Hello again!

So it has been almost 2 years since I last posted on here. I am REALLY going to try this time to keep this thing updated.

This past weekend we took an impromptu trip to Norfolk Va. The kids had no idea where we were going and early Saturday morning we loading them up in the van for the 4 hr drive. When we started getting close they got all excited about the big cargo ships and other ships we could see. The first stop was to the Nauticus museum. www.nauticus.org. If you live in, or ever visit the Norfolk area I HIGHLY suggest you go. We had a BLAST! It is great for kids. Unlike most museums it was almost all hands on and they could touch so much. The main attraction is the USS Wisconsin which you can go on and either just walk around the top deck and a little bit of the inside or you can pay a bit more and get the guided tour which we will do next time.

Here are the boys looking through a para-scope. They thought this was really cool. We could see all around the museum including the ship. After the para-scope we went into a room with all sorts of items from the USS Wisconsin including an old computer that could of fit us all in it! They had items from the kitchen, bunks hanging from the ceiling, and the bridge you could go in and play around in.







One of the activites for the kids was this long pool of water. Inside where all these white blocks (you can see Cat Boy has one) and these holders for the blocks and some toy boats. What you would do is make different channels to guide your boat and see how guiding the water would make it go faster or slower, be full or empty, ect. The kids played here for over 30 mins!





We caught a demonstration to teach us about the guns on the USS Wisconsin. She tolds us how the guns worked, popped a balloon full of Hydrogen to simulate what it felt like when the guns went off (The was REALLY REALLY cool!) and then as you can see here The Boy got to help with a demo about shooting close range vs. long range. Then she tought us about the armor piercing guns which was the coolest part. She shot a pencil through a block of wood and BROKE the wood in half but not the pencil!



There were also some computers set up with simulators. Here Cat Boy is fling an airplane. There was also a sonar one where you would fire missiles, one where you were on a NOAA plane monitoring the weather, and some one with classified documents from WWII. They could of played here all day.

After the museum we went to dinner at an all you can eat seafood buffet for Monkey's early birthday dinner. We all enjoyed it and ate way to much. LOL We went back to the hotel and all crashed in bed and watched Despicable Me. It was really cute.

Then Sunday was Monkey's birthday. We had brought his presents with us so of course as soon as we woke up he wanted to open them. He got this lego truck, a Toy Story shirt and Handy Manny shirt from us, a Toy Story Lego set from Grandma Shields, a Toy Story toy camera from Cat Boy, and Rex and Buzz on a skateboard from The Boy. He was very excited with all the presents.





We got home in time for the big football game. GO BEARS! Since I was not sure when we would get home I had not gotten stuff for a cake so I had to run out and get stuff during the game. I decided we would do Dirt Cake and Monkey just though it was so funny that it was called Dirt Cake and kept laughing saying "I eat my DIRT!"