Dinosaurs and Disney

Busy week last week. Dan's parents were here to visit for the week. We went to the Natural History Museum and a Disney Train made a stop in ABQ over the weekend. More about that later.

Here we are at the museum. Logan did great at the museum. He didn't care for the 'dark' parts of the museum (the volcano or caves) but he liked looking at all the bones.

I took a picture of this before Logan erased it. It's his first word that HE wrote. I wrote the one on the left and he copied me on the right. He can almost do his name, the G is hard for him right now, but we'll keep practicing.

So onto the Disney Train. It was in ABQ Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We went bright and early Saturday morning. Dan had hoped Mickey would be there to greet people. But no sign of Mickey. But the reason the train was in town was because it was promoting Disney's new Holiday Movie The Christmas Carol. For more information on the movie or to see a map of where it's going you can click here. It will end in NYC on Nov 1, so there's still plenty of time to see it. And it's FREE! The train uses all state of the art digital technology to make the movie and it gave us a look behind the scenes of how they did it.

Walking to the front of the train for the tour.

Here's the first car. It was the costume car. Some of the actual costumes used in the movie and in the glass cases were some original Charles Dickens work.

The next car was the concept art car. Where we saw pictures of how artist made the different scenes.
Here's a shot of all the concept art pictures. They were in digital frames so the images kept changing.

Here's a close up of one of them.

The next car was the 3-D models for the movie. Here's Fred house.

Scrooges office.

The next car (which I didn't get a picture of) was of the digital suit that the actors wore to and their actions were stored as digital information. Then we moved onto this car where we saw how they used that action to create the movie.

Then there was an interactive car where you could play a 'quiz' like game about the movie. And they had different screens that you could 'morph' your face into a character from the movie. We didn't do that though.

Here's Logan enjoying the quizzes. He liked pushing the buttons on the screen.

Here we are in the last car, they had a fireplace and some final art images from the movie.
So we could see how everything came together.

Close up of one of the final art scenes.

The engine, of course.

There was a preview for the movie after the tour but the noises from the outside scared Logan so we waited outside, while Dan and his parents saw the preview.

So that was our week.

Really Cool Video

Ice Cream, Baseball, Orbit, Fireworks and Flags

There's lots to cover from the title. So we'll get started with Ice Cream. While watch Rachael Ray a few weeks ago she showed us a cool recipe to make ice cream with kids. So last Tuesday we finally got a chance to try it. Here's the recipe:

1 Tablespoon Sugar
1/2 Cup Heavy Cream
1/4 Teaspoon Vanilla
Combine those ingredients in a small (sandwich size) ziplock bag.
Fill a large (gallon size) bag with ice and 6 Tablespoons of salt. Put the small bag in the large bag and shake for 15 minutes. Then you'll have ice cream. You can add chocolate chips or crushed oreos to make any kind of flavor, but since it was our first time and I was a little skeptical we just stuck with vanilla. But it really worked. Need a summer time activity for your kids, this is a good one and it will occupy them for 15 minutes. So here's Logan shaking it. I had to give him a towel to hold the bag in because his hands got so cold.

Boy 15 minutes is a long time when your waiting for ice cream.

Mmmm, but it's worth it.

Next on to Baseball. Last night (5/24) we went to and Isotopes game. The church had a bunch of tickets for a church night last night. I think there were about 55 people from the church there. Pretty good turn out. We had good seats right behind home plate. They played the Salt Lake Bees. The Isotopes lost 3-2. Oh well, next time maybe they'll win.

The Isotopes are in the blue jerseys.

"Where's my hot dog Dad?"

Now we're enjoying the game.

Of course the highlight of the baseball game for Logan is to see Orbit. No one is quite sure what Orbit is, but he is funny. In the past Logan has enjoyed seeing Orbit from a distance but this game Logan went up to Orbit where he was signing autographs and had Orbit sign his ticket.

Orbit meeting with a little girl in line in front of us.

Here's Orbit signing Logan's ticket.

Wow!!! He was so excited about it after Orbit signed it. We put the ticket in the diaper bag so that it wouldn't fall apart and Logan kept asking where it was during the game and on the way home. He's so excited about his Orbit autograph.

We don't normally stay for the whole game, Logan either is fussy and tired or they just go to long. But since they had fireworks after the game we tried to stay for the whole thing. Logan did great and so we stayed. The fireworks were great after the game and we left by about 9pm.

Today is Memorial Day and Dan has the day off. We hung our flag out this morning.

Well I think I covered everything. We'll be making ice cream later for dessert but we'll do it in the ice cream maker, not as exciting as a bag of ice.

Have a good Memorial Day!

Strawberry Shortcake

We've had a busy couple of weeks. Logan's had a rough week in addition to our busy schedules. We were dealing with a minor case of heat rash last week. So most of our time was spent inside and he played in the tub once a day. It's finally cleared up except for a few spots where he itched it. Then yesterday he got sick during naptime, and threw up all over himself and the bed. Once he and the bed was cleaned up, he spent the rest of naptime, laying on the couch watching Bolt (which is an adorable movie if you haven't seen it). We're pretty sure it must have been something he ate. He didn't have a fever and was fine all afternoon. Running and playing as normal. Then last night while running he slipped and fell face first on the floor and cut his lip. Rough day for him.
On Mother's Day, Dan and Logan made strawberry shortcake for dessert. I'm just getting around to posting them now. Here's a couple of pictures of them getting the strawberries ready. The pictures aren't great. We have the sun coming in the back door in the afternoon and the blinds weren't closed so they're pretty bright.

Slicing the strawberries using an egg slicer.

Logan helping Dan core the strawberry.

I think the next few days we'll just spend at home and rest. We're going to an Isotopes game on Sunday. Hopefully Logan will have a good nap Sunday and he'll be nice and rested to stay for the whole game. They're supposed to do fireworks at the end. We'll have pictures of the game next week.

Another Zoo Trip

Another day, another trip to the zoo. As long as the weather's nice and since we have zoo passes why not. There were a lot of people this trip. I think all the schools were taking end of the year field trips. Here's a few shots of our trip this morning.

Mountain Lions.

Polar Bears. When we got to the polar bear exhibit the bears were in the water playing or fighting. It was kind of hard to tell, there was growling and biting so I don't think it was all happy play. Then they walked back to their den and they were friends again so who knows what was going on.

Then we saw baby ducks, and these were little babies, probably just learning to swim. They were so tiny and cute. And stayed very close to Mama.

Pine Cone Bird Feeders

We brought back some pine cones from the park in Las Cruces so that we could make some bird feeders. We finally got around to that today after the pine cones have been sitting on our counter in a bag for 3 days. We spread peanut butter on them then covered them with birdseed.

Here's Logan after we hung them up outside.

We're becoming the best bird feeding spot on the block.

Here they are again.

White Sands

Last weekend my sisters and parents all met in Las Cruces for a family reunion.

We left early on Friday so that we could stop at an outlet mall outside of El Paso. It's a pretty new outlet mall, but very nice. They had a Carter's outlet so Logan got a couple of new PJ's and some summer outfits. They also had a Bath and Body Works outlet so I was pretty happy. Everyone else arrived around dinner time, Julie and her family were a little later.

On Saturday we drove to White Sands for the day. We had hoped to spend most of the day there but our trip was cut short due to the wind. It got pretty bad around lunch time. You can click the pictures to make them bigger.

Here's all the kids, well everyone except Logan. All the kids got buckets and shovels with their initials on them. Getting them to stay put for 1 minute while we took the picture was a little challenging. Elizabeth (in the center) was already putting her shovel to use.

Logan had no interest in climing the dunes, so he stayed at the bottom and dug, played with trucks and buried dinosaurs.

Dan carried Logan to the top of one of the dunes.

Hold on to your hats, here comes the wind.

Here's Elizabeth, the youngest of the 7 cousins, determined to make her way to the top.

Some scenic shots of White Sands.

The rest of the weekend was nice. Saturday night was dinner with everyone at Dions and dessert at Scoopy's (a yummy frozen custard place, wish they had one here).

Sunday we spend the morning at a park, then William and Andrew got to open some birthday gifts, they're birthday's are both next week. Then it was lunch and everyone hit the road. We were home by about 3:30pm.