High Five for Friday

Hi there! I'm linking up with Jennie today to share some fun stuff from the past week.

1) Friday evening, since we had no homework to do, Grant and I made some candy cane bead ornaments to get a jump start on Christmas stuff. The best part is that my mom taught me how to make these when I was kid (crafty, she was not but we had fun) and now I get to make them with Grant.

2) Saturday was my birthday. As soon as I woke up, Grant handed me an envelope that said "Mom" (he calls me Mama). Then he told me "I wrote 'mom' by myself! It's a sight word!" How cute is that? I'm not one to make a big deal out of my birthday but Husband wanted to take me out to breakfast and do a little shopping before we took Grant to a birthday party for one of his friends. Later on we had a movie night and Grant got to see Jurassic World for the first time.

Brunch at Briggs! I love starting the day with a dish the
size of a row boat filled with grits :)

We took Grant to a birthday party at this neat gymnastics
place (that's him on a trampoline about to dive into a foam pit).
What a fun place! He had a great time and I dont' think
he's ever been that tired after a birthday party!

Testing out my birthday present on Sunday!

3) Also over the weekend, my little kitchen helper and I made some chicken & rice soup.

4) I had a dinner date with Grant on Monday! Usually he picks Cracker Barrel for our dates. I guess he's tired of it because it was Moe's this time. He loves when they yell "Welcome to Moe's!"

5) Since I was off work on Wednesday and Grant was off school, Husband took the day off and we went to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. It's one of our usual places on days off but they recently opened some new tree houses so we were excited to check those out. We had a really great day together!

Up in a tree house!

Even with the new tree houses, "Into the Mist"
is still one of his favorites!

6) Yesterday when I got home from work there was a package from my sister waiting for me. Along with a cute new bag, she also sent me three boxes of my favorite store bought cookies! I love packages with treats from home :)

Happy Friday everyone!

Have a great weekend!

A Day Out with Thomas & Percy

On Saturday we took Grant to the Day Out with Thomas event at the Transportation Museum. Since we did this last year at Tweetsie Railroad, we thought it might be fun to check it out at a different location. When I went online to get tickets, I saw that you could buy tickets that included a ride with Percy too and as a friend put it...if you're going to drive all that way, you may as well ride Percy too. 

As soon as we got there, Percy was pulling into the station after a ride.

I was so focused on making sure we got there in time for our ride with Thomas...it never occurred to me to check our Percy time. So we got there...saw Percy...took some pictures...and then I found an employee to just find out what we needed to do. She checked our tickets and pointed out that our Percy ride was in 10 minutes!  So we boarded right then. 

So excited :)

It turns out that Percy was pulling the caboose train, which didn't offer much for sight seeing (tiny windows) but Grant really didn't care. He just wanted to ride the train.

At one point along the ride, our guide told us that we would be passing Thomas. Unfortunately we weren't sitting on that side. But the man and his son on the other side of the train offered for us to go over and share their window. He didn't have to ask twice. Grant was over there in two seconds.

I sort of wondered if the man had regretted his offer
because Grant talked their ears off (they were very nice).

The man also pointed out this "911 train" which became
Grant's obsession for the rest of the ride.

Immediately following our Percy ride we had to check in quick to get our wristbands and then head over to the line for our Thomas ride. 

There he is!

And he's pulling all those cars (with some help, of course)

The line moved quick and they were pretty organized. And we somehow got seated in the car right behind Thomas. When we walked into the car Grant said "I can see Thomas' skin!"

Excited to ride with Thomas!

The boy loves a map.

I just love how happy he is :)

So right before the ride starts the guide tells us that we have help Thomas by yelling "All aboard!" So everyone did...and then Thomas blows his whistle...

Grant was excited about hearing Thomas' whistle!

This ride offered better views from bigger windows. They take you back and forth on the tracks in front of the museum.

The roundhouse.

Some other trains out on the tracks.

They told us Percy would be passing us soon.

Hi Percy!

Waving to the people.

He had no desire to wait in line to have his picture
taken with Thomas, this was as close as we got
(behind him is part of line for pictures).

After that, Grant just wanted to check out the museum (convenient, because we did too).

They had a firetruck on display for the kids to check out.

What kid doesn't want to wear a real fireman's helmet?

The Transportation Museum is a really neat place. We had talked about going but this was our first time. So many great buildings filled with great stuff!

One building was just for model trains and all the little things that go with the model trains. There were so many buttons for the kids to push so they could watch all the little models do things! I'm pretty sure Grant pressed every single one.

They had a little Thomas too but I didn't get a
good picture of it.

One building had old cars in it.

The building I was most excited about looked like it was undergoing some repairs so most of it was restricted inside. It was the building that had all the old firetrucks in it (and a plane that Grant could see through the window).

After that, it was on to the roundhouse to check out more trains! So much neat stuff at this place!

From here you can see the turntable that you can ride. Of course,
we had to do that but it was raining so I didn't take pictures.

And we got to see Thomas on one of his last rides of the day.

After that, it was time to start heading back to the car but not before stopping so Grant could run through the hay maze.

I didn't realize how big this place was until we got there. If I had, I would have planned better because we didn't get to see everything. We'll definitely be making plans to go back!

Grant's 5th Birthday Party

This year for Grant's 5th birthday party, we had a splash party (or water party or whatever you want to call it). I filled the backyard with water-related items and let the kids go to town. It was a bit chaotic (to be expected, yes?) but I think the kids had fun. My sister was in town for the week and was a HUGE help getting the party ready!

There were approximately one million children in my backyard but these pictures kind of look like no one showed up. I left out pictures that included other children just in case the other parents don't want their kid plastered all over my blog.

We did some beachy decorations inside and pretty much let the water toys outside be the decorations for the yard (except for some pool noodle garland I made that was so fun!).

The banner I made for Grant's first birthday!

Fun little buckets for Grant's friends to take home
(my sister did a LOT of cooking and cleaning for me
so I could sew stuff for the kiddos - thanks sister!)

I didn't have any games or anything planned for the kids, just play time. I had a slip-n-slide, a sprinkler, some beach balls to play with, water guns, and water balloons. The water balloons lasted about 5 minutes - I should have seen that coming. The slip-n-slide had to be repositioned about 10 times but we eventually got it working great (especially after putting some soap on it!).

I have no idea how I managed to get a picture of just
Grant going on the slip-n-slide

Sitting in one of the water gun re-fill buckets

Bubbles!

I love this beach ball sprinkler! And it's apparently quite sturdy.

The kids played for about an hour before we broke out the pinata. After going to a birthday party earlier this year that had a pinata, Grant really wanted to do one. He picked out a shark. 

So we filled it with his favorite candies...and those poor kids tried so hard to bust it open but in the end, we had to get Husband to knock it down. Which STILL didn't actually bust it. So he tore it open and dumped out the candy...ha!

We did presents and cake after the pinata.

He got a real pair of cowboy boots from Gramma
& Grandpa so he put on his hat to go with them

Telling an animated story of dragons blowing
fire after eating spicy tacos

Really not sure what this was about...maybe cake.

Cake. Grant wanted a shark cake (his favorite birthday activity is looking at cake pictures to figure out what he wants me to make) and he picked one that was supposed to have the shark standing up but that didn't happen. I think he loved it anyway.

3 layers of chocolate cake

Happy Birthday, Grant!

Would you believe he ate the cake this year?? We went from Grant wanting a cake, to Grant wanting ice cream sundaes, back to cake because he decided he loves cake  - which I didn't believe for a minute. I don't know how much he ate at the party, but we still have some leftovers and he's actually eating it. It only took 5 years :)

Grant put on a little show for us after his friends left:

(Currently, he's asking to be a country singer for Halloween)

And he kind of continued the party while we were cleaning up. We turned the slip-n-slide back on and Grant kept up the fun while we cleaned up the yard (and picked up what must have been thousands of pieces of balloon). 

Grant had such an awesome time! I'm so glad his friends could come play and celebrate with him!