Dance Art Camp

Last week I introduced Finley to Dance Art Camp. DAC is a camp that is run through my mom's ballet school in CH. I went there when I was little, and then worked there when I was a HS student. Needless to say I was really excited for Finley to go to the same camp that mommy once did! We packed up and headed out to spend a whole week in CH! 

Finley was really excited about camp and felt right at home at the ballet school. 

Here he is with his wonderful teachers!

They sang songs, played outside, danced in the big studio, had snack time (Finley always said this was his favorite part), and did some art projects. 

The theme for the week was holidays. So each day they did a craft centered around that holiday. 

While Finley was in camp I helped my mom do a little purging and organizing around the house.  

Then in the afternoons we spent time with Nani at her pool! 

I also got to catch up with one of my old HS buddies who lives in CH. 

Finley really enjoyed hanging out with pop pop and watching him shoot his bow and arrows! 

Finley really wanted to try it, but it was way to hard to pull the string back. 

We promised we would get him a kid version soon. 

 He did have fun finding and collecting the arrows though! 

It was a fun week at Mimi & Pop Pop's house! Finley did not want to leave, but I think we were wearing poor Mimi out! He loved DAC and said he is going to miss all his new friends (even though he can't tell me any of their names :)). He can't wait to go back and do it again next summer!

Sciquarium

Now that soccer camps are over for me I feel like my summer can finally begin! Free at last! This past weekend we finally had a Saturday free so we decided to hit up the new Sciquarium aka the Greensboro Science Center. It just opened a couple of weeks ago and it was very crowded! I think we might wait a while before we go back. 

The new aquarium section was small, but still lots of fun! Here are David and Finley inside the otter exhibit! Ha ha ha. If only there were otters in there. We couldn't find any while we were there. 

We were very entertained by the penguins. One friendly little guy kept following Finley's hand around. It was so cool. 

Of course we had to pose with some penguin statues as well. 

There was this really cool polka dotted ray. 

The highlight was definitely the touch and feel tank. 

It was filled with lots of rays! 

Finley really enjoyed touching them and wasn't afraid at all. 

Next up was a huge tank filled with sharks! They are so scary looking up close. 

Finley loved it every time they swam right past him. 

And then all of the sudden this huge ray came toward us out of no where. It was really spectacular. 

Finley has really good eyes and spotted this puffer fish? hanging out in the coral. 

After visiting the aquarium section we headed on to see the rest of the museum. Fin was especially excited about this new airplane. 

He even got to touch a snake! Yikes! 

And of course we had to visit the tigers before heading home. Overall it was a great and much needed family day at the sciquarium! 

Mr. Finley goes to Washington - Part 2

Well on day two of our sight seeing in Washington D.C. we didn't cover nearly as much ground as the day before. I got a huge blister on my heel from all that walking around on the first day, but we still pushed on and I walked through the pain. 

Finley requested that we go and visit the 'Castle'. This is the Smithsonian Castle aka the Smithsonian Institution Building. There wasn't a whole lot to see and do on the inside, but they did have some beautiful gardens outside that we explored, and they opened up at 8:30 am. 

After killing time checking out the Castle we headed over to the American History Museum. First up was a little piece of home, I mean Greensboro, Woolworth's lunch counter. 

We also got to see this really cool boat with cannons on it (the Gunboat Philadelphia)! And find the hole in the side that sank the boat. A huge hit with Finley. 

We saw Dorothy's Ruby slippers, 

and Kermit the Frog. 

And we wrapped things up by checking out the transportation section. Finley really enjoyed riding on the train, which was actually a bus, but whatever. Overall I would say this museum was not the best fit for us. We did see a couple of cool things, but we spent almost 2 hours in there and I wish it had only been an hour. Seeing the Stars and Stripes flag carried no meaning for Finley at all. So time to move on! 

Just as we were ready to head over to the Natural History Museum David called and he was done with his meetings! YAY! He got to join us for the rest of the day. 

We saw lots of 'stuffed' animals. 

And they looked so real too :). 

We were surprised to find some live fish there too! 

The dinosaur bones were a big hit of course. 

And there was a cool hands on exhibit about genomes. Finley made a double strand DNA bracelet to take home. And of course he choose to replicate the DNA of a cobra. 

And we saw lots of awesome gems and rocks but of course a favorite is always the hope diamond. But it does always seem small for being 45.5 carats. By this point in the day we were done. Leaving the best museum for last does have it's draw backs. Finley was just ready for something else. So we headed back to the hotel, checked out, and went to a playground with some of David's old friends over in Alexandria. We were then able to meet up with my cousin Diana and Uncle Michael for dinner. Diana also got us a fabulous rate at her hotel outside of D.C. We thought about staying one more night on us in the Willard until we found out how much it would cost. 

Since we were already outside of the downtown area and convenient parking, we decided to visit the National Zoo on our last day in DC. 

Look at all those turtles! 

We made sure to try and see things that our zoo didn't offer like tigers! 

This tiger was really moving around for us. He was balancing on the cement over the water. 

Then he got hot and went in. There was also a duck who decided that this pool would be a great place to hang out. I was really hoping the tiger would go after the duck and we could see some animal planet action, but alas he just watched him carefully. 

They have this awesome monkey climbing area called the O Line in one section (O for Orangutans). This guy is completely out on his own! This wasn't inside of a cage or anything, but I guess because of some measures they put in place on each tower, they don't climb down and run around the zoo wild. They just use it as a way to go back and forth to the think tank building and the Ape house. 

Way cool. 

The elephants also had a cool 'track' they would use to walk along and get exercise. This allowed us to get really close to them. 

And we wrapped up our tour of the zoo by visiting the Pandas. 

Don't they look so sad :(. After spending a half a day at the zoo we decided we better get on the road and head home to the boro. It was a great, but also very exhausting trip to D.C. Finley was really at such a great age to go and visit and tour the area. And I felt like we saw everything we wanted to and didn't have to spend a fortune to do it. That is my kind of vacation!