more fun instead of to-do lists, part 2 . . .

After visiting with the Cat in the Hat at the Lynden Library last Friday, Jen and I decided to take the kids to the Marine Life Center in Bellingham. Don't let the name fool you . . . it's kind of a sketchy little place with some fuzzy-haired WWU students doing the tours. For the dollar admission though, you can't beat an hour or so of touching anemones and seeing starfish, sea cucumbers and dead crabs.

The kids weren't too into this "bubble", but it was pretty funny to see them "inside" the tank . . . thanks sister for doing the dirty work of lifting the kids up so I could get pictures. :) At the beginning Grace would just put her fingers in the water of the touch tank, but by the end she was actually touching the "jellyfish" as she called them . . . the fuzzy haired WWU student made SEVERAL attempts to correct my 1 year old that it was actually an anemone, but for some reason, Grace didn't listen . . . maybe because she is only ONE. Our cue to leave was when she started talking directly to Jake and Grace about calcium carbonate . . .
Because we have no limits on how many things we'll try to make our kids do in one day, we headed back towards Lynden and ate and played at McDonald's (our 2nd time there in as many days . . . we had been there the day before for Wayne's birthday and only Grace's 3rd time ever in the play area) and then went to Safeway. Aren't you glad you're not one of our kids? We don't stop until at least 2 out of the 3 are crying and I think we might have gotten all 3 going by the end of Safeway . . . at one point Jake had to go to the bathroom, so it was just me, Max and Grace alone in the butter aisle. Let's just say it wasn't pretty and I'm glad I have another 3 months to prepare before I'm permanently in charge of 2 kids.

On Saturday, we were lucky enough to have Heidi and sweet baby Maya come up for the afternoon for a baby shower . . . Heidi and Rockell gave Grace and I an amazing shower and we were so glad to be able to return the favor.

Here is my Mom holding Maya and Grace ADORING her . . . have I ever mentioned that Grace LOVES babies? I had been telling her all morning that we were going to a "girl party" at Grandma Jones's and about an hour before we were supposed to leave, she looked at me and yelled, "PARTY!" and started walking towards the door. That girl definitely loves a party . . . I was really nervous about doing all the food for the shower, so my Mom said I could have it at her house and she would take care of making the food . . . how lucky am I? Since I didn't have to stress about cooking anything, I spent a lot of time on silly details like water bottle labels and color coordinating jelly beans and ordering I HEART MAYA buttons for everyone to wear.
It was a LOVELY afternoon with the girls . . . so fun to hear how much Heidi is loving being a Mom and getting to hold Maya and ooooh and ahhhhh over her. She is a DOLL!

Back to what "party time" is normally like at Grandma's . . . We're already making plans to go to the State Basketball tournament next year during mid-winter break, so I'll know better than to make a to-do list for these four days in 2011. :)