Port Discovery Children's Museum 3/13

Children's Museum's are the best.  Well, except they can cost a bit but luckily this day was half off, or something like that.  It was just me, by myself, with all the kids.  We spent about 3-4 hours there and were able to make it home in time to pick up Benjamin from work.  We really had a good time.

A Mummy Adventure!  The younger kids were a little scared especially when Entegra went in the sarcophagus and a mummy body lit up behind her.

The had a Wizard of Oz theme which we really enjoyed.  It's one of our favorite movies.

Happy Independence Day! July 4, 2013

We had quite the busy day.  Actually, a busy weekend.  I'll just start with the one day.

We started the day by enjoying breakfast at our Church Breakfast.  The kids put on their 4th of July shirts they had made, mostly by themselves, and off we went.

While we were at the breakfast we learned where the local parade was and followed a couple of people and enjoyed that.  Talk about candy!  Those parade people threw TONS of candy.  Some passed out water and one even passed out popsicles.  It lasted for about 2 hours but it was worth it to see one of the Young Women's group float.  They made a temple on their float and passed out "Pass Along" cards.

After the parade we went home to cool off and try to get Bracken to take a nap, which of course didn't happen and instead he fell asleep in the 5 minutes before getting to the place for the fireworks.  We found a perfect place to sit and wait for the fireworks and this year we were there for about 5+ hours.  We always enjoy that though.  This year was the easiest we've had for waiting for the fireworks.  We have this half tent thingy that provided shade, we brought blankets, food and water in our cooler, a soccer ball, glow sticks and sunscreen. Plus the weather wasn't too bad.  It was mostly sunny but not too hot and a nice breeze would blow through now and then.  As always, our fireworks were spectacular!

Daddy, Bracken, and Inara enjoying time in the sun playing soccer.

Entegra and Braddock cooling it in the tent-ish thingy.

Inara and Bracken enjoying a movie

Mommy, Braddock, and Entegra coming back from a walk. 

(Let's just pretend I look better in this photo, okay?)

"Sissy, you have sparkles on your behind.  Don't worry, I'll get them."- Braddock

Tackle Time

"I have glow sticks everywhere!"

"Oh yeah, I'm busting a move."-Entegra  "Sissy, your so embarrassing."-Braddock and Inara.

Sitting calmly and watching the fireworks.

Independence Day 2012

We always enjoy our 4th's of July.  We enjoy taking our dinner with us, scouting out a spot hours early, sitting in the sweltering heat, and figuring out what to do for those many hours.  Eventually, someone always has to use the restroom and it's our great excuse to buy a soda and sit in the air conditioned restaurant for as long as we can.  This year, our brother-in-law came with us.  In the morning, we attended our church Scout group breakfast.  In the afternoon, we went downtown and listened to some live music, visited booths and went on a "hay ride".  Entegra enjoyed playing card games with Daddy and Uncle Jon or as they've been calling him, Uncle Jonny.

The fireworks were great as usual.  They were probably a little too much this year.  I think it went on for over 20 mins!  Bracken was scared most of the time, which makes sense since the fireworks percussion sound ricochet through our bodies.  If I'm remembering my years correctly, Bracken even managed to fall asleep while I was holding his ears.

Oh Forget it.

I keep trying to do new things, which is not a bad thing but it can cause a lot of confusion, stress, and then I have the whole- other people think I'm crazy because I start and stop whatever that thing is fairly quickly.  I've noticed that I'll tell someone in my family, "Oh we're trying this new thing because of all these great reasons," and then a month later I've stopped.

Now, I just need to put it out there that it isn't always because I'm lazy, although that has been a reason, I won't deny. :)  A fair amount of the time I stop because it didn't work for us.  It took too much time, energy, money...whatever.  Other times, it just failed.  I tried, it failed.  Other times, it's too hot, too cold, something came up (like becoming pregnant and having a new baby).

So, now I'll attempt to do what everyone is always saying.  Don't worry about everyone else's opinions. How are you going to know if you never try?  Just because one way works for one family, doesn't mean it'll work for mine.

Some fails:
http://heinerhullabaloo.blogspot.com/2011/08/35-challenge-redo.html
   *yeah right, who can manage $35 per week with 5 people, well good for them!

http://heinerhullabaloo.blogspot.com/2011/07/evening-schedule.html
    *Chore lists and evening schedules are constantly changing now we have a new one that is a little more            permanent only because it's screwed into the wall and not falling down and getting lost.

http://heinerhullabaloo.blogspot.com/2011/05/great-cloth-diaper-change-for-our.html
    * We still use cloth diapers but it's an on/off thing and we've learned so much about what works and doesn't work for us.

Some successes:
http://heinerhouseholdhappenings.blogspot.com/2011/09/dinning-room-chair-project.html
    * This was a fail and success.  The table cloth covers easily tore but I've since recovered the chairs with a more sturdy wipe off-able fabric.

http://heinerhouseholdhappenings.blogspot.com/2011/09/home-made-baby-food-pears.html
    * I make most of the baby food and it is always successful.

http://heinerhullabaloo.blogspot.com/search/label/Family%20Outings
    * Our family outings are always a success, because we have fun.  Just because someone fell down or was super cranky from being tired, does not make it a failure.

With all this in mind, I plan on shutting down the Heiner Household Happenings because why shouldn't I put all my stuff on one blog as though it's a family journal of all or most things that go on.  I enjoy hearing peoples responses to things we've done and tried.  I like a visual place for me to see what we've done.  It's so much easier than having a million journals lying around or printing out pictures, cutting, pasting...blah, blah, blah.

Alright, now I'm babbling.  So, in honor of our favorite book The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales...you can stop reading this now.  Really, there isn't anything left here but a bunch of filler.  I'm just writing more to make me look smart.  I only had 2 paragraphs and that is hardly worth a post.  Besides I didn't say anything more than what I've already said (you know, the links, because I already wrote those).  So, stop reading now.  Seriously.  There isn't anything else to see here folks. :)

Flashback: Bear Lake, UT 2008

We did one of those seminar things where they try to convince you to buy their product for over an hour and in the end we had a short lived time share in a nice suite (?) at Bear Lake in Utah.  We quite enjoyed it.  We invited Ben's brother and sister-in-law to join us for a couple of days.

We made it to the lake only once, the other days, if I remember correctly, were rainy.  Entegra was the only child we had at the time, well except for the growing Inara in my tummy, and she had a great time.

Benjamin is not the biggest fan of going into the water, so he thought I was some kind of nuts for walking out farther than my ankles.  Little did he know that his children would be water babies.

Heiner Family Visit February 2012

Benjamin's parents were able to come visit us for about a week.  I probably wasn't the best company, but I'll get to that in a later post.
The kids absolutely loved their visit and took advantage of any minute they could with either of their grandparents.

Kurt (Grandpa) was almost immediately set to work teaching Benjamin how to build our basement.

Mary (Grandma) sang songs and played with the very willing children.

We had a great visit.  Benjamin went with his dad to Lowe's and bought a TON of necessary items for building up the basement.  Later, Ben's siblings and their kids all came over as well, except for the family in Oregon.  His brothers were all very helpful with working in the basement.  At some point Jon and Ann-Marie noticed the playhouse sitting outside, waiting to be played with, and cleaned it up for the kids to play with on the deck.  They are still having a blast with it.

See the four kids there trying to be patient, while waiting for Uncle Jon to clean off the play house?

On Monday, we went to Mt. Vernon which is George Washington's house.

We had a very fun visit!  It was so nice to see them after such a long time.

Flashback: Thanksgiving 2011

Benjamin arrived safely home after his trip to Spain the same day as my Mom, and sister Aislinn arrived.  We had pizza, sang Happy Birthday to Aislinn, and Inara, and they blew out their candles. We all ate yummy cake that Entegra and Inara made and decorated.  That was Saturday.

Sunday we went to church.  After dinner we went outside.  My mom, Benjamin, and Entegra made a maze out of the leaves in the back yard.  We had fun running around it.  I wish I'd taken pictures of that.

Monday we just went into town and shopped around a little.

Tuesday we went the Harpers Ferry in West Virginia.  It was really wet and kind of cold.  I think the kids handled it pretty well though.  We visited several little museums, bought the girls hats (because we couldn't find an umbrella anywhere), and went through the wax museum about the life of John Brown.  My mom, sister, and I all attempted to stand in 3 states at once - West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia.  We got as close as we could.  In order to do that exactly, we would've had to stand in the rivers and that wasn't an option.

Wednesday we went to Jamestown.  It was awesome.  Sadly, I didn't realize there was the actual Jamestown down another road, but we got to see a Native American village, Colonist colony (Jamestown-ish), and three historic type ships.  I loved it, thought it was great!

Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving.  I'd like to think I did a good job planning and preparing the food.  We had a nice dinner and then went out for roller skating.  I had such a good time.  Entegra had a really hard time to begin with but after a lot of patience, I was able to help her around several times, and she ended up really liking it.  Inara enjoyed going around a couple of times, but Bracken had to sit on the sidelines with whichever of us was taking a break.  (Originally, I had understood that they allowed strollers on the floor, but apparently only on specific nights.)
We had a pretty good time, but ouch on the ankles and I had quite a biff at the end.  Full on, trip and slide right on my belly - hilarious - my elbows were killing me the next couple of days.

Friday, Benjamin and I went out for Black Friday shopping.  Not terribly successful but we got a gift card out of it.  Later I went out with my Mom, Kathy (I guess it's about time I name her), and Aislinn.  Clothes, clothes, wonderful clothes.  We were a little more successful.

Saturday we just relaxed, then it was time for Mom and Aislinn to fly back home.

Sorry Mom, it was just too funny.  I had to put in this picture of you "relaxing".

We had an eventful and fun week, and hope to do more again next year!

Merry Christmas at Arlington National Cemetery

Benjamin is one of the scout leaders for church and therefore he gets to go to the activities with them.  This last weekend, Dec 10th, they were going to Arlington National Cemetery for the Laying of the Wreaths.  It was an amazing experience.  We were able to see many of the tombstones of the people that have fought for our country.  Many of the tombstones were of people that had been able to live long full lives, but there were those we found that had died young, during a war.

When we first arrived at the cemetery, there weren't very many people, but there were several semi-trucks filled to capacity with wreaths that needed to be laid.  Honestly, I thought we'd be there all day trying to lay all those wreaths.  However, as soon as they were ready to get out the boxes, tons of other people showed up and it took maybe an hour to adorn the tombstones.

We learned that the symbols on top of the stones symbolized the religion or denomination of the soldier.  We were told that the tombs with crosses we could place a wreath at (of course), but the Star of David symbol we do not place a wreath at (however they hope to find something soon to honor that person during Hanukkah).  We found another symbol that was familiar but didn't know what it was until another person from our scout group pointed it out that it was the Angel Moroni.  

At the end of the morning we went to the Tomb of the Unknown and attempted to watch the changing of the guard.

Overall we had a great time and are considering doing this as a Christmas tradition.

New York State Fair

A couple weeks ago we went up to New York to visit some of our family.  We had great time!  They heard or saw somewhere that the New York State Fair was going to be there the same time we were, so we took a trip to the fair.
It somehow managed to be really hot.  We didn't bring any appropriate clothing for this trip since it's usually colder there than here in Virginia and we had been very autumny for the last week or two.  Oh well.  We got out the sunscreen, got the hair off our necks and set out.
I really thought the girls would be more afraid of the rides but they weren't scared in the lest.  Entegra was asking the entire time, "Can we go on the Ferris Wheel now?"  Entegra was smiling for the entire ride.  She was able to enjoy many rides and most of them without Mommy.  Benjamin doesn't do rides.  I actually have a funny dating story to go with that but I'll have to write down later.
Back to the kids.  Bracken fell asleep after several hours of whining and just being uncomfortable.  Inara was sad that she couldn't do as many rides as Sissy, she's 1-2 inches too short, but she still had a great time.
We were at the fair for about 6-8 hours (can't remember).  I really don't remember much about the first half, only searching for a bathroom for the girls.  But I do remember that didn't take 3 hours.  We tried to find somewhere to eat that wouldn't break the bank.  Ben or his brother found a hamburger place with reasonable prices but less than stellar hamburgers.  A bun, the hamburger meat...that's it.  But Ben and Jon were able to get a bloomin' onion, which was delicious.

Inara climbing the fence to look at the calf.

First half of the day...I remember now...we walked around, looked at booths a little, saw the rear end of several cows.  We saw a grey Swiss cow, that was a type of cow I've never seen before.  Attempted to see a Sea Lion show (or seal, don't know which) but watched the back of peoples heads for a little while instead.  Entegra was on Daddy's shoulders so she got to see.  After that we were too hot so we went in a building and looked at the exhibits.  The girls were able to make a few things and hold a baby chick.

Entegra holding a chick.

We went outside and saw a bow and arrow activity.  Ann-Marie and I decided we wanted to give it a try.  Entegra jumped all over, super excited so I let her try too.  After we all had our turns, we sat down and watched a Pow Wow.

Finally, we ate lunch and went on to the carnival part of the fair.  Entegra and Inara were excited to go on rides and waste money on the games.  We repeatedly told the girls, the point to the games was to try your best, but have fun trying with out expectations of winning...because seriously, the chances of winning are next to nothing.  

Over all, we had a really great weekend.  We were able to play games, and go to the play ground...just have a good time.  On the other hand, we had quite the church experience due to cranky, tiredness, but that was just a small part of the trip.  Really, the kids just loved playing with their baby cousin and all her toys.  :)