Happy New Year 2017

The highlight of the New Year was our trip to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Annex.

Every year should start with a fun family museum trip if at all possible.

I spent a good deal of time not taking classes and not at work between Christmas and New Years day. It was so nice. It makes me tempted to take a semester off. Sleep is never long with Megan in the house but this last few weeks she has begun going downstairs instead of into our room when she gets up. I think the main catalyst is that she can now work the remotes well herself and she just wants to ease into the day with Dory or Scooby-Do.

We got a tiny bit of snow. We got a visit from Aunt Judy. We got some chores done and we had some time just bonding as a family.

On Saturday morning we had a tea party breakfast (thanks Megan).

Then I took the kids to Brookside to see the trains.

We have done this pretty much every year of the kids life. This year Kiernan was more interested in the green house plants than in the trains.

So we spent some time in there. He was a botanist and she was a leopard.

She ran off to the trains a number of time. He asked me to read him a book about herbs.

If I could trust her not to try to grab the trains I think I would have let her go with less supervision.

Its tricky to read i none room while praising trains in another.

Something about Kiernan's face seems so mature to me here. I am seeing more of his bone structure and some version of his older self peaking through here.

We walked around quite a bit considering the cold and while we did that Megan convinced us to come back a few hours later for the light show.

That Megan she knows how to party.

We drove an hour home and then got daddy and then drove an hour back...that was 4 hours devoted to Brookside in one day! 

I would say it was too much car time but the results were so beautiful that I think it was worth it.

Also we found David's spirit animal.

On Sunday morning a very tired (not from New Years celebrations but from a bad midnight sinus headache) David got to eat his favorite breakfast of Eggs Florentine at the kids new favorite eating spot Eggspectations .

The kids cleaned their plates and were begging to come back as soon as they had done so.

We spent the rest of the day in playful mood with a fun play date with cousin Kaleb and  some grown up nerf gun battles to boot.

Megan took a fair number of selfies and google made me this collection from the best of them.

Oh that girl...

too cute

On Monday we cleaned the house and went to the museum.

The house cleaning was long overdue and much appreciated.

The museum visit was also long over due.

Kiernan's most recent science unit in school was about the space race and he has become a bit obsessed with the Apollo 11 mission.

On Monday he got to sit by the Apollo 11 splash down module.

He was (pardon the pun) over the moon.

We had all planned to see a movie about space while there but they were only showing 3D and those give me a headache and make Kiernan barf so Megan and daddy went to a show and Kiernan and I hung out and talked about WWII.

This boy is a heavy thinker.

we saw the FlakBait plane. Please follow that link. This plane is amazing.

We took a picture next to Eddie Rockenbacker's flight suit and under his plane.

We went to see the shuttle Discovery.

We ate a picnic lunch and did a tiny bit more of exploring but Megan was pretty much done so we stopped by the gift shop where I gave Kiernan my phone to take pictures of all the things he might like for his birthday. (Please have a look at the link on the side if you want to get his some space/plane stuff for his birthday.)

As you can see Megan was done by then. Although she did want to get all the things in the gift shop just in case.

ha

Happy New Year everyone!