Children's Museum

Members of any participating museums could visit others for free on Saturday, so we used our Owl's Head Transportation membership to visit the Children's Museum and the Victoria Mansion in Portland. On the way, we spotted a 4H club doing a fund-raiser, so we stopped to visit with the cows, goats and ducklings.  

 

Then we spent nearly four hours playing at the Children's Museum:

 

 

 

 

 

Abbey saying, "No! No! No" to this poor little boy.  :)

 

Inside the belly of a whale!

 

No pictures allowed at the Victoria Mansion, but we were very pleased with our children there.  Josiah asked questions and participated on the tour, while Ben fell asleep in Logan's arms and Abbey watched "Bubble Guppies", muted, on the iPhone.  Success!  Josiah informed everyone on the tour that wine was made from grapes when he saw a fresco of a lady holding a wine glass. 

And on our way by Freeport, we stopped in for the boys to visit with Eartha.

 

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was a week ago, but I came down with a tough virus that day, so I didn't get around to updating the blog last weekend.  Here are a few pictures quickly:

We returned Willy to April and Danny and had a Mother's Day lunch together at Sea Dog Brewery in Topsham on Saturday.  Yummy!

Willy was SO excited to see his mommy and daddy again, that he bit them both!  April just got a nip to the nose before I snapped this one. :)

Josiah Man.

  

Saturday night I was going to bring the boys to see Ashton in "The Wizard of Oz," but I didn't realize there was only a matinee performance on Saturday because of the prom, so we went looking for ice cream downtown to make up for the disapointment.

Abbey and I Sunday morning.

Logan can Skype from his phone!  He got a big kick out of Skyping in the car on our way home from church.

  

Abbey is a Daddy's Girl.

Ashton, Josiah and Ben having fun on their trampoline from Papa.

  

Abbey loves to dig in the sand!  Around this time, I started to feel bad and went inside to lay down.  It was a nice weekend if we stop here. :)

Here, There & Everywhere

My friend Amber asked me to join her cast for her musical "Here, There & Everywhere," which uses all Beatles' music.  We've been rehearsing Wednesday nights since March and Friday night, we pulled off a "workshop" performance.  Amber wanted to do the workshop since this is a new musical and she's trying to build momentum and attract collaborators.  The night was a huge success!  There was a great crowd, the band and cast sounded fantastic, and everyone enjoyed it.  I, of course, came down with another case of my chronic laringitis the day before, but went ahead with "Blackbird" even though my voice sounded terrible, because I knew it would be much more fun for my family to see me singing poorly than not at all.  Josiah and Benjamin were beaming at me while I croaked my way through, I could tell they were proud of me. :)  And I got a kick out of seeing Ben practicing his air guitar during the performance.  I only took a few pictures of some of the cast: 

 

 

Saturday, Logan and I went downtown to wish Amber a very happy 40th birthday!  She had requested that those coming to celebrate with her wear a hat, so here we are in our hats. :)

Insta-cuties

I've been having fun with Instagram this week, adding filters to already cute pictures of the kids.  Enjoy!

Peace

Something that I have been able to enjoy at my desk job in the mornings has been listening to Tim Keller's sermons online.  He is an exceptional teacher and I highly recommend his sermon and book resources.  His sermons can be found here.

This morning I listened to a very powerful sermon on Peace, and listened to it again this afternoon for good measure.  Then I found a beautiful version of "It is Well With My Soul" for you in response to the sermon:

Healthy Kids Day and Babysitting Willy

I brought the kids to the YMCA Saturday for their annual Healthy Kids event. What a blast! Bounce houses, a touch tank, rock wall climbing, healthy snacks, crafts, and booths with local emergency response personnel = three happy little campers!
 

 

This lobster had three claws on his right side!

  

The boys were so excited to see Miss Margo from our Healthy Kids playgroup!

 

 

Jeannie's son Jack wanted to hold Abigail, who wasn't too cooperative. :)

 Then we picked up the kids' "cousin" Willy, Danny and April's schnauzzer puppy.  This week is going to be fun!  As you can imagine, Josiah, Benjamin and Abigail are very happy about our little house guest. :)