Summer Fun With the Family

We were so over-due for some serious family fun time! Even though we went and broke our budget, we had such a fun weekend. We started things off on Friday by getting the heck out of the house. It's my own fault, but for the past 3 weeks I have been such a lazy home-body. I have been hiding away in my air-conditioned house and doing nothing but cleaning and cooking...and a whole lot of eating what I cooked! (What can I say, my appetite is quite grander with baby girl than it was with Joey!) So we headed to the park in Pineville. I am not a huge fan of "p-town", but the kids like it because there are always loads of geese (and poop to boot!) and it's really big. That was fun and it got Joey nice and worn out for nap time.
After an extended nap we picked up my mini paycheck from Banfield and headed out for all the necessities for hot dogs a'la'grill and S'MORES! The original plan was to camp at Andrew Jackson State Park, but the weather was calling for thunderstorms all weekend long, so we cancelled and cooked-out in our drive way. It was SO MUCH FUN!
We ended the night all cuddling-up in Mommy and Daddy's bed to watch the Phantom of the Opera. The kids absolutely love the music and were very jealous Trey and I couldn't take them last week when the show was in town at Blumenthal. So we watched the movie and let them ask us 100 questions about the live musical.
It was up at 7 as usual Saturday morning. Trey made really yummy French toast and then we were "all aboard" to catch the light rail to Discovery Place downtown. They were having a new UnderWater and Pirates exhibit we were very eager to experience!
We got to Discovery Place after the very crowded train ride (I was a nervous wreck that I left my hand sanitizer in the car...icky icky public transportation germs!!!) and everyone was off to play and experience the Circus exhibit. We had all already been so it was a bit of a review, but a fun one! Then we went to explore the deep! We saw so many artifacts that had been extracted from as far as 1700 feet deep! Most of them were from the SS Republic that sunk in a Hurricane in the 1800's. The kids had fun with video simulations of being under the ocean using the mechanic extraction devices that scientists used to discover the artifacts. Very cool! They took turns steering the helm in a hurricane and what I thought was coolest of all was being in the hurricane simulator! (We all got to experience winds up to nearly 80 mph!).
Then it was off to the land of pirates! These days, someone just says the word "pirate" and thinks 'fun'! We learned all kinds of interesting factoids about pirates through history and even met a live pirate! We learned about "privateers" who were private pirates hired by the governement. Queen Elizabeth had one! Finally, we met BJ, a very cool talking parrot. Did you know that there is no historical account of pirates ever having a talking bird?!? Wonder where that part of the story came from.
As we were leaving DP we passed a pizza guy carrying pizzas from Fuel. The cravings hit me really quick! It was only 2 blocks away so we headed over for lunch. What a fun place to eat with kids! They provide the kids with pizza dough to play with at each table and boy was the food ever yummy!!! We got some great shots of the kids (and Daddy!) playing with the dough.
As we headed back to the train station we decided to swing into the ImgainOn really fast. There we wound up playing in a Charlotte Trolley (that's what the pictures are from), watching a puppet show by puppet master Carly, and getting a library card and taking home a big stack of books...chapter books, picture books, children's books. What a great thing for the kids to be excited about!
We were very excited to get back home and finally get to nap! We are by no means Disney Land parents...so it was very fun to break out of our normal routine (which is still fun!) and try some new things. All our experiences were not just fun, but educational. Since Trey and I are huge fans of this type of fun....it was a perfect day full of exciting adventures!