Saving A Life at the Zimmer Museum

I bought a Living Social deal in December to come to the Zimmer Museum  and finally got around to using it today before it expired.  As we were putting my purse and lunch through their metal detector security area, out wobbles a 12-15 month old girl.  Assuming her mom was nearby, I didn't pay too much attention.  Then I looked back and the girl pushed the door open and walked outside.  I'm looking around for a parent, realized there wasn't one and walked out to get her.  She was just a few steps away from walking right into the street; but hubby was fast enough to grab her.  The employee took the girl and called inside the museum to report a lost girl.  The mom was completely oblivious and calmly walked to get her child.  The museum is not very big, so we saw this mom several times and noticed she always left one child to tend to the other.  Several minutes would go by with one of the kids just wondering by themselves.  It was soooo frustrating watch.  I just had a hard time believing these kids made it this far with the lack of supervision they had. 

Later on, the girl hubby saved ran a shopping cart into his leg.  I guess that was her way of saying thanks.  Hubby must have been a magnet for shopping carts cuz another kid also ran into him.  It was a day of mostly people watching as our girls managed to stay in one area for really long periods of time.  They really enjoyed the ball pit ship, the grocery store and the cafe.  For the most part the kids at the museum were behaved which made people watching a little less interesting.  We did have a stinky diaper go past us,  and some screaming babies go by (mostly from the one we saved from running into the street).  There was only a certain amount I can just sit around watching the girls play and people watch.  2 1/2 hours became my limit and we headed home.  The girls had a fun time though.

Painting with Fruit and Astronomy Day

College of the Canyons held it's annual Kid's Day event today.  While I think my 5 and 8 year old girls are getting a little too old to participate, they always find something to keep them entertained.  As we were walking along the booths, we started to smell something next to us.  It was like there was a Starbucks or bakery a few feet away.  I think the booth was advertising a preschool.  The activity was to mash up different kinds of fruit such as blueberries, strawberries, pomegranates and some others to use as paint.   The fruit were in mortars and the kids used a pestle to mash it up.  Once the fruit was all mashed up, they were given a scrap fabric and a paintbrush to paint their masterpiece. 

In the same booth was what looked like a vintage coffee grinder and coffee spread all over the blanket.   Our girls didn't participate in that activity; but  other kids seemed to enjoy grinding up their own coffee beans.  The smell of the coffee, all the fruit and some shade of that booth, kept it inviting.

After about an hour of kid's play, we went to the local library for their Astronomy day .  We got there at the time they were making telescopes from a kit.  The girls each made a telescope brought to us by Santa Clarita's local Astronomy Club.  The girls were were eager to try it out later in the evening when we went back for stargazing.  After they made telescopes, we watched a presentation on TMT, Thirty Meter Telescope.  It was very interesting to see how many people and how much time goes into building this thirty meter telescope.  Construction began in Mauna Kea, Hawaii just this month after about 20 years of planning.  I believe it will take about 10 years to complete.

After the TMT presentation, we did an astronomy scavenger hunt within the library which helped teach us some interesting facts about our solar system.  We got to also view the sun through a solar telescope.

This is the telescope we viewed the moon from.
Later in the evening we grabbed our homemade telescopes and came back for some stargazing.  We got to see the moon and it's many craters!  We also got to see Jupiter and three of it's 67 moons!  We also got to see Saturn! It was fascinating to actually see the rings around Saturn. 

 

Cheerios Bird Feeder

At the Earth Arbor Day Festival,

the girls made a cheerios bird feeder in a shape of a heart.

Supplies for this craft are:
Cheerios
Thin wire or floral wire
Ribbon for hanging

Instructions:
Bend wire into any shape such as a heart, star, circle, diamond, etc.  while leaving the ends open for threading.
Thread Cheerios onto wire.
Twist wire ends together.
Tie ribbon on top and hang.

A Mouse, Earth Arbor Day, Trashcan Art

My youngest enjoys the Laura Numeroff books such as 'If you Give a Mouse a Cookie'; so we took the girls to see a real life sized "Cookie Mouse" who paid a visit to our local library.  The librarian read a few of the story collections in English and Spanish since it was bilingual storytime day and then got to take a picture with the cookie mouse.  Hopefully, the girls picked up on some espanol today!





After meeting the mouse, we went to the Earth Arbor Day festival to be encouraged in reusing, reducing, and recycling. They had several activities for the kids to do such as making a paper bag hat, a seed bomb, a cheerio bird feeder, plant seeds, catch ladybugs, climb the rock wall, play on the swing and bounce apparatus and a bouncer.  They also had an animal show.  We caught the tail end of it and saw the porcupine.

They displayed some cool trashcan art.

 Releasing the ladybugs into our rose garden
to prey on any aphids or small pests we may have.

Tax Day Freebies 2013

AMC - Free small popcorn. Valid 4/12/13-4/15/13

 

 

Arby's - Free curly fries or potato cakes. Valid 4/15/13

 

Cinnabon - 2 Free Cinnabites. Valid 4/15/13

 

 

 

Panda Express - Free Samurai Surf and Turf. Valid 4/17/13

 

Boston Market - 2 rib meals for $10.40. Valid 4/15/13

 

Sonic - Half price drinks and slushies. Valid 4/15/13

 

 

 

 

What is Laminin?

What is Laminin?
The protein that holds every cell in our body together.
Notice the molecular shape is a cross!

We watched a longer version of the video below 

in Bible study the other night...Amazing!

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Colossians 1:17

Free Cone Day - Ben & Jerry's

                                                    

April 9th is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's! Swing by a participating Scoop Shop and grab yourself a FREE ice cream cone.  No coupon necessary.

Geocaching

Not too much going on anywhere today; so we took the kids to Home Depot's kids workshop to build a bird feeder.  It was a nice day out; so we let them paint the feeders while they were there since the sun was out to dry the paint fast.

From there we went for our 1st time geocaching.  Hubby wasn't too thrilled with the idea; but I was really excited to go "treasure hunting".  I picked one place to try because I heard it was many people's first cache.  This kept me optimistic of hopefully being able to find it.  We entered the coordinates on our GPS and drove to a homeowners association park to find our first cache.  We got to where the coordinates told us to stop and we started looking under bushes because that was the hint given.  After a few minutes I spotted a cameo can hidden in a bush.  We opened it up and there were all kinds of little trinkets for kids.  The girls were so excited to find treasure!  We took a couple things such as this m&m keychain, horse show toy and a butterfly keychain .We left an origami heart dollar that I made for what we took. 

So far our adventure was pretty fun; so we set out to find more caches at another park nearby.  On the way to the park, my oldest noticed that my youngest got a butterfly keychain that said don't keep me.  I learned we found a trackable on our first cache.  Now we had to find another cache for our butterfly to travel to. We could not find the first 2 caches at the park that we had set out to look for and that was a little discouraging.  At this point, bellies were rumbling; but I was to determined to find one more.  We set out for the 3rd cache and we finally found it!  Inside were some Disney stickers; but the trinket we brought was to big for the container; so we didn't take anything. 

We were way overdue for lunch and geocaching had to wait for another day......or maybe not.  After lunch and a short rest, I found another cache right by our house.  I persuaded hubby to come with me to find it and to release our trackable butterfly.  I found it right away.  It was a fun find; but log only.  We are going to SeaWorld next week; so it would be fun to have that butterfly travel over 2 hours from home.  I found several caches near SeaWorld to do some more treasure hunting.  Hopefully the butterfly will find a new home.

Free Pinkberry Yogurt

offer valid 4/5/13 - 4/6/13 at participating US locations only.

see terms and conditions. TM ring as: Free Greek

April Foal's Day?!

I completely forgot about April Fools Day!  I did remember this morning before we headed out to Underwood Farms in Moorpark.  We went on a weekday during Easter break; so we paid the weekday price of $3/person. It was a nice cool day at the farm for the kids to play, feed some animals, ride the tractor to pick strawberries, pick lettuce, broccoli and some teeny tiny carrots.  I called them carrot nubs cuz they were much smaller than baby carrots.  I think we picked those too early in the season.  We then watched the animal show that's included in the admission and my oldest says right before the show, do you know what they call April Fool's day on the farm?  She said, April Foal's Day!  Ha Ha! I thought that was pretty clever coming from an 8 year old.

My oldest also remembered that we have a tradition on this day to have dessert for dinner and breakfast for dessert.  Hubby and I were not in the mood to be making all their favorite breakfast items for dinner; but since it's tradition, we were obligated to keep it.  I served dessert first, which was 2 cookies. For dinner, I made ham and zucchini quiche for hubby and myself.  Hubby made the girls french toast and pancakes.  We were exhausted; but the tradition goes on :)