Grandma's Visit, County Fair, Hair Nets and a German Town!

 Grandma Curry came for a visit!

 It was a very fun filled week! The first thing the kids wanted to do with her was play Arizona Monopoly, and that's just what they did.

 We took her to the Children's Museum. Noelle gave moustachey Winston a check-up.

 We also made a lot of jellyfish cause we didn't see the sign that said to just make one. There are more jellyfish in our bag. They're really addicting to make.

 We also took Grandma to the Unity in the Community festival. It was really fun! We got every stamp in our fake passports, and visited every booth. The girl at the Chile booth was eating Chili's take-out. I told her I thought that was ironic. She did not think so. I should've told her how I was a waitress at Chili's while I was in college, extra ironic!

 We also had a lovely lake day! It was the most perfect afternoon, one of my favorites ever!

 We found a giant log floating in the lake, and it entertained our entire family for hours! We were all determined to walk across it without falling, easier said than done.

We had a peaceful evening at the Arboretum. It's probably my favorite place in Spokane. It's overwhelming how beautiful it is there!

 I love watching the kids find fun in nature! It's so magical to see them creating their own little play world with nothing but sticks, rocks and streams.

 Winston on my lap, "fishing" with a reed is just the icing on the cake!

The next day we went to the farm. It was our first time pulling a carrot straight from the ground, and it was unexpectedly exciting. We couldn't stop picking!

We took a break to play in the farm's pea pit. Not only is it fun rolling around in peas, but it's funny to say, "Look, I'm making a pea angel" or "I've got peas on my pants." It makes you giggle no matter who you are!

We picked a crazy amount of peaches. We thought we'd grabbed about 5 or 6 lbs. It was actually 18lbs. We were gobbling up peaches for days!

 We brought Grandma to the bridge.

 And then we took a little nature walk. We spotted a huge eagle's nest with babies in it!

Winston had his 3rd birthday while Grandma was here! We had a little family party, and he was very happy to pick what movie we went to (he chose Planes) and where we went to dinner (Tomatoe Street.) It was so fun watching him open presents. He gets incredibly excited, and yells, "It awesome! Me love this!"
He melts my heart! 

 A few days later was my birthday! Grandma had already gone back to Az, but Robert and the kids planned lots of partying to finish off birthday week for me and Winston!

 We went to the County Fair in Idaho. We LOVE fairs! It was so fun seeing all of the 4H stuff and the cute little animal races. Now that I know what 4H is, I wonder how on earth was I NOT in it??? I found out that the H's stand for head, heart, hands, health, and they do so many cool projects! I can't believe I missed out on such awesomeness.

 The exhibits were really neat too!

 Adam the Great was the county fair magician (and an admitted Howey Mandell look alike.) He chose Noelle to come up on stage and be his assistant. She was so cute and brave in front of all those people. As her prize he made her a balloon animal, which made her so happy. Then he stepped on it and popped it, which made her so sad (she barely held back the tears on stage.) Then he put the scraps in a paper bag, crumpled it all up, and made the balloon animal reappear, and she was happy again, very happy! Thank goodness cause I would've had to make my fist disappear in his face had he not remedied that situation.
I should calm down. He was actually a super nice and very entertaining magician. I'm just a little overprotective.

 I was pretty happy the fair had one of these! We have tons of different pictures in these funny things. Maybe one day Robert and I will get tired of sticking our heads in them, but today was not that day.

 The next day we went on a little day trip. We drove a few hours to a little city called Cashmere, and we went to this awesome pioneer museum. They had Indian artifacts and all sorts of gems and animals, and there was a whole authentic city in outside, with the actual buildings from hundreds of years ago. We went on a scavenger hunt to find all sorts of ancient stuff.

No matter how many times we told him, Winston refused to believe that his well had run dry. He kept pumping and pumping.

 There was even a little gold mine.

 Next we went down the street to take a tour of a candy factory. They pretty much just make Turkish Delight (like from the Narnia books.) It's like fruit and nuts with covered in powdered sugar. I thought it tasted terrible, but it was fantastic touring the factory and watching it get made. I was fascinated with all of the fancy machines and people in white coats and hair nets.

 And because one family picture with hair nets wasn't enough for us, we took another! This was the boiling room.

 Then we drove a little ways to Levenworth. It's a German town in Washington. Everything there, including the buildings, food and people are very Germany! It was very COOL, and very hard not to yell, "Ricola" every time the man in liederhosen blew his alp horn.

 We went to the Nutcracker Museum, which is now one of my top twenty favorite places on earth! It's only $2 to get in, and it's owned by a little German lady who told our kids to pull her finger (apparently that doesn't mean the same thing in Germany as it does in America.) So she led them around by the finger and gave them a personal little tour of the kid nutcrackers she thought they'd like the best.

 I've never seen so many of anything in my life! There were thousands and thousands, every holiday, celebrity, nationality, religion, animal, sport, cartoon character that you could imagine, some huge and hundreds of years old and some tiny. One was only 5 millimeters! There was even Mormon missionary and Joseph Smith nutcrackers! It was like nothing I've ever seen!

Stanton was excited that there was even a Star Wars one. We were all so impressed! The only thing the museum was missing was nuts. If we could've a little pack of peanuts like on the airplane, that would've really put the whole experience over the top!

We went to all sorts of German stores, listened to a German concert in the park and ate bratwurst at Munchen Hause.

We even got a Christmas gurken to hide in our tree, so we can start our own German Christmas tradition.

 It was such a fun family day! The car rides on these day trips always turn out to be just as fun as the trip. We played a lot of 20 questions, and Noelle's word was rhubarb leaves. That's impossible to guess! She and Stanton also explained to us why monsters are scarier than aliens, and we listened to Winston sing a lot of really loud songs in funny voices.

And for our last day of birthday week, we went to the lake and did some paddle boarding.
We're really loving the lake!

Squeezing in as much fun as we can before school starts!

I am devastated that school starts in 3 weeks. It's not an exaggeration. It makes me so sad to have my kids away from me for so long everyday, so sad that I may or may not be crying a little right now (for the second time today) just thinking about it. I'm a little obsessed with them. It's probably unhealthy, I know. I'm sure it stems from my weird childhood or something, but whatever. Anyway, we've been trying to squeeze in as much awesomeness as we can until September comes to ruin our fun.

 I love Science (like elementary school science, not like fancy atoms and protons) and forcing it on my kids has made them love it just as much as me! We made sure there was a science center before we moved here, and we've been spending lots of time there. They were really into this exhibit!e

 Robert and I took the kids to a play at the local theater. Noelle thought Little Red Riding Hood gave a dazzling performance, and now all she wants to do is be one of the little women in their next play, Little Women.
Robert says she and I are exactly alike because as she was loudly whispering in his ear during the play that she wanted to be in the next one, I was loudly whispering in his other ear that I was going to start my own children's theater and direct a play. Good thing he's supportive cause Noelle and I are both serious!

 Stanton on the other hand does not want to be in a play. He barely wanted to be in this picture. I love his cute little personality!

 The next day we spent another Saturday at the lake. We can't get enough paddle boarding!

 Winston is a sand man himself. He goes in the water for a dip, but then returns to his digging, rock collecting and castles. The best part is he cuddles with me on the beach blanket, in exchange for snacks.

 Noelle learned how to swim, and now she's so happy she can join Stanton in his underwater exploring.

 They discovered a bug deep under the sand. It looked like a lady bug mixed with a bumble bee and a cockroach. It had a fuzzy belly and made weird clicking noises. We were all sure it was an unidentified species, so I told the kids they could name it since they discovered it. They chose to call it a "lady bumble cock" because of the other 3 bugs it resembled. Try as I might, they would not change the name. They saw nothing wrong with it, and I wasn't about to explain why.

 I gave Noelle a pedicure and the boys foot massages. I was a popular mommy after that!

 Later that day we tried some experiments with dry ice. We'd visited the library science show earlier that week and saw Radical Rick making cool stuff with it, so we decided to give it a shot. I poured the dry ice gas over their head, which they thought was very impressive.

Then Stanton wanted to try pouring it on my head. He poured too much and instead of just the gas, all of the water and a little chunk of dry ice landed on my head.

 We also looked on the NASA website to learn how to make a dry ice meteor with finger nail polish remover, vinegar, cornstarch, syrup and dirt. It was a flop. Thanks for nothing astronauts.
After that failed experiment, we wanted to do a big grand finale. I found easy instructions on how to make a dry ice bomb. It sounded exciting and easy, and it was on a kid's website, but I didn't know the extent of the danger. I did have a moment's pause when I read that it's illegal in a number of states, but not ours, so we pressed on.
Luckily, as I shut the kids inside to watch from out the window and threw the closed container outside, the lid popped off and dry ice flew out, making our little bomb a dud.
We read afterwards that it can burst your ear drums and bloody you pretty badly, so I was SO thankful it didn't go off.
We ended our dry ice fun by making very safe, giant, soapy dry ice bubbles.

 Our next week's experiment was more of a mess than a success. We made dryer lint clay, and it was pretty disgusting. It reeked like burnt hair, probably because I had to cook it, and we actually did find tons of mine and Noelle's hair weaved through it, grossest clay ever.

 One morning I woke up to a little family band. Winston was playing the maracas while Stanton was practicing piano and Noelle was practicing violin. It was all just loud, screechy noise, but it was sweet to wake up to, almost as sweet as the breakfast in bed they've made me three times this week. They come up with toast with honey, an orange, a half eaten yogurt and a Diet Coke. It melts my heart (:

 The other day we took a little drive to the largest patch of sunflowers in the world.This is only like a tenth of it. They go on for miles and miles. It's incredible!

 We tried to sit down for a picnic, but you can barely step, let alone sit because every inch is covered with flowers.

We watched bees and picked up lady bugs and had a perfect time in nature together! Stanton took all sorts of pretty pictures, like this one. He wants to be a photographer and an inventor and be in the Navy. He told me all about it while we walked through the flowers. Noelle told me she wants to be a paleontologist/artist/mom when she grows up, and Winston just says he wants to have a beard like Daddy. It was a GREAT day!

 And sometimes you see something that you just have to sneak up on and take a picture of because it's so sweet, there are no words and you just don't wanna ever forget it!