Lego, Gymnastics and More!

Carlton decided to purchase a Lego project for he and the kids to work on - a Haunted Mansion. Just over 3,000 pieces to it and it took them about 3 or 4 days to finish it.

It is a pretty cool structure with the portrait in the top left lighting up with a "ghost" that haunts it. There is also an elevator in the middle that takes riders up and then drops them, kind of like the Tower of Terror. Here is a video of Gavin cranking the elevator.

The kids love it but now Gavin likes to take some of it apart and rebuild it....in other builds.

In other news, both kids ended up graduating to the next level in their swim classes!! So here is the obligatory pic!

We have also signed up Gavin for gymnastics, although his class is called Warrior Fitness. The "regular" 5 year old gymnastics classes are all full, so this was the only other option for his age. It's a bit advanced for him but we are on a waitlist for the other class and hope he can switch sometime soon. In the meantime, here are a couple videos of him trying the Ninja Obstacle course for the first time. In the first part he had to climb over this wall and then jump onto the balance board.

Next he had to pick one of three paths to go through using rings to a rope or and on to another ring or net of rope.

From there he was supposed to climb up the net of rope and move on to the next section but he couldn't quite get up.

In the next section he chose to try the rings that slide across the bar.

The last thing he had to attempt was a "Spiderman" crawl using these huge foam blocks.

Needless to say it was challenging for him!! We will see how class two goes this coming week.

Hopefully we all start feeling better this coming week. Gavin caught a cold his first week of school which he shared with all of us. Then he got an ear infection from the cold. A couple days after finishing his medication for the ear infection, the school sent him home for pink eye!! We got him into the doctor the same day and on medication. After 48 hours we thought we were in the clear because he was no longer contagious and no one had caught it. Then the next morning, Avery had a goopy eye. So we took her to the doctor and got her medication for pink eye in both eyes. That was on Thursday and now I need to get myself checked out Monday to see if I might have it too. Fun, fun, fun!!! Meanwhile, Carlton has caught the cold we have all had for a couple weeks now. One of these days, we will all be healthy again! That's all for now!

Keeping busy

We had a busy week with some new experiences! Ms. Avery got to try out a gymnastics class this past week and loved it! Here are some videos and pictures of what she did in her first class.

Forward bunny hops down the long trampoline, then backward bunny hops...

Forward rolls into the foam pit and then she got to choose her own method. By the time she got down to the foam pit on this one, she was dizzy!!

Then we went into another part of the gym where there were three different obstacle courses set up. The first one she started with the parallel bars.

Next up was a backward roll on a foam ramp and then onto a balance beam doing bear crawls backwards.

On another obstacle course they had to climb up a ladder and jump down, then walk on a balance beam and do a flamingo pose in the middle of the beam.

The last obstacle course had rings, uneven bars, and parallel bars again.

So our little monkey girl is going to take gymnastics now and see how she likes it!! If nothing else, it gives her a regular class to get out of the house while Gavin is in school. And then the other day she showed me how to workout in the garage....using the gardening tool wagon and old wheels from one of Carlton's remote control airplanes.

Lego Mania!!

Last weekend there was a Lego Convention in the SLC area, so we decide to take the kids and check it out. It was pretty cool to see all the different builds that people have done. We had to start with pictures in front with the Lego man. Then we took pics and videos of some of the builds.

The details that are put into these builds is incredible.

Then Avery and Gavin got a chance to do a small build and add it to a wall.

So many different themes and characters. We saw lots of Muppets, Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars and many others mixed in as well.

In the back we found another place for the kids to build. This time there were tons of Lego bricks to use and two ramps set up to race cars. They hung out there for a good 45 minutes or so while Carlton and I took turns walking around to see the other builds.

Life sized Wonder Woman built by the two Moms from Utah who were on LegoMasters TV Show.

This was a huge snow scene with a mountain of skiers and a village. There were several scenes from movies in it.

I did not take the time to try to find all the movie scenes but I did spot this one from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!

Amazing build of Hogwart's with scenes from all the movies scattered around the build. This was easily 5 feet by 4 feet and about 3 feet tall.

I also got videos of the kids rolling their cars down the ramps

When we were able to tear the kids away from building, we explored a table where one guy had built an amusement park with a little village area.

When we were leaving, the kids had to do the faces and Lego Man again.

In other non-Lego news, Avery did really well in swimming last weekend. She was able to swim Chicken-Star-Rocket by herself!! It's the same thing as Elementary Backstroke. Gavin did not swim because he picked up a slight cold from school. But Avery was super proud of her accomplishment!