Back to School

Megan started school yesterday, all elementary, 6th grade and 9th grade did. Megan is a big bad 5th grader this year, her last in elementary school.
Her school had a back-to-school night last Thursday so she got to meet her teacher and see some of her friends that she hadn't seen for awhile. Her teacher also called her on Sunday just to welcome her to the class. How sweet! So I think Megan was excited to go to school yesterday.

Kristin and Lauren, because they're 7th and 10th grade, didn't have to go to school until today. I'm not sure either was excited about it. I know I wasn't excited about getting up early today, that's for sure! I'm so not ready for that. Lauren of course is all about the fashion. She had to be looking good at least even though she had next to nothing in her back pack.

Kristin, however, meticulously gathered her supplies and had everything she was supposed to have in her bag. She's my little rule follower. She still was looking good with a brown top and a couple of necklaces. Yes, she did wear shoes, I just took the picture before she put them on.

Kristin's school had a back-to-school night last night that we went to. She got her schedule and we got to find where all her classes were. She's going to have a lot of walking to do this year! Most of her classes are at the far end of each hallway. Wouldn't surprise me if she didn't get some late to class notices this year. She noticed right away that she didn't have band on her schedule. That was Kristin's thing last year, she loved it. So we had to stop in the band room to check on this, Kristin was afraid she was kicked out of class for talking too much! If you know Kristin that's pretty funny since she's so quiet but I told you, band was her thing last year. The band director was surprised it wasn't on her schedule so he said he would get it straightened out.

One last picture of the two of them. In next year's picture Kristin will probably be taller than Lauren! Well she already is by a fraction of an inch, you just can't tell it in this picture.

Next year I can once again get all 3 of them in the same picture with Megan going to middle school. I will never get all 4 of them since Lauren will have graduated long before Zach gets to middle school. In a couple of weeks it'll be Zach's turn for his first day of school. Pre-K this year, boy is he getting big.

Making a Bus

This was our 3rd Lowes Build and Grow workshop we've taken the kids to this summer. I was looking forward to this one, it was a bus that had a secret compartment with a chalkboard top and it even came with the chalk. As I said, I was really looking forward to it...that is until the kids started making them. Or should I say Zach started making his. His didn't have all the pieces so he couldn't even finish it plus one of the sides that holds the chalkboard in broke off so the top wouldn't go on right. Of course this time they barely had enough kits for the people that signed up so I couldn't even get him an extra one. Luckily he didn't know the difference. Just give him a hammer and he's happy, like this:
Megan did most of hers by herself.

They got their certificates and patches when they were done and the woman running the workshop said to stop back at 11:00 and if they had any left then I could have another one for Zach.

I stop back and luckily there were some no shows so there were 6 kits left and we scored another one. We still haven't fixed Zach's bus yet but at least now we can if we want to! Unfortunately I never did take a picture of the finished product, Megan's came out cute though.

Soccer Tournament

We actually made it through a soccer weekend without Lauren getting any concussions. Yay! All summer long she's been seeing two different doctors for that 2nd concussion she got at the end of May. One doc specialized in concussions and the other doc had her take computerized concussion screens. It was amazing how low her scores were after taking the first test (about 3 1/2 weeks after getting her concussion.) She took the test again about about 3 weeks later and her scores had improved enough to eventually be cleared to play again. She did get a warning from the one doc that if she gets anymore concussions her symptoms will be worse and it will take longer for her to recover. I think everything the doctor said went in one ear and out the other because as soon as we left that last appointment Lauren was super excited that she could play soccer again. So needless to say I was super nervous about this weekend.

It was a local 2-day tournament that she played in, 2 games each day. Unfortunately her team didn't do very well, only winning 1 of the games. Here she is after heading a ball. Can you believe she did that? Actually the doctor told her that if done correctly, heading a ball will not give you a concussion. This particular one bounced on the ground first before she headed it.

Here's another picture of her. She played forward the whole time.

A couple of more weeks yet before the season starts so she has a little bit of a break. Plus a couple of weeks where I don't have to worry!

Hershypark

Yesterday we went to Hersheypark again. Twice in one year, I don't think we've ever done that. The crew was the 6 people in my family plus Kelly. To start the morning Megan, Zach and I went and checked out the kiddie rides while everyone else rode Fahrenheit. Zach picked the swings as his first ride. Then it was onto the mini pirate ship. Megan was still able to ride this so you can see her and Zach in the third row down from the top. Next year I think she's going to be too tall and Zach will be doing all the kiddie rides solo.

We then rode the Tiny Timbers or kiddie flume, I even got to ride on that one!

We squeezed in one more ride, the Dizzy Drums before I was texted that they were almost to the end of the line at Fahrenheit.

The picture is blurry but this is how he rode that ride.

We rode some more things, ate lunch, then got our swim suits and towels out of the car and went to the Boardwalk. My camera stayed in the locker during this time. Zach had a ball playing in the Waterworks, a big water-play structure that had slides and water squirting out of almost everything. Here's a picture of it that I took from 2008:
Zach found two slides that he kept doing over and over. One was the small red slide you see at the bottom right of that picture. The other was a tube slide that's on the other side of that one. He liked the tube one best because not only was it a tube slide, it was a twisty tube slide and he said he couldn't see where he was going. Everyone else (meaning Paul, Kelly, Lauren, Kristin and Megan) rode the bigger tube rides.

After finally meeting up and changing Kristin made us wait while she took care of her nosebleed. I told her I was putting this picture on my blog so here it is:

Isn't that just an awesome picture of her?

Megan, Zach and I went to get our picture taken with the Hershey Kiss guy while the rest were riding the Great Bear. We were third in line, the family that was up next was a mom with 4 boys. I didn't see what happened but after they went up to the Kiss the Kiss turned and walked over to the corner. Later two of the boys were told by an employee that they needed to calm down. The Kiss then left after that and we never got to get our picture taken with him. Darn kids ruined it for everyone. We waited a few minutes to see if he would come back but no, he didn't. Here's my wonderful, well-behaved kids waiting :)

We just had to drive the cars. Zach loves this ride. On the turnpike I rode with Lauren and we were in the first car. Kelly rode with Kristin (I heard Kristin wasn't a very good driver.)

Zach was special, he got to drive both Paul and Megan. It looks like he took his job seriously.

Megan likes roller coasters but for some unknown reason she doesn't want to ride any that go upside down. I find that really weird because when we went to Disneyland in the spring of '07, 3 years ago, she rode California Screamin' over and over, it was one of her favorite rides. That one went upside down so she's done it before and loved it.

Somehow Lauren talked Megan into riding the Sooperdooperlooper this time. It used to be an awesome ride back when it was first built. Apparently it was the first looping roller coaster on the east coast (at least that's what their website says!). But now with all the other cooler roller coasters around, it's just plain boring. Here's a picture of them as they started going up the hill. About the only person you can see is Kristin, she's in the second to last row. Kristin and Paul were together and Lauren and Megan were in the very back.

And here they are going through the loop.

Maybe next time we go to an amusement park she'll be more willing to ride the looping ones. I know she would like them. As soon as Zach gets old enough to ride she's not going to have any choice but to go on since we can then ride them as a family. In fact, by next year he hopefully will be tall enough to ride the Sooperdooperlooper and the Comet, you only have to be 42" tall to ride those and he's 40" now. Can he grow 2" in a year? The kid better or I'm going to have to put him in thick soled shoes!

It's starting to get later in the day but we rode a few more rides, here's the kids on the Tilt-a-Whirl.

While the girls were waiting to ride the Comet. Paul, Zach, Kelly and I rode the Skyview.

At this point it just got too dark to take any more pictures. The girls got off the Comet, they rode the Pirate Ship then it was off to Chocolate World to do the free ride and buy some chocolate.

It was a LONG day. It was very crowded, especially at the Boardwalk but at least that cooled us off since it was also a hot day. I took the stroller with us for part of the day in the hopes that Zach would take a nap but no such luck. He did a lot of walking and was asleep in the car before we even left the parking lot. He even slept through our stop to get something to eat on the way home. Other than wishing it was less crowded I think we had a good day.

Museum of Natural History

Every summer in August we do this and every summer in August I blog about it. I believe this will be the third blog entry that I've done about this museum. To refresh your memory, it's $1 Tuesdays in August hence the whole reason why we go. It normally would have cost us $27 to go to this tiny little museum but I only spent $5 today. Woohoo! I ALWAYS get there before they open because the place gets CROWDED. I'm not kidding, they open at 9:30 and by 10:00 there's no parking spots left and people start parking in the grass. So... here we are with about 5 minutes till opening and we've got to pose with the turtle. We do it every year.
I think other people are finally beginning to get smart because when I pulled into the parking lot (about 7 minutes before opening time) there were about 12 other cars already there. Usually I'm the second or third one. So already there was quite a crowd waiting at the doors.

We waited in the shade by the turtle till the doors opened. Lauren was not too thrilled to be there.

I did give her the option of not going but she told me last night that she wanted to go and she was up this morning so she came with us. I think next year I'll insist she stay home since she didn't seem too interested in it.

You do see the same things every year, with the exception of one exhibit, and the museum is kind of small so once you've seen it it does become kind of boring on future trips. I go mainly to see the special exhibit and for Zach (and for the girls when they were younger.)

This years special exhibit was about Tree Houses. They had a tree house on the ground that was slightly elevated that you could explore. We made a beeline straight to this exhibit and had the place to ourselves for awhile. The tree house had different things to look at...

and even had pictures of animals on the ground and as you walked over them they made the appropriate animal sounds. It was a cute exhibit, I think they could have added more activities though.

We then backtracked and looked at their regular exhibits. There were different animals (fake ones) behind glass in their natural habitats.

We stopped in the auditorium and watched about 2 minutes of the dinosaur movie. As you can tell we had this all to ourselves too.

Lauren was wanting to leave at this point but I wanted to go explore one area that we've never done before, the outside trails. Actually, I never even knew they existed till I was looking on their website to find out what time they opened. There were two, one through a meadow and one through the woods. We did a little bit of both then stopped to get pictures at the outside animal statues before heading home.

Next year I think I'm going to have to ditch Lauren, she's getting too old for it and was totally bored. She let me know how bored too, about every 5 minutes we were there. Zach would still like it next year and I think Megan would too. Surprisingly Kristin seemed to enjoy it as I saw her reading alot of the display signs. She got rushed through a few due to Zach just wanting to keep going and due to Lauren telling her to hurry up. So yeah, definitely ditching Lauren next year.

Meet Sapphire

My heavy metal rocker!

Megan went to a film seminar last weekend where she takes acting classes. Her acting coach wrote a 5 minute short film and she played the character of Sapphire. Her character's description was "a little bit Rocker, a lotta crazy." That role was perfect for Megan!

Originally I had only signed her up to go to the Saturday class (it was a 2-day seminar) but she enjoyed it so much that I ended up letting her go on Sunday too. She especially liked dressing up in character and getting her hair and makeup done.

After I picked her up on Sunday she immediately started taking her makeup off and taking her hair down. I don't know what she was thinking because when we got home I had her put eyeshadow back on and I put her hair back up, I wanted a picture! We even let her go to Grandmom and Pop Pop's house looking like that to show off her "new look." Of course I laugh and think it's funny now. I won't be thinking it's so funny when she decides to dress like that in high school! Knowing her...she probably will too.

Making a Bug Box

I took Megan and Zach to another one of Lowe's Build and Grow clinics. Last time Paul went and helped Zach with his and I just had to semi-help Megan, they made monster trucks that time. Today, however, Paul was busy so it was just me with two kids. Not that putting the monster truck together was hard or anything, it just had a lot of steps. This bug box was super easy. 3 large nails on each side and 8 small nails on the bottom, slide in the clear cover and that was it. I helped Zach with his but Megan pretty much did hers all by herself. The only thing I helped her with was lining the legs up the right way.

I didn't get a chance to take any pictures while they were being put together but here they are with their finished projects:
Zach is showing how the cover goes on and Megan is pretending to hammer.

See the boy sitting next to Zach? A couple times I thought Zach was going to get him with the hammer, he was swinging a little wildly at times. That pretty much explains why I didn't get any pictures during the making of the bug boxes, I was trying to control where Zach was hammering!

We visited the Children's Museum again.

Lauren didn't go the last time we went so today we took her with us. Even though the place is geared for ages 10 and under she seemed to have fun exploring everything. She tried out the rowing that is supposed to get your heart rate up.
She enjoyed the climbing wall.

She even performed on stage with her sisters. We didn't get a chance to do this last time, it was always so crowded.

We explored a few other new things this time too. I don't remember if they were out last time or if I just didn't notice them before. In the Structures exhibit we tried building with these kind of blocks:

There were a couple of other exhibits that seemed new too. One was to show what happens to a building during an earthquake. You build a building, push a button, the ground shakes and knocks your building down. Then you're supposed to do it a second time but this time when you build it you're supposed to add these velcro anchor things to it. The only problem was that Zach kept wanting to hit the button to move the exhibit so we never got a chance to see if it worked. Megan was rather annoyed at him!

So once again we saved the water area for last. Kristin started to create a vortex (at least that's what I think it's called!) by spinning a wheel.
Lauren took over and managed to get it to the top so the water came out. I told her it was her workout for the day because it took a lot of power and time to get it all the way to the top.
Zach was once again fascinated with the water area. He likes floating his boat around the stream table and I like the the "boat elevators" or locks that are on it. That would be a lot of fun to play with if there were no other kids around to mess you up!
Kristin played her stock game again but she also found this game that she said she likes better. It's some kind of career/job type game where you go through and make choices and it keeps track of the money you either earn or spend. When Lauren did it she was a doctor heavily in debt (due to classes she took) and managed to overspend her budget to end her game. Kristin thought it was funny.
Overall it occupied our morning. Lauren liked checking everything out but soon became bored. Well I would hope so since it's for much younger kids! In a couple of weeks it'll be just Zach and I going. If anyone wants to tag along with us just let me know, I can bring two extra people with us with our membership.

Our visit to the Ticking Tomb...

On the way we stopped at Mamaw and Papaw's house to get some more tomatoes. Zach got a surprise and got to take a ride on a tractor.

As we were getting ready to leave I asked him if he had fun driving. He said, "yeah, I drove all by myself."

So now it's time to visit the "ticking tomb." Megan went with one of her friends this past spring to see it and it's all she talks about and has been wanting us to see it since then. I don't know why I haven't gotten there before now, I guess it's because it's so close I knew I could do go there anytime.

According to legend, in the mid 1760's surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were passing through the area while mapping out their famous Mason-Dixon line. A local tot supposedly swallowed Mason's pocket watch, which continued to tick inside the boy throughout his life and beyond. It's said that if you put your ear close to his tombstone, you can sometimes still hear the watch ticking away.

Here we are approaching the cemetery.

Megan had been there before and knew where it was but Lauren wanted to find it. All she knew was that it was next to a heart shaped marker. She was the first one to listen.

Of course no one heard the ticking. One theory about the ticking is that it was caused by an underground spring that was beneath the gravestone. In recent years, the ticking has reportedly stopped, which suggests that the underground spring has shifted. Or maybe that the watch has finally run down. Who knows?

Another interesting tidbit about this legend is that Edgar Allen Poe visited the grave himself and the result was the story, "The Tell Tale Heart." Poe did actually stay at a local tavern a few years before his story was published so that part of the legend could actually be true.

The "ticking tomb" is the small flat tombstone to the left of Lauren.
It took us till the end of the summer to go see it but we finally did.

Slip 'N Slide

Toys R Us always sends the kids something for their birthday. Usually it's a $2 or $3 coupon for any purchase and a coupon to get a free balloon and crown at the service desk. Zach hit the jackpot this year. They sent him a coupon for a free Thomas train ($11.99 - $12.99 value) and $3 off any purchase. I was a little worried that there would be no Thomas trains left because the coupon said "while supplies last" and he got it in the mail the Friday before we went on vacation. Yesterday was the first chance I could get him there but there were plenty of trains for him to choose one. He chose "Charlie" so that's the new addition to our Thomas family.

With his $3 (plus another $1 that Paul gave him) Zach got a slip 'n slide that was on clearance. (It actually cost $7 but I let him slide on the extra $3 it cost.) After dinner tonight I set it up and the kids had fun slipping and sliding. Zach was a riot! He was a little hesitant at first but very quickly got the hang of it and loved it. He loved it so much he kept cutting in front of his sisters so he had a lot more turns than anyone else.

Our backyard is a hill and the kids kept slipping to the side so I switched it so it was going slightly downhill. Did they ever go fast after that!

Kristin was the funniest. The very first time she did it she slid maybe 2 feet. She sucked at it but at least she had a sense of humor and laughed at her pitiful attempt. Once the slip 'n slide was turned she had no problems and did a much better job.

I guess because they had more momentum with it being a little downhill the pad at the end got a little torn with everyone ramming into it or going over it. Oh well, we'll keep using it until it's totally trashed. For an out-of -pocket cost of $3 I sure can't complain!