Trip to the Science Center

We headed to the Arizona Science Center for Snow Week.

It snowed inside!

There was snow (ice) outside that the kids enjoyed playing in.

Matthew with a snowball.

Megan and her very little snowman (down by her feet).

Matthew took a flight. He enjoyed learning how planes fly.

Some of the workers put liquid nitrogen in a 2 liter bottle and then put it in a garbage can filled with ping pong balls. Boom! The ping pong balls went everywhere! They let the kids help clean up.

Matthew's eye. (This is at the front of the science center. He's looking in a telescope and seeing something while we all see his eye.)

The girls and U blew frozen bubbles with a soap concoction and liquid nitrogen. It was pretty neat!

We went to the Dinosaur in Motion exhibit where we saw and were able to move these big metal dinosaurs. It was interesting!

Megan and Matthew turning the wheels to move the dinosaur.

This is a whooping crane sculpture. The artist started doing a few bird sculptures in addition to the dinosaur ones.

They had some hands-on activities about balance. Matthew was so excited he got his stack of blocks balanced!

When we left, the kids played a bit more in the snow and then participated in some activities set up in Heritage Square. Megan and Matthew both really enjoyed the activity where they used a wooden stick to move a wooden hoop. They got pretty good at it.

Sarah went on a scavenger hunt. She was very persistent in finding all the items on the list!

It was a fun outing!

Christmas lights

A neighbor told us about an awesome light display so we drove to Gilbert to see the lights. A whole street had decorated their homes and synchronized the lights to music. It was pretty amazing! We first drove through and then we parked the car and walked around. It was really, really neat. They were collecting money for Make-a-Wish Foundation, which is cool. In addition, they won an award from ABC on "The Great Christmas Light Fight." If you come visit, we'll take you to see it!

Two pictures taken at same location.

There's more info here and here if you're interested.

Matthew's 5th Birthday

Matthew had a birthday! It was a great day for him, complete with a trip to the fire museum and playing with Legos.

With his gifts. He received a couple Lego sets, a rocket and a fireman outfit. He really wanted the "Happy Birthday" Mickey balloon--he'd seen it when we got U's birthday balloons and knew that was the one he must have for his birthday.

Legos!

The face says it all! He loves his Lego fire station.

Studying the possibilities....

Police officer Matthew.

Officer Matthew arresting Me.

Matthew with the Easter egg he wanted to save until his birthday. He even shared the jelly beans.

With his ice cream cake.

(It was my first attempt at an ice cream roll. It turned out so so which is why he got his own special cake with the piece that broke off the roll.)

Make a wish! It took him a lot of blows to get those candles out.

With the rescue hero set put together.

Matthew with his fire station.

Jumping to shoot off the rocket.

Matthew is such a happy kid and has such interesting insights. He enjoys making jokes and reading stories. He loves to be a helper. In fact, as I was typing this, I discovered that the keyboard tray was loose on the computer desk. He happily got his screwdriver and tightened the screws. His current career choice is street sweeper.

Here are a few Matthew stories from the past few months:

-While we were visiting Sister Thomas (a friend at church), Matthew came over all wide-eyed to inform me that the Thomas' cats were magical. Wow! When asked how they were magical, he told me that if you pet them one way, they were one color, but if you pet them the other way, they were a different color.

-Not long after that visit, Matthew asked, "Mom, do the Thomas' cats kill people or do they just climb trees?" {no idea where that one came from.....}

-Matthew believes robbers are everywhere. He talks about them as if they are as prevalent as firemen and construction workers. Once, he drew pictures to give to his friends and to robbers. He gave the ones for the robbers to U for him to give to the robbers at work. {I did have a coworker who robbed banks on the side, so that may be the basis for thinking robbers are at daddy's work....}

-When we asked Matthew what his favorite scripture story was, he said it was when Jesus came to the Americas. We mentioned about how He had blessed the children and Matthew replied, "No! He didn't bless the children! He turned them into sheep!" When asked for more information, he explained that Jesus turned them into sheep and that He is their shepherd. He also said that adults can be shepherds, too, to help Jesus.

-Matthew really wanted Santa Claus to come to his birthday party. In fact, he planned on getting up on Christmas Eve to see Santa so that he could invite him. Alas, he slept through Santa's visit (but don't worry--Santa is still on the guest list for the party!).

A Birthday Outing

When we asked Matthew what he wanted to do for his birthday, he answered immediately, "Go to the fire museum!" He enjoyed looking at all the old fire trucks--he wanted to go up and down every row to see the trucks and U was happy to oblige. All the kids enjoyed playing in the kids' area for a bit as well.

Playing in the old truck.

Off to the rescue!

We also headed over to the zoo, which is super close, to eat lunch and to go on the train ride (since we hadn't been able to on the 26th). It was a nice way to see the zoo and I learned quite a bit as well (like hyenas are a matriarchal society with baby females usually outranking grown males and they have the strongest bite of any mammal {Note: who gets to measure that?} Also, maned wolves are not wolves or foxes--they are their own species). Fun time!

A Trip to the Zoo

The day after Christmas, we went to the zoo. It was a bit chilly (for Phoenix anyhow) and so was pretty empty. We enjoyed wandering around looking at the exhibits and learned a lot about tigers!

The SRP water tree. It shows how many gallons the average person uses per day. At night, it lights up according to type of use (landscape, drinking, cooking, cleaning, etc).

A big reason we went was to see the new tiger exhibit. There are two sides to the exhibit so that both the male, Jay who is pictured here, and the female, Sariah, can be out at the same time. The exhibit is nice and much bigger than the old one.

Megan and the tiger taken by Sarah.

Megan and Matthew on the komodo dragon. It's the only one we saw outside as it was too cold for the adults to be in their exhibit.

Monkey kids!

We now have alligators at the zoo. Photo courtesy of Sarah.

Megan and Matthew kept U from getting swallowed by a vortex many times during our trip.

(It may have also helping M&M not get swallowed by whining and complaining.....)

Cheesers!

Matthew really wanted a picture on the frog.

It's fun to see all the farm animals. Another picture by Sarah.

We had wanted to go on the Safari Train at the zoo. However, since we would have had to wait a few hours, we decided to do that another day and ate trains for lunch instead :)