Category: Family

One of the things I love about living in Dayton is being near to such a great children’s museum – the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery. This weekend Bobby and I took the kids for an afternoon of family fun and learning. Bobby and Jonah enjoyed some of the areas for smaller kids while the big kids and I checked out what is always our favorite part of every visit; the museum’s latest and greatest rotating exhibit. Up and running now is a really fun one and probably the one I learned the most from: the Mystery of the Mayan Medallion.

This exotic exhibit takes you into the rain forest of Palenque, Mexico to learn all about the Maya people and their culture – as well as to search for a lost team of archaeologists and their sought-after treasure! At the beginning of the exhibit, each participant takes a paper with questions identified by a symbol. Each station in the exhibit also has a symbol that will help you answer the specified question. I loved this because the kids and I had to really look carefully at each stop to get all the info we needed to answer our questions and unlock the Mystery of the Mayan Medallion!

Each station had loads to learn about Mayan culture – here’s Sophie absolutely THRILLED to learn the glyphs for Mayan numbers. She chose to make the number four:

After we went through all the stations, we figured out which four Mayan glyphs we’d need to unlock the Mystery of the Mayan Medallion and get a glimpse of the mysterious treasure! I won’t give anything away on that score, though! You have to go solve that mystery for yourself!

This is a really fun exhibit, and it is chock-full of information. Definitely plan to spend a good chunk of your time here; I’d say it takes at least 30-45 minutes to do it right!

The Mystery of the Mayan Medallion is at the Boonshoft through January 4th, so make sure and visit while it’s here – definitely on your kids’ holiday school break if not before. You’ll be glad you did!

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The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery is the sponsor of this post. All opinions about the exhibit are my own.

My darling Jonah boy is now almost 22 months old and…I finally just got the kid’s photos done professionally! Oh my poor, neglected third child! Of course I had to throw my big kids in for a session, too! They hadn’t had theirs done in over two years.  Ooops.

So, anyway! The cure for my photographic slackerdom was my friend Cyrissa of Immerse Photography. Last weekend we headed over to a beautiful arboretum in our area for an outdoor photo session. Jonah was ready to RUN in all that beautiful wide-open space, so I was worried Cyrissa wouldn’t be able to get any good shots. He was being a total booger and just wanted to be on the move.  But, as you can see, she worked her magic well. Look at my baby!

And my big boy:

And my pretty girl:

I cannot tell you how much I ADORE all these photos! What’s not to love?

If you are in the Dayton area, I really recommend you contact Immerse for your family portraits. Cyrissa is professional, fun, and as you can see, extremely talented, You can see the flyer below for her contact info – tell her I sent you and you’ll get 10% off your print orders.  Wheee! You know I loves me a coupon!

To see more of Immerse Photography’s great work, check out their Facebook page.

Thanks Cyrissa, for these beautiful portraits!

{Please insert comments below about how beautiful my children are!}

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Immerse Photography provided me with a portrait session free of charge to facilitate this review.

Today is a momentous occasion – Jenny’s 35th birthday!

It is hard for me to believe that Jenny’s 35, because that is soooooooo old it seems like JUST YESTERDAY that we were celebrating her 30th birthday, right here on this blog. Which means we’ve been doing this for a long time. Blogging, I mean. We’ve been celebrating her birthday much longer than that.

I love giving Jenny a hard time (my favorite topic right now are the pictures she posts of her FACE – have you seen them? Lord have mercy. The girl loves her some make up. And also her face.), but I can only get away with that because she knows how much I love her. We talk/text/IM/tweet/FB just about constantly, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.

I could do without all the pictures of her, however.

Just kidding! I love you, Cousin.

Please join me in wishing Jenny a very happy 35th!!