Life is crazy right now. Andy’s (16th and final) tennis season has started, both the kids have birthdays this month, Sam’s playing t-ball and Kate is swimming. It seems we’re always moving, going, doing.

Last night, though, I sat at the kitchen table alone. The kids had already eaten at Grandma’s and Andy was eating with the tennis boys. I was eating leftovers and playing Candy Crush, not paying too much attention to either one.

Before long, I looked down and saw this.

Sam picked a spot on the kitchen floor, right beside me, to play with his action figures. He didn’t say anything to me, and we didn’t talk, but we were close to each other, and that was enough.

A couple minutes later, someone else joined our party.

Kate came out to discuss her costume for her upcoming school play.

As I sat there with the two of them, with nothing special, nothing in particular going on, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for those two amazing kids. Gratitude for the simple moments, for that moment in time. For kairos.

Friday was Joshua and Sophie’s first official day of Spring break and we finally got to go see the Microbes exhibit at the Boonshoft! Woohooo! The microbes that made us sick and kept us away from Microbes have finally vanquished.

We had a BLAST! This exhibit was my favorite one yet, and we’re definitely going back again before it leaves in a month. There were so many different attractions within one exhibit, we honestly could have spent our entire trip to the museum just within the world of Microbes.

Joshua blasted away microbes in a video game, we saw some amazing 3-D models of microbes in a super-fun black light room, the kiddos examined microbes (good and  bad!) through a microscope, and we learned about all the different places microbes (again, good and bad) live and have the potential to live in our kitchen.

Every part of this exhibit was extremely interactive, but none more so than the “Disease Detectives” scenarios. Each scenario had a patient and we got to take their vitals, explore their symptoms and background, and use diagnostic tools to figure out what microbe caused their sickness and how they were infected. Then, at the end we took a quiz to test our knowledge. It was super-fun! Sophie got REALLY hands-on with shoving the giant q-tip up the giant nose. We couldn’t quite convince ourselves to get that hands-on with the faux stool sample, though. It was rather life-like!

We loved the Microbes exhibit at the Boonshoft and we’re definitely going back to see it again before it ends May 5th! If you’re looking for a fun and educational day out with the kiddos, you should head over there too. You won’t regret it.