Chatsworth Farmyard & Adventure Playground

Chatsworth is closed this time of year, but they did open up their Farmyard and Adventure Playground just for the Half Term Break.  I took the kids up there for an afternoon, and we had a fabulous time meeting the farm animals, learning about how they shoe the horses, doing crafts and playing on the fabulous playground.

Avery meeting some baby lambs.

Alexa holding a guinea pig named "Star."

The girls enjoyed some crafting...making birdfeeders out of pine cones.

The kids could spend hours just in this section of the playground.  There is a large sandy area, with a hand operated pump that brings water up from a stream and through a series of valves that the kids can operate.  The water eventually is released into the sand where the kids can dig channels for the water to flow.  Here Avery is operating one of the diggers, one of his favorite things to do.

London - Day 4 (British Museum)

Our last day was spent at the British Museum which has an amazing variety of collections.  I thought that the Parthenon exhibit was really interesting.  Huge portions of the Parthenon were brought to England after an explosion damaged much of the Parthenon.  

There were also lots of Egyptian sculpture and artifacts.

We also got to see the Rosetta Stone, which translates Egyptian Heiroglyphs into Greek and is dated at 196 BC.  The top portion is Heiroglyphic, the middle portion is demotic (a native script), and the bottom portion is in Greek (the language of the administration).

After the British Museum, we made our way back to our car via the tube and headed home to enjoy the remainder of our holiday week in relaxation (at least for me and the kids). 

London - Day 3 (Museum of Natural History & Diana's Park)

On Monday, we spent the first half of the day at the Museum of Natural History.  Lots of earth history to explore at first, but then the highlight was the dinosaur exhibit...AMAZING!

The girls enjoyed looking at all kinds of interesting crystals, rocks and gemstones.

I think they said that there were bones from 300 different kinds of dinosaurs in the exhibit, pretty impressive. 

After grabbing some lunch, we made our way over to Princess Diana's Memorial Playground, which the kids really enjoyed.  It is a Peter Pan themed park, which I'm sure is beautiful in the summer when things are more green and the flowers are in bloom.

The kids really loved the pirate ship and also the little rocking boats to play on.

London - Day 2 (Tate Museum & Piccadilly)

We walked across the Millennium Bridge to get to the Tate Museum of Modern Art.  It wasn't quite as interesting to us as some of the other museums we saw, but still a fun excursion.

After the Tate, we made our way to Piccadilly Circus, which is not a circus, it's just an intersection that resembles Times Square a bit, but not as huge. I really liked the atmosphere there, though we didn't stay long.  We were just there because the kids wanted to go to the Rainforest Cafe for Dinner.  Before being seated, the girls had time to have their faces painted.

London - Day 2 (Tower of London)

On Sunday we started our day at the Tower of London, which was very fascinating. This castle was just amazing and has such an interesting history, albeit filled with horror and tragedy.  Sean had us try to make a terrified face when we took this picture...I think Mia and I got it right...Alexa went for sad and Avery tried to look scary instead of being scared!

The White Tower is at the center of the castle, which served as a royal residence as well as dungeon. Currently it is being used as a museum of the Royal Armour, and also a gift shop.

We went on a brief tour of the grounds led by one of the "Beefeaters" which was both informative and hilarious!

Here we are climbing one of the spiral staircases in the White Tower.

Some of the royal armour on display in the White Tower.  In addition to touring the White Tower and the grounds of the castle, we got to view the Crown Jewels, which are stored on site under strong security of course.  No pictures were allowed, but they were quite a sight! I've never seen so much gold and gemstones in my life.

As we left the Tower of London, we enjoyed the view of the beautiful Tower Bridge.

Holiday in London - Day 1

The kids have a week off for their half-term break, so we took them to London for a few days.  We explored lots of museums and got really familiar with the Tube (London's subway system).  Even with all that we saw there is still so much that we did not, so hopefully we will have more opportunities to visit London in the future.

On our way to our hotel on Saturday, we passed through Kings Cross Station.  Being big Harry Potter fans, we just had to find Platform 9 and 3/4, where Harry and the other magical students would catch the Hogwarts Express.  All the kids took turns pushing their luggage carts throught the brick wall :-).

After a longer than expected travel day, we arrived in our hotel to find the elephant towel on the bed, shown below.  We were all pretty exhausted.  We decided to just spend the rest of the night in our hotel, though we did manage to go out to a nice Valentine's dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant.

Snow Day

We got our first snowfall of the year on a Saturday night...if it had been on a Sunday night the kids would have missed a day from school.  Though I must say that if the snow clean up continues at this pace, they may not go to school tomorrow...It's now a bout 15 hours after the snow finished falling and we have not yet seen a plow, I don't think one is coming.  So now it's up to the sun to do the job. We got about 4 or 5 inches and I do see it thinning on the tops of the rooftops. 

It was so pretty last night watching the snow fall.  I was really missing it...not that I'm a big fan of snow, but it does make it feel like winter and the sight of snow falling is both beautiful and peaceful.  I was worried that we'd make it through the whole winter without seeing any.

Today was supposed to be my first day attempting to sing at church.  There was going to be a rehearsal at 8:45, so I cleaned my car off and drove up the hill of my road towards the main road.  Unfortunately, I couldn't make it onto the main road.  The car just couldn't do it.  So after about 8 attempts or so, I backed up down my road into my driveway and decided to stay in for the day.  It wouldn't have mattered to me so much, since I love snuggling up on these kinds of days, but I do miss singing in a band so much and it's been 6 months...

The kids have had a lot of fun playing in the white stuff, so I do have some photos and a video to share. They're still using the trampoline even with snow on it, and doing the usual, snow angels, snow balls, etc.

Hope you are all staying warm! 



Just Bouncin' Around

For Christmas, we got the kids a trampoline.  Since it doesn't snow much here, and doesn't get too cold it's a fun thing for them all year round!