Hands on House

Our family can now evaluate the difference between the two children's museums in our area.  Sapphire has stated she prefers the Hands on House in Lancaster.  While Port Discovery of Baltimore is about 12 times the size of the little Lancaster place, the Hands on House allowed the girls all-day face painting, and they made use of it. 

Both places kept them busy. The 2 story jungle gym in Baltimore made them giggle just to look at it, but the Hands on House was cleaner and quieter--less class trip, more family day out. 

Their little stations offer a chance to build styrofoam snow forts (to pummel with soft bean bag snow balls), pick and sell corn, and run an assembly line, among other things.  The girls really enjoyed exploring this all together. 

The face painting was the highlight, though, and they kept going back for more.  Ruby was not a fan of paint on her own face, but she eventually saw the beauty of having a father who would sit patiently while little girls stabbed near his eyes with paintbrushes.

There is Sapphire's special smile again.  The place was only open from 11-4pm, and though we took an hour break for lunch, we used up just about as much of the time there as we could.  It kept them busy.  The older two especially seemed to enjoy the toy assembly line of wiffle balls and blocks at the end.  Their daddy and I wished there was a nap room--watching them have so much fun wore us out.

Side note: I've been prepping for my trip to northern Europe in June. I *love* planning things out, and the friend I'm traveling with is very busy, so I get to mull over all sorts of details. A planner's delight. Soon I'll turn my attentions to the revisions to the Christmas book the editor suggested or VBS (coming this August!), but for now I love wandering the streets of Copenhagen and Oslo in my mind (alongside Rick Steves, my tour guide of choice for this trip). 

Next week marks Ruby's sixth month anniversary with us. We all talked about Family Day during lunch (that's the 1 year anniversary of being all together). This is my preferred term for Gotcha Day. Gotcha is not a word!  The girls thought Family Day would be all about Ruby, but I want us to see it as a celebration of our complete family, not just one person.  We'll have to talk about this more as a family.

I sent a 6 month update to Ruby's foster home and got an immediate, encouraging reply. It is so nice to have that contact! 

This was Sapphire's third and final face painting of the day. They really developed, didn't they?

She didn't want to wash it off.