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.

Strawberry Picking!

Today was a beautiful day to go strawberry picking! We always head to Sam Mazza's farm stand. They have pick your own, and they also have a cute store and tons of beautiful produce for sale. They also have a little playground with some random animals for feeding and petting. We've been picking strawberries there since Connor was about 2. I remember my first time picking I was 9 months pregnant! (good times....). We've also gone with Siobhan as a tiny 1 month old in the Bjorn!

This time, however, I had bigger kids able to actually pick and help out. What a difference that makes! They were all able to pick good ripe ones. They were also able to refrain from eating their weights in strawberries.... =) Dad was up for a few days so he came with us too. A nice treat!

Siobhan munching away!

Obviously the coolest picker there....

If you say to Siobhan "Let me take your picture", this is what she does.
I am not sure if it means she has a future in modeling,
or in dorky picture taking...but there it is.
We brought a picnic lunch and ate there.
(A picnic for me means purchasing sandwiches at Subway;
you didn't think I actually had time to make a nutritious meal, did you?)
We then had some time for my animals to visit with the animals there.
Connor loved feeding the animals. The kids hung onto their apples from their lunches and fed them to the horse. Then they managed to clean me out for all of my quarters so they could buy those little pellets.Connor was right at home.
Aisling is generally more timid around animals. She was a trooper though and fed the animals with my hand under hers. She was super cute and I was very proud of her. Siobhan wanted nothing to do with feeding them, and who could blame her really; the animals were mostly bigger than her!
By the end of the afternoon, Aisling was feeding this little guy all by herself.
(Of course it helps that this was a tiny little baby, but still!)
I had heard there was a pregnant goat at Mazza's.
While I am no expert on goats, I may be an expert on being pregnant;
having been so a few times... you know, for over 2 years when you add it all up....
Anyhoo.... I can be relatively certain this was indeed the pregnant goat. I also will wager a bet that there are two babies in there.
She and I had a little chat about how miserable it is to be pregnant in the hot summer.

We came home from picking strawberries and jumped in the pool. Correction, the kids jumped in the pool. I am a water wimp, and anything below hot tub temperature does not appeal to me. I now am off to cut strawberries for our home made strawberry shortcake for tonight! =)

Shelburne Farm

I actually had an opportunity to hang out with the kids today. It was awesome! We went to Shelburne Farms. We have been there so many times in the past and it's one of our favorite places! We opted to go today because Siobhan's preschool class was having a field trip there. We ran into her class, but only visited with them for a few minutes before we ran off to do our own thing.

It was neat today to see the farm through Siobhan's eyes. I've been with the other kids so many times, and they know the place like the back of their hands. But, this was the first time Siobhan could really go and comprehend what she was seeing. It was so fun and exciting to watch her take it all in. It was even more fun and exciting to watch Connor and Aisling interact with her and explain all of the animals to her!

Busy

Are you seeing a theme here?!
I am LOVING my classes and my new job. Love doesn't even seem like strong enough a word. I am doing what I was meant to be doing and it's awesome and exciting. It's also overwhelming and terrifying and exhausting. My classwork has added at least 15 hours of work to each week, if not more. Add that to the fact that I am suddenly working full time for the first time in ten years, and, well, you get the idea. The big kids both played baseball this spring as well as maintained dance lessons and scouts. I am so glad they are able to do this stuff, and it definitely is making them well-rounded kids, but it makes life a drain sometimes. Al and I hardly see each other on a daily basis anyway, but add all of this into the mix, and, well, days go by before we are able to have a conversation. I am hoping that when I finish this classwork (next April) that this speed slows down a little bit. I hope that in the meantime people understand why we may not be showing up to every social event offered. It's not you, it's me; I swear. ;)

Understand, however, that this is the choice we've made. We have had conversations with people multiple times who ask us things like: Why do we still have Wyatt? Was Siobhan an accident? What were we thinking? This is the life we have chosen, and we have talked very seriously every step along the way. I wouldn't change it for anything. Wyatt is here because we love him and at this point could not picture our lives without him. When his presence is no longer feeding our souls our our children's' souls (or his soul) well, then we will discuss his moving on. Siobhan was absolutely not an accident. We always wanted a big family, and, through the grace of God, we have that.

It often feels like people are "worried" about us. I understand that, I do. Sometimes I do question the choices we've made. But, don't worry about us. We're fine. (We could sometimes use a little help with some babysitting.... if anyone's interested!) ;)

I just felt the need to get that off my chest. Continue to stay tuned for updates on our life. I hope to be adding some pictures soon of trips we've taken recently.

Thanks for all the love!