Long Weekend

I had last Friday off and after Amelia's O/T we met some friends at Lookout Ridge!

 

We played for about three hours again!  The kids have so much fun and burn off so much energy there - it's great!

Saturday, Amelia went to a cat show with my mom and sister in the cities.  Jason, the boys and I went shopping for a few groceries/ingredients for soup and chili.  After that little excursion we stayed in the entire weekend - it's too cold to want to leave the house!  We pretty much watched movies all weekend :)

Sunday night movie (Ice Age) in a tent!

A little Jackson for good measure :)

We had a scheduled day off school yesterday and today was cancelled because of the cold weather so Amelia is also enjoying a long weekend!

Temperature on my way into work this morning!

Joe seems to be suffering from fifths disease aka "slapped cheek syndrome."  

It just kind of showed up yesterday.  He is a bit congested but no fever or other symptoms.  My googling only turned up fifths disease so we are just watching him for now since it is viral and requires no medical treatment.  We are going in Friday for Jackson's well-baby visit and I plan to ask her about it, especially if it hasn't cleared up by then!

Well, I have a crying Jackson and a messy room to help the big kids clean up!  Stay warm!

Lookout Ridge

Yesterday afternoon we met some friends at Lookout Ridge - an indoor play park!  We have already been feeling cooped up this winter and needed a way to burn some energy off!

Amelia showed me to the top of the climbing structure! 

THREE kids SMILING?!?!?!  Success!

Baby Jackson fell asleep towards the end of our play time!

We played for two and a half hours - well worth the admission of $4.50 a kid!

Jumping and Bouncing

Tonight my sister and I took the kids to a nearby jump zone for special needs night! They have inflatable slides, an obstacle course, a bounce house and several Little Tykes houses/castles etc for the kids.  

This was Amelia's second time going and she did more and was more adventurous this time around! I'd like to think that it was because mama was there ;) At first she did exactly what she did last time - she holed up in a little house. 

Last time the log cabin was her hideout.

She likes to jump on the bed so after Auntie going down the slide didn't entice her I sat on the edge of a slide and bounced. Auntie sat on the edge of the entrance to the obstacle course, with Joe, and bounced. That was all it took. Amelia came over and bounced too!

After doing that for awhile I moved over to the bounce house they had. I told Kim to bring her over in a minute and I would be in the bounce house, bouncing. Luckily I found a Dora ball in there and I used that as "bait" to lead her into the bounce house. It worked like a charm and she had a blast!

She bounced in there a ton and then she stared jumping up and letting herself "fall" which she thought was hilarious. On our way out she finally showed some interest in the baseball set-up they had: 

You placed a ball above the tee and air blew it up so you hit it while it was suspended in mid-air. She thought that was pretty neat but the bat was a touch to big for her!

 Joe was so good. He just came along for the ride with us and did it with minimal whining! He even went down the big slide with Auntie in one of our attempts to show Amelia it was fun! 

It took around one hour for us to get Amelia warmed up to things but I'm glad we stuck it out because she had so much fun!  One nice thing about special needs night was that we were one of two families there.  The place was pretty loud in general from all the machines keeping stuff inflated so I think it helped that there weren't a ton of kids running around.  

We had a feeling that this night would be more successful than open jump because it would likely be less crowded - which turned out to be true!  We have a Groupon for this place that was good for three visits so we are going to save the final visit for next month's special needs night!