What A Week!

The kids in front of a fish tank at the zoo. They both are just fascinated with fish!

What a fun-filled week! Grandma and Grandpa with the curly hair were here! (That's what Emily calls my parents because my mom has curly hair. The names of both sets of grandparents are based on the grandmas' hair. Both grandpas are bald, so . . . ) We went to swimming lessons, the zoo, the children's museum, and the kids got spoiled rotten! (But it's OK. They don't get to see their grandparents very often.) Mom and Dad didn't care for the weather much, but they were good troopers, especially when we went to the zoo. It was very warm and humid that day!

Grandma and Emily "shopping" at the children's museum. (They have a pretend mini-store. It's pretty fun and always jam-packed!)

Grandpa and Jacob doing their own "shopping." Jacob filled up on pears and cucumbers and apples!

Billy and I introduced Guitar Hero to my folks (more nerdiness, I know!) the first night they were here and they really liked it. We played it a few more times with them during the week. So much fun.

One of the most fun things we did was go to NASA's Space Center Museum. They had some neat things to look at, and entertaining things for the kids too. It really made space travel and astronauts seem so exciting to me again. I remember just being fascinated with it when I was a kid, watching the shuttles take off and land each time, and nowadays, you hardly seem to hear mention about a mission anymore. It was pretty crazy to finally be looking at spacepods (I think that's what they were called) and things and see what the astronaunts had actually traveled in. How small and/or how big they were.

The coolest thing there was a Saturn V rocket, that you could see during the Tram tour of the Johnson Space Center. They were used in the late 60's/early 70's, and it was just amazing. To see how big it was, but then to see the little tiny part of it (way at the top) that was for the astronaunts! All the rest was engines and stuff to move the rocket into space. Incredible. (Do I sound like a 6th grader yet, just home from a field trip?!)

This is a web picture of the rocket we saw, except now it's inside a silo/shed. (Billy's got the camera with those pictures at work.) I know I probably sound so silly, but even though I've seen tons of pictures and videos of shuttles and rockets, it was really amazing to see one in real life and get a better idea of how big they are. Even Emily randomly mentioned today how she liked seeing it.

Anyway, we had fun, but now we're getting back to real life. It's always a bit of a let down, isn't it?

But I haven't resorted to eating helicopters yet. :) (Guess his hands got too tired!)

So, just wanted to say thanks to all the grandparents for visiting us this summer. We had so much fun with all of you, and hope it won't be too long before we see you again!