Summer Break: Week Five

This summer has been a good mix of downtime and fun outings, with multiple visits to libraries and bookstores thrown in.  During week 5, we went to Candytopia, which is like Candyland meets Charlies and the Chocolate Factory.  Candytopia is just in Houston for the summer, but it was sure a fun way to spend an hour!

This place is over-the-top!  Full of color and sweets in every room, it was just magical and so much fun. I took so many photos.  

This was a colorful playground with lots of swings.  

We walked through the light tunnel to get to the art gallery.  

All of the paintings were made of candy.  

One of the "paintings" came to life with the Candytopia app. It was so fun to see the candy shoot out at us!

Next up was the confetti run.  

  

 

Confetti shooting from the pig's bum made us all laugh!

Under the sea -- all the creatures were made of candy, of course.

 

We found a Moomin-unicorn (a Moomicorn?)!

Our final stop was the marshmallow pit.  So fun!

Candytopia was such a fun summer outing!

We also visited the MFAH.  Henry and I had been earlier in the summer to see the William Forsythe exhibit.  Will wanted to see it and he absolutely loved it.

Lunch at Picnic afterward.

Our Fourth of July was quiet.  We just stayed home and Gene made barbeque -- pulled pork on homemade pretzel rolls.  I have no photos, but the weekend was full of fun.  Gene took the boys to the pool and then to play D&D with the cousins.   

I hope your week was a sweet and fun as ours was!

Summer Break: Week Four

Summer break is speeding along.  Here's a peek at some of what we were up to at the end of June:  

Father's Day this year was all about brewing beer and playing baseball in the backyard.  

It was a quiet, though busy, day at home -- all the grandparents were traveling and Will was still in France, so it was just the three of us for Father's Day.

Henry discovered the TimeRiders series this summer.  Most were not available at our library, so we ended up purchasing the entire set.  He was ecstatic when they came in!

This spring, our piano teacher retired suddenly and we switched to Vivaldi Music Academy in May.  We didn't think Henry would be able to play in their spring recital, but his new teacher added him to the schedule at the last minute and he played two songs.  He performed flawlessly and we were so proud of him!

Will decided to organize our graphic novel and manga collection one morning. I am always up for an organizing project and decided this was the perfect time to go through all the books on their five bookcases.  We ended up with 7 boxes of books to donate to Books Between Kids and more room on their shelves for the (many) books they actually want to read.  

We also took a trip up to the Art Car Museum.  It never takes long to run through the museum, but it's fun to see what they have on display.

Afterward, we headed to Melange Creperie in the Heights for lunch.  We discovered this restaurant at the farmers market, but now they have their very own space on Heights Boulevard. Delicious!

Finally, we had tickets to see The Three Musketeers at the Alley Theatre.  

What a fun performance!