Adventure Park Is as Good as Its Name

A friend "liked" the Adventure Park at Sandy Spring on their facebook page and I'm so glad they did.  I've been following their page as well and earlier this week, they posted free tickets to the new "Monkey Climb."  We had so much fun doing a similar aerial course in South Dakota; so I've been itching to try it out.  Free tickets for part of their park was the perfect incentive to plan a last hoorah before school starts on Tuesday.

 

We spent an hour on their monkey climb.  It was AWESOME.  Dan was the only one who didn't participate.  The kids were absolute dare devils.  They climbed all the way to the top on every tree.

 

Jaelyn and I raced on these two trees.  She was in the lead for a while...

 

then she puttered out and dropped...wimp :)

 

leaving me to be victorious!!!!

 

This tree was the absolute hardest.  It leaned and had tiny hand holds.  It was all about arm strength and as it was my 5th tree to climb, I had no arm strength left.  I attempted it 3 times and this was as high as I could go. 

 

 

Jaelyn made it all the way.

 

 

We had lunch after the monkey climb and then went back for their 3 hour aerial adventure.  They say this is the largest park of it's type in North America.  It was definitely bigger than SD.

 

I enjoyed the zip lines the most.  Each course had 2-3 scattered between other obstacles.

 

They had a photographer taking group pictures.  I didn't buy it, but I did take a picture of it ;).

 

There was some pretty hard obstacles...This was my choice for hardest.  It was all about inner thigh strength.  My legs were quivering at the end.

 

Huge, I tell you and this is only a small portion.  The park consisted of 5 different levels with 2 courses for each level.

 

 

So, if you are ever in the Virginia/Maryland area, we highly recommend stopping here.  Save your pennies...it ain't cheap.

Silly Dancing Boy

A Day at the Zoo

I met Caden's friend last year in their classroom.  It took us till the spring to figure out that he lived just a few houses down from us.  My kids spent most of the spring playing with him and his little sisters.  I only knew their mom from waving to her from the yard and visiting with her while waiting to pick up the kids after school.  At the end of the year, S. told us they were moving to DC.  I talked to his mom about exchanging contact information so we could get the kids together here.  Unfortunately, we never did it.  The end of the year was busy.  Then they had moved by the time we got back from our vacation.  The kids have bugged me ALL summer about finding them.  Last week, I found them!  It involved an hour scouring our old cell phone records for a text conversation that happened in the winter with a cell phone I didn't recognize. Anyway, we met them today for a trip into the city to the Zoo.  It was so exciting! 

 

Click this link to see how much the kids have grown since our last visit Fall of 2010.

 

The Panda liked his frozen block of goodness.

 

It was a HOT day...the mister stations were the hit of the zoo.

 

Miss Kendra - this picture is from Jae to you.  Elephant Poop!  She thought you'd be excited. :)

 

Jaelyn told us all about naked mole rats. They are nasty things.

 

Yeah, he's not that scared of her.

 

 

The Panda at the Woodley Park Metro Station.  We loved him the first time we visited.

 

All in all, it was a great day.  I can't wait to see our friends again now that we have their number.

Last Week of Summer

I can't believe this is the last week of summer. It's been a fun and crazy summer with a vacation to South Dakota, an impromptu trip to Pensacola, and a 1000 mile move. We are ready to get back to our routine and make some more friends. I'm also anxious to get our homeschool show on the road. Dan has had orientation for the last week and a half. He started his master's degree for real this morning with his first class.

I'm trying to plan fun things for this week. We had family game morning this morning and the kids are playing in the pool now. They might fight at home, but they play so well together at the pool. And I love that we can walk out our back gate, cross the footbridge over the lake and be at the pool in 2 minutes.

Tomorrow, we have a date with the Washington Zoo and friends from Missouri. Only Jaelyn knows. I can't wait for the expression on Caden's face when he sees Sebastian. Oh the excitement.

Crafting

I cleaned out the kids' dressers. There's no one here to give our smaller clothes to; so I'm cutting them up to make yarn for a new rug. Caden is always left out with my crafting. I took a barely worn T-shirt and made it into a pillow for him. He's loves his new pill-y.

Jaelyn's quilt is coming right along. It's a lot bigger than I had planned. I can't wait to start quilting it.

Frisbee Fun

Jaelyn's friend Isabella and her family invited us on a picnic today.  The girls were talking to moms and arranging it through texts.  Next time, I'll call the mom.  We were there for the picnic on time.  They apparently were there an hour and a half later.  We actually had so much fun as a family that I'm glad we didn't meet them.

 

I brought two Frisbees with us and we had the best time.  It's been a while, but all of the kids are pretty good.  We didn't have to do too much chasing.  I love Allie's expression the first time she caught it on her arm (btw, I love these Frisbees with the hole in the middle.  I had to hunt online when are original one got messed up.)

 

Dan showed off, of course.  I used to be able to do this.  Try as I might, I couldn't catch one under my leg.  I blame the sandals I was wearing!

 

Caden tried hard, but I don't think he caught one under his leg either.

 

She's a beautiful Frisbee ballerina.  Look at her back leg and her hand position LOL.

 

Photo Bomb!

Jaelyn was being such a monkey every time I turned the camera her way.

 

We had a great game of Monkey in the Middle.

 

On the way out, we stopped for a Geocache.  This is a brick kiln (because they made bricks in it, not because it's made out of bricks). There was a nearby prison and the women suffragettes would fire the bricks here.  Talk about hard labor!

 

This cache was well hidden inside one of the "windows."  Can you see it?  Dan could barely reach it.  If it had just been me and the kids, we wouldn't have gotten it.

 

 

We were all hot and sweaty after chasing Frisbees for an hour.  We finished off our afternoon with Rita's (hence the video earlier).  I love being close to stuff again and also being in a new area with new places to explore.  We can do something different every weekend we live here and still not run out.