Sensorium Museum

We went with some friends to the Sensorium museum just outside of Bern. The idea behind the museum is to let kids explore their senses. Jack and his friend Mabel had a blast running through all the rooms. 

Exploring the sense of sight

 Funny how Jack could spend hours in front of a mirror making faces at himself

Lily and Charlotte hanging out

 Jack and Mabel having fun with the sense of sound

Making music

 Several large jars were filled with different items to touch

Exploring the sense of touch

 Even Luke and Lily got in on the fun

The favorite room was this barefoot path. Barefoot hiking is actually pretty popular here in Switzerland and they have entire hiking trails that are specifically designed for it. After watching Jack and Mabel run through this path hundreds of times, I realized that Jack would love to do a real barefoot hiking trail so that has been my mission this past week to find some good barefoot trails.

After we went through the museum we let the kids play outside at the playground

Jack with the beautiful Swiss countryside in the background

Best part of the playground had to be this huge slide


It was a great day and I am so happy that the weather is finally starting to turn nice again! 

Lenzburg Castle

A few weeks ago we drove an hour an a half to visit a castle that we have been wanting to go to ever since Lily was born. When we finally got there we had to walk quite a ways up a big mountain only to discover that the castle was closed! Apparently most castles in Switzerland are closed for the winter and reopen on April 1st. Who knew!!??

Lenzburg Castle

Walking up to the castle

Long way up!

At the steps of the castle just before
learning it was closed

Looking down from the castle door

Below the castle was a really neat forested playground. So luckily the trip was not a complete bust. We spent a few hours playing in here with Jack

Entrance to the playground

One of the houses in the playground

Lily loves to be upside down

King of the tree stump

Stick fighting

View of all the little houses in the playground

 

My sweet girl

Me and my babies

 

Bath time

Lily at 5 months

Jack at 5 months

Fun at home

This winter has been tough for us. There have been weeks when it has been too cold to go outside. Being stuck inside the tiny apartment with Jack and Lily is no walk in the park though. It wouldn't be so bad if I could stick Jack in front of the TV all day, but I can't do that. So I have decided to start some weekly lesson plans and activities to keep Jack busy during the long days inside. We have started going through the alphabet, one letter a week, and then we have activities and projects all week relating to that letter:

A is for Astronaut. 

Little astronauts in space

I also got several workbooks for Jack to work through by himself. He hates coloring and dot to dots, but he loves tracing pages. He is also a whiz kid at the mazes, he can spend an hour going through maze books.

I have a habit of saving our egg cartons for various projects. They are great fun when used to sort small items or to toss marbles in to. Our egg carton collection has started to grow too big to fit into the cupboard so we decided to turn some of our cartons into animals:

Caterpillar, ant, ladybug and spider

Egg carton spider:

We made several home made projects for Luke's birthday, but by far my favorite was this questionnaire I asked Jack about Luke

I framed the questionnaire with this picture Jack drew of him and his daddy

Another one of Jack's favorite indoor games is hiding. Whether it is in the closet, under his blankets, behind the chairs, etc, Jack LOVES to hide. One day I brought out this tunnel and he had a blast hiding in it. We even got Lily in on the fun. 

Here are some pictures of Lily in her pretty dress

She wants to sit up all by herself

But eventually she falls over

Here she was trying to get some chips Jack had in his hand.

My two cuties

This is her cabbage doll face

Sweet little princess

Girls are so fun to dress!

Last but not least: our favorite thing to do before bed is play Super Mario Bros on the Wii. Even Lily gets in on the fun.

Freiburg im Breisgau - Our favorite city

For Luke's birthday we made the 2 hour drive up to Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. We've been here twice before and we absolutely love this city! They have a great city center, cheap food and a fun atmosphere. We stayed right downtown next to the Munster. It was Lily's first trip away from home and she did pretty good. 

Jack and Lily in his sleeping tent at the hotel

The first day of our trip we spent shopping at the cheap stores and stocking up on baby items and arts and crafts. Then we went to our favorite Thai restaurant for Luke's birthday and afterwards we stopped by a local Mexican restaurant and I got a margarita.

The second day we were able to walk around Freiburg and enjoy the city.

Lily taking it all in

 

Outside the Munster

We were lucky enough to go to the local market where we stocked up on several hand made toys for Jack and Lily.

We went back to the mexican restaurant for lunch and had fajitas. They were fabulous! I can't even begin to describe how much I miss good mexican food! After lunch we took Jack and Lily to a nearby water park. 

Lily tuckered out before we even started swimming

 Everyone had a blast!

Fun in the water

This was Lily's 2nd time at a water park and she loved it!

Sleeping beauty

Jack spent hours on these slides

After the water park we went back to the Thai restaurant again. The kids were really tired so we took the food back to the hotel to eat. It was a good thing too, because as soon as we walked in our room Jack ran to the bathroom and started throwing up. He threw up several times over the next few hours. At one point as he was throwing up he turned to Luke and said "I'll be okay daddy." He can be so sweet. 

On our last day we spent a few hours walking around the town again

Then we headed home and stopped at an indoor play place so Jack could run around for a while.

This was a dinosaur that closes its mouth when you climb in

The place was amazing and they encouraged the parents to play as well so Luke and I had a great time too. Jack's favorite area was this big volcano dome that you could climb up and take a slide down. It's hard to see in the picture below, but the green and blue stripes to the left are a portion of the volcano that you could climb up and then you can see the huge silver slide that you can take down. Climbing up that thing over and over for several hours was a great workout!

It was a great trip and I have officially ate enough Thai food to last us until Luke's next birthday. It wasn't too difficult traveling with a baby so I'm excited to start planning more trips for the four of us!