Baseball and birthdays and brothers, oh my!

We returned from 10 days of camping on Monday afternoon. That was awesome fun! I have about 8.000 pictures to share from that, so it will take a while! (Meaning, you'll be lucky to see any of them before next year's trip...!)

We returned on Monday afternoon, and then I took off with the kids on Tuesday evening to head to my dad's house. He won Red Sox tickets in a raffle, so we decided to take Connor to his first game. These were not just any Red Sox tickets, however, they were Green Monster seats! These, for those of you who don't know, are the seats on top of the Green Monster, and have the best view of the game. Amazing.




This same week we also took Aisling to the American Girl store to celebrate her (belated) 7th birthday. One of the gifts that Uncle Kevin gave to her was a CD full of songs with Aisling in the title. It was such a special and meaningful gift. (Fitting for a Godfather to give his Goddaughter!)



While staying overnight at dad's house, we had an afternoon free. During this time, Kevin and I noticed that the kids were going bonkers, and that they didn't have anything to play with outside. We took off to the store to buy them a few things to keep at Poppy's house. When we returned, this is what we saw:

Poppy had a few tricks up his sleeve, and was letting the kids slide down the "big hill" on sleds and rugs! Very cute.

We headed for home the next day. Knowing that we had the whole day, I decided to make an adventure out of it. We stopped at the Quechee Gorge on the way home. I had big plans to hike with them. We did a short (5 minutes?) walk, and then the kids were starving. I noticed that there were storm clouds above us, and we could hear thunder. So, I made them take a look at the gorge before eating (worried we wouldn't have a chance to see it at all.) It's a good thing too, because moments after they saw the gorge, it started pouring! Our lovely picnic outside became a free for all in the car! We still had fun, and we managed to see the gorge a little after lunch.

One interesting thing that happened during lunch, was this: a car pulled up next to us, and 2 parents got out with their 2 kids. They knocked on my window and asked if they could trade us some peaches for a cell phone call. I handed over my cell phone, and we ate some lovely home grown Maine peaches from our friendly neighbors. (from Maine)

It was a great week, but I am so glad to be home. I head back to work on Monday. I will miss the extra time home with the kids, that's obvious. However, I look forward to some added structure to our lives.

Another day, another destination

Today, after spending the morning taking 300+ pictures off my phone and organizing them into folders on the computer, I decided to take the kids to Ben and Jerry's for a tour. That's right, I decided to drive an hour away, after lunch, during nap time, on a day when everyone went to bed really late. Foreshadowing anyone?

It ended up being a decent visit overall, but not without a lot of effort on my part. (And when I say effort, I mean effort not to sell the children to the nearest tourist)

We started and ended our visit at the playground. In between we managed to complete a tour without exhibiting any temper tantrums along the way! (oh, and the kids behaved well too). We also, of course, ate more than our fair share of ice cream.
At Ben and Jerry's today, Wyatt discovered the hand dryer. He would not move his hand! Very cute.
After the hour long drive home I decided to swing by the site of the new playground. Our town is building a (much needed) new playground. Read about it here.We've been following the construction of the playground for the past few days. When we drove by it yesterday the signs said that it would open tomorrow.
So, on the way home I figured I would drive by with the kids to see the final stages of construction before the big trip tomorrow to break it in. However, the playground was ready tonight. Yes, tonight; when I had my exhausted,un-dinnered, sugared-up, fighting children in the back. As soon as they saw the playground they screamed (in unison, like they rehearsed it) "OHMYGOD the playground is ready RIGHT NOW!!!!" I am not sure how I could have pretended not to notice that they wanted to go play. So, against my better judgement, away they went.

Sadly, although perhaps not surprisingly, it didn't end well. It involved hitting and maybe a little yelling from me. In fact, Connor was told he would not be able to go tomorow. That makes me really upset because I was planning on bringing everyone for a bike ride to the playground in the morning. However, he did the exact opposite of what I asked him to do, and he knew the consequence ahead of time. So, in the morning I will take the girls to the playground while he stays home. I hope that I will be able to take him in the afternoon, we'll see how his behavior is. These are the moments that make parenting really difficult.

Overall it was a decent day. Perhaps not the best day of vacation, but it was still nice to be with the kids. Today was also the first time we went to a place where it made sense to bring Wyatt. It was really nice to be able to bring him along, and I think he had a good time.

We actually stayed home today!

Today we opted to stay home. I almost took the kids out for an open gym session at a place nearby, but couldn't get respite for Wyatt. That turned out to be a good thing. I think we needed a day to hang at home! We did some crafts in the morning, which was cool. It was neat to be with all of them working together. They all were in a great mood and were working together really well. Even Wyatt seemed really happy to be hanging out with us. Of course, we were sitting outside which is his favorite place, so that may have helped!

In the afternoon Connor went over a friend's house for a playdate. He went to the house of a friend who we have known for ever, but they've never had a playdate before. It worked out really well, and reportedly they had a blast!

While he was gone I was able to get Siobhan down for a nap, and Aisling and I had some time together. Given that we had some many strawberries from t
he other day, we decided to make chocolate covered strawberries!

Aisling, of course, stayed in her pajamas all day. It is, after all, summer vacation!

Montshire Museum

This vacation of mine is turning into a veritable tour around the state! Today's destination was the Montshire Museum. We've been there many times before, and Aisling and I even slept over there last year with some girl scouts. It's a fantastic place, and I wish we lived closer to it. It's about a 2 hour drive away, so we only head there a few times a year. They have a fantastic outdoor water exploration section, so we generally go there in the summer. Today the biggers slept until 9:00 (!!!) and I did not want to wake them, given their behavior yesterday... so we had a late start. We still had a blast, however.

We started the day with a picnic. (Yes, I actually packed food today, not Subway!) They have great outdoor trails and tons of places to sit and eat. They've never sold food there before (and there's nothing really close) although new this year was a food cart. Dad was still up visiting.
This museum is right in the middle of the trip from MA to VT,
so it's a great meeting spot too!Once inside, the kids hit one of their favorite places within the museum, the fog machine. They have little blocks and things with the machine, so you can move the path of the fog. Siobhan, probably having no idea what fog was, felt certain that we were going to see "frogs". She spent at least ten minutes of our fog playing asking me where the frogs were!(I'm having a really hard time with how grown up Aisling looks in this picture...)

Connor and Aisling learned a little about evaporation,
as they tried to spread fog to everyone below them.
It didn't quite work!The fog machine is right near the "tower" which rewards your climb with views like this
of the "science park" below.
Next up was playing in the robot garden, where giant robot bugs gave the kids
some perspective on a bug's life.
This is the kids putting pieces together to make a platypus.
How bad of a parent am I if the first thing Siobhan said was "It's just like Perry?"Perry:

Hey, it's a good show. Don't judge.

They were then able to head to Siobhan's favorite place, the bubble zone!

Then they did some exploring with aluminum foil to try to build boats that would hold the most pennies. They learned about surface tension. They had a blast with this and tried a few different ways to build their boats. I have a feeling this may be replicated at home. Connor's record for the number of pennies held was 168. Aisling's was 100 something, and Siobhan lost interest after about 50.

Finally it was time to head out for the true favorite part, the water exploration park! This is a long stream which includes places for the kids to look at damming, currents, and fountains, among other things. The stream ends in a little water fall. There are ping pong balls that the kids can drop into the stream to explore what happens at various places and under various conditions. There is also a place where the kids can build their own fountains using little pieces of PVC pipe. There is also a little area where the kids can climb on the rocks and in and out of the water. They can control the speed of the fountains here and can play in little pools of water. They can also play with the ping pong balls here, and can also experiment with blocks to change the water path. All around excellent water play!
This child keeps me on my toes in unbelievable ways.
Good thing I love him so gosh darn much!

I'm having a great time home with the kids. I head back to work next week. I haven't worked over the summer since college, so I am having some mixed emotions. I LOVE my job, and am excited to go back to it, honestly. I am also quite happy to take a break from being camp director/nurse/teacher/fight manager/art teacher for four kids all day every day. That's exhausting. It's fan-freakin-tastic, but so exhausting. I know the kids will have a blast at the camps we've picked out for them too. But, of course, they are feeling a little nervous about it as well. Thankfully, I will have Fridays off. A decent mix I think.