Not Ready For Summer To End

We just haven't been ready to say goodbye to summer.  Many friends and family have been beginning first days of school this week.  Instead, we took a surprise trip to see my side of the family.  Ryan adores his Aunt Larissa, who dotes on him and constantly plays with him.  So my mom and I thought it would be fun to surprise Larissa.  She had no idea we were coming.  

A secondary purpose for our visit, other than spending time with family, was to look through my mom's old homeschool curriculum and prepare for the school year. In our homeschool days, my mom had enough curriculum to stock a small elementary school and much of it is still laying around, collecting dust.  She had offered to give me any of it I could use.   So I have spent several hours this week sitting in the crawl space opening boxes and making piles of educational treasures and organizing a plan for the year.

Of course, it hasn't been all work.  Mom is too fun for that.  She couldn't resist taking us to the Franklin Institute and Drexel to see the dinosaur bones. 

 Ryan got to meet Ben Franklin.  We also went to the Omni Theater and saw a show on butterflies.  Ryan was super impressed with how the screen gave the illusion of movement.

 At Drexel, Ryan enjoyed looking at the dinosaurs and dinosaur bones.  

 In the butterfly house, we were able to observe the different stages of the butterflies from caterpillar, coccoon, to winged creature. 

There was also an exhibit on animals that are biolumenescent, creatures like glow worms, anglerfish, and fire-flies.  They had a dress up area that the kids could pretend to be jelly fish and lightning-bugs.

 And a place to dress up and pretend they were under the sea to see the anglerfish.  

When it was time to leave, Dylan couldn't be parted from a stuffed eel they had as a prop.  He was pretending it was a snake, making it slither and hiss and calling it a python.  So, Grandma could not resist spoiling him.

He left with a giant stuffed rattlesnake.  Which he slept with, which meant I had to sleep with it too, since he's bunking with me this trip.  Yes, I had nightmares.