clay center fun

We had a free Saturday with decent weather, and finally, everyone was well. So, we decided to load up and drive over to Charleston to check out the Clay Center for the day. We had a wonderful time! We've had someone sick in our family every week since we walked in the door after Christmas. With day to day business and the dreary winter weather we've been really needing just a day to get out and do something fun. Elle had been last year on her field trip, but none of the rest of us had.

A water room is always a big hit with the cubs!

The music rooms were pretty fun too!

We got lunch there, but we learned that you can take food in so we'll do that next time.

This structure goes from the bottom floor to the third/top floor. Todd loved climbing it!

The place we spent the most time was the little town.  Copper loved this area! He had so much fun on the fire truck and police motorcycle.

I'll be shocked if Todd doesn't become a police officer when he grows up. He seemed to love playing on the cycle too!

However, Todd and Copper spent a ton of time in this little pretend mechanic shop. Copper loved to move the tires around and pretend he was changing them.

I love that Todd can instantly make friends with someone!

The biggest kid had fun too!

I can totally see Reese being a doctor. She played a long time taking care of these babies.

This was an "MRI machine" they could scan the babies with.

They had a house building area, energy zone, vet clinic, theater, grocery store, and diner too. There's so much we'll have to go back again.

I love that there were books everywhere!

WVU was also there showing off robots and other tech, as well as other activities from a lot of their science departments. Todd like the marbles and marshmallow building. The girls like the chemistry table where they got to draw with sharpies, and the biology table where they made bracelets. It was such a cool activity. Different biological features, such as eye color, detached ear lobes, hitchhikers thumb, etc., determined which color of bead you put on. 

It was a great day, and we even caught one of the kids saying that!

elle’s social studies fair project...or parent jail

Elle had to choose to do the science or social studies fair at school this year. We found this great book on the history of the Monopoly game, which is one of Elle’s favorite things to play. So she picked SS, and thus began our first adventure into working on this type of project. It’s so much work, and as Chris put it, parent jail. We didn’t want to do the work for her, but giving her guidance and motivation was a constant job.

The story is a pretty good one about how a woman named Lizzie Magie created the Land Lord’s game and got a patent for it, which was pretty rare for a woman and for a board game at the time. Her game had two ways to play, and her purpose was to show how unfair the it was to poor city workers who kept having their rent raised by rick land owners who were buying up all the property. Her game was popular, but the Parker Brothers turned it down. Fans kept play it and creating different versions. Eventually a man named Charles Darrow played a friend’s game, and decided to create his own version, and called it Monopoly, then tried to sell it to the Parkers Brothers. Eventually, they had to buy Lizzie’s patent for $500, and Charles Darrow ended making tons of money.

Elle decided to test one of Lizzie’s original ideas for her project. This involved playing lots of Monopoly. The project got turned in, and she ended up with Third place in her category. One cool thing about this project was Elle getting a chance to see my Grandma’s Monopoly game from 1947.

scouting 2017-2018

Todd started Lions as part of Cub Scouts this year. His den decided to go ahead and get the Tiger cub uniform though. Apparently, Lions used to be part of boy scouts, and originally that was the step after Bear, which was where We Be Los came from. They added Lions back last year as a pilot program, and it was successful enough they officially added it back in.

Todd has really enjoyed going to his weekly meetings with Chris. It didn't hurt that the first meeting took place at the Wildlife Refuge and they made s'mores. He's been working on some things at home, and recently was awarded his Lion belt thing, and his Bobcat award.

Elle jumped right into AHG this year and has completed several badges. She also recently signed up for the Pen Pal program, and got matched with a girl with the same birthday! She's done a Memory Maker badge and made a softball scrapbook. Her favorite right now is cake decorating though. She's also loved all the parades her troop has done. We started zoology and nature and wildlife before we left, but need to finish those up. She's also been working on leveling up from Tenderhearts to Explorers.