Gathering Day 5 : KidzoneSerenity, Henry, Jack, Patricia and I went to Kidzone, a sort of museum/play place geared towards younger children, for most of the morning on Wednesday. We had a blast! Both kids loved the train table especially. They also had a huge play structure. Serenity again preferred the twisty slide, although they did have some big mirrors that she liked. It was a little bit alarming that she didn’t even want to share the mirror with other children. She’ll learn =) They had great puzzles, including one particularly fun animal one that had the words the animals said written on the board, so I could get Serenity to read the word and then figure out which piece she needed from that! The other side of Kidzone was set up as a farm. They had lots of ride on animals, gardens to plant, a store to sell the produce, saddles, and costumes. They had a really cool ball run set up with clear pipes that I totally want to duplicate with all the ball pit balls we have. Jack thoroughly enjoyed playing with the cool magnatiles, even though he had to play by himself =)
We enjoyed the rest of the day back at the cabin playing games. Gavin wrote some words for Serenity on the white board, and was really surprised when she read the word flower. It’s not an easy one! Then in the evening we went to the beach. We got dinner, had a picnic, and played on the playground where Serenity got just a tiny bit too daring for Mama’s comfort level on the playstructures. Eventually we had three people manning the thing just to keep up with her.
Very very late that night we got Jennie from the airport! Yippee~!
Gathering Day 6: On A Boat
Joyce, Serenity, David, Eric and I got to have a great visit with Mrs. Mumma, who taught Joyce and Eric in the sixth grade. She lives in Tahoe during the summers, and owns a boat, so she treated us to a trip on the lake! Eric, David and Joyce all got to ride on a tube/boat thing that was pulled behind the boat. Steve took great delight in dumping Eric and David! Serenity had her ups and downs with the boat experience. At first she was very unhappy because I wasn’t in the boat at first, they had to pick me up off the dock. Then she basically just clung to me and seemed pretty disturbed. Then we moved to the front of the boat and I wrapped her in a towel so she stopped getting splashed. Then whenever the boat stopped, she asked “MORE!” And eventually she was lulled into a nice little nap on the boat. When I asked her later she said she liked riding the white boat =)
I need to at least mention the book Swim Boots Swim. Jack and Patricia brought a very impressive library of books, and Serenity could not get enough of that book! I’m hoping it will make her want to practice swimming more, as right now she likes to say “I can do it myself!” as she walks along the kiddie pool kicking her legs up and declaring “I’m swimming!” Dora is becoming a real addiction. I’m thinking of looking for books and dvds in all Spanish. She’s already becoming more interested in Spanish, she knows numbers 1-6 and several colors and random words. She particularly likes “Arriba!”
