Counting Down...

We just finished our last full week of summer vacation. We ended our summer break the same way we started it - full of activities!

Danielle started the week off by having 3 of her friends over to celebrate her birthday and spend the night Sunday night. On Monday I took them all to lunch and then to see a movie. Danielle discovered that she prefers the one-on-one activities more, but she had a nice time. She is too much of a peacekeeper to really enjoy all the girls at once, and she was a little stressed out by the time I made them go to bed Sunday night. I figured it would end up that way, but she needed to figure that out for herself.

The girls decorated pillowcases to take home.

Just like we've done for the past several years, the kids and I got up in the middle of the night to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower. We saw a lot of shooting stars. I always enjoy this little tradition with the kids, and this time was no different. I attempted to take a couple pictures of the meteor shower, but they aren't very good. I really needed a wide open space far away from city lights, but I enjoyed sitting out there with the kids more.

We went for a walk & looked for frogs at one of our favorite parks. We saw frogs, but none of them were close enough to maneuver into our nets. We did catch a small turtle, but we were rushed by another family with, as Danielle put it, way too many kids, so we didn't really get to spend much time admiring him. We put him back in the water so he could scurry away. Tyler would rather have spent the afternoon at home in front of the computer, but he did a nice job of humoring me. He almost seemed to enjoy himself a couple times.

We spent a day at the zoo. That is unusual because when we go to the zoo, we usually go for a couple hours and call it a day; That's the joy of having a pass. We spent the entire day at the zoo, though. We watched one of the animal shows we'd never seen before and really enjoyed it. We visited some of the parts of the zoo we don't typically make it to, rode some rides, and even splurged to enjoy lunch there. It was a very nice day.

Danielle was watching the people who were gathering around. She was a little embarrassed because I asked her to sit in the flower. We have pictures of them in this flower when they were both little. This is the only one I could find at the moment.

Yesterday we went to a kids' museum. I was a little worried Tyler & Danielle would be too old for it, so I decided we would go to the air force museum, too. It turns out the kids really enjoyed the first museum, so we had hardly any time left to enjoy the 2nd museum! The kids' museum had a really cool animation exhibit that ends next week. We were in that area forever. I liked the little zoo, too.

They were adding sound effects to a video.

Tyler was photographing faces with various mouth positions to create a speaking animation. He did a good job.

We really enjoyed the stop motion animation stations.

Danielle was moving the horse and taking pictures of him to animate him.

Here are a couple of stop motion videos the kids made.

Tyler's:

Danielle's:

Another of Tyler's:

By the time we got to the air force museum, we only had an hour to look around before they closed. Tyler really enjoyed it, which kind of surprised me. I think Ron is going to take him there for his birthday.

 

My goal this week was to spend quality time together, and I feel like we successfully accomplished that! As we transition into that time of year where other people spend more awake time with my children than I do, we will all have happy memories of all the fun things we did together this summer to carry us through until next summer. Or hopefully at least through Christmas time. :)