Easter Weekend (cousins & BodyWorld)

We had a completely non traditional Easter weekend this year, as we spent the weekend in Houston with a quick trip to Seabrook on Saturday afternoon.

My sister had her second little boy a couple of weeks prior and we'd planned to visit them that weekend early on since baseball has all of our weekends through the end of May.  We made a mini family vacation out of it and had a blast.

SK and Banister had fun outside.

Snake in the city!  (Luckily it was dead.)  SK was super proud of her find and I wish I could post the 4 second video of her telling me all about it.

Baby Bennett is just precious and we loved our time with him.  :)

Also, this was great for J & L since they regularly suggest/request that we have another.  Um, nope!  But we'll take all the time we can get with this little guy!

On the note of babies, this was our first family trip where not one baby item was packed and it was GLORIOUS.  Precious times then and precious times now.

We headed to Houston in time to get there for dinner and the 6:00 showing of The Case for Christ, which we highly recommend.  As we were leaving the theater J said, "I've just got to see that movie again."

Did you catch that we took all three kids??  Yes, these days are all kinds of fun.  :)

Saturday we got up and headed to the Houston Health Museum where there were two exhibits we wanted to experience; BodyWorld (which Hots and I had seen way before kids) and The Body (which was geared toward kids with its eight foot tall replica of a human heart-that actually pumped-and a section of large intestine the kids could walk through among other things.

Well, I LOVED BodyWorld (BodyWorks back then) and have kept an eye out for its return to Texas and was super excited to see that it would be in Houston when Bennett was born.

Body Worlds is a traveling exposition of preserved human bodies and body parts. In this exhibit what is enticed to see are real skinned humans and other anatomical structures of the body that have gone through the process of plastination. Wikipedia

And as I see it, a totally fascinating look at the human body for weird science people like myself.

I just assumed the kids would like it like I do and would have at ages 3, 7, & 8, but some wise people who love our children dearly were not so sure so, long story a bit shorter, a deep discussion was suggested and had one day on the way home from school to feel things out ahead of time.

After as many descriptions as I could think of and lots and lots of questions from L, J, who had been heavily involved in a chapter book, glanced up from his reading to ask, "Hey, uh, do they serve food in there?"  Check.  J was good to go.

We did end up taking all three and were pleasantly surprised that many children of all ages were there.  And for some reason we were surprised when our three-year-old stepped up to the first body and announced with great accuracy specific parts of his anatomy.

This particular BodyWorld exhibit highlighted preventable diseases (Type II diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and smoker's lung cancer) which was very eye opening for the kids; especially the smoker which had made a huge impact on me all those years ago.

After our museum visit and lunch (Yea for big city restaurants!) we headed to Seabrook to spend time with Trey, Sarah, Banister, and Bennett.  Had a great time and probably wore them out.  :)

The kids wanted to swim at the hotel so we did that and headed home on Sunday morning.

On Monday when the kids got home I had an array of healthy snacks out for them (snacks are my downfall when it comes to feeding them healthy foods; hello, goldfish!).  J wanted something else and when I let him know that these were his options he said, "We never should have tooken you to that Body thing."

We are currently looking for a grammar exhibit.