Trying something out . . .

Wii love to play!

We finally did it. We bought a Wii. Actually, we finally found one to buy. I have wanted a Wii for a while now but whenever our Wal-Mart had them in stock I was not ready to part with the $249.00 plus tax that would be required to make it mine. Plus, the cost of the extra remote, games, etc.

Well, while we were on vacation we played the Wii at Auntie Darla's and Uncle Chuck's and Jimmy was sold on the Wii. Meagan also ramped up her pleading for a Wii of our own. (She had already been asking for one for Christmas.) If you have read some of my other vacation posts you will know that Hurricane Dolly made landfall in Brownsville while we were on vacation. This brought lots of rain to the Houston area. Lots of rain meant some of our vacation activities had to be canceled.

Anyway, on our last day of vacation we stopped at Target and guess what?? They had Wiis (is that even a word???) in stock. Jimmy and I decided to buy one for the family due to our rainy vacation.
It came with the sports game which is a lot of fun all by itself. We also purchased an extra remote that came with an extra game Wii Play. (Well, the game came with it for $10.00 more - but it was still a great deal.) The Wii play has air hockey, ping pong, a shooting game, etc. There are ten mini games in all. Well worth the $10.00. Since then we have purchased Mario Galaxy which the kids and I enjoy. It has elements that are similar to the original Nintendo Mario (the only game system and game that I ever owned.) It is 3D (I don't know if that is the right description) and some sometimes you are walking upside down on planets. Once you get used to that it is a lot of fun. However, I have no friends to depend on to show me how to conquer the creatures and where all of the extra coins/free men/star bits are. You see, none of this stuff is in the instruction book. You just have to play the game and figure it out all by yourself. I used to rely heavily on my friends to show me where all of this secret stuff was.
We have also purchased Cooking Mama which Meagan has for her DS. We all like this game and it has totally different recipes from the DS version. Your arm does get tired from all of the "cooking" you do. Or maybe I'm just a wimp.
We have played the Wii every day since we brought it home. I know this will change as school/sports start but overall I think it was worth the money!

Swimming Lessons

In July the kids took two weeks of swimming lessons. Thanks Grandma Silly and Grandpa! (The swimming lessons were their treat because Grandpa thinks a child can never have too many weeks of swimming lessons.) The kids had a fantastic teacher - Miss T. She is the coach of our local swim team. She did a great job with the kids and they really learned a lot. Meagan can swim all on her own now, even in deep water. She is still working on diving and learning different strokes. She also needs to work on breathing while swimming. Right now, when she takes a breath she stops swimming.

Garrett is going great too. As long as he has his noodle he will go anywhere or do anything in the water. When you take the noodle away, he knows what to do but acts like he can't swim. Next summer he will work on swimming independently. (Considering last year he told me, "No thanks, I'm just going to sit on the side of the pool." We are really proud of him.)

This is Garrett jumping off of the diving board with his beloved noodle.
This is Garrett doing a toothpick jump. When you do this type of jump you wind up going quite deep into the pool. He came back up just fine!
Here he is swimming to Miss T. after one of his jumps.

Here is Garrett swimming to the edge of the pool after one of his jumps. This proves to me he can swim when he tries because Miss T. wasn't even there to catch him and send him to the side. He jumped off of the board, came to the surface, and swam to the side of the pool all by himself.
This is Meagan swimming to the shallow end of the pool after jumping off of the diving board.
Meagan does a handstand in the shallow end of the pool. We need to work on keeping those legs straight!
Meagan doing a cannonball.
The kids had a blast and keep asking, "Are we going to Miss T.'s next week?" Unfortunately, she was booked/we were on vacation/busy, etc. for the rest of the summer.

The kids have had the chance to practice their new skills this summer though. As I have posted about before we found a great pool in Aransas Pass that the kids have really enjoyed. Maybe one day Alice will have something like that!

Houston Children's Museum

On our first day of vacation we went to the Houston Children's Museum. I was pleased with the museum. All of it was hands on and kid friendly. There were several neat exhibits. Meagan is at the point where she wants to read everything and really learn about stuff and Garrett is at the stage where he wants to run around and do the hands on stuff without caring why things do the things they do. Does that even make sense? To sum it up, Meagan wanted to travel through the museum slowly and read everything, and Garrett raced through touching everything.

This is the front of the museum. I think it looks really cool.

Here we are in front of the museum. Garrett has that funny, no smile, the sun is in my eyes, are we done yet look on. Unfortunately, he has that look on his face in most of the pictures from this vacation.
Meagan and Garrett created this path for a ball to roll down. It was neat to watch them test the maze and then fix it as needed. (The object is to get the ball to roll from the top to the bottom without falling.) They had a good time moving the pieces around to create a maze that worked. Yes, they actually worked together!

There were these neat phones that looked like pay phones but also had a video feed so you could see the person you were talking to. They also had a huge robot looking man made entirely of telephones and telephone parts. Cool. Very cool.

Phone robot - too cool

Extra, Extra, Read all about it!!!!!!!!!!

I just discovered that TEA (Texas Education Agency) just released school accountability scores for the 2008 testing period (07-08 school year). We are RECOGNIZED!!!!! WOO HOO!!

Aransas Pass Aquatic Center

A couple of weekends ago Jimmy and I took the kids to Aransas Pass. I had heard about this great pool that they had with slides like Schlitterbahn. Well, I love Schlitterbahn, but for right now it is too big for us. Meagan and Garrett are five years apart and like totally different things when it comes to places like Schlitterbahn. Anyway, this park sounded perfect for us. As you can see, it was!

I LOVE the look on Garrett's face in this picture!

There is something for the entire family at this pool. They have three slides: a short green one that makes you go really fast, a blue one that is open on the top, and a yellow one that is totally enclosed (think Soda Straws at Schlitterbahn).

They have a huge kiddie area where Garrett played for most of the day. There are several things to interact with in this area like these umbrellas. Jimmy and Garrett pretended that they were in jail and the water was like the bars.

They also have a high and low diving board. Meagan jumped off of the low diving board several times, swimming to the side each time with no problem. The water is 13 feet deep! I am so proud of her. She is really doing well.

I am so glad that there is something like this within driving distance to us because it has been so HOT lately! I think we will be making lots of trips to it now that we know exactly where it is and just how much fun it is!