Summer Break: Week Eight

What a fun week we had! We got out and explored our city and had a blast. Here's a recap of our summer adventures this week:

Monday: The boys love to visit the downtown library (so many books!) so we headed there in the morning. On the way, we checked out three of the Houston Zoo's gorilla murals (there are five in Houston). These three are all located in downtown or midtown and they were commissioned in the spring to welcome the zoo's new gorillas to Houston.

Mural #1 by Anat Ronen, located at Richard's Antique, 3701 Main Street.

Mural #2 by Mario Enrique Figueroa, Jr., aka GONZO247, located at the Downtown Food Park, 1311 Leeland.

Mural #3 by Nicky Davis, located at 3100 Smith Street.

After filling our bag with new library books, we had a picnic lunch at Gramma and Grampa's and spent the rest of the day reading. Will just finished all four books of the Adventurer's Wanted series and now has Henry hooked on reading them! The two of them talk about books nonstop and I love listening in on their conversations.

Tuesday: The boys and I headed to the science museum first thing in the morning. They love pushing on the Kugel Ball, which weighs 5000 pounds!

Inside, we toured the energy and Egyptian halls and watched The Great Planet Adventures in the planetarium. We also saw this cool new clock with a grasshopper escapement.

After a couple hours of museum fun, we hopped over to the MFAH for lunch with Gene and to see Shadow Monsters again. 

Wednesday: We had an amazing half day adventure in the Heights! After a much-needed visit to Penzey's Spices, we checked out the last two gorilla murals.

Mural #4 by Michael C. Rodriguez, located at Jenni's Noodle House, 602 East 20th Street.

Mural #5 by Sebastien "Mr. D" Boileau, located at 2119 Washington Avenue.

If you haven't had a chance to check out the gorilla murals (or the gorillas at the zoo), they are definitely worth seeing. Henry's favorite murals were #1 and #5.

After seeing the last mural, we ventured into Glenwood Cemetery, just down the road. Glenwood Cemetery was established in 1871 and is a typical nineteenth-century romantic garden cemetery. It's funny to think that the setting was rural back when it first opened. It is a beautiful, peaceful place and many of Houston's prominent families are interred there, including the Staiti family (the Staiti House is located at The Heritage Society in Sam Houston Park).  

By this time, tummies were rumbling, so we headed back into the Heights to have a picnic lunch at Donovan Park.

I've driven by this park numerous times but we had never been. The boys absolutely loved it! It's a unique park with castles, bridges and lots to explore. We can't wait to go back again, maybe in cooler weather!

After the park, we visited the Art Car Museum. Who doesn't love art cars? They change their exhibits every 3-4 months, so it's definitely a place to revisit.

Our final stop on our funky art tour was the Beer Can House, decorated by John Milkovisch. There are some 50,000 beer cans used on the house! It is unlike anything we'd seen before and definitely worth a visit.

We ended our adventure with some frozen yogurt at Yogurtland.  

Thursday: We headed back to the Houston Food Bank for another volunteer shift. 

This time, we were repackaging brown rice into two-pound bags from a massive 2,222 pound bag! It was different from our experience last year but the boys enjoyed it just as much. We even got to wear super-fashionable hairnets this time around!

Behind the boys are some of the boxes we filled. The volunteers on our shift filled 289 boxes, each with 16 pounds of rice (8 2-pound bags), which is equivalent to 4624 meals for Houstonians in need. Wow!

We enjoyed volunteering so much that we are already signed up for another shift next month.

Friday: By the end of the week, we were all pooped, so we deemed Friday a "Do-Nothing Day," a term borrowed from Phineas and Ferb. The boys played games, read, played together, and relaxed. We didn't leave the house once! In the picture below, they were pretending to be robots and did whatever I asked them to, from drawing pictures to solving some complicated math problems.

Sometimes, after a busy week, a "Do-Nothing Day" is exactly what you need!

Summer Break: Week Seven

The boys had their second (and final) week of summer camp last week. They were back at the Houston Arobretum for Stayin' Alive camp, where they hiked, did crafts and learned all about animal adaptations. Nature Trekkers camp is awesome and the boys just absolutely love it! I love picking them up at noon and listening as the words tumble out of their mouths. They always have so much to tell me about what they did.

Talking to Dad on the phone -- and telling him all about camp!

On the last day of camp, the boys made their own animal species based on what they learned during the week. Will's is the red shelled birtle (a cross between a bird and a turtle). Its scientific name is Reptilius Willia. He filled out a whole sheet about its habitat, diet, adaptations, and more.

Showing Henry the red shelled birtle.

We didn't get out too much last week besides camp, but here's a look at some of the goodies we found. This is an Israeli melon from the farmers market. It looks like a green cantaloupe and the flavor was a cross between a cantaloupe and a honeydew. It was so good!

Popsicles just scream summer. We love Goodpops frozen treat because they are local (Austin), have a pretty decent ingredient list and aren't super heavy on the sugar. Our favorite flavors are chocolate milk, cinnamon banana and coldbrew coffee.

We also found these goat milk pops from All You Need Farm at the farmers market. They were delicious too!

We also are hooked on Katz coffee, a local Houston roaster. One of the neatest things about the company is their community partnership with local groups, including Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Enchanted Rock and the Houston Arboretum! My favorite is the Early Bird blend, a fair-trade, bird-friendly, organic coffee that benefits the Arboretum.

And finally, a couple of pictures of swimming fun at Mike and Jess's over the weekend.

I hope your week was full of cool summer fun!

Summer Break: Week Six

Summer is officially half over -- but don't tell the boys! They are loving the break from school! 

My big camera has barely been out of the cabinet this summer, as I too am enjoying a break. My phone doesn't even capture all that we do in a week (somehow there are no pictures of our Cub Scout picnic/movie night or my friend Leigh's visit to Houston!), but here are some highlights of week six.

We are always visiting the library in the summer and we especially love the Central Library downtown. So many books!

We visited the Health Museum one morning. The boys played chess

and tried this relaxation "game."

Even though it's summer, Will is working away on some of his Cub Scout requirements for his Webelos I year. He decided to work on the art elective and created a self portrait and about 20 origami pieces.

We drove to Sugarland for a visit to the science museum.

Turtle fossils for my turtle-loving boy.

We came home with a couple of new toys -- a dinosaur for Henry and this pin art toy for Will.

One of the playgrounds at school is getting totally revamped, so we stopped by to take a peek at the progress. The boys cannot wait to play on all the new equipment!

We have six more weeks of summer and have many fun adventures planned til the routine of the school year begins again.