bloggers ate my babies: our trip to the west siyyyyd

hayden is off of school this week so we decided to take a trip to grand rapids on tuesday to hang out with jenn and rainah. many people go to florida for their mid winter break. not us. we decided to travel to the west side for some lovely windy 12 degree weather. i honestly don't know how you west siders do it. i went to western for a year and i remember walking to classes in that weather. michigan is bad enough, you don't need to make it any worse on yourself by moving up north or even to the west side. it really wasn't much warmer here in the detroit area. but there wasn't the wind. or the snow that caused me to travel at 35 miles on the expressway because you couldn't see a darn thing except snow.
we really did have a wonderful time though. we showed up to jenn's and after transferring 2 car seats into her mini van we headed off to the grand rapids children museum. hayden actually had been to the museum last year at this time when mom took him on a trip to visit 1 1/2 month old rainah while i was still working. i believe that he remembered quite a bit of it as he kept asking to go see "the cars" which turned out to be a yellow slug bug.
they were doing a "bob the builder" thing so they had all sorts of tool type things and all of the cars from the bob the builder show. at one of the tables they had nuts and bolts and screws that you could put on a magnetic strip. hayden played for a couple of minutes while rainah and talan could have stood there for hours putting them in their mouths while we told them "no" and took them out. many minutes after leaving the table i looked in talan's mouth and found one of the washers. awesome parenting, i know.
hayden's favorite part at the museum was the bubble tables where he could make giant bubbles and one where he could actually pull a lever and stand inside of a giant bubble. he actually never was able to make the bubble go above his head, but he got close.
hayden, talan and rainah all also loved this little ramp that had different size bells that you could move around and then push golf balls down and listen to the dinging. they stayed there for quite awhile. and hayden even actually shared occasionally.
at the end of our visit we somehow got hayden to go into the arts and crafts room where he made his own rubber stamp that he was able to take home.
keeping the amazing parenting alive, at about 2pm we decided it was about time to leave and go get some lunch. lucky for me talan will still happily take a bottle and hayden could care less about eating so 2pm wasn't so much a big deal.
don met up with us and we had a really good lunch where hayden ate 1/2 of his french fries and drank his chocolate milk and talan and rainah had more food on the floor than in their stomachs. but they still managed to get quite a bit in there too. talan even ate quite a bit of the ham from my omelet. while in the car hayden said "talan still has a piece of ham in his mouth." that piece of ham probably stayed in his mouth for about 1/2 hour....just like his brother. oh well, at least he eats more than hayden.
after lunch we headed back to jenn and don's and let the kids play for awhile. i tried getting hayden to eat his leftover mac and cheese from lunch, which he didn't do, and then we packed up and left for home around 6pm. besides the spots where it was snowing, the ride was uneventful and we got home a little before 8:30pm.
we'll be taking another trip out there on the 1st to see justin's band play. i'm hoping for a little bit warmer weather this time around.
thanks for having us jenn, don and rainah! we'll see you next weekend.

hayden and talan in the mirror tunnel. hayden kept saying "there's so many of me!" yeah, that's just what this world needs: