Discovery Depot

The day that Nathan & Cori left to head back to Colorado, we took off to go met my Mom and Kassie (keeping the fun times rolling without a break!)  My parents wanted to have the kids for a few days and these were the last open days they had!  I had been wanting to take the kids to Discovery Depot (in Galesburg) so this worked as a great meeting spot.  We packed a lunch.  My mom brought Jadyn and Jaren so the cousins could play... we had a great day! 

  

Discovery Depot is a "train-themed" children's museum.  It was smaller (and less expensive!) then other museums we have been to but it was no less fun!  I was very impressed with the exhibits... the kids played for hours and could have spent more time.  I liked that it was all on one level and not too busy--it was pretty easy to keep track of the kids.  It was also unique in the fact that it had a HUGE outdoor playground.  We enjoyed our picnic outside.

 They had really cool, realistic firefighter dress-up outfits.  All of the kids liked putting them on.  They also had a play fire truck with a "ladder" going into the upstairs window of play house.  The kids loved crawling through to "rescue" each other.

 Dinosaurs!

Jadyn and Sadie loved being waitresses.  They also had fun delivering mail around the museum.

 Macey always enjoying spending time with Aunt Kassie!

 And what children's museum would be complete without a water exhibit?

If you're in the Galesburg area, I would highly recommend Discovery Depot.  I'm sure we will be playing here again in the future.

Friends Weekend

 

 This first picture pretty much sums up our weekend... crazy kids!  Seriously though--we had such a great weekend.  We loved having a house FULL of people (crazy kids included!)  The Knopps and Caseys arrived Friday night and were able to join us for a small group cook out.

 We spent lots of time relaxing.

 These two girls had a blast playing together all weekend long!

Saturday morning the guys left to go golfing and us girls took the kids to a Children's Museum:

 Saturday night the Windhams joined us for dinner.  On Sunday, Tim's sister Nikki (and her husband Kyle with their little boy Jordan) joined us.  We planed to go hiking after church, but it was HOT.  Instead we ate our picnic lunch in the back yard (and the air conditioned living room) and let the kids run in the sprinkler.  Us girls made a Pinterest craft--infinity scarves that we dip dyed (the ones in the pic below).  We grilled out for dinner and then the girls had a fun outing to The Melting Pot for dessert.

 Monday was another relaxing day at home.  We grilled, enjoyed lots of yummy food, cold drinks, sunshine, and best of all... great company.

 We are so blessed by these college friends that we are able to remain close with.  God knew what he was doing bringing us together and I'm very grateful that we can make it a priority to make time for each other.

IA Weekend

We had planned to make a trip to IA the weekend of Jan. 12... instead we got a whole lot of snow! After that our weekends were booked with Disney on Ice, and misc. other events so the weekend of Feb. 17th we were finally able to make a trip. We needed to visit great-grandmas and pick up a bed for Kinnick's new room. Because we needed to pick up the bed we had to drive 2 vehicles.... so the kids and I decided to get an early start (leaving just after lunch time). They enjoyed some ipad time as I finished packing and loading the car. They were so cute I couldn't resist a picture!

The kids were beyond excited to see Liam--he was pretty excited to see them also! He had just started crawling this week. The kids had so much fun playing together.

Our weekend was pretty low-key. Lindsey and I managed to sneak away to a move and do some crafting. The kids had LOTS of play time. We had planned to visit both great-grandmas on Sunday but had to change plans last minute b/c Sadie was throwing up during the night Saturday. The boys went to church and lunch with Great-Grandma DePauw and to pick up the bed. Us girls (with Liam) enjoyed a lazy pj day.

Sadie ended up being fine by Sunday night... just a quick stomach bug (thankfully no-one else got it!)

Due to his recently aquired skill of crawling, Liam took a few falls. Due to the crazy Gorsch kids being in his house all weekend, he took a few thumps. He was all shades of black and blue by the end of the weekend but it didn't keep him from being his smiley self:

Our trip coordinated with President's Day weekend. Marc had the Monday off so we made a day of it and stopped at the Iowa Children's Museum on the way home. The kids loved playing:

A fun february weekend... and a great break from working on the house!

Happy Birthday Macey!

To celebrate Macey's 2nd birthday we had a fun family day. Starting with... a trip to the Children's Museum in Naperville:

Marc made this birthday cake for Macey on the giant light brite. The kids liked helping find all the colors.

My favorite exhibit had lots of bubbles. The kids liked making a giant bubble around themselves.

Kinnick loved having lots of "daddy time" to build and explore.

We packed a lunch and ate at the Children's Museum. After lots of playing we went to the mall for Macey to get her pictures taken. Pictures went well. We finished our night at Macey's favorite place to eat...

And finally headed home to enjoy cupcakes...

But we didn't make it to cupcakes because we had three kiddos asleep in the car! We saved them for the following day...

I think the only thing sweeter than the cupcakes loaded with frosting is my favorite little two-year-old!

Iowa Children's Museum

We were in Iowa this week for Marc's Grandpa's visitation and funeral. We had the whole day Wednesday before the visitation... Marc and Nathan wanted to shop for IA stuff and I have been wanting to take the kids to the Iowa Children's Museum for a while now. I recruited Aunt NeeNee to help and we had a great day! The museum was great. An added bonus was visiting on a week day--they were not too busy. We spent about 2 hours in the morning, took a lunch break and went back for over an hour and we still didn't visit all the exhibits! They had such a great variety of exhibits--my kids had a blast and it can really appeal to elementary school kids as well. Here are some of the things we did:

Art Studio: This was a HUGE room stocked with all kinds of art supplies. We were free to grab whatever we wanted. They have a wall of cubbies for you to stash your creations to dry and then pick them up before you leave.

Kinnick was thrilled to paint this dinosaur.

Macey loved crawling around and pulling things out of the bins.

I helped Sadie make a collage with all different types of stuff.

City Works--Hospital:

A big part of the first floor was an exhibit called "CityWorks"--they had a grocery store, hospital, pizza parlor, bank, and post office. Each place was well stocked with uniforms and tons of props. We didn't get to check them all out, but the hospital was one of the first places my kids wanted to visit. Kinnick loved driving the ambulance and Sadie loved being a doctor and a dentist.

Macey loved the baby dolls.

ABC Forest:

Kinnick found this little reading area complete with an abundance of books, couches, and a reading hide-out. He could have spent the whole day here! Sadie had fun doing some different alphabet activities while Kinnick read a few books.

ImaginAcers:

LOVED this place! This exhibit was for 5 and under (perfect for us!) It was set up like a farm with a gate that closed it off from the rest of the top floor. The kids got to plant vegetables in a garden, climb in the barn and play on the slides, dress up like animals, play with a wooden farm, and fish for letters.

Take Flight:

This exhibit was all about flying. It had lots of flight simulators that allowed you to drive an airplane or helicopter. It had a giant hot air balloon--kids could climb in the basket and it wobbled around like it was in the air. One of the coolest parts about this exhibit was that it was on both floors--to get down quickly you could ride the giant tube slide. My kids loved these little petal planes:

It's hard to tell, but Kinnick has on a little pilots jacket--too cute!

Museum "Pets":

At the entrance they had a huge tank with fish and another tank with a turtle. Kinnick loved the turtle!

City Works--Pizza Parlor:

This was probably my favorite exhibit. I helped show the kids how to make and cook their own pizzas, then I sat back in the restaurant and let them serve me.

PlayWorks Theater:

We spent a lot of time here! This was a huge theater/stage with LOTS of dress up clothes and props. They had puppets, masks, scenery, etc.

Sadie made friends with another little girl while we were playing here. I overheard her ask the girl her name and then they had the following conversation: Girl-"What's your name?" S-"Emma" Girl-"Really, I have a friend in my class named Emma." S-"Yep, that's my name."

Kinnick loved "getting me" with this dinosaur puppet.

Notion of Motion:

This was the last exhibit we visited. The kids loved it--they had all kinds of hands on experiments you could do to test the laws of motion. There were several different experiments that involved dropping golf balls on ramps, and also an exhibit that let you build your own cars (using different weights) and race them on huge ramps.

Sadie loved this climbing wall. She was so proud of making it to the top by herself.

And of course, Kinnick had to play at the train table. In this pic he's saying "Choo Choo!"