Well we had a great week this week. I got to take Thursday and Friday off of work for the holiday and it was fun to have a few days to just spend time with the family. With all the craziness we’ve had lately this was a welcome change of pace for us.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty normal days. On Wednesday evening I took the scouts to help a family in the ward load up their moving truck. The boys were pretty helpful and I was happy that we could do some service. I’m really impressed with the quality of the young men that I work with. They are really trying to be good and to do what is expected of them.
Thursday we had a fun family day. We went to the Thinkery in Austin. The Thinkery is a children’s museum with all kinds of fun things to do. They had a big “farmer’s market” where the kids could shop for fresh plastic fruits and vegetables and then pretend to cook things for the adults that wanted to order lunch. Eliza picked out a bunch of things from the crates and put them in her basket and then she started to pick up all the spare foods she could find on the floor and add them to her basket. She seemed to be trying to keep up with the mess that all the other kids were making. She also had a little personal quest to find all of the plastic strawberries. I think she may have had all of them at one point.
Eliza also enjoyed the tumbling room that they had. There were soft blocks that the kids could stack up and climb on She had everything just the way she wanted it and kept having to put it back as other kids moved things around. It was cute to watch her. In this room they also had an instructor come and do a parachute with the kids. Eliza loved shaking the parachute with the other kids, jumping, and walking in a circle. She was by far the youngest kid there but caught right on. She also enjoyed bouncing on the little inflatable animals that they had.
James wasn’t left out of the experience either. They had a room especially for crawlers with things setup close to the floor so the crawlers and toddlers could see them. They even had things built into the floor so that the kids could look down into them. James enjoyed scooting around looking at things.
They had a water room that we thought Eliza was going to love and she did. They had smocks and croc shoes to wear so the kids “didn’t get wet.” They didn’t always work but it was a nice thought. Eliza loved splashing in the water and throwing a little floating ball around.
After this room and lunch we went to a colors room where they had a huge ‘light bright” built into the wall. It was completely dark in this room except for the different color activities that were lit up. Eliza loved this probably the most of anything. The board had transparent pegs made out of different colors of resin and when you put them in the board light would shine through. She would name all the colors as she put them into the holes and had a grand time playing with this. She also wanted to clean it up and put all the pegs back where they belonged.
After this room she had a meltdown, and it was time to go home!
On Friday we did all of our normal Saturday things: shopping, house cleaning, lounging, laundry, etc. We wanted to make sure we didn’t have to try to do anything like that on the 4th.
On Saturday we got up early and went to our ward’s breakfast. My scouts did a good job on the flag ceremony and the food was good. We had pancakes and breakfast tacos. You know you’re in Texas when you have tacos for the 4th of July! It was fun to see the ward.
After the breakfast we came home and Sarah crashed for a few hours napping. I got to play with the kids and we just played dress-up and duplos. We also did ring around the rosie several times. I let Eliza and James direct what we did and we just played. I had a lot of fun.
In the evening of the 4th we went out to some farm property that one of our ward members has out to the east of where we live. They had invited basically anyone in the ward that wanted to come and there was a big turnout. We cooked pizza in our dutch oven and made some peach cobbler. We also brought along our traditional homemade ice cream (vanilla with chocolate fudge and brownies) to share with people along with the cobbler. Sarah made the cobbler, and it turned out amazing! We got a lot of compliments on it.
The family that invited us out also had a lot of fireworks to shoot off, and we enjoyed the show. Eliza loved the fireworks and would scream in delight at each one. She loved dancing to the music too. James also liked the fireworks and would just stare at them mesmerized. He lasted until almost the very end and then realized he was tired. Eliza wanted to dance with him at the end and he just couldn’t take it anymore.
When we got home, Eliza reminded us that we needed to read scriptures and say prayers before we went to bed. It was already 10:00 and we were ready just to dump her in bed and crash ourselves, but it was sweet to have our little girl remind us that this was in fact the most important thing.
