Catching up a bit

So, I didn't post about our family gathering last month.  My brother came to visit us with his 4 girls...  So we had 17 of my parents 24 grandkids in town.  :)  So much fun.  So, one of our big adventures was to take everyone downtown  to the Museum of Science and Industry.  It was so much fun.

They had a few areas like this where you actually interact with the image they are projecting.  In the picture above, if you hold your hand still enough, one of the butterfly's will actually land on your hand.  In another one, some balls would either gather into your arms, or fall to the ground below based on what you were doing.  Very cool.

Twister was completely intrigued by the ball suction thingy.  He went back and forth grabbing the balls and watching the vacuum suck them up up and away.  :)

Cinderelly was pretty entranced by the floating ball.  No barriers were going to stop her!!

The baby chicks hatching were pretty amazing to watch.  They know the exact gestation of the eggs, so they put the eggs in the public incubator on the day they are scheduled to hatch.  Could've spent all day there watching them, truly miraculous.  :)

The weather science area was really fascinating as well.  They have this neat vortex thing that looks like a giant tornado.  At one point, a few of the kids were invited to stand in it!  Very cool.

There were a lot of other really neat random things as well.  The raining fog here made a really neat effect.  Eventually all good things must come to an end.  And there was no exception here:

We pushed the kids to their limit and it was time to head home.  They slept beautifully through the huge traffic jam as we headed home.  I feel so blessed to have the family that I do.  The kids LOVE their cousins, they are really best friends.  I can't wait to see how they interact as they head off to college and stuff in the future.  :)

Anyway, since they left, its been back to the summer grind.  We play outside in the heat, and hide inside when we can't take it anymore.  We've made forts, camped in the backyard, caught lightning bugs, played at the park and more.  Life is never dull with 5 kids.  :)  And since I can't leave this post with such an unhappy picture, I'll leave you with this: