“I’m glad we have this amazing thing called Amazon,” said Lex, when I told him that the Star Trek shows he has been watching with Alan were originally on TV before I was even born. We watch a lot of TV on Amazon Prime.
“There’s no such thing as two-finity because that would be banana,” said Eve, trying to join (interrupt) a conversation Lex and I were having about infinity.
We took an impromptu trip to the Ben & Jerry’s factory today. We were at the science museum yesterday, having a snack, and the kids found a Ben & Jerry’s brochure. They were sold. That and the Vermont Teddy Bear factory brochure that had Eve cooing. So we decided to take a drive! It was a beautiful day for a trip.
When we got there we had to wait for about 15 minutes for our tour so we did a little exploring. Tours are just $4 for grownups and free for kids 12 and under, but guess what? It was free tour day! We got lucky!
Welcome to Ben & Jerry’s!
Peace, Love, and Ice Cream
Funny faces
Eve had to jump high to ring the cow bell to get the tour started. (She is wearing her backpack because she insisted on bringing six stuffed animals with her!)
They both loved the ice cream cone constellation. :)
The camera had to go off at this point as they don’t allow photography during the tour. Lex was pretty disappointed because he really wanted to take pictures and draw a diagram of the factory on the way home. I told him to do his best with his memory, but there was a lot to see and a lot to remember.
Cameras back on at the end for free samples!
Free samples! The flavor of the day was Milk and Cookies. Yum!
The flavor lab. This is a silly place.
After we finished the tour we stopped at the Scoop Shop and got two smalls, one Americone Dream and one Double Chocolate Brownie (or something like that). Then we went to sit in the grass and eat. This is where we lost Eve (emotionally, not physically). The deal was we would all share both, but she decided she needed some alone time and sulked by herself for awhile. I think it was stimulation and sugar overload.
“I just need to be alone!”
Yes, I took pictures while Eve had a tantrum and Lex ate her melted ice cream.
Tanks of pure deliciousness.
Eve and I had a snuggle while Lex played on the playground for a little while. She felt much better after that.
Fortunately her tantrum didn’t last long and she was back to her old cheery self soon enough. Just in time to visit the Flavor Graveyard!
Welcome to the Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard.
There were so many silly epitaphs. I wanted to take pictures of them all. :)
This one was for Alan. :)
When we left the graveyard Lex said, “That wasn’t sad at all.” He had been a little hesitant about going there, apparently because he thought it would be too sad. Turns out it’s a very silly place, much like the rest of the Ben & Jerry’s establishment.
Some free spin art on the way out.
Once we left Ben & Jerry’s we stopped at a pizza place for a very late lunch. The kids decided they were feeling up to driving a bit further (half an hour further!) and visiting the Vermont Teddy Bear factory. They promised they would not bug me to buy them a teddy bear. Ha!
There were some pretty giant teddy bears!
Again we had about 15 minutes to wait for our tour, but unfortunately this place is nothing but one big store. We browsed briefly then went outside and found a giant cement silo full of graffiti. The kids picked up some sidewalk chalk and added their own names. There were also a few hula hoops and balls to play with, so we whiled away the time outside waiting for our tour.
Lex wrote his name and drew a teddy bear face.
Do you see Eve’s name in there?
These eyes cracked me up!
Just hysterical. I made the kids try them all. :)
Tour time! Because these are teddy bears and not food, we were able to get much closer to the actual production. The kids liked it much better.
The kids get comfy while our tour guide discusses the bears.
I liked that we were able to get right up close to the factory floor and see actual people at work (little old ladies at sewing machines).
Bears in various stages of stuffed.
This little display showed bears on an conveyor belt getting put into boxes and onto trucks. The tour guide told us all about the boxes they ship in. She did such a good job that Lex wanted to go home and order a bear, just to get the box!
I like this guy’s IV.
Now I’m sure you are wondering if I actually left there without buying a bear. And of course the answer is no! But I didn’t make them pick a small bear and I made them agree on just one to share. Even the smallest ones were $30 and as we discovered from recent organization efforts at home, we have more than 50 stuffed animals! That’s not even counting the ones I have put away in the storage! So they agreed on one small bear (on the condition it came with a box!), I bought a few funny eyes, and away we went.
Silly kids at Panera Bread for dinner.
This about sums it up. Ben & Jerry’s cow, wearing a Teddy Bear button, sipping a Panera iced tea. My day in one photo. :)
Overall a great day! I’ll give you a quick summary of my opinion of our two factory tours. We were discussing them while cuddling in bed tonight and the kids agree too. Ben & Jerry’s was a much funner place to be. They had lots to do and see. Ice cream, of course, is always a bonus, but they also had the graveyard, and a big playground, and lots of history and murals and interesting things to look at. However, the tour was less interesting and consisted of mostly videos and a birds-eye view of the factory floor.
The Vermont Teddy Bear factory was a better tour because you could get a real close view of the action. It was also much less crowded so our tour group was small and the kids were really interactive with the tour guide. However, I felt the whole tour was a sales pitch! She spent the first part telling us all about the different bears they make and she named every bear “product line” and made us all guess at what the names were (all flavors). All through the tour she talked about “your bear” this and that. Towards the end she spent a lot of time detailing how cute the packaging was that the bear ships in. It has an air hole, and games on the inside of the box so the bear doesn’t get bored, and it comes with a snack (candy from Lake Champlain Chocolates!) and she really sold the idea. She also spent a fair amount of time discussing the clothing options for the bears. The tour was nice and fun, but totally a sales pitch! Very little history or anything else. Then, of course, right into the gift shop where the cheapest bear you can buy is $30 and they all have entire wardrobes you can buy.
Both places were fun, but overall I think Ben & Jerry’s was a more all-encompassing fun experience! We spent several hours there and could have stayed even longer.
Lex went to bed wishing we could visit more factories in the area. I’ll have to think about that. I feel this need to pack in a ton of fun stuff this week since next week I start school and summer is practically over!
For tonight we will sleep well with visions of ice cream and teddy bears dancing in our heads. :)
Fresh pavement is perfect for chalk drawings.
Racing.
A joke for passersby.
I’m sure the walkers out today will be entertained. :-)
Lex and I got some good exercise this morning. I went our for an hour run/walk and he joined me on his bike. It was awesome!
Happiness is.
We went back-to-school shopping at Staples yesterday and now Lex is super excited to go back to school! He walked around all day today saying he wished he was back in school. This evening we counted the days on the calendar (17!) and he said, “Awww…. I wish it was tomorrow.” Silly boy.
A very excited boy. He made a cover sheet for his take home folder and tucked all of his new supplies into his pencil box. He has two pair of scissors, one to share, and two glue sticks, “Just in case one runs out.” There’s something exciting about new office supplies!
As we cuddled in bed tonight I reminded him of his summer homework assignment, the one thing that has been a bit of a damper on his back-to-school excitement. We discussed the assignment, which is just to read a book and fill in some questions about the components of the story. Person, location, problem, etc. He’s already read the book (technically heard it on Audible) so we discussed each part. He said, “Oh, yeah, I did this in 2nd grade!” I think once he realized what the assignment was he got a lot more relaxed. His plan for tomorrow is to do the assignment and then read the book. I said he probably doesn’t have to bother reading it since he heard the audio book, but he reminded me the assignment specifically says to read it, not have it read to you. It’s a Beverly Clearly book, so I think he’ll be done with it by tomorrow evening. :)
Seventeen more days! Only ten more days until I’m back in a classroom full time! Eek!
The kids both wanted to ride in the shopping cart at BJs yesterday. They were so funny and so cute together.
August 2013
It reminded me of a picture I took many years ago when they first introduced double seats in the BJs carts. A lot has has changed since then! The kids are bigger, they no longer fit in the seats up front, and the phone photo quality is much better. Back then I used to have room for the actual groceries as well! :)
July 2009
Hahaha… I just clicked the “Then and Now” tag to see other posts I’ve tagged that way. There’s just one. Basically this exact same post last year! Whose the silly one now?! :)
It took me awhile, but I finally got this movie working properly and up to YouTube. This is a bunch of pictures I took in Franklin in June, overlaid on Lex’s first Garage Band song, called “Summer Vacation.” Enjoy!
It moves fast, not exactly a laid back summer vacation feel, and it’s not perfect, but we’re learning. :)
Saturday night Lex went to bed with a plan for Sunday. He wanted to build a DNA strand (or many, as he tends to do) out of clay. He woke up Sunday with the additional plan to build a set of simple machines. I called the day Science Sunday.
He got started with the DNA strand, knowing that it would take time to dry before painting.
DNA in clay
While the clay dried, he went to work on building his simple machines – a lever, a pulley, a inclined plane, and a wheel and axle. I asked what he planned to do with them and he thought maybe he’d start a science store. Ambitious.
Lex is hard at work, making an inclined plane at 7am.
All smiles! Proud little guy.
I went out for a run (ha! a walk, really) and came home to find him writing a book about DNA. Eve was writing a book called “The Day of Dogs.” They were both hard at work!
[I’ll take a picture of the book later. It’s pretty cool.]
Our neighbor came over a bit later and distracted them from their work, then another neighbor came over and that was the end of Science Sunday. Later Lex tried to paint his DNA model, but it fell apart and he got frustrated so he grabbed the iPad and gave himself some quiet times…
Which leads me to my latest musings on technology. It’s really hard to balance how much is good or too much. I feel like they’ve had a lot of media lately, but for the most part it’s all educational. Starfall, Garageband (educational?), What Ifs, etc. He had a lot of information in his head about DNA from a BrainPop video he watched. When he started asking me questions about DNA I debated about whether or not to grab a computer and do some researching with him. Educational, yes, but still screen time and still very easy to get lost in the computer.
This morning he decided to work on his Mindcuber program (reprogramming it to “solve” the cube in a checkerboard pattern) and he spent the entire morning working on it. He was thinking hard, I’m sure, but still he sat in front of a computer for hours. I finally had him turn it off at lunch time and come outside for awhile. He didn’t object, much, but after lunch when he went back to work on his DNA project he asked about watching the BrainPop video again and I was again torn between education and screen time.
This afternoon he decided he wants to create a weekly science show. Each week will be a different theme. He even made up a science calendar as an addition to the show.
I suggested he just use the penguin one, but he preferred to make a science one instead.
He started with January. :)
We spent the evening discussing logistics of a weekly vlog (video blog). He wants to do a puppet show with a host and a different guest each week. This week the guest is Mrs. DNA. More on that later.
Sounds cool, right? It also sounds like he’ll be spending all of his time on the computer! Oh, the balance. If he was just asking to play Mine Craft or Angry Birds all day long it would be an easy no, but these requests are harder.
Life with a smart boy!
Stay tuned for Lex to launch his own blog and/or YouTube channel. I’ll keep ya posted.
Me: “Eve, do you know what our plans are for tomorrow?”
Eve: “What?”
Me: “Nothing!”
Eve: “Aww, dang!”
Lex, yelling from the other room: “Woo hoo!!”
That about sums up my children. :)
A few weeks ago Lex and I came across building plans for his Lego Mindstorm. New plans, different than the original three that came with the set. Lex perused the options and decided to try one called MindCuber that, in theory, could solve a Rubik’s Cube. This seemed exciting and somewhat impossible to both of us.
We have all, as a family, been working on this project for weeks now. Lex built the MindCuber, following the given instructions, and then I tried to help him download the program to the NXT box. Unfortunately I ran into complications and we had to wait for our tech support (ie: Alan!) to come home. Finally the program was on the box and we gave it a shot. No good. It was wobbly and didn’t work at all. We talked about troubleshooting steps and tightening up the connections, but Lex decided to rebuild instead.
On the second build the MindCuber successfully scanned the cube and came up with a plan to solve it, but each time it started solving it would jam. We were so excited that it successfully scanned and then enormously disappointed when it jammed over and over. This has been a roller coaster ride. :)
Fortunately the MindCuber developer has a helpful website and offers free support on his Facebook page. We read other people’s posts, did some troubleshooting of our own, bought a new cube, ran the problem by the developer, followed up with his feedback, lubricated the cube, adjusted the tension… all over the course of a few weeks. Lex even made his first iMovie with clips of the MindCuber not working so we could send it to the developer for troubleshooting. So many lessons in this experience!
Today… it worked!! We were all super excited to see the MindCuber solve our Rubik’s Cube. Now you can marvel with us as well.
Our neighbor was over and as soon as it solved the cube once he said, “Great, now let’s take it apart and make something else.” Lex and I both said “Noooo!!!!” We worked so hard on it. We need to enjoy it for awhile. :)
After dinner Lex decided to try writing a program that would “solve” in the Rubik’s cube into a checker board pattern instead of the usual way of solving it. He went right to work. Stay tuned.
At our CSA farm this week Eve was picking flowers, I was picking purple beans, and Lex was a field away picking blueberries. Then Even said to herself, “There’s nothing I like better than being surrounded by a beautiful garden, picking flowers with butterflies all around me.” How sweet is that?! I liked it most because she was just talking to herself and enjoying the moment.
Meanwhile Lex was eating his weight in fantastically delicious blueberries.
Happiness is.