Spring Break Staycation!

'Tis the season for Daddy to be busy at work with Tax Day approaching, so when Spring Break comes around, we have to stay local so Daddy can keep working hard.  Our break was a little later than most of the local school districts this year, so it was easy for Mommy to get the week off work.  The kids and I had a blast doing all sorts of fun things all week!

The end of March brought a bit warmer temps for a couple days, but then went back to being chilly for our spring break week the first week in April.  On one of the nicer days in the end of March, Trevor and I had some playtime at the park.

Blowing bubbles

Fun on the swings

Climbing time

Then the big kids were off school from April 1st to April 10th and we made a plan of all the fun things we wanted to do...and then had a blast doing them!

On Saturday, we went to both the Shakopee library and the Eden Prairie library because we had items waiting for us at each location (and the kids like playing with the toys at Shakopee library and the iPads at the EP library).  We picked up a copy of the Lion King movie because the kids have never seen it and we are going to the Lion King Broadway show this summer.  We had fun at the library, then a movie and popcorn in the afternoon.

On Sunday, we had a nicer weather day and took advantage of it by meeting Sarah's friend and her family at the Chutes and Ladders Park in Bloomington.   (I only got a few photos because most of they time the kids were climbing all throughout the crazy play structures and going down the big slides, etc. and we were chasing them from the outside trying to keep eyes on them!)

The kids has a blast climbing and playing and swinging and we stayed later than expected, so we ditched the plan to make dinner at home and took the kids to Pizza Ranch as a treat!

On Monday, we had Daddy home and we all went to see the new Disney movie Zootopia!

On Tuesday, Sarah had swimming lessons in the afternoon and then we took Austin and Sarah to see "Beauty and the Beast" at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater.

 The kids really enjoyed the show (and their gigantic souvenir cups full of pink lemonade), but it ended pretty late, so they both fell asleep within about 2 minutes of getting in the car.

Because of our late night on Tuesday, we decided to lay low on Wednesday.  Sarah had dance class on Wednesday evening, but we otherwise spent the day at home playing and relaxing.

On Thursday morning, Trevor had swim lessons.  Afterward, we had some snacks in the car, then headed to the Mall of America to visit the Sea Life Aquarium.  We had lots of fun getting to see and even touch the sea creatures!
When we entered, there was a waterfall with a ship. Trevor was very excited about the "pirate ship"!

Then we entered to a big hands on area in which the kids could touch all sorts of little fish, anemones, coral, etc.

Then on to the sting rays!  (The kids were worried about the "sting" part of their names, but their stingers had all been removed.)  We were able to touch and feed the rays!  Austin in particular LOVED this part and counted that he was able to touch a ray 101 times!

In this photo, they are each feeding the rays.  See the little fish between Trevor's little fingers?

Trevor got soaking wet sleeves, but enjoyed getting to touch the rays!

Then we went in to the jelly fish room, where the lighting was really fun!

Little aquariums next held many different kinds of seahorse.

Then a big tank with a variety of fish in which Trevor "found Nemo" and was very excited about it!

Then we got to walk in the tunnel under the shark tanks and see all the different kinds of sharks swimming around and over us.

I love this sequence of face on Sarah when she saw a big shark swim right over my head...

I tried to get a photo of all 3 kids sitting on the ledge of the tunnel with the sharks behind them, but because of the low lighting, it was tough to get a shot without one of them moving and making it blurry.  This is the only one I got in which 2 kids next to each other were not blurry.

We called this guy the Grumpy Fish (maybe like the "Pout Pout Fish"?).

Check out the saw on this one!

Austin at one point declared that this was the "best day ever"!

I thought the little bright blue frogs were really cool.

And Trevor was pretty excited about the "Tick Tock Croc"!

On Friday, we had Daddy home again and we spent the afternoon swimming at the Chaska Community Center pool, where there are some fun water features like a big water slide, a little water slide, a rope swing, dumping buckets, and zero entry/shallow ends for Trevor to walk around independently.

On Saturday, we again made trips to the library (because the kids had already read all or most of the books we had picked up for them the previous week and we had to return the movie we borrowed).  Then we spent the afternoon doing kitchen science experiments.  We picked up a book at the library with all sorts of fun experiments to try and we did a bunch of them over the weekend.  We did the "Frankenworms" experiment in which you cut gummy worms really skinny (the hardest part) and then soak them in a baking soda solution, then put them in a jar of vinegar.  The bubbles from the reaction between the baking soda and the vinegar makes the worms wiggle.  We didn't get the worms cut skinny enough to get dramatic results, but it worked OK. The kids had the most fun with that one eating the extra gummy worms!

We also used the baking soda and vinegar reaction to blow up a balloon that was on the top of a bottle of vinegar for the "fizzy balloons" experiment.  There is video of that one later in this post.

We then tried the "egg in a bottle" experiment in which we learned about air pressure and found that if we put a candle in a bottle with a hard boiled egg sitting on the top of the jar, the candle eventually goes out when it uses up the oxygen in the bottle, then the air pressure shifts push the egg into the bottle.  The kids loved this one and celebrated when the egg popped in the jar (then ate the eggs).

The anticipation!

And the celebration!

Then we made a volcano!  I missed getting a picture of it erupting because I was helping Sarah hold the funnel to to put the baking soda into the bottle of vinegar and the eruption was so fast it got all over our hands and I couldn't grab the camera until I wiped off my hands.

We made a "color changing magic potion" by boiling chopped red cabbage and keeping the liquid it boiled down in.  It is purple to start with, but apparently is sensitive to pH change.

Trevor got to be in charge of adding the base (baking soda) and stirring it in.  It turned a blue/green color.

Then Austin added the acid (vinegar) into the other jar and it turned pink.

Then Sarah combined both jars and we got a fizzy eruption from the acid and base combining.  I love how excited about all this the kids were!

We did more science experiments after Church and Austin's futsal practice on Sunday.  We put some pinto beans in baggies with wet paper towels and hung them on the window to grow sprouts.  By mid-week this week, they all have 2 of the 3 beans sprouting plants!

Then we made supersaturated salt solutions to make "climbing salt crystals" and boiled up some sugar and water to make a sugar solution to make rock candy.  They each got 2 jars and got to pick what colors to make their rock candy.  It is growing every day!  In the next few days, it may be ready to eat!

 Here is a short video of 2 of our experiments...


There are a couple other experiments we didn't quite get to, like the soda geyser (the Diet Coke plus Mentos trick).  We wanted to do that one outside to avoid getting it all over the house, but the weather was a bit chilly for that last week, so we'll do it in the next weekend or so.  We got the ingredients to make "Mad Scientist Green Slime" but didn't get to it yet.  We couldn't find fresh cranberries at any of the stores we checked to make "Spy Juice", but if we find them, we'll give that a try later too.  We still have another head of red cabbage and some of the boiled cabbage water left that we could try making the "Red Cabbage Litmus Paper" with, but we'll see what we have time for.

There are lots more in the book we got called "Kitchen Science Lab for Kids" by Liz Lee Heinecke (who we found out is a local mom and scientist here in the Twin Cities).  We'll have to check it out again and try some more!

As you can see, we had a fun week and got to do, see, and try lots of fun new and exciting things!  We didn't really travel anywhere, but we had a great vacation week. Who knew a "staycation" could be so fun?  Now this week I've been back to work, the kids went back to school, and we've got soccer ramping back up for the spring season, Sarah getting to the end of the year in dance with her recital in June, Trevor working on swimming lessons, and summer approaching quicker than we think!  We are getting some beautiful weather this week and are enjoying getting outside in the sunshine to play!