Thursday, May 26, 2011

Visiting the Kinfolk

Last weekend, my aunt, the girls and I drove down to Murfreesboro, TN, just outside Nashville, to visit some family.  It was a great visit and went by much too fast.  The girls had a ball playing with their 4 Tennessee cousins.  Most of our activities involved entertaining the kids while sitting and chatting.

We swung on the tree swing, taking turns with the other kids.  Magnolia just loved this swing.  Wish we had a tree that we could hang a swing on in our yard.

 Boothe even got her turn to ride the swing.
 It rained one afternoon for a couple hours so we popped some popcorn and watched a movie.
 We played dress up.  A neighbor came over to visit and Sydney put her crown on the neighbor's head and gave her her wand.  The neighbor then playing along waved the magic wand and asked Sydney what she wished for.  Sydney answered, "actually, I wish I had my crown and wand back."  haha
 We did this.  Whatever this is.
 She really got her boxing skills down in no time.
 We ate ice cream with chocolate and strawberries.  And got ate up by mosquitos, but it was worth it!
 We wasted no ice cream.
 We laughed.
 We had a night of balloon blowing, popping, flying silliness.


 We made interesting uses for kitchen tongs.
 We waited to see what Jason had up his sleeve and was always pleasantly surprised with his ideas.

 We ate popsicles.

 We played with water balloons.  This is Boothe before squeezing her balloon....
 This is after it popped.
 Sydney pretending to be sweet and not about to throw that balloon full of water onto anyne.
 Best buddies.
 The biggest water balloon....ever.

 Boothe got quite attached.  And...
 was a bit upset when it popped all over her.
 Trying to pop a balloon that doesn't want to pop.
 Here it goes...

 And one more for good measure...
 Phyllis, Kathy and Delbert.  My mom's sister, Kathy, whom we traveled to TN with and brother.
 Most of the Tennesee crew.  See you all at Thanksgiving.  It's your turn to come to Indiana!

Ballet Class

Magnolia finished up her semester of ballet class last Thursday.  We got to go in and watch the class.  There was one other observation day in the middle of the semester and I could tell so much improvement from then until now.  All the girls look so cute in their pink tights and tutus.  Magnolia seems to really like it so for now, this will be our winter activity.  I just signed her up for tennis this summer, which will be our summer activity if she likes it.

She is taking her classes from Southold Dance Company.  I mainly picked it because their studio is just a few blocks from our house and it's a quick trip there and back.  We have really been happy with everything about our experience.  Boothe is DYING to join in and participate but she'll have to sit out one more year until she is 3, poor thing.  Must be hard being a younger sibling (I was the oldest!) ha.

















Shedd Aquarium

Dan took the day off work on a Monday a couple of weeks ago so we could take a day trip into Chicago.  We had been wanting to take the girls to the Shedd Aquarium and decided to also stop by Trader Joe's and Ikea.

We had a wonderful day.  It was nice for Dan to get away from work for a couple hours.  I enjoyed having an extra set of hands with the girls.  And we all liked seeing all of the fish, dolphins, sting rays, etc.

Having taken Magnolia to the Indianapolis Zoo while I was pregnant with Boothe and now having visited the Aquarium, I think we'd rather do the zoo.  And probably not just the Indy Zoo, I'm sure there are fabulous zoos all over, but we have only been to the ones in South Bend and Indy.  It's just nice to have some aquatic exhibits as well as other things.  We all were a bit bored of looking at fish by the end of the day.  And being all indoors, the Shedd was so crowded with school children, that it was a bit overwhelming.  We have a Indianapolis Zoo/Children's Museum trip planned for this summer now!

 Boothe wanting to hold the turtle.
 Magnolia's favorite part of the day was the Dora 4D show.  It was a short 3D movie but with seats that shook, blew air and smelled like bananas.
 This was the best picture I would get of the 2 of them together.  Thank God for professional photographers.  I don't know how they do it!

And that was our Chicago trip.  I'll be posting pictures from our Tennessee trip last weekend soon!