First up was sledding- except we don't own one and try finding one in March at a store. Good luck. With some helpful employees at the farm store (yes, the farm store- it's awesome there), we picked out some automotive and tractor tire inner tubes to use instead. Little kid butts = car tire and adult size butts = tractor tire. If you thought sledding on tire inner tubes was strange, just wait until you hear this. The best and closest place for sledding is the hill behind the cemetery. Yikes. It is actually part of city-owned land that is where the parks maintenance facility is but it is right next to the cemetery.
So the first time Aunt Megan and Uncle Jim took Rex and Olivia and then we got some more snow so my sister and I took the kids while Uncle Jim looked after Wyatt at the house. They were pretty good buddies.
We also went to the Science Center of Iowa and saw a little of downtown Des Moines over the weekend that they were here. I thought Wyatt would sleep in the car on the way down there but he didn't and then he was super crabby before falling asleep on the way from lunch to the Science Center. So he slept through most of it and unfortunately, his mood wasn't a whole lot better until we got him back home again.
But Rex and Olivia got to see a giant T-Rex skeleton. Olivia likes dinosaurs a LOT so I think she really liked this part of the center.
There was a section on weather, complete with making your own tornado, learning about floods and doing a weather report on the television- except they were too short and all the big kids (and one idiot parent- I mean seriously, it is for the kids, not you, you big camera/attention hog!!) were blocking them.
There was another section about space and stars and they even have a planetarium but my family had to get going before that started and let's just say my niece is no fan of movie theaters, or as it turns out, planetariums. So none of us saw that part. There was one more section that was very interactive for the kids to build rockets and do a lot of fun things. Had there not been a thousand kids in that room, we probably could have stayed there a long time. But Groupon had a deal (how we bought our tickets) and the place was crazy-packed with people on that rainy Saturday afternoon. My sister and her family spent a little time after seeing downtown Des Moines- we would have loved to do that too but Wyatt was completely out of patience and we had to get him home.
I drove them around on a little tour of our town one day and we ate out a few times too. Here are Rex and Olivia at dinner one night.
Besides that we just spent time at the house with each other- having dance parties, playing, cooking and having a good time.
I'm so glad they spent their vacation time with us- we miss you guys and hope you come to see us again soon!
