kickin' it elmer style

My sister Sarah and her family came to visit us a few weeks ago.  It was such a great time having them here.  We decided to make it a surprise and not tell the kids, but Casey kept telling our kids that there was going to be a surprise, so I finally told them that the surprise was going to be a meteor shower.  Sarah had a tougher time keeping the secret seeing as her kids had to drive 4 hours and knew something was up, so she told them they were going to a museum and that they were going to stay at a rental house over night.  These pictures are of the kids as we walked outside to see the meteor shower.  Check out Porter and Maya's faces in this picture.  They were so thrilled to see their cousins.  Way better than a meteor shower.  

As always we had so much fun together.  I had gotten two free passes to COSI (the science center) so we exhausted ourselves spending the day there.  There was a fun little play area when you first walked up so we spent a while running around and climbing on everything.

Check out Bennett and Grant fighting over the metal ant.  Grants face is priceless!

Then we went inside and checked out all the great stuff there was to explore.  Like making energy and astronaut toilets.

Next we all went outside to the pavilion area where we had lunch and played with all kinds of outside things.  There was a pulley system set up that enabled you to lift a car, and a cool contraption that would suck balls out of your hands and shoot them into the air.  

On the top level there was a really awesome kids area.  They had water tables and even had little infant chairs so Ender got to splash around to his hearts content.

There was also an area dedicated to gadgets.  There was all kinds of building materials and the older kids had a great time putting together little creations.

The last area we visited was a section where you went through different time periods.  The kids loved this area!  There were lots of interactive ways to expierence each time period. 

On our way out we snapped a few "group" pictures.  Everyone wasn't in the picture, but it still turned out cute for those of us who were patient enough to let me take their picture.

We did some wrestling lessons.  The kids had a great time throwing each other around. 

Events that were not pictured:

• Sarah fixed the sewing machine my mom let me borrow!!!
• Sarah helped me get all my crayon bags sewn for primary!  I am so so so happy to have this done.
• The kids played outside a bit (thank heavens for nice weather)
• We went to Jeni's Ice Cream and paid $20 for 2 pints of ice cream!  It was so expensive but so so so delicious.  I was happy to see that the ice cream we've made from her cookbook are just as good.  I think I'll save myself the money and make it myself (so I can eat more of it!).
• The kids made some melty bead projects
• The adults played the bean game
• Landon and Porter played football quite a bit and even convinced the dads to join them a few times.

It was such a great visit and I can't wait to do it again!