Wednesday

For Tuesday, I have no pictures. We went and did some thrifting, looking for cowboy boots which were not to be had, and then drove over to Ikea. That place is so cool. We bought a few things and made a day of it, came home tired and chilled out.

Next day we went out to meet a friend and hung out in downtown Winter Garden a bit. They have built a whole new pavilion for the Farmers' Market, and were working on renovating some more buildings. Looking good! Wish I had taken more pics up and down the street, it's so cute. 

Serious Silas...

Crazy boys crawling all over everything and pushing any buttons possible. 

Then we made a trek out to the grove to visit Grandma Mary. I spent some time in the sewing room trying to organize and get some fabric put away. It was a daunting task, but we plugged away for a few hours. The whole top of the double closet is full all the way down, mostly of lovely polyester. Someday I will figure out something genius to do with that stuff. I wanted to make a rug, but that hasn't happened yet. There's plenty there for any project. This is how I replenish my stash and find fun treasures. Thanks, Grandma! 

Mixed in with the fabric are piles of slides from her many travels. I think she has sections of the room where certain places go, heh. Under the sewing table would be China, over in another corner Africa, plus a whole few shelves worth in the closet. She used to give a lot of slide presentations that I attended as a child. I still enjoy looking at them, and it's amazing what she remembers and the stories there are to tell. I think she visited over 120 different countries. Is that right, Grandma? It's a bunch. 

I'll take pictures of some of the treasures I brought home after the holidays. There are some really nice fabric pieces, wool scarves from Ecuador, silver thimbles and a carved wood head from Easter Island, pictures of my family, lots of costume jewelry and even some old books on record from when I was a kid. It's gonna be fun. 

There are even slides from when I was little somewhere in the stash. It's fun to put them up on that lighted viewer. 

SO MUCH STUFF!! *lol*  She kept wanting me to take more, but I had to limit myself to a box as best I could. Plus I desperately need to organize what I have, it's fast getting out of control and I don't want it to get this overwhelming. She said she's been working to organize things more since I left...sometimes it helps to get a running start on a project.

I wish I had taken some pics of her house while it was still daylight....next time. My camera ran out of batteries so I didn't even get to take after shots! Boo on me. 

She fed us a delicious supper of lasagna, and we looked at a few slides and had to call it a night. Hopefully we can make another trip down soon. Those balmy breezes are calling my name! 

Monday

Monday it was off to see the Science Center.

...chilin' in the balmy breezes, waiting for everyone to get ready. 

Replica of a flying machine. 

Lots of bugs...

Race car track. 

Airplane cockpit....Silas loved this. "Push dat button right dere!" His favorite sentence and action had free reign today. 

This exhibit was fun - you could join together all the pipes for the balls to run down, illustrating gravity.

The boys had fun and we did too, lol. 

Funny weird pics in the dark planetarium. 

This shows behind the screen and all the speakers.

This show was about the Grand Canyon and water conservation. 

Another cool replica.

Floor piano. 

The dinosaur exhibit was phenomenal. I don't think I've ever seen full-size cast models before, and they had some huge ones! T-Rex was truly daunting. I won't be watching Jurassic Park anytime soon. 

Triceratops was quite large as well. 

Our little archeologists.

They even got to be on TV...ha hah.

Hurricane force wind tunnel.

And then, the laser show. Goodness knows why we went to this thing, shoulda known by the title it was going to be a lame 80's thing. One family got up and left...they didn't have little kids. Leon and Silas seemed to be into it, so we stayed...for song after song after song. Whew. Silas had a nice little nap, while I tried to keep myself awake by taking time lapse pics, lol. 

Then we went down to the nature walk part to see some critters. 

This guy was huge, I think it's one of the Cuban variety that are taking over the native habitat.

Miss these little guys...

This dude was in a pen where you could reach through, which Leon did, thinking it was a fake turtle I guess. You should have seen him jump when the foot he grabbed moved as the turtle pulled away! So funny. 

Fell in the sink hole. 

Lots of gators and turtles.

Leon had so much fun running around...he had this big grin on his face. 

I got terrible pictures of this. but they had a fun interactive display where you could pick oranges off some trees on the right, feed them into the bicycle-powered conveyor that would drop them down to crate. Sorry, guess you need to have been there...anyway, Silas picked and fed them, Aaron ran the cycle...

....Leon crated them up and brought them over to the slide where the boxes would dump out the oranges that would return to the trees. They really liked this part and we spent a long time picking and toting citrus.

They cooked up some pizza and changed the oil in a car....

Finally worn out and ready to go! It was such a fun day.