Myriad Gardens

Today was a play date at the Myriad Gardens.

We met up with Aunt Karla, Athena, Danielle, Peyton and Parker. The kids loved playing in the fountain.

And we had fun at the children's garden, too.

It's such a cool place!

Another fun summer day!

Jasmine Moran Children's Museum

For our second "day"-cation of the summer, I took the kids to the Jasmine Moran Children's Museum in Seminole. I think this might be my favorite of the Oklahoma children's museums. The kids loved it!

Tyler's favorite exhibit was this car repair area.

He changed the tires on this car probably a dozen times, in addition to "refilling the fluids," changing the air filters and checking out the muffler. Ashley may not have liked it as much as Tyler but she definitely got into the action.

Ashley's favorite exhibit was the grocery store.

She loved the little miniature carts and particularly the produce section.

They both enjoyed checking and bagging, too.

Our other favorite exhibit involved "bricks, " which the kids loved raising and lowering in this bucket.

They played with another little girl in this exhibit forever, finally working out a  system where Tyler would use the wheel barrow to collect bricks, bring them and put the in the gray bin, Ashley would put them in the bucket and raise them up to the other little girl, and then she would take them out of the bucket and walk across and throw them down the chute.

I was pretty impressed with 3 three-year-olds coming up with such a system on their own. The kids also liked the dino dig.

I think Ashley could have played in the sand for hours, if Tyler hadn't been ready to move on. And Ashley actually found a pair of crutches that were her size.

And Tyler enjoyed "driving" the fire truck.

We had such a great time! So great we ended up staying until they closed. The kids are already begging to go back.

Pirate Day

Yesterday was the first in a series of theme days that I'm planning for this summer.  It was pirate day...and the kids loved it.

They dressed in Jake and Izzy costumes (from Jake and the Neverland Pirates). We had bought these costumes for Pirate in the Caribbean Night on our Disney cruise, and they have been in our dress-up bin, so it was fun to get them out. I also wore a costume (the one Brent wore on our cruise), but I intentionally made sure there was no photographic evidence of it.

Our first activity of the day was to make "jewel"-encrusted swords.

I found these awesome foam swords at the dollar store and the kids got to add some stick-on jewels.

Next, we went to the back porch and dug for buried treasure.

I hid some dollar store rings, earrings and coins in the sand, and the kids dug and dug.

We did this for a while and even came back to it later on in the day. 

My other big activity was a treasure hunt with a map.

I made a large map of our house and yard on an old grocery sack. I even took the time to burn the edges for effect.  I definitely spent the most time on this, and some of the detailing was probably lost on 3-year-olds, but I had a lot of fun with it.

I put "x"'s at places throughout the house and we used the map to find "gold doubloons."

The kids were so happy when they found them. I didn't get any pictures of lunch, but the kiddos got little pirate flags in their PB and J sandwiches and sword toothpicks in their craisens. The day ended with dinner from Long John Silver's, movie night watching Treasure Island (Tyler liked it and asked to watch it again sometime. Ashley thought their was too much fighting. I agree with Ashley.), and finally a pirate bedtime story...How I Became a Pirate, which is a really cute book. Overall, pirate day was a huge success...has me looking forward to our next theme day, cowboy day. 

Playing at the Neighborhood Park

Trip to Leonardo's Discovery Warehouse

I have planned a few mini-trips for the kids this summer, and we took our first one yesterday. We went to Leonardo's in Enid.

It's basically a children's museum, and the kids loved it! They had been once with Brent about a year and a half ago, but this was my first time to take them.  Ashley's favorite part was, of course, the doctor's office area, and Tyler enjoyed that part, too.

They each got a chance with the "cast, and crutches (which they both call "crunches")

In addition to the indoor portion, they have an outside play area, that's really cool.

We didn't stay out their too long, because it was so hot, but the kids did enjoy exploring it.  It was a great first "day-cation" of the summer...looking forward to the rest.