Are We There?, Claire, and the Crazy Chair!

How fun for us! The boys and I traveled to lovely Charlotte, North Carolina, last week to visit our good friend Laura and her delightful four year old daughter, Claire. It was great for Mitch and Claire to see each other again, especially since Mitch has big plans for them for the future. "Claire is going to marry me up!," he often says, so it was good to check in with his future bride to see how she was doing. Claire is a doll, and even planned her outift accordingly. She had a darling green skirt that I suspect her darling mother was up until midnight washing and drying just for the big day. (Incidently, Mitch is also planning on "marrying up" Lauren, but we have moved out of the state of Utah, so I am not sure how exactly that is all going to go down, but a little boy can dream!"

We met at the Discovery Place, a sort of hands-on science and fun center...a PERFECT place for the hooligans. They could hooliganize and explore all over the joint! They had dinosaur bones, aquariums with sharks (not catfish), and plenty of things to build, wreck, build again, stack, move, lift, operate, and generally manhandle. (My kids are especially gifted at manhandling!)

Here are some photo highlights:

Here is the infamous trio watching a puppet show about dinosaurs.

Here are the boys, each building something that was way beyond my level of comprehension. All that spatial reasoning stuff leaving me feeling a bit woozey.

Here is Mitch putting on a puppet show. Hmmm...I wonder why he chose that particular puppet.

And here it is. THE CRAZY CHAIR! This is a vacuum powered chair where the kids sit in, close the gate, push a few buttons, and go for a ride up into the air and back down. Needless to say, buttons, motors, and up in the air- it was a homerun for the Ferrario boys!

Welcome to the New Blog!

I do not like change. However, I was having a whole heap of trouble trying to upload pictures onto the old blog. I would type a witty and charming entry (really...they were), try to throw a couple of photos to round it out, and it would disappear. All my hard work! Gone! To be replaced with boring blog entries that I just put on out of sheer frustration (that's what you've been getting lately. Sorry).

But, no more! New site! New format! New auto-save feature! And, it is free...as opposed to the hefty $4.95 per month that I was paying before. Think of all the dough I will save! In five months, I will have enough for a pedi!

So let's get started with a photorama- Here is our trip to the local zoo. We are now members, as it would have been $30 for all of us to get in for one day...or...$74 for unlimited admissions for one year, 12...yes 12 free passes for our friends and family (so if you come visit us, please plan on going to the zoo!) and (this is the best part!) advanced registration for the boys for Zoo Camp next summer. Mitch can go to a program for 4-5 year olds, and Matty can go for 2-3 year olds. How perfect! So now, we are zoo members. Zooligans if you will, and, yes, you will.

Here are some photos from our trip.

Here is Matty, looking into an aquarium, pointing and yelling out, "Shark! Shark! Look, a shark!" Well, it was actually a giant catfish, but I was not about to argue. Well, actually, I did argue, but I lost. He kept insisting that it was a shark, and I gave up!

Here are the men looking at elephants.

Here is Mitch (sideways....sorry. I will work on that) with his homemade binoculars. Pretty snazzy, eh?

And here was my favorite part!!!!

Come visit! We'll go to the zoo. Our treat.