Pumpkins!

Early in October, our neighborhood had a pumpkin painting party down at our community playground. Cody and Jaden enjoyed picking out their pumpkins at the grocery store almost as much as they liked actually painting the pumpkins! I didn't get a picture of their completed pumpkins since it was dark outside by the time we were done. Jaden painted his with splotches of green and then attempted to write his name. Cody painted a whole scene with a witch stealing a pumpkin.

Closer to Halloween we bought two new pumpkins for carving. Before cutting into the pumpkins, I had both boys look with me on the website pumpkinlady.com. This was a GREAT place to scroll through hundreds of free, printable pumpkin carving designs. This year, we chose to just focus on pumpkin faces. Jaden and Cody didn't even browse past the letter A name pumpkins before they made their decisions. Jaden chose a pumpkin face named Alistair, and Cody's pumpkin was named Arlo. Selecting their own pumpkin faces made Cody and Jaden even more excited to begin the carving process. So, of course, we began by cutting the pumpkin top...

...and then scooped out the insides. Both boys requested gloves for this step. Ha!

Not surprisingly, Daddy and Mommy ended up doing most of the pumpkin gut-scooping. :)

Once the pumpkins were fairly clean inside, we taped on the Arlo and Alistair faces and began carving.

Despite what it may look like in the above pictures, neither boy was yet able to maneuver his own carving knife. If Mommy or Daddy got the knife in position, they could often push the knife into the pumpkin, so that was about their extent of helping out this year. Progress every year, I guess! :)

Both boys helped to poke out their pumpkin's eyes and noses.

Cody was VERY eager to tear off the template and check out Arlo.

And here they are... the temporary Halloween additions to the Schleicher family:

Arlo, carved by Cody and Mommy

and Alistair, carved by Jaden and Daddy

Jaden and Cody's favorite picture of their pumpkins:

The day after our carving experience, Jaden and Cody treated these pumpkins like dear friends. The boys washed the pumpkins down several times with wet paper towels, sat on the porch next to them for long periods of time, and even tried dressing the pumpkins up with hats and other dress-up clothes. I guess we can call the pumpkin carving experience a success! :)

The Last of San Antonio

We squeezed in two final tourist stops on our last day in San Antonio before starting the 3-hour drive home. Just down the road from the DoSeum was the ZooEagle train, a train that runs around the entire city park where the San Antonio zoo is located. We didn't actually visit the zoo but just bought tickets for the train ride. The lines for the train were fairly long since the zoo was having a Halloween event that night and appeared to be packed with people.

We liked being able to sit down and relax on this train ride, and having a costumed train conductor was a nice touch, too. 

We crossed over the San Antonio river, passed by golf courses, and went through some wooded areas. 

After the train ride, we probably could've headed home based on our family's energy level, but you just can't visit San Antonio without stopping by the River Walk! Plus, this stop was just off the highway on our route home anyway. :)

Cody and Jaden were very curious about the river that went right up next to the sidewalk and the fun-looking boats that traveled along the river. What a beautiful and unique part of the city!

When Jaden and Cody asked about going on a boat ride, we caved in and bought tickets for a short tour. The historical information given was far over the boys' head, but they seemed to enjoy the boat ride experience.

We thoroughly enjoyed our little getaway to San Antonio and sure packed a lot into our 2-day vacation. Our exhausted boys slept the whole way home!

The DoSeum

I learned about this hands-on children's museum while I was researching tourist info for San Antonio. It got excellent reviews and looked like such a fun museum, but I didn't think we'd have time to visit since our trip was so short. Then, when we were at Sea World, this amazing couple behind us at one of the shows asked if we'd be in town for a few days and if we wanted free tickets that she had won to the DoSeum. Well, sure!! We were so happy that we had the chance to visit this museum and would highly recommend it to anyone else who travels to San Antonio.

The exhibits were very hands-on and perfect for our boys' age and interest level. First, Cody and Jaden had a dinosaur "fight" by stretching their arms in front of these two computers. The dinosaur necks on the screen would imitate whatever the boys' hands were doing, including opening and closing their mouths as the boys opened up their hands. So fun! 

Then, we spent a brief amount of time in this wind tunnel, testing to see how far each item would blow in the wind.

Jaden and Cody's very favorite exhibit was this large section of the museum called Little Town where they had a chance to dress up and act out different roles. Each area was so well done! The boys drove a trolley,

dressed up as construction workers,

actually moved features on this digger,

transported mulch,

pretended to be a pilot,

sent items back and forth to one another through the vacuum tubes (which are actually called pneumatic tubes, apparently-- I had to look it up!) at this bank,

and spent a long time pretending to be veterinarians. 

This section of Little Town was one of my favorites, too. Each animal cage was labeled with a specific issue that an animal might have (needs shot, needs bath, needs to be groomed, etc.)

When they saw all the tasks to be done, Jaden and Cody got really serious and costumed up. :)

We loved this animal X-ray machine!

Depending on which type of animal went into the machine, an X-ray of that type of animal would show up on the screen and alert the vets to whatever broken bone or problem this animal might have. How cool!

Dr. Jaden gave shots...

while Dr. Cody read this poor pup's temperature... 

...and then gave him a scrub-down bath. We were very impressed with these vets' level of professionalism. :)

After our time in Little Town, we explored some sound exhibits,

a light table,

and then tried to draw light pictures on the wall.

Jaden and Cody each designed small parachutes and tested them out in these wind tunnels. The best part is always trying to catch the parachutes when they exit the top of the tube!

We also got to jump onto various continents and see on the screen pictures of that part of the world.

Daddy helped the boys try to "catch" various hidden items moving around the map.

Then, the boys used blocks, road pieces, park squares, fences, and railroad trips to build a sort of town.

Our last stop was to visit the outside playground with this enormous slide!

Again, we were blessed with a perfect weather day to be outside, so Jaden and Cody loved their time on this playscape.

We likely could've spent another couple hours at this museum if we had visited first thing in our day rather than in the afternoon when the boys were getting tired. We felt good about all the exhibits we explored, though, and were especially thankful for our absolutely free admission!