Photo Friday

A day in Newport

Yesterday we spent a family day in Newport. Our first stop was the Hatfield Marine Science Center. As soon as you walk in there is a tank that has an octopus. He was really cute, but he has just been introduced to this new tank and so you could not take pictures of him. There was a really cool globe display and you could change the views with a touch screen computer. Dylan was changing it from the Sun, to Jupiter, to the Moon, and also different views of the earth. It was really cool.

Right outside the door of the globe room was a tank with a turtle in it. The kids were talking to him and saying, "Hi Mr Turtle, how are you today?"

Next we made our way across the room to touch tank. It was full of sea stars, sea cucumbers, anemones, and even a stingray!!! Dylan touched a few things but Ally was not all that into it she only touched a display rock and a Sea Star.

We then made our way around the rest of the building looking at various tanks with fish and other sea creatures and other various displays.

After wrapping around the whole building we decided to talk a walk along the bay on the nature path.

There was a short sandy stretch where the kids found lots of shells.

Ally loves shells! We continued along the path and Ally started to get a little tired, along comes the Daddy mobile. She happily rode the rest of the path on Daddy's shoulders.

We made our way back to the car, buckled in, and headed off to find some lunch. After a quick lunch at Arctic Circle we headed down to our new favorite beach, South Beach. the kids kicked off their boots after climbing up the hill

and settled into digging,

running,

and relaxing on the beach.

They loved walking along the top of the dune and back, their endless energy was exhausting! We spent a couple hours just wearing them out. Finally it was time to head back, we got them changed into less sandy clothes and settled in with pillows and blankets and headed back to dinner, showers, and a warm cozy bed.

A day at...

Silver Creek Falls!...wait...that's not right. That was the plan but our plan was rudely interrupted by the rain. We decided to head on over to Gilbert House Children's Museum instead. Poppa and Grandma Jo came along with us. The kids had a blast! We started out in the bubble room, lots of bubble wands and fun things to do with bubbles!

Next we spent a little time in the stomach,

then made out way upstairs to the shadow room, arts and craft room,

dress up in the jungle room,

and Ally's favorite the submarine.

If she could have one in her room she would live in it! It was just a little closet sized space with a joystick and all kinds of other little buttons to push and flip. When we went back to it later I was in there with her and she exclaimed, "We just ran into a sleeping whale!" What a great imagination! After hanging out and getting dressed up as birds and flowers, we made our way outside to play on the giant playground structure.

There was a break in the rain and so they kids played and climbed for awhile until rain threatened again. We headed into another building and while the kids were engrossed with the train

Poppa's eye was caught by a huge dinosaur skeleton puzzle. After browsing some other stuff with Ally, Poppa and I decided to tackle the dino puzzle, after a false start we finally got it.

Took about 20 minutes or so to get it all together. But we did it! By that time the kids had moved back outside to run around on the playground with Daddy. We joined them and by then the sun had broken through and so the kids ran and ran, up and down, around and around the tall very dizzying slide. Luckily I only had to go down a few times with Ally before she was ready to tackle it herself. But man did it make my head spin! We still had one building to go and so we herded up the kids and made our way in. Upstairs was a Japanese cultural room, some ecological teaching stuff, and a projection room. The kids loved pretending to sit down and eat in the Japanese room,

and the projections room was a BIG hit with Dylan, when he moved it projected up on the screen with lots of colors and shadowy lines.

Downstairs was a "grocery store." The kids never wanted to leave the grocery store. They walked around with their carts thinking through their grocery list in there head and filling their carts to overflowing.

Then it was time to check out. Darrin and I helped by playing checker, then it was time to put stuff back. The kids were very good about returning the stuff to the shelves without complaining. We wrapped up the day by playing outside awhile longer then making a sweep back through the buildings to revisit the kids favorites. It was a successful tiring day when all was said and done.