RyRy's in Korea: Summer: Part 2

The majority of the summer was doing random stuff with the girls. We played at home, did lots of art, went to the pool and a variety of random other activities. Luckily the family has a membership to the Durham museum of Life and Science. This place is awesome. It is super hands-on and you can play with just about anything. There is a large outdoor area too. There is a dinosaur trail, animals, and a wind-water exhibit. There is also a huge butterfly house with lots of varieties of butterflies and random chicken-like birds.

Climbing on a dinosaur

Running from a T-rex

Teeth comparison

Peanut holding a huge butterfly. I think it's a moon something.

One day the girls decided to be pirates. They made treasure maps, a telescope and hook hands. Then LouLou, the younger one, decided to put on a chicken costume from a Halloween 3 years ago. She had a wedgie a mile long. So she was the parrot to the pirate. We did a few other things like this, including a ballet complete with backdrop which took a large chunk of the afternoon to complete and 4 costume changes.

The girls started tennis this summer. We did this on the afternoons the day they didn't have swim team. The played in a couple of "matches" and went undefeated on their doubles play. LouLou went to another swim meet before we pulled the plug on the meets (huge time suck).

Check out the game faces

Swim meet intimidation

My aunt and uncle are doing some weird time share/buying/renting thing with some friends and neighbors at Topsail Island. We went twice during the summer because we happened to be out of town on a few of their weekends. The house is really nice and only one house over from the beach. It's also a fairly secluded beach and it's nice not being near anyone.

Attempt at one of the ocean, feet, relaxing pictures. I couldn't lean back far enough to get the ocean. I then got a spa treatment when the kids rubbed the sand on my legs and exfoliated them.

Empty beach = bliss

One day I took the girls to Pullen Park in Raleigh. The park was recently redone and had an awesome playground, train, pond with ducks and boats and the big hit - a carousel. One of the best things is that all the "rides" cost $1 so you can do stuff without it costing a ton of money. At the end of the day it started to pour, but luckily we got to the car in time to avoid the huge downpour.

Riding pigs at Pullen Park

I mentioned the museum earlier this post. I bring it up again because we went there about 6 times over the summer. They had daily science experiments and you got stamps for attending. Once you got enough stamps you got a prize so the girls wanted to go a lot. The prize ended up being some plastic plates to store leaves or bugs; it was a letdown. We all learned a bunch though so it was still fun. This year they added a "contraption" room with PVC pipes, balls, pulleys and other things to make something like a Rube Goldberg machine. We spent a lot of time in that room playing with buckets and ropes.

Goggles for a luminescence display

Their "machine" consisted of a dozen buckets and clamps and every piece of rope they could get their hands on.

Sitting in a chair to show ratios

LouLou's birthday is in July and she ended up having a handful of parties. A handful of family came down as a stop over on their way to the beach and brought some other cousins with them. The boys went to play golf on Friday afternoon and the girls went to a paint your own pottery place. I wanted to steal 2 of my cousins pieces.

This is one of the pieces I wanted to steal

I made napkin rings and gave them to my mother

Birthday number 3(?) (after her actual party and a swim team one and possibly one more) was a trip to Atlanta to the American Girl store. We stayed at my mom's house, went to Stone Mountain for the laser show, a Braves game and had brunch at AG, complete with doll party accessories (they made me bring my doll as well).

Licking icing before we sang

For the fourth of July we made my brother patriotic rice krispie treats (which was fun once we figured out wax paper was the key to lack of mess) and some cards that included bacon fireworks.

Thanks pinterest!

At the end of August we went to the Outer Banks with the majority of the family. We go every year and this was an "off" year meaning that many who are usually there, weren't. We still had fun, but we missed the people who weren't there.