Not Quite Three

This is one very anxious girl who has to wait to turn three!  She has been hoping that each day for the last week it will be her birthday.  It's finally coming up tomorrow and she is READY!  We cancelled the party due to rain, but ZB will happily eat the ice cream anyhow :) 

To document her nearly-three-ness, she asked to be photographed with a drawing (of a monster), and sing one of her favorite songs, so here ya go!

Rainy Days and Giant Tinkertoys

Our weather has been all over the place (typical North Carolina!)  The saying here is, "If you don't like the weather, wait a couple days".  Within a week, we've had 60 degrees, then snow, then 40 degrees, now a couple days of non-stop rain.  Our garden is glad for the rain, for sure!  The kids, however, are getting on each others nerves and trying to think of indoor activities.

Just in time for the rainy days, I found some vintage Giant Tinker Toys on Craigslist this weekend!  All three kids are designing with them.  ZB making simple items, Reed getting pretty creative (car, robot, etc), and Clay making weaponry (13yo's... go figure).

Reed and ZB built a pretty fun castle fort to fill up with pillow, blankets and stuffed animals, and of course themselves :)

Only a day or two more of rain and then we'll be glad to welcome back the sunshine!

Road Trip to Raleigh - LEGO KidsFest

Reed invited 2 of his friends to join us on a road trip to Raleigh this weekend.  The LEGO KidsFest was set up in their Convention Center for the weekend.  After a 4 hour drive with these great traveling companions, as well as a toddler who was feeling quite under the weather, we entered the LEGO mayhem :)

Cool sculpture area, set-themed building areas, and games all had to be explored.  The kids wanted to spend quite a while in the Monochromatic Build area.

They played in the Racer area, building cars and racing them down big ramps.  Next, the nearly-literally dived into the Big Brick Pile!

They buried each other, searched for interesting pieces and got stepped on a couple times before moving on to challenge areas.  One of the challenges they did was forming a team to build a 4-foot platform out of Duplos (big legos).  The structures were elevated onto pillars to make a bridge, which then was tested to see how much weight it could hold.

We checked out the Lego shop and got a glimpse of Creation Nation before they closed.  That was a HUGE map of the US covered in kids' creations - very cool!

These were a great group of kids to travel with, so glad we got to go!

Monster Trucks!

Little known fact about me:  I have secretly always wanted to attend a Monster Truck rally.  Seriously.  When I was in college in Florida I almost got to go see school bus racing on a figure 8 track, but plans were changed and my dreams of seeing big vehicles doing stupid things were put on hold for quite a while.

And then I found out that the Monster X Tour was coming to Asheville - woohoo!  There was even a Groupon for it.. it's like it's calling my name.

Bobby and I took the boys on a Sunday afternoon.  The "Pit Party" happened beforehand.  You get to check out the trucks, meet the drivers and take silly pictures:

The kids also got to ride around in the arena in the back of one of the trucks.

Unfortunately, the photos stop there, sorry!  Reed has great photos on his iPod, but we can't seem to get them to email to me.  If you are friends with him on instagram, you have probably seen the awesomeness already :)  There was racing, wheelie competitions, jumping and freestyling, as well as quad (4-wheelers) racing in between the monster truck racing.

One more thing to check off the bucket list!