Spring Break Adventure - Amazeum

At the end of our spring break, we made a last-minute decision to take a weekend trip to Northwest Arkansas. We drove up after work on Friday and checked into our hotel. On the way to the hotel, we noticed that there was a Krispy Kreme right down the street. We hadn't had a Krispy Kreme in our area for the last few years so we immediately knew what we were going to have for breakfast.

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and Mike and Emily went to get our Krispy Kreme. We at them in the hotel then headed over to our first stop - The Amazeum.  The Amazeum is sort of like a science museum and it has different learning/exploring sections sponsored by different corporations. 

I knew from what I'd read about the Amazeum online that Emily was on the cusp of being too old to enjoy a lot of the activities, but one thing that I though she would really be into was the Hershey's Lab, where you get a chance to do an experiment with chocolate and/or candy. 

The Hershey's Lab is free, but you have to get a ticket for a specific time. All the tickets are available at the beginning of the day, but the first hour is open to members only. I wasn't sure how quickly the tickets for the Hershey's Lab would go so we got there right before the museum opened so that we would have a better chance to get a ticket. I wanted to make sure we got to do this activity for Emily.

Noah, on the other hand, loved all the exhibits. He's very independent and doesn't mind running off without us. 

"Ohhh, the tornado is going to take me away!"

I felt like a lot of the exhibits were well put together and really fun. 

And of course, Emily did find some fun things that she enjoyed doing. 

Noah loved this painting exhibit. You paint on the glass then use a spray bottle of water to wash it all off for the next person. Messy, but fun.

They also had an outside play area with a few different play areas. Noah wasn't scared a bit on this jungle gym.

The water play area was very fun, too. Again, things seemed to be really clean and the activities were set up in a way that let kids play without a lot of parent involvement.

We were able to get a ticket for the Hershey's Lab. We got to play a game about how Hershey's chocolate is made. It wasn't really the type of "experiment" I was expecting, but it wasn't bad. And we got to eat a tiny bit of chocolate.

Overall, the Amazeum was really neat and we had a lot of fun there. I would definitely recommend it if you're in the area.

Read more »

Easter Nest Cake

Last week, I had Easter on my mind so I made this cute Nest Cake.  I loosely followed this recipe that I found online.  I made mine with a lemon bundt cake and cream cheese frosting.

I filled my nest cake with Robin's Eggs and peanut butter M&M's eggs.

Noah doesn't particularly like coconut so he mostly ate the candy, but everyone else liked it.

Read more »

Easter Bunny Racers

In my Sunday School class, we made some Easter Bunny Racers for a craft/snack. They are so easy and so cute! The hardest part for the kids was not cutting the Twinkie all the way through. I used a can of vanilla frosting to hold the wheels (mini oreos) and the steering wheel (pretzel) in place. And they only have to look cute for about a minute before you eat them.



We some leftover parts so the kids got to make some at home, too.


See? I told you they don't last long!


Yum!

Read more »

Emily and Noah Blog: Easter Baskets

Emily: 3 words. It. Was. Awesome! I got white high top Converse shoes, sunglasses, mechanical pencils, a water bottle, a Peekaboo (it holds your phone.) Its name is Uni - Unibrow! Haha. I also got Bath and Bodyworks stuff. I got a beach towel, beach ball, and frisbees. And of course LOTS OF CANDYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!


Noah: So, I got a fluffy bunny. I got beach things! I got a beach ball, eggs, candy, Donatello and a T-Rex, movie tickets, and Peeps! I also got a C3PO tsum tsum, 2 movies, headphones, shoes and a whole lot more. It was awesome. P.S. This golden egg is super fun. It has a Warren (movie) ticket inside. Wow. P.P.S. You can watch a movie while holding it and you can watch Justin Bieber's music while putting headphones on. Thank you Easter Bunny! Hallelujah!


Emily: WOW! He must have had too much candy because he has gone CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Read more »

Happy Easter!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. He is risen indeed!

Read more »

Spring Weekend Adventure - Davis Oklahoma

The other weekend, we took a day trip down to the Davis, Oklahoma, area. Our first stop was the Bedre Fine Chocolate factory. The production line was not running when we were there, but they have floor to ceiling windows from the gift shop and we got to see all the equipment that they use to make chocolates. 

We also got some chocolate to eat. Noah got a chocolate in the shape of Oklahoma. Emily got some gummy bears. Yeah, I don't understand it either. I got a white chocolate egg. And Mike got some dark chocolate covered potato chips. 

We also stopped at the Chickasaw Nation Welcome Center, which is next door. It has a lot of items made by people of the Chickasaw Nation - foods, candles, artwork, books, artifacts, etc.  Very neat and interesting to see.

Then we headed over to Arbuckle Wilderness drive through park to feed the animals. This is something we really enjoy doing, but it's very expensive to get in. I made sure we bought plenty of food to feed the animals. They gave us the food in a plastic shopping bag and I let Noah carry it out to the car, but he accidentally dropped it outside on the steps and it went all over. BOO! We picked up as much as we could and it was all fine.

There were not a lot of people at the park when we were there so we got to go through at our own speed and stop whenever we wanted. We spent a lot of time trying to feed the giraffe. There was an ostrich standing right beside the giraffe's pen. Those thing will peck your eyes out! So Mike lured the ostrich over to his side of the car so that Emily and Noah and I could try to feed the giraffe. So fun.

Noah likes to hold his cup out the window and just let the animals eat as much as they want. That's why I bought a whole bag of food this time.  He looks all happy because the animals love him!

I get so caught up in feeding the animals that I forget to take many pictures, but the zebras are always neat to see. Their stripes are as unique as our fingerprints. 

Before we left the park, we had to stop by the playground for a few minutes. It was such a pretty day. 

They have some unique items on their playground like this wooden train.

And also this wooden monster truck. 

One the way home, we stopped by Jo's Famous Pizza in Purcell. We took some selfies while we were waiting for our food. 

Isn't she so pretty?

Read more »

Labor Day Adventure - Fossil Rim Wildlife Center

So, I'm finally getting back to finishing up the recap of or Labor Day trip. I don't know why it's so hard for me to blog these days.  I guess I'm never completely sure what to say.  Can't I just post the thousand pictures and be done with it?

After Dinosaur World, we grabbed lunch then headed to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center.  Fossil Rim is one of those drive-thru zoo places.  We've been to a couple places like this and we all really enjoyed it.  We'd heard some good things about this one so we were excited to try it out.

When we got there, we went into the gift shop to pay our admission and get some animal food.  One of the ladies at the counter mentioned that they had about 750 cars going through there the prior day.  That sounded like a lot.  Then when we drove through the checkpoint, the woman gave her little spiel then said "Okay, we'll see you right back here in about 3 hours."  I thought, "Oh fun!  That's a nice long drive-thru zoo.  Lots to see."

And there was definitely lots to see.  Lots of deer.  

And lots of other kinds of deer.  All kinds of deer.  Big ones, little ones.  Big horns, little horns.

Another deer!  Oh wait, that's dear Noah.  

There were really a lot of cars.  And a lot of people spent a lot of time feeding all the deer that would come up to the vehicle.  Like, a long time.  Feeding all the deer.   Catch my drift? 

They had quite a few giraffes that were really cool to see.  They couldn't come up to the cars to get a bite to eat, but they were very neat.

The fact that the giraffes didn't want to come eat didn't mean the cars would just keep going to find other animals to feed though.  They'd just sit there for like 5 minutes ... waiting ... blocking the road ... with a couple dozen cars sitting "patiently' behind them.

Of course, the deer wanted to eat!

As we approached the 3 hour mark, I was getting pretty impatient with all the cars and the lines not moving. In a few areas, there were signs that said "Stay in your vehicle or get escorted out."  This started sounding like a incredibly good option.  #rulebreaker

We eventually did make it out of there though and I was so glad. It was a fun trip, but just way too many cars on that particular day.

Read more »

Labor Day Adventure - Day 2

Our Labor Day Adventure continued on the second day with a trip to Dinosaur World! Did you know that such a thing even existed?!  This park is right outside Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas.

We got an excavation package that included a fossil dig and a gem mining pass.   At the fossil dig, the kids got to dig into the sand to find fossils, shark teeth, etc.  They got to pick their three favorites to bring home.   

I didn't get any pictures at the gem mining center because I didn't want to get my camera wet, but the kids got a lot of gems in their bags. Noah wasn't much into the gems, but Emily has a pretty extensive rock collection so she loved seeing all the gems she got.

Dinosaur World also has a really nice playground for the kids as well as a Bone Yard where they got to use little brushes to uncover bones in the sand.  

We didn't have a lot of time to play on the playground, but they had some really cool things like this dinosaur skeleton.  Noah was a fan.  

They also had a museum with some real dinosaur bones as well as some Animatronic dinosaurs.  These things were moving and squawking at us.  Noah was scared at first, but then he was okay after we told him that they were robots.  I thought it was pretty cool.

Dinosaur World also has a walking trail with life-sized dinosaur statues all along it.

Emily was acting scared with the Tyrannosaurus Rex statues, but Mike and I called foul on that one. Obviously, they're statues like all the others.

This was a familiar site on the trail.  This little guy was all too confident to go out exploring on his own.

At the halfway point in the trail, there was a pond with these big Koi fish in it.  We'd bought some fish food so we walked out onto the dock to feed them.

The kids loved feeding the fish.

They also had some dinosaurs along the banks of the pond and some Animatronic alligators in the water.  Pretty cool.

Overall, I thought Dinosaur World was a really fun stop on our trip.  We spent maybe a couple hours there and it was well worth the visit.

I'd wanted to go to Dinosaur Valley State Park to see the dinosaur footprints, but we really didn't have time.

And speaking of time, I'm out of time for blogging tonight so you'l have to tune in later this week to see what else we did on our trip. It was definitely a fun one!

Read more »

Labor Day Adventure - Day 1

I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend!  We decided that we were going to take an impromptu road trip.  We left after church on Sunday and headed down to Texas for a couple days.

We told the kids on Friday night that we were going to go on an adventure, but they had no clue where we were going until we got to each stop.  Emily thought we were going to Mexico.  And don't I wish!

I Googled a lunch place on my phone while we were heading down the interstate.  We ended up at Deiter Brothers BBQ in Lindsey, TX.  I got the loaded baked potato with brisket, which is pretty much my go-to BBQ meal. It was really delicious.  Everybody enjoyed their meal.  Mike asked if this place was better than my favorite BBQ place in OKC and I had to say YES.


Then we were off to our first stop on our family adventure - Sandy Lake Amusement Park!   This is a family park in Carrollton, TX.  When you drive in, you pay $2.00 per person at the gate then you drive in and you can park anywhere.  Literally, you drive down into the park and they have a bunch of picnic tables at different spots under these huge trees and you can just park anywhere and just go have fun.

The park had a family feel to it. It was not too big and not too small.  They have a lot of carnival rides like what you would see at a county fair.  It really took me back to when I was a kid and we spent a lot of time at the fairs when we were showing our cows.

Noah was a big fan of the bumper cars and the pony ride.  We did the bumper cars a couple of times.  Much to his disappointment, Noah was too small to drive the bumper cars so I had to drive with him.  He literally kept grabbing the steering wheel from me and crashing us into people.  haha!  Emily drove her own car and she did not like it when Noah and I ran into her.  She was really offended by that.


It was a hot afternoon on Sunday, but they had a lot of big shade trees to help keep us cool.  We also had rainbow snowcones to cool us down.


One of the main reasons I wanted to go to this park was because they have my favorite carnival ride - the Tilt-A-Whirl. I was so excited for the kids to ride this with me!  We all rode it together and I taught them how to lean one way or the other to keep the car spinning around.  We were all screaming and having a good time.


The Tilt-A-Whirl was a 5-ticket ride, but it did not take us long to go on the ride again.  The second time we rode, I gave the ticket guy 15 tickets for the three of us and he handed Emily five of the tickets back.  And when the ride was over, he asked if we wanted to ride again but I said we would later.


Then we went over to the pond to ride the Paddle Boats. I knew Noah would love this.  The paddle boats could take three people at a time - two people peddling and one person in the middle riding along.  Noah was pretty disappointed that he couldn't paddle the boat.  It was HOT out on the lake though.  There was not a lot of shade.  We didn't quite make it to our 20 minute time limit, but it was still fun.

After the paddle boats, Noah was pretty much done so he and Mike went back to the van to cool off and Emily and I went back to the Tilt-A-Whirl one more time.  I only had two ride tickets left so I went and bought 8 more.  Emily and I discussed that there was a good chance the ride operator would give us back half the tickets and then we could ride again.  But if not, that was fine and we'd be happy with one more ride.  But when we got to the Tilt-A-Whirl, we each had our 5 tickets in our hand.  He wouldn't take mine and he wouldn't take Emily's.  So we rode and had a wonderful time!  Then the ride ended and he asked if we wanted to go again and we said YES!

Emily likes to point out that I was really sweaty and she's right.  But I loved it and I was having a great time.




After the Tilt-A-Whirl, I tried to convince Emily to ride some of the other rides with our extra tickets.  The Spider?  No way!  We'd ridden that earlier and she thought she was going to have a heart attack.  The Scrambler?  No!  The Swings? No!  So we just handed our extra tickets to a random person on our way back to the car.

We left the amusement park and headed for our hotel, which was about 45 minutes away.  That night, we went to eat at In-N-Out Burger (P.S. Why do they not have mayo?  Not everybody wants their "spread".)  Then we went over and grabbed dessert at Curly's Frozen Custard.

After dessert, we went back to the hotel for a little family swim.  We had the whole pool to ourselves most of the time so it was a lot of fun.  Both of the kids loved it.

And that was the end of our first day of our Labor Day Adventure.  Come back later this week to find out what else we did on our trip.

Read more »