Children's Museum of Phoenix

On Saturday the Children's Museum of Phoenix had a free admission day. Since David had a rare day off we decided to take the kids and go. It's a really cute place, in a building that used to be an old High School. They had such a good turn out that there was a wait to go in. So here's a pic of us killing time across the street at ASU's downtown campus.
This activity was like the Plinko game on "The Price is Right". You drop these little wooden wheels at the top and they bounce back and forth all the way to the bottom.
This was a pretend carwash that the kids could ride bikes through. Emma loved this one!
I LOVED these reading tubes! They were so comfortable for reading a book and both Emma and Eli hunkered down in them with books and forgot about all the toys for a couple minutes. I'm going to have David figure out how to build us a couple for our school room.
This picture doesn't show anything the other doesn't. But it's a really good picture of me so I threw it in anyway!
The noodle room...too cool!
The restaurant room.
And last but not least. Us with Elmo, Grover, and Rosie the Shamrock Farms spokescow!

New Car

So last weekend we bought a new car. Our van was getting up there in miles and was needing more maintenance than it was worth. So David and I decided to trade it in on something that was more economical for a guy who spends much of his time commuting. It was very sad for me to sell my van. We bought it three years ago on the assumption that we would be having more children soon and need the bigger vehicle. It was hard to move back down to the smaller vehicle. On the other side it's a manual, which I love, and it gets great gas mileage. 36-37 mpg! It's pretty cute too, it's a Hyundai Accent.

Science Experiment

Want your kids to think you're the coolest Mom ever? Try this science experiment, it;s easy, cheap, and fun. All you need is a shallow bowl, some milk, some food colors, and some dish soap.

Pour some milk into the dish and then put a couple drops of blue, red, and yellow food coloring equal distance apart.

Then add one drop of dish soap directly in the middle of the bowl.

Then sit back and watch the fun!

Add two very easily inpressed children and you can easily kill an hour doing this. Just make sure to get some extra milk!

I'm sure there are lots of scientific theories involved in this experiment but given the age of my audience we limited it to colors and how they mix and become new colors.

A Mountain

We're trying to be more active as a family so a couple weeks ago we decided to hike A Mountain in Tempe. Here's everyone, even Lucy, at the bottom of the hill.
Here's me and the kids taking a breather. Eli is just like me, he turns bright red at the smallest amount of physical activity.
A very nice couple took this picture of all of us.
And the view at the top was beautiful.
Want to try this with your family? Park your car at Tempe Beach Park and walk through the park towards ASU campus. There are trailheads on the North and South sides of the mountain. It's a very short hike, steep but paved all the way and definitely doable by children. Have fun!