New Paint

I am the painter in the family. Josh does so many other things (and well) that it's nice to have my niche and I don't mind getting messy. When we moved into our house everything needed new paint - inside and out! I got to all of them except the playroom until now. The girls didn't mind the stars and splatter paint but this room needed a nice new coat of paint on the walls and the ceiling. Here is a before picture.

Here are the after pictures. In two and a half months Eric will be turning three so we were able to purge a lot of baby toys. The girls haven't wanted to get rid of any toys because, "they are all so special to us mommy!" But it needed to be done and here are the results.

As I was clearing things out to paint the children had a great time running around the empty room. I then asked if they would rather have all of the things back in there or more room and after much thought they wanted more room. Thank goodness!!! I made sure they weren't around when I purged the toys and they only miss them when we look at pictures of the old room.

I have some wall decorations that still need to be put up as well as a curtain for the window. I just love the tranquility the light green walls provide. And Eric now has his own corner with baskets of boy toys on the bookshelf and a table nearby to play on. He's been there most of the day already!

Yesterday I finished painting and last night I put the shelves back up and the floor back down. When I went upstairs for something, Eric grabbed my hand and said, "let's finish working downstairs mommy." He is his father's son....motivated!

I still have to put the dress up items back in the room but that's pretty much about it.

Less shelving, less baskets, less toys...more room

Our Wichita Staycation

I decided that I had to take a much needed staycation with the kids. With Josh deployed and an extremely cold winter, I needed a break from the same routine. I heard about a hands on museum called the Exploration Place that was in Wichita only two hours away so that's where our planning began. Emma picked our hotel (I gave her a few to choose from) and she liked the one with the tropical pool with a waterfall. It was at a nice LaQuinta that offered a good military discount and a nice breakfast! Then we had to pick one other location for our two day one night stay. I found a few really neat museums but when the temperature was going to be 50 degrees on our first day, the zoo became our only choice.

It was 56 degrees which felt like a warm day to us but the wind kept us in hats and gloves.

We saw rhinoceroses and elephants.

Having fun with the statues.

Eric was the first to approach the gorilla exhibit.

The girls finally got closer

After the zoo, we ate a nice Mediterranean restaurant and then checked into the hotel.

Then we were off to the POOL!!!

We all slept well that night and were looking forward to our visit to Exploration Place or as Emma calls it, "The Museum of Fun".

The Exploration Place

The second day of our trip to Wichita, KS was a visit to the Exploration Place. It is a hands on museum and was the perfect place to spend a cold and drizzly day. I checked ahead of time and knew the local children were in school so we practically had the place to ourselves. So we absolutely got our $20 worth on this visit as we stayed for 6 1/2 hours!

The first area we went to was a huge castle environment. It was three stories tall and had several rooms that visitors could explore. We spent quite a bit of time here and the kids just loved to play and use their imagination.

I really liked the garden concept here.

Eric spent a lot of time riding the horses.

Onto the next exhibit and the girls were in for a surprise when they tried to look at themselves in the mirror. The tunnel spun and we all got quite a laugh!

Here they are making stars.

Letting Eric "drive" the truck.

Mr. Potato Heads - more accessories than you could ever imagine.

One of Eric's favorite places, little plastic pieces of dirt and they had to find the hidden bones. I imagine that there used to be quite a bit of "dirt" but is was pretty barren while we were there. However, Eric loved it and I ended taking him away over my shoulder much to his dismay.

The next exhibit was music from around the world. It was really interesting and fun but Eric managed to get a nice lump on his forehead. After an ice pack, an incident report and a Mr. Potato Head Cookie, all was well and we were back to exploring.

The girls enjoyed the break at the cafe and part of the Mr. Potato Head Cookie.

They each had to take a picture of themselves and they made sure I posted it on here.

Now back to playing. Our next stop was a pretend veterinary office and they played here for 45 minutes. We only left because some other children came and we had more to explore.

Our next stop was an exhibit on Kansas including this smoking tornado display.

Then the girls got into the tornado tunnel...

where the wind speed got up to 78 mph

One of Emma's favorite things to do was to play with the "colored sand". It was colored fish tank rocks that they could use to manipulate the water flow and watch the effects. Very cool.

More water manipulation

After lunch we checked out the pendulum and waited for it to knock down one of the blocks.

And then we went through the museum again. We had the time and the children really did enjoy playing. Back to the castle and this time they found the dress up clothes.

There was an area for 3 and under that we didn't go into the first time around. Again, there was hardly anyone there so we all went in to play. Eric was happy to find this Thomas train table!

The girls found a cute kitchen with a crib large and strong enough to hold Emma.

We spent our last hour here, then got in the van and drove the two hours back to Manhattan.