Cousin Camp, Thur Jul 16 (Museum Day)

Rob and Leenie, and their daughter Stephanie arrived at Nonna and Pop Pop's on Tuesday night to go to Carrowinds. Aunt Leenie has a talent for french braiding hair and all her nieces love to get their hair done. Emily was lucky to get beautiful double french braids Thursday morning.

The main family event for Thurday was a trip to the Whitewater Rafting Center. If the kids were older we would not have missed this. In addition to rafting, I heard there were zip lines and rock walls to climb. But since ours are so little, we decided to go to Gastonia's Schiele Museum of Natural History. It is an amazing museum and just right down the street from Nonna and Pop Pop's house. There is also a planetarium there that we'd like to visit our next trip. Here is Emily at the Entrance. She enjoyed the Indian exhibits at Christmas time and was excited to see them again.

The Schiele Museum was having a special Ocean Exhibit for our visit. There was a beautiful mural on the wall and I got this sweet picture of Lia. She is just so stinkin' cute! I asked her to go sit in that chair and smile for me... I guess she was listening.

After a few hours at the museum... we enjoyed the nature hike on the premise. Here are our children blazing the trail by order of their age. They had lots of energy to start... but didn't quite finish as strongly. They never do. It was a nice little walk though.

And after the museum and our nature walk, we got to see Chris's friend Dale perform at a Chamber of Commerce happy hour. His band is called Cotton Mouth. They were fun and the happy hour provided free Carolina pork BBQ so we were quite happy.

Another fun day at Cousin Camp!

Cousin Camp, Wed Jul 15 (Carrowinds)

Carrowinds was probably the most exciting day of cousin camp. Carrowinds is an amusement park like Six Flags/Astroworld. Chris and I were not sure if there would be enough to keep the little ones busy... we were wrong. There was a very large section (put on by Nicolodeon) of rides for the little kids. We got to see an ice show. And if that weren't enough, there was a huge water park as well. As you can see above, Pop Pop took very good care of Lia. She fell in love with the carousel and was able to ride it over and over again because there was not much of a line when we got there. Every time we would walk by it she would point furiously. There was no doubt which ride was her favorite.

Here is an action shot of David and Emily on the swings. As you can see, they were loving the rides.

Here is David and his Nonna. David was afraid of the horses that go up and down on the carousel. He prefers to sit on the benches. By the end of the day, we got him to ride one of the horses that was mounted on the ground.

After a morning full of kiddie rides, we had lunch, and headed over to the Scooby Doo ice show.
It was nice and cool inside the theater and ice skating show was awesome! Lia got her nap in during the show. It worked out well.

And if that wasn't enough... we spent about 3 hours at the water park after that!

We closed the place down with a few more rides including the big space needle and an incredible view. Our group met at CiCi's Pizza for dinner and to celebrate Jamie's birthday. The party blowers were a huge hit with my son. He played with it non-stop once it was presented to him. Here he is with his uncle Jamie. Happy Birthday!

I think we got everyone to bed around 11:00pm. A very big day!

Cousin Camp, Tue Jul 14 (Discovery Place)

Tuesday's big adventure was a trip to the downtown Charlotte Discovery Place Museum. The museum was boasting an Odyssey Pirate exhibit that everyone was excited to see. Here is Emily posing at the entrance. Arrrgh!

The museum had a whole floor of hands on exhibits demonstrating all sorts of scientific principles. The little kids got to do their own science experiment on what kind of materials would make a good rain jacket. They learned how to use a pipette and determine whether different materials absorbed or repeled water. Emily got the hang of it pretty quickly. David really liked squirting the water out of the pipette. We learned materials like foil and wax paper repel water the best...

The highlight of this hands on room centered on small wooden sticks like the one my husband is holding. There were many of these sticks available for building things.

David, for example, chose to create a flat design, much like wooden flooring. Olivia is helping him here.

The big kids decided to tackle something a little more challenging with these little sticks. This picture shows a 'cantilever' addition to their very impressive tower. For those who don't know, a 'cantilever' is a beam supported only on one end. It is especially difficult to create this with little sticks. Team Nelli is very proud, as you can see.

And the final design, complete with red monument on top.

A sweet Daddy/Daughter moment.

And here is David raising the flags at the hands on pirate exhibit.

A fun day at the museum! There was a big family pasta dinner later that night. Chris's friend Dale was able to come over with his daughter Caroline. I am not sure how Nonna does it... I think she expected 10-12 people for dinner, which quickly escalated to 20 people and she managed to feed everyone! I found out later that the sausage and meatballs she planned to take to the beach were eaten that night. As she says, "I keep a very well stocked freezer! They also keep lots of wine around too.

David is introduced to "military guys"...

Nonna and Pop Pop had a big box of "military guys" in their toy closet. I thought David might be interested in them... He LOVED them and spent quite a bit of time (hours) lining them all up. He expecially liked the helicopter.

Apparently, his cousin Jed liked military guys too. Jed had a few things to show David the next day. And yes, Jed insisted that I take aerial and side view photos of his creation. His battle scene included good guys in white (on the left) and the bad guys in black (on the right). There are even some lying down fighting guys tucked under the book bridge on the right side. Emily got into this creation too - it was very complex. Jed also had a thing or two to teach David the sounds the military guys make when they fight. The bazookas go "pa pa pa pa". Or something like that... I am only an observer when it come to this kind of play... Later in our vacation, Uncle Steven had to teach David the correct sounds for some of the other weapons.... apparently he was doing it wrong. Boys.

Cousin Camp, Mon Jul 13 (Lazy 5 Ranch)

Kristen and her kids (Olivia, Christopher, Ainsley and Analiese) arrived at Nonna and Pop Pop's on Monday morning for our outing to the Lazy 5 Ranch. Emily and Ainsley, not only cousins but best friends, were so excited to see each other. Also joining us were Madison, Jed, Daniel, Mrs Walkowiac and her grandkids (Blakely and Hailey). Daniel (he's 14) was very sweet to take orders and made sandwiches for the little kids - he called the sandwich bags "off brand" and used scotch tape to seal them shut, but not before labeling each child's sandwich with their name in permanent marker. Engineer in the making? It was sweet he went to so much trouble. It was about a 30 minute drive to the ranch. We saw cattle and a longhorn as we drove up to the ranch. The animals even came to greet us at our car... you think they were hungry? Imagine the excitement!

We parked by a cage of ostriches... the kids loved that! As you can see, they were huge!

And here is our picnic spot. Everyone is very excited!

Now, if you have a small group, you can take the tour of the ranch in your own car. But if you have a very large group, you can tour the ranch in style... Here we are waiting our turn.

And here we are getting into our horse drawn wagon! How cool is that!

We got big buckets to feed the animals with. David can't wait!

Look at this guy!

The giraffes were the most impressive. The pot bellied pigs, with their bellies dragging along the ground were kind of gross. Oh yes, there were zebras too! What a great outing!

Cousin Camp - Sun Jul 12 (Travel Day)

We made it home! What an adventure these last 2 weeks have been. I have been diligent about taking pictures and keeping a travel journal so I will now begin the somewhat daunting task of updating our blog. We had so much fun though and I am excited about documenting all our memories.

Sunday, July 12 (so long ago!) was our travel day. We were able to get 4 free tickets on American thanks to all of Chris's travels for work. The kids were very excited for us to park in "The Parking Spot" because we got to ride a yellow and black polka dotted bus. They had 'big' excited eyes on the bus and couldn't wait to get on our plane. We usually fly Continental for direct flights but the fact the tickets were free somewhat made up for the long travel day.... After paying $15 per bag checked (ridiculous) we flew from Houston Hobby to DFW and were delayed about an hour - not too bad. The DFW terminal for American Eagle actually has a play place for kids... like the ones they have at the mall. I was really impressed with this. We had time to eat at the airport Chili's - the kid's favorite restaurant. They were very happy with their mac' n cheese and playtime. Since we couldn't get flights to Charlotte we flew into Greenville, SC. This worked out well because we have family there and it is only an hour and a half drive to Nonna and Pop Pop's house in Gastonia. Even better, the Vick's let us borrow one of their cars for our trip which saved us having to get a rental car. Thank goodness for family!

John Vick picked us up at the Greenville airport and treated us to hot dogs and homemade strawberry ice cream at their house. What a treat! We really enjoyed getting to visit with them before our drive to Gastonia.

Here is John Vick, Chris and Jed flashing their hook 'em horns. John Vick went to law school at UT Austin. Looks like Jed has the right shirt on too.

Here is Madison with Lia. Lia is thoroughly enjoying her ice cream. So much, that she wouldn't even look at the camera! Did I mention the homemade strawberry ice cream was really YUMMY!


And here is Lexi with Emily. It is hard to believe our god daughter will be 18 this September! She says she will probably stay in state for school with scholarship opportunities, but we are still hoping she might figure out a way to go to UT Austin. We'll keep sending burnt orange stuff her way.

We didn't make it to Nonna and Pop Pop's till after 10:00... so we headed straight to bed. The next day was a big safari adventure and we were all excited about it.

Going on vacation...

We leave on Sunday for North Carolina and here are all the fun things we have to look forward to. I'll do my best to get some good pictures so I can blog about it all when we return! We are very excited.

Cousin Camp:
Monday - Lazy5Ranch - African Safari www.Lazy5Ranch.com
Tuesday - Free Movie, Madagascar 2, Discovery Place
Wednesday - Carowinds Amusement Park, CiCi's Pizza
Thursday - Free Movie, Whitewater Center
Friday - Peach and/or Berry Picking, Adventure Landing Arcade, Fish Camp for dinner
Alternatives: Ocean Exhibit/Planetarium at the Schiele Museum, pool, Cartooning for Kids or Teen Jam at the Library

Beach Week:
Saturday - Arrive and Settle In, North Carolina Pork BBQ for dinner
Sunday - Pizza and cocktails on the beach at 6:00
Monday - Game Night at Nona and Pop Pop's, Late Night Poker to follow
Tuesday - Italian Night at Tom and Cortney's. Everyone brings potluck and try to dress Italian style.
Wednesday - Shag Night, Dancing to Band of Oz
Thursday - Annual Men's Luncheon, Ladies Night Out
Friday - Ice Cream Social and Fireworks