Pre-Christmas

This is the third of three posts today covering our Christmas time. Prior to Christmas, Kris and I took the kids to the Cincinnati Museum. Kris had never been there before (he hasn't really been to any kid places around here) and I had just recently discovered (ha ha) that there are other museums besides the children's on at the center. So two Saturday's before Christmas we ventured there. It is rare that we don't have something to do, so we really enjoyed ourselves - although Kris did have to leave early to attend a training session for a Lego competition he is participating in.

We first took the kids to the Natural History museum. Ryan and Kris had fun looking at the body parts area and flossing extra large teeth. We looked through the area that takes Cincinnati through different time periods. Ryan got to play lincoln logs and play in the outhouse (I would never recommend him 'playing' in the one at the farm!). We played for a while at the large sandbox there until Ryan dumped sand over Emma's head. That was the end of that. We saw the dinosaurs and life size area of animals that used to live in the area (some extinct). Yes, that is a picture of Ryan with a wolf. We then went into the special area where they had Clifford the Big Red Dog event going. Ryan got to play mailman and delivered mail and bones to Clifford. They even had a life size Clifford, which was huge. After Kris left, I put Emma in the carrier on my back and we headed to the holiday train section. Ryan loved pushing the buttons to make the trains go and was just thrilled with the large train sections, sitting and waiting for the trains to go by. But his favorite part was getting to ride the train himself, which he did twice and would have all afternoon. All the while, Emma slept on my back, looking pretty comfy!

The week after this was pretty busy with finishing our Christmas shopping, packing and such. Tuesday, the 18th, Ryan's school was early dismissed due to the snow storm coming through, and they did it early enough that Ryan didn't have school at all. He enjoyed himself playing at home. But then Wednesday came, he got on the bus and a half hour later, I was called to pick him up from school because he was sick. On Thursday, the 4 preschool classes were having a presention on Christmas in other countries and my mom was driving down to see it. Unfortunately, that was in vain. Ryan seemed better by Thursday morning but then got sick again. So we ended up missing it. By Friday, he was better and we all headed to Michigan. There was a snow storm coming down there, but that didn't stop us. And by the time we made it there, it had stopped but the roads were pretty bad. It took us 7 hours, for a trip that if you drive straight through takes 4.5 hours.