We Rode a Duck!

My husband has only been getting 3 Sundays off a month with his overtime and military duty, so when he wasn't called in for overtime on Saturday, instead of being upset over a missed day of time and a half, we were thrilled! We actually would have a Saturday to do something together as a family!

Well, what to do. It was going to be over 90 degrees out. We took a train into the city and decided to go on a duck ride. Yes, a duck. Not a live duck, of course, but the amphibious vehicles from WWII that helped in the invasion of Sicily and Normandy. It was a lot of fun-- 70 minutes of sightseeing on land and river (of course, that was the kids' favorite part-that and the quackers that they got to quack to music, to people and other boats!) :-) I, myself had never quacked to the Village People or the Chicken Dance before, either. LOL.


We were driven through a lot of the historical sites in Philadelphia and then plunged into the Delaware River right underneath the Ben Franklin Bridge and cruised the river for a bit.



It was definitely an adventure!

The "Other" Zoo

On Thursday, I took the kids to the Elmwood Park Zoo in Norristown, PA. Most people when I mention that zoo look kind of perplexed and say that they didn't know there was a zoo in Norristown. :-)


Of course, we have the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoo in America with it's huge displays and large "zoo" animals: lions, tigers, elephants (well, not for much longer, but that's a topic for a whole other post). We have a membership there and the kids do enjoy it.

But, I decided to surprise them and take them to the small zoo that many don't know about. It is much smaller, doesn't have the lions, tigers and elephants, but has a charm that is undeniable. And, there are animals they wouldn't necessarily see anywhere else like American Bison. The Union Pacific train caboose always goes over big as does the big playground and the walk-through aviary and the crawl-through prairie dog tunnel.




I have to mention that I like to visit this zoo for another reason, as well. They not only discount military families' admission, they don't have *any* admission cost for military families. That's right, free. Wow. There aren't many places around today that acknowledge families like mine at all with even a small discount, let alone allow free admission. So, I was happy to buy the children ice cream on the hot summer day, pay for pony rides and buy them a small souvenir-- my way of saying thanks to them for being thankful. And, a great time was had, hot temps and all!

The First Fruits of Our Harvest

The first vegetables were picked from our humble garden today-- 2 cucumbers. Since they are kiddo #4's absolute favorite, we gave her the honor of picking them. I think kiddo #3 will be picking some peppers (his favorite) tomorrow! We all have sampled the cucumber (I know, before dinner, naughty us!), and it was really delicious-- far better than store bought!

Fourth of July

Although a bit rainy and overcast, it was still a fun day with a barbecue and some family members over to enjoy the festivities. I thought it too rainy to attend the local fireworks display, so we allowed the kids to stay up (I didn't know that they weren't going off until almost 11PM!) to watch the televised firework display from Philly. They were magnificent, though. Poor, tired, kiddo #4 was a very cranky, tantrum-prone girl the whole next day from the lack of sleep. :-)

The kids all had matching 4th of July shirts that I found at Target that looked really cute on them. I didn't get a photo of kiddos 1 & 2, unfortunately, but here are photos of kiddos 3 and 4 in their "July 4th attire." Happy Birthday America!

The Pool is Open!

After countless hours of blood, sweat and tears by their father and grandfather, the kids have been able to swim in the pool for the past week or so. (thus the real slow down of posts of late!) The fact that the kiddos have not missed a single day of swimming and spend *hours* in the pool at a time has made all of their work worth it, but I am truly thankful, because I know I would never be able to keep up with that kind of maintenance and work with everything else. Here are a few pictures from the first day in the pool on 6/22. A lot more "toys", inner tubes and other playthings have joined us since. :-)

Here's to Spontaneity!

The kids got done their science camp at noon. I had a bright idea-- take a train ride into the city and visit The Academy of Natural Sciences. When the time for the train came and went and the next train wasn't for another hour, I told the kids that I could get them in the door of the museum before an hour was up. Thank goodness, there were no traffic jams and I was able to keep my word. Perhaps it wouldn't seem like the brightest idea to get out of a museum in the city at rush hour on a Friday, but I was being spontaneous and the kids were thrilled with their "surprise." So, off we went. And what a great time we had.

Getting there at that time was fantastic. Any camp trips were long gone and if there were 2 dozen people in the whole place that would be a lot. Just the look on my little ones' faces at the sight of the massive, 70 million year old dinosaur fossils was worth it. The live walk-through butterfly exhibit thrilled all of them. The hands-on kids' section was really impressive with all kinds of manipulatives and animals. We got front row seats (I think everyone was in the front row, actually!) for a live animal show that was fun and engaging.

On our way out, we grabbed some snacks from a friendly vendor. My 4 year old said we bought them from a "snack bus." (too cute) The man was quite nice and since it was the end of the day gave me extra soft-pretzels for free and charged us less than I could have bought 2 snacks for in the museum cafe.

Who could have asked for a nicer afternoon? And, the great weather and views of center city Philadelphia made it all the better. :-) So, sometimes, it is best just to be spontaneous!

A Diversion

Well, I need something to keep my mind from the heat in the house since we still don't have full power. Today, I can finally say it's starting to get to me. I'm real fatigued, "headachey" and kind of nauseous. I did convince the nice man from the power company to put something called a jumper on the house, which gives us 110 volts throughout the house, not enough to run the ac, but enough that I think we can finally shut off the generator which has been running non-stop for over 3 days now. I can't imagine the cost of refilling that tank, but am very grateful that we had it. The cost of refilling two freezers and a fridge would have been equally intimidating. We are going to see if we can dig up another small ac window unit to try to bring the family room temperature down a bit more. The kids did have a blast "camping-in" last night in the family room. They all slept in their sleeping bags and their daddy and I took the sofa and loveseat. I was lucky that the loveseat was right under the ac unit, so I was the lucky one with the cold air almost blowing right on me. :-)

So, what is going to take my mind off of our current problem? I can write about kiddo#4's preschool end of the year picnic in a local park. It was held on Wednesday and was a great deal of fun for all of the children, their parents and siblings. There was Rita's water ice, face painting and entertainment by a magician. Every family was asked to bring a snack to share, so there was plenty of food of all varieties.

The kiddos each had their own chair and we brought our cooler filled with their favorite drinks. It was a great diversion for them from their scary experience the night before. All of the parents laughed as we lingered after the picnic was officially over since everyone had a dark, hot house to return to. :-)