National Aquarium in Baltimore

On Monday the kids and I went with a friend and her boys to Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium!  It's about an hr and a half drive from where we are and was a perfect little day trip for the 6 of us :)  It's been on my to-do list for quite some time, and the kids loved it!  I would say it's not quite as great as the VA Beach Aquarium or Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg, but it ranks up there ;) 

Our boys are almost the same ages (just a few months apart between them) so they are all good buddies! 

The kids were just amazed by everything, so fun to watch them enjoy the day! 

Here are Michael and Alex waiting for the dolphin show to start!  That was probably my favorite part of the trip, so fun! About halfway through the show though, Alex asked me when they were going to do tricks, LOL... I guess it takes a lot to impress a 4 yr old when they've seen all kinds of crazy stuff on TV ;) 

Nathan would yell, "This is AWESOME!" as he ran from tank to tank, too cute! 

We had such a fun day!  Hoping to go back and do the Children's Museum there... it's ranked amongst the top few and was what we were originally going to do, until we found out it was closed on Mondays through the off-season ;) 

Walks, bikes, and mini-golf!

We've been enjoying the warm weather lately!  Here are the boys ready for a walk!  Nathan likes to walk "all by himself" these days...

And bike/scooter riding:

Last weekend we took the boys mini-golfing!   Alex's putting skills have gotten much better since last year ;)  He was actually semi following the rules and counting his strokes...

Nathan was pretty cute trying to figure it out ;)

Proud of his hit!

He got some help from daddy ;)

After the first few holes though, Nathan decided it was just too much work using that club, and there was a MUCH easier way!  He announced "I'm gonna throw it!" then after his first throw, he picked it up again and dropped it in the hole! 

Playing on the golf cart!  Nathan was confused why it wasn't working and told us it needed batteries ;) 

Soccer season again!

Alex has been SO excited for soccer to start up again!!  He absolutely loves going to practice and loves his soccer games!  It is such a huge difference this season from last for his whole team so far.  Last season we started off the first game with tears (not from Alex, but most of the team), hand holding by parents on the field, and goal after goal being scored by the other team ;)  This season, everyone is much more into it, and his team is definitely getting better skill wise, too! 

Here's Alex at the first practice of the season (a couple of weeks ago):

And before his first game!  He was SO excited!! 

He's still a bit timid about "getting in there" and stealing the ball, but is doing MUCH better than last season!  He actually gets into the huddle some and tries to kick it out!  The kids always raise their hands between quarters if they are "ready to play" (some like a lot of breaks...)  Alex ALWAYS raises his hand to play!  He just loves it! 

The coach has the kids point at which goal is their's before each kick off ;)  They're getting better about understanding that each team has their own goal!  :) 

Thinking he probably won't be a professional soccer player or anything, but he's getting better and he has so much fun! 

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful Easter!  As you can tell, I took a ton of pictures (this is maybe 1/5 of them!) and couldn't narrow it down to just a couple ;) 

Here the boys are getting their baskets ready for the Easter bunny!  They were so excited! 

 They set out a plate of carrots and celery... but Nathan was eating off the plate the whole time ;)

Easter baskets!  They each got some superhero Imaginext guys (Iron Man for Nathan and Star Wars for Alex), hotwheels, airplanes, bubble stuff, stickers, new spinbrushes, socks, lego superhero shirts, glitter glue, and some card games and a puzzle for Alex and mini board books books and a Bible for Nathan.  They were so excited!  

We took some pictures before church! 

After church the kids took naps and we started on our big Easter dinner!  While everything was cooking we had our family egg hunt!  The kids had already done 2 hunts, but were still just as excited and were scrambling around to get the eggs!   We hid some out front and most in the living room and kitchen. 

 Nathan was really into gathering the eggs this time, it was so cute!   Here he is running to get one that he spotted in the grass! 

Alex's strategy was to run as fast as possible gathering as many as he possibly could!  We had to make him leave some for Nathan, who was a bit slower and taking his time ;)

Nathan's favorite part was definitely opening them up to see what treats were inside... and then eating entirely too much candy!

As soon as we were done, Alex asked if we could do it again!  He hid and rehid and rehid again eggs for probably the next hour (at least) and then him (and whoever else he could convince to help him) would find all the eggs that he just hid.  He had a ball! We were finding eggs in some random places for the next few days ;)

After our big Easter dinner, we finally got around to dyeing our eggs... we had such a busy week that we ended up not having a chance to do it before Easter evening!  The kids absolutely LOVED this! 

Alex enjoyed dipping the eggs in lots of different colors and experimenting with what they would look like... our eggs were not the prettiest Easter eggs to say the least ;)  He thought this pukey-green egg was hilarious! 

He was laughing so hard and being such a goof! 

Nathan wants to do things "All by myself!" lately... (after reading Little Critter's: All By Myself by Mercer Mayer, his absolute FAVORITE book series right now, it's his favorite thing to say!  haha!)  We were preparing ourselves for a HUGE mess, but he did a pretty good job ;) 



He did splash a little on himself, and this was his immediate reaction... even though it was just a few drops ;)  What can I say, my kids HATE to get messy most of the time! 

The finished product!  What a fun day!!

And the next day we had an "Easter egg hunt lunch" where I filled the eggs with things that were part of their lunch... they begged to do this over and over, such a fun pinterest idea!  We will definitely do this again next year!