Thursday, July 24, 2014

Children's Museum of Memphis

While Josh worked on Monday, the kids and I went to the Children's Museum of Memphis.  We went in January and they LOVED it!  The second trip was just as much fun as the first!  But I missed Josh!  It is hard to chase the two of them around by yourself!  I didn't get as many pics as I wanted to...  But here are a few...

Fed Ex exhibit...  getting the "packages" off the airplane....

Grady flying the plane on the simulator...

My favorite...the Kroger grocery store!  I remember playing in this exhibit when I was a kid!

Vera is all about some SHOPPING!



The dentist office...



Police Motorcycle...

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Memphis Zoo

Josh had to work in Memphis on Monday and Tuesday, so we took the kids a day early and went to the Memphis Zoo on Sunday.  We had never been before, but had heard really good things about it.  We were not at ALL disappointed!  It was the best zoo!  We did the New Orleans Zoo last summer and were really impressed.  But I think this one is my new favorite!  The kids had a BALL!

Of course, V. immediately found some flowers and snagged one!

Checking out their penguins...

Getting eye-level with the prairie dogs...

They had a petting zoo area with different farm animals...

Waiting for the sea lion show to begin...  This was really neat!


They had polar bears, grizzly bears, and panda bears!  So impressive!  All three exhibits were so good, too!



Elephants exhibit...


We LOVED the pandas!  A tradition we have in our family is to collect a Christmas ornament from each place we travel to.  Every year when we decorate our tree, it's fun to remember all the places we have been as we unpack the ornaments to decorate with!  We chose a panda ornament from our trip!

I read a book this summer called The One and Only Ivan.  Made me cry!  It's a book I am going to be using in my classroom with my kiddos this year.  So seeing that they had a silverback gorilla was really cool to me!  :)

ICEE break!

Followed by a playground break!  Of COURSE!


They even had komodo dragons!

Me and my fear of lizards...  that was the FREAKIEST lizard I have ever seen!!!!

The China pavilion/exhibit was so neat!


They had scheduled times for feeding/seeing animals all over the zoo.  You could ride camels, feed/pet stingrays, feed giraffes, etc.  We missed the giraffe feeding...hopefully we can do it next time.

Vera has an obsession with zebras...  She met a mascot zebra named Zoe at the Jackson Zoo and ever since, she calls every zebra she sees "Zoe Zebra."  Here she is calling out to Zoe!  ha.

WHOA!  They even had a "Mufasa" lion!  Grady was excited!


We stayed until closing time.  We were one of the last cars in the lot!

Such a fun day!  We will DEFINITELY do this again soon!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

First Haircut!

Vera had her first haircut yesterday!  She was such a big girl and Mrs. Lara was SUPER sweet and did a great job!  :)




Yeaaa!  No more raggedy ends!  She has a tiny little "bob!"

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

MCM visit

Our latest trip to the Mississippi Children's Museum....





Ever since the museum's opening, we have been members.  So we go alot.  As long as my kiddos still think it is fun, we'll continue to do that.  So glad Jackson has something like that for them to enjoy while they are little.  Inevitably, they will outgrow it one day.
We made this last visit mainly to check out the new Literacy Garden that we have been watching them build outside at the museum.  It was neat.  They still have not completed it, but it was "complete enough" for them to open it.  Here are some pics of the literacy garden.  It was HOT outside!  Maybe we'll enjoy this part of the museum more once it's fall and COOLER!




Vera's favorite thing was that they had superhero capes for kids to wear while they were running around the garden!