New Job and Children's Museum!

William got a new job!  Here's the short story.

He saw a job posting for a job with the city.  It was for a building code reviewer position.  Basically, architects submit plans to the city and they approve (or don't approve) the plans for a building permit.  He asked his old boss (a local architect who he worked for before we moved to Lafayette) for a reference and applied.  He made it to the final 2 candidates but didn't get it.  But when he emailed his old boss to thank him for the reference, they began to dialogue.  And long story short, a few months later, William had an official offer from his old boss at Smith/Burgett Architects.  It's a pretty lateral move and he'll be doing similar things, but he trusts the boss immensely and we'll finally get a stipend for health insurance.  YAY!  When he told his current boss about the new opportunity, he basically said he could just give him 1 week.  (we weren't shocked by this)

So we had a whole week of William home with us!  Not going to lie, we were all ready for our normal routine by the end of the week.  Haha.  But we did have some fun.  We went to Bloomington/Normal to their awesome children's museum. So wish we had one of these in town:

Ellie LOVED the water table

 

Owen's favorite area was the pizza making station.  He made pizzas with different toppings, baked them, rang them up, and pretended to deliver them.  It was pretty fun how "into it" he was!

pizza delivery truck

 

heartbeat drum

 

 

he wasn't brave enough to try and climb this last time - he made it up a few steps

The painting room was a huge hit.  They paint right on the wall and then spray and squeegee it off.  So fun!

 

 

 

 

 

We had a yummy lunch at Avanti's (another thing I want in Champaign) and then headed home as they took short naps in the car.  A very fun time with dad and it was nice to be able to go during the week when it's not so busy.

Children’s Museum!

Late Wednesday evening I got a text from Aubrey asking if we wanted to venture on a road trip to Bloomington the next morning. While I have been to the Children's Discovery Museum several times with classes I've taught, I've never taken Owen there.  We ended up having a really large group with six adults and eight kids.  We played all morning and then did Noodles & Company for lunch.
If you've never taken your kid here, you need to. We could easily spend the entire day there. The first floor (there are 3) is an awesome toddler/younger kiddo space. There's play forts to climb on.  The water table area is like Owen’s water table on steroids. There is an grocery shopping area, pizza “cooking” station, a delivery truck to ride on, and a place with you can pretend to be a dentist or doctor. And of course Owen’s favorite area was the car table and the big train area!
On the second floor is Owen’s 2nd favorite area.  There is a huge agriculture section.  When he saw the cows, he literally ran off the elevator.  There's two big tractors to climb and a place to “grind” grain.  There’s a huge two story climber of course always a little too small for him to do right now.
Also on the 2nd floor is an area to learn about the wind.  You can put balls and scarves in these tunnels and the “wind” going through them makes the balls fly through the tunnel.  Owen loved it!On the third floor there's a painting room and lots of places where they can discover things about music .  There’s a stage where they can put on a play or puppet show.
If we lived in Bloomington, we would absolutely have a season pass to this place. We'll be going back soon with William so that he can check out all the great stuff too!