No School Children's Discovery Museum Adventure

Nate just vanquished Eli in a battle scene on the new stage!
Trash bots!
Scientist Eli
Web Climbing Binks!

On President's Day the boys and I headed to the Children's Discovery Museum in Normal, IL. We met up with about 10 other families from University Primary School and the boys loved checking out the museum with their friends! After the traumatic time at the St. Louis Museum I put the boys in matching bright orange shirts so I could keep track of them! They loved the web climber, water table, tractor/farm area, and wind section but they definitely loved the new Theatre area the most. Tons of costumes a real stage with curtains, props, and backdrops, and a built-in audience! Those little hams loved it! Hilarious!

The Scariest Place on Earth: The St. Louis City Museum

The most amazing 3 story, musical slide ever! (I went down it too)!
Eli making his way through one of the MANY tiny climbing tunnels
Brave Binky!
This is a tiny glimpse of the underground caverns right before I flipped out
Scary Gargoyle statues
Indoor foot skate park=awesomeness
Tricksters
Nate going down the skate ramp

One Saturday in January we had to travel to St. Louis for Nate's rheumatology appointment so we decided to make it a fun family day and hit up the rumored-to-be-awesome St. Louis City Museum. This is a family blog or I would tell you what I really think about it. The top two floors were crazy in a fantastic way. An indoor skate park designed for shoes was a huge hit! The boys could have spent the whole day there (and I wish we had). They ran around, did tricks, and jumps and slides. But my first hint that something was off about this museum came when the boys disappeared into the tunnels UNDER the skate ramps only to come out in a totally different location. You all know I can't handle loosing sight of my 4 and 6 year old at a small park let alone a gigantic museum full of weirdos. Ahem... So we then moved on to another SUPER place that involved me getting down on my hands and knees to crawl through bars and tunnels after the boys because their 6 foot 4 daddy couldn't fit. Ha Ha. We then did get to go down an amazing 3 story musical slide that was a blast! It was narrow and fast and seriously giggle inducing! We did it at least 3 times! So far, the museum had been slightly awesome and slightly terrifying. But we decided to head down to the bottom floor into the caverns!

The caverns...there are no words. We may go back when the boys are 16 and 17 to check it out again but I am not betting on it. Some how, the crazy people behind this museum have built a 6 story, intricate and dark, tunnel/cavarn/ninth-level-of-hell area that resembles carlsbad caverns on crack. It was full of teens smoking pot, flirty college kids and desperate parents trying to find their missing children. I was one of those parents for 5 minutes until I hit full panic mode and made us find our way out. The final straw was when our boys went down a tube tunnel and I lost them, only to find them with a group of teens that I swear were smoking pot. It took us 15 minutes to get out and that only happened because I coerced 3 middle school age boys into guiding us into the light.

As you can tell, it has been more than 1 month and I might never get over this experience! The museum is gorgeous, unique, and inventive but it is not for the overly anxious types! Sam, who was too tall to fit into ANYTHING doesn't understand why I wigged out but he certainly enjoyed the show when we climbed out of the caverns covered in sweat and frantic!

Karate Show Day

Brothers hugging it out after class
Nate assuming the proper stance!
Eli doing a kick! The boy is super flexible!
Nate on the high bar doing a parade wave!
Eli defying gravity!
Old Friends celebrating the end of the first semester of karate!

The boys just finished up their first semester of Karate at The Little Gym! We have been with the little gym for 4 years now and this might be the boys favorite class! Some old friends take the class with the boys and they love getting to spend that time with their friends! This class is perfect as it just works on form and strength in a very fun way through karate and gymnastics! They also still get to run around like nutso's in the huge gym! Those proud faces say it all!

Merry Christmas 2011

Santa brought Eli his long hoped for Castle! It is enormous and he LOVES it!
AN-I-MAL! Santa brought Nate an kids electric drum set and electric guitar! HE rocks out!

We had such a lovely christmas! The boys actually slept bast 6:45 and rushed downstairs to find their Santa surprises! Funny story about Santa! Santa's original present to Nate arrived damaged on Christmas Eve!!! Luckily Santa found out that Toys R' Us was open on Christmas eve and found even more Nate-Perfect presents! It was VERY stressful for Santa who was operating on a sugar/coffee high. The boys loved their stockings and presents and Bob loved his dog toys! We had another huge Christmas dinner and spent the day hanging out, playing games and being together! It was our favorite Christmas yet!

Bowling Before Christmas

Nate doing the Nate shuffle after he bowled!
Eli getting ready to fling the ball down the lane
Brother Bowlers!

We went bowling as a family a few days before Christmas and it was so fun! Eli doesn't need to use the special kids ramp any more and that guy bowled a strike! Nate is hilarious and does a little wiggle/shuffle/dance move after he bowls! What a funny kid! I beat Sam to a pulp and he cried like a baby (ok he didnt cry)! I bowled 4 strikes in a row and then on my next time up I let go of the ball on the swing back and almost killed some people! Sooooo embarrassing! We love that the boys are getting old enough to play these great games with us!

Nate the Great is One Tough Boy

Doesn't he look like he could be Captain America?

Nate has had a tough fall and has been nothing short of a trooper! He is struggling with recurrent Juvenile parotitis which means his parotid salivary gland becomes enormously and painfully inflamed. He has it on both sides now which was an unwelcome development and has now had 6 episodes since August. In addition, Nate has been diagnosed with a constitutional growth delay (his bone age was 2 years 9 months even though he was 4 years 6 months at the time of x-ray). If you add in the fact that he developed growing breast tissues last year, that he is very at-risk for major complications (pneumonia, etc...) from common colds, and that he runs low grade fevers all the time than you realize that Nate is one complicated dude! What does this all mean? We don't know!

The good news is that Nate is blossoming intellectually, is a charmer, a sweet heart and so very brave. He has started reading (seriously!) and is a bit of a scary math guy! All of his health issues haven't slowed him down in the least!

We are also a tiny bit relieved about the constitutional growth delay as this means he will more than likely reach his expected height 6'3 to 6'4 (base on our heights, etc...) just MUUUUUUUCH later than Eli!

We have many many more appointments in our future! This little man will always keep us on our toes! We love sweet Nate so much!

Christmas Came Early: Munger-King Family Christmas 2011

The Grandkids: Emma, Eli and Nate
Gromma reading her special recorded book to the boys
Gromma and Emma
A Christmas Dog Named Bob
Pop Pop and his Grandkids
Gromma and her babies
The Mungers: Chris, Rebecca, and Emma
The Kings: Sam, Sam, Eli and psycho-eyed Nate
The Munger's and Kings: Merry Christmas 2011

We celebrated Christmas twice this year! Gromma and Pop Pop, Uncle Chris, Auntie Becca and sweet cousin Emma all came into town on the 17th of December and stayed through the 21st! It was an incredible treat! We ate, we played games, went to a museum, played cared (I won!!!), watched our kids play together, visited and generally just loved spend time together as a family! We had a grand Christmas dinner and opened family presents! We are so lucky that everyone was willing and able to make it to the frozen plains to share in the holidays!