Easel a deux...

We're always looking for activities to occupy our days. Now that the weather has turned nice, we dragged our easel outside and tried our hand at painting. (Said easel has been locked away in our storage room for the entire year since I bought it on Craigslist. I couldn't bring myself to crack out the paint indoors after seeing the damage these two can do with crayons & markers!)

Maddie happily wore her smock and used her paintbrush...

Aidan screamed as if we were trying to smother him with the smock and learned that fingerpainting equals unpleasantly messy fingers...

The Master at work...

The finished product...

It never ceases to amaze how different these two are from each other!

'Nastics

We signed the kids up for gymnastics (the mommy/daddy & me type) at our local YMCA. And I'd say we're pretty gosh darn good at it! All 4 of us go together on Sunday mornings and M&A get very excited yelling that they're going to 'nastics.

Here's what they're teaching us...

The trampoline is BY FAR their favorite. I'd say they spend a good 35 minutes on it; and the class is only 45 minutes long! We've even had to drag out our Urban Rebounder (a mis-guided purchase during one of our "let's get into shape" enthusiasms) here at home to function like a mini trampoline. Watch out Nadia Comaneci...

Cause he's curious...

...that's Curious George! What a beautiful day to take a trip into Boston and pay a visit to the Curious George Exhibit at the Children's Museum.


Attempting to bribe Curious George with money stolen from his own cash register:




Maddie couldn't get enough of this block building machine thing:





Opening the elevator:





Our future engineer:






At the marketplace:






And I think this pretty much sums up how fondly we feel about Curious George:

After a very nice walk along the docks to check out boats and ducks, everyone was pretty zapped out from a very busy day:

The kids give the Boston Children's Museum a thumbs up! We won't mention that we accidentally took a wrong turn on the way to the museum and ended up at the airport since it actually worked out well giving M&A a chance to see some real live airplanes. It's always an adventure...

Fort Devens, here we come!

Mimi & Buppy were on vacation in TN this past Friday, so the kids and I decided we'd go on an adventure to occupy ourselves. We drove up to the old Fort Devens and visited Daddy at work!

Here we are lunching in the conference room:




While Maddie tried to jump rope with the telephone cord:





Aidan had to take a VERY important phone call:





Then right to work:





Maddie rockin' the safety goggles:





No worries, Piggy made it along for the adventure:

Quick engineer training session:

View from Daddy's office (not too shabby as far as suburban views go):

Happy to see he's proudly displaying his Christmas gift:

And a quick visit to the local playground to burn some energy before the long drive home:

Thanks Daddy; we had a blast and can't wait to do it again! We're thinking maybe a corner office next time??