Camden Children's Garden

This weekend we took the kids to the Camden Children's Garden.  It was a super hot and humid afternoon, but the kids were troopers and were rewarded by running through the splash fountains at the end of our visit!

Daddy goes through the life cycle of seed with Sean ...

... while Clare whipped up some fun in the kitchen - "I makin' dinner! I helpin' Mommy"

Uh, Birdy? We already have a play kitchen at home, remember?

Next up was the butterfly house.  If we thought the butterfly house at the Academy of Sciences was warm, then we had no idea.  This butterfly house had to have been at least 400 degrees with 200 percent humidity, but Sean was really into it - he loved looking at all the butterflies and the caterpillars inside the shed.

We took a ride on the merry-go-round - Sean tried to match his jaguar's roar:

We stopped by a statue of Walt Whitman - Sean said, "I LOVE this statue - it's so beautiful!"

 

We spied a frog prince at the frog grotto:

We took a little break in the giant's garden:

The kids had fun running and hiding in a little network of tunnels:

Daddy and Sean in the dinosaur garden:

We put the kids in a dinosaur egg so they could hatch - Clare was not a fan :-(

Yay! Clare! We're hatching!

Happy again, sitting on a bug:

Finally, we reached the exit and let the kids splash around in the sprinklers to cool off:

Clare didn't really like going in the sprinklers, she'd rather supervise from the sidelines...

I brought an umbrella into the Gardens with us since the forecast called for pop-up thunderstorms.  We didn't need it in the park since the storms held off until just after we all got buckled into the car ...

... after enjoying some ice cream, of course!

Babies' Day Out

Last Monday, the kids' daycare was closed, so we had a day out in Philadelphia. We took the train into the city and once we got on street level, Sean pointed at one of the skyscrapers (which happened to be the one I work in) and asked if we could go up there. I was happy to oblige! My office is on top of a mall which had a display of Philadelphia's most notable buildings portrayed in gingerbread:

 

After a quick stop at Mommy's office to look out the windows to see the "little taxis" down on the street, we headed over to Drexel's Academy of Natural Sciences museum. Sean was so excited about all the dinosaur bones!

The Academy is celebrating its 200th birthday and one of the dinosaurs was decked out to celebrate:

Sean was so excited - "It's the dinosaur's birthday! He's 2 years old - he's having a party with those birds and the birds made him a cake!"

There was a neat exhibit with a camera and a green screen that allowed Sean to put himself in a "dinosaur jungle land!!!!"

"Hi, Longneck! Hi!"

The upper levels of the museum had a ton of dioramas with stuffed animals, which both kids loved. They especially liked the lion, polar bear, deer, and panda dioramas. 

The museum wasn’t very crowded, but there were several small groups of kids on field trips.  We kept pace with a group of kids that were probably in the second grade and Sean would just go off with the kids and forget I was there!  He would just start talking to whoever was next to him about whatever animal we were looking at and the little girls thought he was cute and the boys would just treat him like a pal. Clare wanted to look at whatever Sean was NOT looking at, so that was a little hairy at times but once we finally broke away from the school groups, the museum was pretty much empty and I could let them walk around freely while watching both of them.

The kids managed to sit still for a turtle-riffic photo op:

There were plenty of hands-on exhibits for the kids to put their mitts on, as well:

The special exhibit was an indoor butterfly house with butterflies zooming around willy-nilly.  Both kids loved that and we spent a good amount of time there despite the fact that the butterfly house is kept at like, 85 degrees with 100% humidity. 

Sean kept following this Owl Butterfly around - he was trying to count how many eyes are on the butterfly:

After that we’d seen pretty much everything so we had lunch and then headed back towards the train to go home.

Random

It's snowing tonight. Real snow! It's sticking to the roads! We knew a Nor'easter was coming tonight but we thought we'd have rain - not snow! And it's cold out. Very cold. I can't imagine not having heat or power tonight. We are so fortunate to have come through Sandy pretty much untouched.

Sean was so excited about the snow when we walked out of school this evening - he walked out to the car with his head tilted up and mouth wide open - "I'm eating snow, Mommy! It tastes like chocolate candybars!" Clare liked letting the fat flakes fall on her cheeks and kept saying "no? no? no? yaaaay no!"


Real snow. Right when it started to accumulate.

I made sweet potato fries for dinner the other night and I put a bit of salt and pepper on them before serving - this was a mistake since Sean does not like seasonings of any kind on his food right now. When he asked me why his fries were "dirty" I told him they were vitamins to make him big and strong. I don't think he bought it:

Clare liked the fries - seasonings and all :-)

We took the kids trick-or-treating on Friday. Governor Christie rescheduled Halloween festivites for Monday, but our mayor got permission to hold trick-or-treating on Friday.

Sean worked each door like a pro with a hearty "Trick or Treat!", taking several handfuls of candy and then he'd turn back and ask if Baby Clare wanted some candy, too. He always ended the visit with "Thank you! Happy Halloween to you, too!"

Clare wasn't very interested in ringing any doorbells or talking to strangers, but as long as she could munch on some candy, she was a happy camper.

Dribbing chocolate on the hand-glued cotton balls making up her "fleece"

On Saturday, I took the kids with me to Haddonfield to pick up my race packet for the Ben Franklin Bridge 10K. Also on the docket for that day was a trip to see the Hadrosaurus and to see the Sooy Babies' little cousin Luke. Sean was really excited to see the dinosaur and when we got to the Hadrosaurus, he was really let down. He didn't want to see a dinosaur statue but a real dinosaur. Oh man, communication breakdown.

Clare didn't mind - she thought the dinosaur was funny.

"Cheese!"

After getting over the intial disappointment, Sean perked up with the promise of going to see Baby Luke and playing with all his toys. :-)