Riley's Swimming Lessons

Riley has wanted to take swimming lessons since Zach took them last winter, but he just didn't seem ready enough. Well, the last several times we have gone swimming in a big pool, he has gone out farther into the water, and even loves putting his head under water (where before he wouldn't even think of doing this.) So, Jeff & I thought it was time to let him take swimming lessons. He just finished his first week and he LOVED it!

This is his favorite part. They sing "Ring around the roses", but they end with "and we all do bobs!" He loves to bob in and out of the water.

He is also getting good at kicking his legs while putting his head in and out of the water.

His teacher said that he is doing better at turning his head to the side for breaths.

At the end of each lesson, they turn on the water slide!!!

Riley wishes he could do this the entire time!

#9: Nature Walk

We were able to cross off the last thing on our list of ten things the boys wanted to do this summer. Number 9 was: Take a nature walk. We have been on plenty of walks this summer and the kids usually point out things in nature, but I haven't had my camera with me. So this morning, I grabbed my camera and we set out to find things in nature.

This is the pond at the park by our house. Zach thought it would be a good picture for nature.

In the pond, we found a mama duck with her babies.

The kids' favorite part of our nature walk?

Playing at the park!

OK, that really has nothing to do with nature, but we usually end up at the park on our walks, and by the time we got there, they were pretty much done with nature. =) So we ran to the park to play.

So, our list is done. We still have some summer left though and we will be filling our days with playing, swimming, art projects, and having movie nights. It was fun to make the list and the boys got excited each time we were able to cross something off. We will definitely do this again next summer. I am sure there will be some of the same things, but hopefully we will come up with some new things too.

Aquarium Day 2

Day two of our trip to the aquarium started off with Lily getting up VERY early....and waking everyone else up very early too. Instead of just hanging out in the hotel room until the aquarium opened, Jeff decided to head over to the Bass Pro Shop that was right next to the hotel. (Picture sighs of boredom from me and cheering from the boys.) The kids thought this waterfall was really cool.

They also found a shooting game that they tried out.

Then it was finally time to go to the aquarium. The reason why we went for two days was because we wanted to be there in the morning to feed the turtles and stingrays. It is on a first come first serve basis, so by the afternoon, all of the food is gone and we knew it would be gone by the time we got there on Wednesday.

We started with the turtles first. They gave the kids little poles with clothespins on them to put strips of carrots in.

The other animals you can feed are the stingrays. They have two tanks of stingrays. One were you can touch them and one where you can just look at them and feed them. To feed the stingrays, the kids got poles with a little hook on the end where they could attach shrimp. The stingrays loved it, they swam right up and snatched the shrimp out!

We touched the sharks and stingrays again and then we looked at some of the exhibits we missed the day before.

Riley LOVED this octopus!

They had a whole room full of sharks. It was a big tunnel where you could watch the sharks swimming. The picture below is of baby sharks.

There was a man showing the kids a shark jaw. He told the boys to see if they could open their mouths that wide.

On the first day, Zach found Nemo right away, but he couldn't find Dory.

Finally, at the end of the second day, he found her!

When it was time to go, the boys decided it would be funny to pose with the alligator one more time......this time with their heads IN the alligators mouth......I have some goofy boys. =)

Then it was time to head home. It was a fun trip to the aquarium!

#10: Day Trip

Number 10 on our list was to take a day trip somewhere. We were planning on going down to the Oklahoma Aquarium and then coming back home in one day, making that our day trip. But Jeff had meetings in Oklahoma City both Tuesday night & Wednesday morning, so we decided to make it a two day trip instead....but I'm counting it as our day trip. =) So, Wednesday morning, the kids & I headed to Stillwater where we were going to meet Jeff after his meeting. His boss was going to go golfing there & we were going to head over to Tulsa to the aquarium. Well, we had to wait about an hour for Jeff because his meeting ran over, but we made it to the aquarium by 3:00. The kids were very excited about getting out of the car.....so was I. =)

My kids' obsession with posing with statues prompted them to run up to this alligator after they spotted it.

Then we were finally in the aquarium!!!!

The kids really liked this big room where you could watch a lot of fish swim around. They even had divers in there feeding the fish & one went up to the boys to have his picture taken with them.

Then we moved on to some of the other exhibits.

They have these touch tanks where the kids got to touch shark eggs, a starfish, and a clam. I thought Lily would not like it, but she wanted to practically jump in there with them!

Then we moved on to the part that the boys were looking forward to the most: touching sharks and stingrays!

After that we moved on to more exhibits!

Then we headed to our hotel. I think the kids were tired since they hitched a ride on the luggage rack.

This hotel had mini golf for free!!

Lily loved golfing! Most of the time she actually hit the ball in the hole (after moving it by the hole that is).

But every once in awhile she would do this:

After swimming in the pool, the kids settled down in their bed to watch a movie and unwind from our busy day.

I will have more pictures of the aquarium tomorrow including pics of the kids feeding the turtles and stingrays!