Nature Week: Museum of Life and Science

The Museum of Life and Science in Durham is awesome! We had a great time exploring all the exhibits there one day. It was much bigger than I realized with tons to see and do outside as well as inside. They had a fun special exhibit called "Into the Mist" which was perfect for a hot day. The kids loved the dinosaur trail and the butterfly house. They also had an amazing collection of crazy, icky bugs which the kids thought were pretty cool.

(NOT a leaf.)

Nature Week: sun prints

We had big trips at the very beginning and very end of the summer which left 5 weeks in the middle. I decided to bring back summer theme weeks. It had been a few years since I had done these and it was really fun to try them again. Every Monday morning the kids would find a sign posted with the new theme for the week. They loved the anticipation. We started off with nature week.

Our first nature week activity was making sun prints. Everyone loved it. Simon mostly just caused trouble, dumping out water and disturbing the exposures. But they worked pretty well.

Our neighbor Brooke joined the fun.

summer tea

Elsa decided to throw a tea party on the balcony one morning. She made invitations and set everything up and then surprised Amelia and Oliver.

And a random photo from a summer evening on the deck. Not sure what everyone was looking at.

Maymont Park

I had to return some lighting at a store in Richmond so we all headed up one Saturday afternoon and spent a few hours at beautiful Maymont Park.

Waffle House for dinner. Quite possible our kids' favorite place to eat.

Fourth of July

Broke out the bike wash again, attended a neighborhood party where Ben and I confirmed that we are most definitely the youngest people in the neighborhood, and watched our neighbor's fireworks show.

Festive tarts were in order.

Oliver's viewing spot for the fireworks.

These two had fun running around with some of the neighborhood kids.