Fire!! 5/27/10

This morning Marc's kindergarten class went on a tour of a fire station. There were 40 kindergartners and about 20 parents. That's a lot of people!! Just as we were all arriving one of the trucks that we were slated to look at got called away on a medical emergency call. oops! I guess we got to see how a call really happens! (What's funny is on the way to school this morning Marc asked me what would happen if there was a fire and they had to leave. Is he psychic???).
After we got split up into two groups, we started our tour. Our group looked at the inside of the fire house first. We got to look in their kitchen. (They were having hamburgers for lunch today.)
Their kitchen table was made out of an old bowling alley lane. The logo on the table was really beautiful!
After we looked at their kitchen, we went on to the living room. This was just a room with about 4 couches, a tv, and a video game system. The kids loved sitting on their couches.
The kids were dying to see where the fire fighter slept! We went into a huge, open room and were told that this is where they slept. All the kids looked confused. Until the fire fighter pulled one of the murphy beds out of the wall. They were AMAZED!!
We continued our tour in the work-out gym. He told us that some of the weights weighed as much as they did. The kids found that unbelievable!
That concluded the tour of the inside of the fire house. I have never been inside the "house" part before. it was kinda fun to see how they spend their time when not out on a call. if you ask me, they deserve a bit more than they have since they risk their own lives to hep and save others!:-)

Our next stop was at the "Safe Kids Fire Safety House". This was really cool!!!!! They took a camper and built a floor in the middle making it a two floor "building". This camper was turned into a kid-sized house. They take this around to help to teach about fire safety and how to get out of your house if it on fire. The fire fighter (whose kids go to Chandler Woods as well) explained the purpose of this to the kids before we went in.
Us parent were told that we didn't get to go in because it was so small and there wasn't enough room. We could peek our heads in to take a picture, but that was it. The lower level of the camper/house was the living room.
and the upper level was the bedroom. On the outside of the slider was a deck.
On the edge of the deck was a "rope ladder" to climb down. Each child climbed down the ladder to show them how to get out of their house if their bedroom is on the second floor and their house is on fire.
Once they made it out of the "fire" safely, they had to go over and call 911 to report the fire.
This house was cool!!! I hope it drilled home the message to the kids as much as I think it would having it be their size. :-)
While the rest of the kids finished climbing down, the ones that finished ran off some energy. i was able to stop Marc and his friend Katerie for a quick pic.
Our next stop on our tour were the fire trucks. We first learned about the ladder truck and all the stuff it has on board in all the little nooks, cranies, and doors. (The "boring" stuff if you listen to the pumper truck guys)
After the ladder truck we learned about the pumper truck, or the "fun" stuff. (The relationship these fire fighters seemed to have was awesome!)
After we took a tour of the truck and all it's contents, each kids was allowed to help the fire fighter put out a "fire". The fire was actually just an orange caution cone. :-)
While the fireman was emptying out the excess water from the hose he turned it out mist. Guess who went flocking to him? You guess it, a lot of the kids. Kids love to get wet! :-)
Then the fireman put the kiddos to work at rolling up their hose to put back on the truck. The kids thought it was cool that they were helping to put something back on the fire truck.
We ended the field trip with a class picture on the fire truck. :-)
This was probably one of the most fun field trips have been on. I actually learned something this morning. ;) I have even more new found respect for the fire fighters that put their lives on the line to help and save others!! :-)

Getting Wet at the Gardens 5/23/10

We loved our family pictures so much that we hired the same photographer to do another photo shoot with the 4 of us with my Mom, my Grandma, and my Brother. We figured out that is has been 13 1/2 years since our last family picture, and that was at our wedding! So we decided since she was so inexpensive and good that it wouod be worth another $50 to do another shoot.
My brother Jeff was visiting from out of town for the weekend. So we headed out to the Meijer Gardens on Sunday afternoon for the shoot. That was one of the days that the weather was about 87* and REALLY sunny. It made for a long, hot afternoon, but hopefully it also made for some nice pictures (we haven't seen them yet).
Since the Gardens are so huge we asked Grandma to sit in a wheelchair to go from location to location. Samantha saw everyone else taking tirns pushing her and thought she needed a turn. ;-)After a little over an hours of picture taking and walking in the really hot sun, we were done getting pictures taken. Grandma had never been into the Children's Garden so we headed in there to give her a quick walk-through tour. We walked quickly through each part of the Gardens, except the water area. We stayed there for about 1/2 hour. We probably would have stayed longer, but it was closing time. Following is a LOT of pictures from that 1/2 hour. They were all so cute I couldn't chose just a couple)
There is a button that sprays a mist of water. When Daddy took the picture he captured a rainbow over Marc's shoulder.
There is also a "wall of water" that kids (and kids at heart) can put there arms, hands, head, etc in to "break" the wall.
Daddy was just helping Marc, but when I looked at this picture on the computer, it looks like Daddy's is trying to push him into the water. ;-)
We didn't know how Samantha would react to the water.....she LOVED it!
Her favorite toy to play with were the nets. She liked "catching" the water.
Marc's favorite thing to do is drive a boat all the way around all of the Great Lakes.
Both of my little boys have fun playing in the water area. ;-)
Both kids had fun showing Grandma what they were doing.
And Uncle Jeff.
My cute, wet little man. :-)
And my cute, wet little princess. :-)
Daddy found that they had squirters to play with. He was squirting Samantha and Marc. He decided it would be fun to teach Samantha how to use the squirter and squirt Uncle Jeff.
Since Great Grandma was in the wheel chair she was not able to go up and get wet so Samantha decided to go over with the water she "caught" in her net and sprinkled both Grandma and Great Grandma's feet to cool them off. ;-)
And then Marc tried to see if the squirter would reach all the way over to the Grandmas....it didn't quite make it.
The clothes that Samantha and I wore for picture were the same. Since we were twiners I asked Daddy to take our picture.
Daddy thought that this pose looked like we had really strong kids and they were lifting the rock.
On the way out of the children's area the kiddos went through the kids door. Marc actually made a comment to me that he was so tall that he had duck down or he would have hit his head. :-)
It was a very hot 1 1/2 hour getting pictures taken, but I think we will have a few really cute pictures. To end the afternoon it was a very fun, wet final 1/2 hour at the Gardens. :-) (I will post pics as soon as I get them. She said it will probably be next week sometime)