Fractured

Anwyn is sporting this lovely blue cast for the next two weeks. She was playing soccer in the street with the neighborhood kids when she tripped and landed on her left elbow. When it was still painful the next morning we made a trip to the orthopedic doctor for some x-rays. The verdict: a nondisplaced radial head fracture. The growth plate was not damaged, so it should heal fine and quickly. This makes Anwyn's second broken bone (her first was when she broke her arm diving off our bed at 14 months old).

She is taking the cast in stride, and it certainly hasn't slowed down her reading.

First Day of School

August 27th finds us back to school. Anwyn is attending second grade, Lily is doing homeschool preschool with mom, and Zach gets to join in on the preschool when he is interested.

 

North Carolina Museums of Natural Sciences and History

On the last Saturday before school started we headed over to Raleigh to check out the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and the NC Museum of History. It was fun to have Ryan and Marcelaine and Kevin and Heidi join us for some of the day.

NC Museum of Natural Sciences

 Ah! Don't eat us!

A sloth-it moved more quickly than I had expected.

NC Museum of History

 Zach loves cars, so it was fun for him to see real life race cars (from famous North Carolinians Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty-who is Nascar's most successful driver).

 We were happy when the museum clarified "Tar Heel", a nickname for North Carolinians. It comes from the "state's history as leading producer of naval stores, including tar. Workers in this messy business surely wore samples of the product of on their feet."

 

A replica of the Wright brother's airplane, flown at Kitty Hawk, NC.

 Soldiers in the army in WWII.

The Museum of Life and Science

Durham has an awesome museum, The Museum of Life and Science. I had heard great things about it, but the price of admission was a bit out of our range. But I was thrilled to discover that they offer free admission to Durham residents every Wednesday afternoon. Hooray! Once we heard the news, we were there every Wednesday for the rest of the summer. The museum offers much to explore, with many hands on exhibits. We saw something new every time we went, and we all loved it. Here are some of the photo highlights.

The Dinosaur Trail

(with our friends, the Wrights)

The play yard and train

The Butterfly Conservatory

This was a favorite of the kids, so we were sure to visit this area every week. On our last visit we had great luck with a number of butterfly's that were willing to land on the children and be held.  Lily was especially thrilled.

The Mist

They have a special seasonal exhibit right now called Into the Mist. Mist blows up from the ground, and the kids can run through it and play hide and seek and cool off in it.

I don't have pictures of everything, but we also loved the Farmyard, the Insectorium, the lemurs, and the Science Center. It's a really fabulous place to visit!

Duke Homestead

This Saturday we visited the Duke Homestead and participated in the children's festival. The girls had fun dressing up in historical clothes, making rag dolls, and making sugar cookies on an old cookstove.