Getting Our Jollies in July

After we got back from our Phoenix trip, we only had about a week and a half until the "meet and greet" for our school. We had so little summer left, and had so much partying still to do! Luckily, we managed to fit in a few things, like the following:

Our last two Family Fun Fridays

The first, on July 11, was pretty mellow...understandable, considering how tired out we still were from our Phoenix trip. However, the kids needed to get out of the house for some wiggles. Unfortunately, when it's super hot and humid (as July tends to be in Arizona), our options are sort of limited. At least we were able to spend the morning in Tucson, first frolicking in a splash pad...

As you can see, there's a park next door to the splash pad too!

 

...then eating lunch and hanging out at the Tucson Mall (oh, blessed air conditioning!). We spent a little time at the kids' play center; however, my girls are just getting too big to goof off inside that play area any more. Luckily, they seemed to realize it and we moved on quickly.

We also visited an organ store (as in, the musical instrument...the kids wanted to play on every organ in the store); the Build-A-Bear workshop (perhaps anticipating their Christmas present; ugh, it's going to be so expensive for them each to get one!); and best of all, a pet store that had dozens of puppies! Our dog-loving girls were in ecstasy watching all the wagging tails, and left almost in tears that they wouldn't be taking one home with them. I know there will be a dog in our family's future, but I don't know when exactly. I just know we're still at least a year away!

Our second (and last!) Family Fun Friday of the season was a bit more involved. It began with a trip to one of our favorite places...the International Wildlife Museum. It's always nice to check out all the taxidermied animals and learn more about the natural world.

 

It had been a while since we'd visited the Wildlife Museum, and a few changes had been made. There was a hall set aside for a photo-essay on penguins in the wild; a little further on, there was a "sensory safari" experience that the kids just didn't get. It's an exhibit that shows how visually-impaired people would experience a museum like this one; mostly, that involves them touching the exhibits. The small corridor is completely dark; you have to slowly run your hand along the left side of the wall to feel the fur/teeth contours of the animal statues.

It's an interesting concept, but all the girls could focus on was how dark it was inside the exhibit, and how scary it was for them to be in the dark with a bunch of dead animals. Then they made a game out of it and started running through the exhibit as fast as they could; needless to say, I was not pleased with them! Knocking down a bunch of other visitors in a dark room...nope, not a great idea.

At any rate, the kids behaved themselves at the museum otherwise. Unfortunately, after our visit, that Friday became less "fun," since it was time to head to Great Expectations for the "meet and greet" with our teachers. At we managed to squeeze in a Fun Friday activity alongside the "non-fun" meet and greet (I was also invited to a night of Bunco with some girlfriends; at least it was a fun evening for me, if not the kids!).

A glow-in-the-dark Pump It Up playdate

Fridays weren't the only day we had fun during these two weeks. On a whim, we decided to visit Pump It Up, the indoor inflatable playground that we've visited many times in the past. It had been a long time (more than a year) since we'd gone to Pump It Up, and so we decided to sneak in a visit before school started. As luck would have it, we chose to visit them on a special day.

 During the summer, Pump It Up holds a GLOW! Jump Time once a week (during the school year, it's only held in the evenings). For their GLOW! session, they turn off the overhead fluorescent lights, turn on the black lights and the disco balls, hand out glow necklaces, and let the kids run wild and free bathed in a whole new type of light.

 

Needless to say, the girls loved it...maybe even more than usual, since the atmosphere was so different this time around. There was one more new wrinkle: Pump It Up recently installed a "storm-wind simulator," that kids can use for an additional fee. The girls had tried one of these machines in San Diego early last year, and they begged and begged to try it out again, and I obliged because I am clearly a pushover:

 We helped out the juggler

James Reid the Juggler Extraordinaire comes to the Green Valley library every summer. He juggles bowling pins, balls, ribbons, bowling balls, miscellaneous sporting equipment, rubber chickens, and a host of other things. He's always fun to watch. He's also pretty handy with the Chinese yo-yo, which is basically a super-sized yo-yo. The string for a Chinese yo-yo is unconnected to the actual yo-yo (the axis of the yo-yo just slides along the string, which the operator manipulates however he wants). Mr. Reid wanted to perform a trick in which he swipes the yo-yo off of someone's head from a distance, but he needed a volunteer...

 

...and that volunteer turned out to be Lorelai! As you can tell by the pictures, she was pretty scared to be up there on the spot. She probably thought she'd get whipped in the face by the hurled string. Luckily, everything turned out all right, and she survived. But the show wasn't over; a few minutes later, Celeste was called up as a volunteer too!

Her role was a little less substantial; she was there as a "control group" who had to hold a bowling ball and verify that it was, in fact, as heavy and ponderous as they usually are. Having proven that, Celeste was sent to sit back down and Mr. Reid juggled the bowling ball along with a golf club and a baseball bat! And then he juggled three bowling balls at once! He's a juggling genius, I tells ya!

Lorelai learns to "Beat It"

Lorelai had participated in a hip-hop "mini-camp" class last summer, and I thought I'd let her try it out again, since it's her favorite type of dancing (Celeste had participated as well, but she was not overly thrilled with hip-hop; plus, she'd just had a whole year full of dance classes). Ms. Cindy is a really fun, enthusiastic hip-hop teacher, and I knew Lorelai would have fun doing another mini-camp. Best of all, Cindy allowed Lorelai to take the class for free (with a night of baby-sitting her kids as an exchange). It was very gracious of her!

This year, the kids did some dancing every day, but I didn't get it all recorded (too many errands to run in the meantime). However, their final day of dancing was pretty memorable. It was an "80s throwback day," in which the kids were to show up wearing 80s clothes. And what music did they learn to dance to? Michael Jackson, of course!

I had so much fun watching Lorelai get down with her bad self! She wants to take another hip-hop class sometime in the future, but we will have to check on Ms. Cindy's schedule to see if it will fit in. With band and the school play on the horizon, Lorelai may not have time to participate this year...we will have to wait and see! At any rate, it was a fun way to wrap up Lorelai's summer.