Summer Part One!

School is out, and our summer plans have been in full swing! Jenn and her kids came down to visit for a week. My kids love when they come to visit. They really have a lot of fun together.

We kicked off the week with a day full of swimming. Have I mentioned how much I *love* my mom's pool!?! It's the only thing that gets us through these hot Georgia summers. We spent the day just swimming and laughing and playing, and grilled out for dinner and swam some more. By bedtime, we had 9 exhausted and SUNBURNED kiddos. I guess we didn't reapply sunscreen enough. Poor babies! They were such troopers though. We tried to go do things in the mornings the rest of the week, and wait to swim in the later afternoon when the sun wasn't quite so strong.

We went to the Georgia Children's Museum in Macon and had a lot of fun with the kids. It's not a fancy museum by any means, but it's just a fun place. They have a big room with different areas to play...a kitchen area, a dress up area, a moonsand area, blocks, a puppet theater, and even a little kid play area separate from the rest. The kids pretty much went from station to station and played with it all.
When they had had enough of that, we went to another floor where when they have little play houses set up to resemble houses from various countries. You get to pick up a passport and collect stamps from each country. We had the older children write down one of the interesting facts from each country. There was also a place where you could be a news reporter, and a little room with a king and queen throne and some dress up clothes. We did take some pictures, but I will have to get them from Jenn.
There is also a huge arts/crafts room with long tables and stuff to color. This time, they also had a BUNCH of different drums there too, and they LOVED creating a huge racket with them. 8 kids all pounding on stuff...woah. It was loud!
On the main floor, they also had some interesting things to play with. There was a section with bubbles, and BIG bubble wands made out of various tubes (there was even one with a hula hoop in a tire cut in half, but there weren't any bubbles in it).
After we played the morning away, we had a picnic lunch outside on the benches, and returned to Nana's to swim some more!

We also visited the Museum of Aviation with the kids that week, and they always love going there. They have a couple different airplanes that they can sit in and push buttons and pretend to fly. Oh and they love trying to decide who gets to push the buttons in the elevators. :D

A special treat was taking the kids to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The kids all thought it was really funny. Jenn and I were kind of grossed out. :D It's still funny to hear the kids making references to it. Later that day in the pool, they were playing "cheese-touch".

I think we grilled out the entire week, making dinner time easy and delicious! One cool thing we tried was grilling pizza! How fun is that!? I have to be honest, I totally wasn't a believer, but it was really good and EASY! I want to try it again soon.

One of the reasons Jenn chose this week to come visit, was that Saturday was a 5K race in Macon. I participated in my first 5K with Jenn and Laura in February. It was SO fun. I decided then I wanted to do more. So she and I got up early that Saturday and went to the race. It was really fun to be with her, even though I am much slower than she is, she humored me and kept her pace with mine. During the race, as I tried to push myself to run as well as walk, I really struggled to control my breathing (I really am NOT a good runner *sigh*. It was just all over the place and I ended up having I guess like a little Asthma attack. I have had Asthma since I was about 5, and generally I don't have many problems with it, except when I exercise, or get sick. And when it happened, I got panicked which I'm sure makes it worse, but thankfully Jenn helped me to calm down and breathe, and we pretty much walked the rest of the race. I felt kind of mortified that it happened. Here I am struggling so bad, and Jenn was barely winded! But I know that she's fitter than I am, and like anything, it takes time. It was a pretty small race, and even tho we came in last, I still took about 10 minutes off the last 5K I did. :)
So THANKS Jenn for doing it with me, even though I held you back. I love you! <3

It was sad to see them go back home, but hopefully we can make a trip up to see them before the summer is over.