A Visitor

We recently had our first of MANY visitors (right?)
My mom came to stay with us for a couple of weeks. She left last week and I am still getting re-acquainted with my washing machine. She was so helpful and we loved her company. I'm in the works of convincing her to move out here. I even found a 3500 sq. ft. house with in-law quarters and an indoor pool!! In my mind there is no question about it. But she has something called a ‘job’, which is so constraining!

We shopped, took a lot of walks, sat around talking… pretty ordinary stuff. But we had fun. My mom proved to be quite the acrobat on the trampoline… 

The boys are in school all day, so Reagan got some serious quality time with her Nana. We went to library story times, the park…. my mom even brought her tap shoes to practice dance with Reagan.
 
(I promise, I did not stage this adorable picture)…

(oh, and don’t mind the barren walls in my house. My goal was to put stuff up while my mom was here… didn’t happen. I’ve been here 3 months and can’t get a darn thing done besides clothe and feed my children.)

This girl got some quality time too.

On the weekend we took a drive up to Raleigh to check out the city museums. Now, when they call it “the Smithsonian of the South”, they’re not joking. There are several FREE museums within walking distance of each other, and they are amazing! Shawn and I were able to check out the North Carolina Museum of History. We could have spent an entire day there, but we only had 2 hours.
When we went up with my mom and the kids, we visited the Museum of Natural Sciences……(you totally can’t read it on the rock, but that’s what it says)

This place is awesome! I think I uttered, “I can’t believe this is free,” about a dozen times! There are 4 floors of exhibits. It truly is fantastic (and free).

The kids loved the entire museum, but we had to tear them out of the Discovery Room. Everything in there was hands on. There was a see-through bee hive, spiders and insects,  which Jefferson loved. Reagan and Grant tried on 10 animal costumes each, and insisted I take a picture of every one.
 

Outside the museum was a walkway featuring plants and cash crops of North Carolina.. We’d never seen a cotton plant before and probably looked like  bunch of fools going wild over something so common here. My mom was especially fascinated. In fact, she screamed one day on a drive and made us pull the car over so we could look at cotton. Here she is, posing with the famous plant itself. And on the drive home, she snickered and showed me the inside of her purse…. full of cotton. Why was I not surprised?

Next time we’ll have to tackle the Nature Research Center. We only had enough time to snap a picture in front of the GINORMOUS globe jutting out from the building.  

It was a lot of fun having my mom visit, and it was hard to see her go. I’m sure she’ll be back… but she has vowed NEVER to come when there is any hint of humidity.