The Friday 7

Sincere apologies for the absence of a Saturday 7 last week. The depression game was strong, and I was crazy busy with ten million different things that I don't even remember now. And this weekend is shaping up to be just as busy, so henceforth I present to you the "Friday" 7ish.

1. I noted in my last entry a couple weeks ago that we were going to see another house. What I didn't tell you was that some of our closest friends were also interested in buying it.

Because we're mature adults and we love each other we all went together to see it! Haha. Fortunately for our relationship, but unfortunately for our high hopes, the house had some pretty serious structural issues that neither of us was comfortable with. So we both walked away. Still looking . . .

2. Homeschool update: We're getting lazy. Originally I enforced starting at 9:00 each morning. Lately, we've been sleeping til 9 or later and starting school around 10 or 11. Ha. I knew we'd eventually fall into this pattern. I'm actually proud it took this long! The past couple of weeks we've studied dinosaurs, octopuses (yes, it's a word!), and Brazil/South America. Fortunately for us, we have some good friends who just came home from the mission field in Brazil. So we headed to Christina's house with our friends Presley and Harper (who are using the same curriculum as us) and had a little Brazil Presentation.

Captive audience!

Christina made us Pao de Queijo - a delicious cheese bread and a Brazilian kool-aid and even shared some Brazilian candy. We had a great time learning from her!

Today was our Brazilian Festa. Lucy made a Brazilian flag and a banner, we dressed up for Carnival, learned how to Samba dance via YouTube, and attempted to make brigadeiros. We're still waiting for them to set, so we can't attest to their taste yet.

This was my brother's shirt, then it moved down to my nephews, and now I have it in my closet waiting for Levi to grow into it. It's a boys' size 14, so I was pretty proud that I squeezed into it. Lol. (It wasn't attractive.)

No Carnival costume is complete without masks and boas!

Ready to Samba!

3. This week was Octopus week for Lena, and I got the idea in my head that we should go to an aquarium for further "learning." ;-) Justin was able to get Tuesday off of work, and I used my credit card rewards toward a hotel room so we only had to pay $13! We headed to Auburn Hills Monday after Justin got home from work. We didn't get to the hotel until 8:30, but our kids are night owls, so we went swimming for a while. Then we had snacks in bed and watched Disney channel until 10:30.

By the time everyone got in bed and settled down it was 11:00. I brought the pack n' play for Levi. He slept in it like a champ when we went camping, but he lost his living mind when I tried to put it in him this time. He started jumping up and down screaming at the top of his lungs - which is heavily frowned upon when staying in a hotel room! So I pulled him into bed with us, but he was wide awake, wiggly, giggly, and disobedient. It was such a disaster. Justin finally went to sleep on the couch because he was getting sick of being kicked in the spleen. I gave Levi some cars and let him drive them on me until he literally dropped. I eventually snuck him into his bed around midnight, where he stayed 'til about 5. Then he slept above my head on my pillow until 8:30. Needless to say, it was not a very restful night.

4. The next day we swam again in the morning, then headed off to the aquarium. Justin and I were fascinated and could've spent all day looking at each creature and reading every piece of information displayed. The kids sped through it a little faster, but enjoyed it for the most part.

Pic through the aquarium

There was a really cool "touch pool" area where we could touch starfish, lobsters, anenomes, and more. 

Peek a boo!

My favorite part was this walk-through tunnel. All the sea creatures were swimming around us and over us. It was so cool! But it was also where Lena started melting down.

I love these things and their little "faces."

Despite my online research that assured me this aquarium had an octopus, we never saw one. Oops.

5. Of course we couldn't drive all the way to Auburn Hills without a trip to Legoland! Our library was giving out passes for "Buy an Adult Ticket Get a Child Ticket Free" for both the aquarium and Legoland, so we splurged and let the kids do both. Legoland was so cool. There are some seriously talented Lego "artists" in the world!

The Detroit skyline. There were all kinds of exhibits with interactive buttons: the football stadium with Lions players that you could run down the field, an Aretha Franklin museum that played music, cars you could "drive," boats that cruised on the river, etc. 

In his glories.

There was an entire exhibit devoted to making and racing Lego cars.

Lena loved the Lego Friends town. The big structures are cemented in place, but you can add on to the space around them.

Did you notice the best thing about all of these pictures? There were no other kids!!! Thanks to attending on a Tuesday morning, we literally encountered only 4-5 other families in the aquarium and Legoland combined!! Justin took the kids to Legoland last year on a Saturday and said it was wall to wall people. They had to wait in line for hours to ride the rides and fight for space near the exhibits to do anything. We were able to walk right on to all the rides and do every single exhibit to our heart's content! Homeschooling for the win!!

We finally headed home around 5:30.

6. Wednesday was Halloween. We had a great time making the rounds between our friends in town, to the aunts, uncles, and grandparents nearby. Lucy picked out a rockstar costume from Once Upon months ago, but decided at the last minute to make a homemade "fashion designer" costume instead.

Lena was an adorable pinata that got tons of comments all night, and Levi was a "ka-chow" driver (Lightning McQueen racecar driver).

With friends. (Lucy's best friend is the Black Panther next to her. Lol. Could they be any more opposite??)

We met up with Cousin Nash!

Look at his adorable little fox costume!

7. More pictures:
Dino Activities

Salt dough fossils

Lena's choices for "Things that start with D." Lol. 

Hatching baking soda dinosaur eggs with vinegar. Messy, but fun!

Leaf pile fun with cousins Nash and Nova

Grandpa too!

Cutie pie at the dentist

Octopus hot dogs. The girls thought they were funny. Levi cried. Lol.

Adorable "post-bun" curls.

Letting our kids sit in the bar at Rainforest Cafe just because the stools were so funny.

Whew! 10,000 useless bonus points if you made it to the end! Thanks to those of you who reached out when I never posted an entry last week. I'm still struggling through the depression. I might even write an update about it soon. But for now, I'm off to a fun moms' weekend out with some great friends and no kids! Much love to you all!