Our nature walk

Not to far from us is the Manassas Battlefield and it has many trails to walk so we decided since it was too hot outside to go on a nature walk.   We had a great time and got some energy out that needed to be out.  We found some bugs, leaves, acorns, and explored a new land and even got a little  history lesson.  An interesting thing is we got to see a tree completly uprooted and we saw two or three.  I don't know if they had been there for awhile or if they were uprooted during the recent storms we had.

 We went here back in June also and toured the battlefield and the museum as little.  The kids loved the cannons!!

 You can't really see them below, but they are on top of this island.  They wanted to explore the island some more, but I didn't know what may live in all the dead tree limbs.

Scripture challenge

We have had some issues this summer as you may imagine with not having many friends.  I have decided to give the kids and me a challenge to memorize scripture.  Christian's is a scripture about anger since he has been having issues with anger and lashing out at others.  Piper's is a scripture about being kind and forgiving as she has had issues with being kind and forgiving to her brother.  I think I would have some issues too if I had this much togetherness with my brothers.  I have been listening to some of my favorite preachers during workouts and Toby Slough is doing one on Romans 8 and encouraged everyone to memorize so that is my scripture.  I will let you know how the challenge goes.  Yes, they do get some money to memorize.  These are up all over the house so they are everywhere we look.  I am excited to see what God does as we write scripture on our hearts.

Mork the Alien

Christian got a stuffed alien from Grandma Fran in a package and I don't think he has left his side since.  We were doing melty beads and he designed one that looked like Mork by himself.  I am amazed at him sometimes!

Oobleck experiment

I have been thinking of things to do with the kids as they get bored and we don't have many people to call and play with. So we decided to do oobleck, which is 2 cups cornstarch and around a cup of water mixed together. When you first feel the oobleck it feels like a solid, but then you dip your fingers into it and it runs through your fingers. The kids had fun playing with it and putting food coloring in it too. You can get it to dance, but I don't think our speakers were strong enough. You can google it is pretty cool.

My Mom and Romie, my neice, came to visit

My mom and my neice, Romie, came to visit us for about a week. Romie is right between Piper and Christian in age and it is always better to have more kids around to play. My mom had never been to DC so a couple of days we went into DC. I think we did every inch of the Natural History Museum-the kids loved it. The gems were the favorite of everyone. It is amazing to see uncut gems and see how pretty they can be after they are cut, but we decided the diamond is the least prettiest of all the gems. They had a bone exibit. They have found grave yard of many the people of Jamestown and have discovered mysteries of how they died. They had a whole area where the kids could put together skeletons, see different bones, and try and see if they could figure out how old people were by the bones, and how tall they were. I would have loved to spend more time in here. We also went to the American History Museum, which was way more interesting than I thought it would be. The kids got indroduced to my favorite kid show Captian Kangaroo and they saw Kermit. Christian was sad that all their Star Wars stuff was in storage. We ended up in museums all day and just walked down by the White House and Washington Monument-it had been a long day. We relaxed the next day and then we went to the National Zoo the next day. It was a good zoo just a confusing layout, but we saw some cool animals, but it was crowded. I have so many tips I am starting to gather for future visitors. The kids were sad to see them go and I am glad that mom got to come and see out new place and hang out for awhile. I think the best part was Brian and I got to go out on a date and talk. He has had so many late calls ect that we don't really get to talk. Here are the pictures:

 Dollhouse of I don't remember who, but it was amazing and facinating.

 In the superhero room they got to draw their own superhero.  Brian tells a story of Rockin Romie, Transformer Christian, and Super Piper so that is who they drew.

 Natural History Museum-I  let my niece have my camera and piper have my phone and they took over 300 pictures, but so fun for them and I put them on a disc for my niece to show her mom and dad all the things they saw.  I however didn't put all those pictures on here.

 Giant Anaconda that they have found a skeleton for-scary!!!

 Rolling down the hill of the Washington Monument-they are silly and were itchy afterward

 Feeding the birds with our snacks

 Romie found a dollar on the mall and was very excited and the White house is in the background

 The ZOO-they wanted a picture with every non-living animal.  We did get to see the panda and red panda, but the zoo is a zoo.  It is free!!

 They loved the escalators in the metro especially the really long ones and always turned backwards to see how high up they were going

The red panda

Ice Cream at the end of the day and Chik-fil-a!!