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Downtown Firehouse Tour

Firehouse Tour
Click on the photo to see album

My friend Tricia arranged for a group of us to go and tour the downtown Fort Worth firehouse and it was so great! This is the one of the firehouses in town with the poles for the firemen to slide down. When we arrived one of the trucks and the chief were out on a call, but there were a few firefighters still there to lead our tour.

Firehouse Tour

Firehouse Tour

First they showed us around downstairs in the garage area. They spent a long time answering questions from everyone and then the kids got to go inside the truck. Nadia wasn’t so sure about it, but she got in line anyway. Amelie on the other hand was “all in!”

Firehouse Tour

I thought the most interesting thing we learned was that the firefighters at this station all have to be trained in rope and entrapment rescue. I know there is a more technical term, but basically they do a lot of rescue for people who jump out of or fall out of buildings downtown. Plus they do hazardous materials rescue and save people who get trapped in confined spaces.

Firehouse Tour Firehouse Tour

Firehouse Tour

Fireman’s pole from above, below and with a fireman 🙂

Firehouse Tour

The last thing they showed us was their gym. They are the only firehouse in town with a basketball court and all the workout equipment. They gave the kids a bunch of balls to play with and let them have at it. The kids had a blast! While we were upstairs the team that was out on a call came back and they came upstairs to see the kids too.

Firehouse Tour

As we were walking down the stairs to leave the alarm went off and when the men saw what kind of call it was they took off to respond. We all thought that was kind of cool to see in action, but I didn’t get any photos since we were trying to stay out of the way.

Firehouse Tour

This cool bell is on one side of the building. What a great time we had at the firehouse!

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Shaving Cream and Water Beads

Water Beads/Shaving Cream

I knew going into this playtime I was in for a big mess by the end, but I also knew the girls would love it. It was way too hot to go outside, so I set this up on our pantry floor in front of the washer and dryer. A few weeks earlier, I set aside some of the multicolored water beads from the batch that I froze for outside play. I filled up 8 portion cups with shaving cream and gave them some “tools” to sculpt with.

Water Beads/Shaving Cream

The first thing Nadia wanted to do was attempt to shape the shaving cream into something interesting. Amelie started by coating the water beads in the cream. At that point I left them to it and told them to call me when they were done.

Water Beads/Shaving Cream

This is what I saw when I came back – Amelie was trying to get it on every exposed body part. Nadia was saying she was done because the smell was too strong – HA!

Water Beads/Shaving Cream

The towels on the floor made for an easy clean up and I put both girls directly into the bathtub. I think they both would have liked this better if I could find some unscented shave cream, but even the sensitive skin scent smelled too much like aftershave.

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Sticky Mosaics

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I saw someone mention these Sticky Mosaics by Orb on Facebook and immediately looked them up on Amazon. I knew that Amelie would love them, so I suggested that Nonnie buy her some for her birthday. They are so great!!! Amelie was a sweet girl and shared with Nadia and they both had a great time.

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The girls had a lot of fun with these and they even came with some rhinestones which they both love to stick on things. The designs go on a really thick paperboard that makes them more stable and they have held up well for a couple of months now. My mom bought the Zoo Animals and Fairies. I think that I will be putting more of these on Amelie’s Christmas list because she loves stickers so much.

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I highly recommend these because they are really easy for the kids to do.  They are also great for fine motor skill practice and matching up shapes.

The amazon carousel below is an affiliate link if you want to order 🙂 — I have also seen them at Hobby Lobby, but I am not sure how the price compares.

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Fun to Beat the Heat

So the trade off of all the AWESOME benefits of living in Texas is that you accept the month of August feels like you are living on the surface of the sun. We are blessed with air conditioning and anywhere you go that is indoors is cool too. But children need outside time so I tried to come up with some “cold” fun for the girls. We took our niece to see IKEA when she was visiting and while I was there I picked up 4 of their shaped ice cube trays. They are only $.99 each if you can get to the store. I also picked up some of their kid sized baking and ice cream toy sets for $.99 a set. I made an assortment of the cubes with food coloring in the water. I had the girls get on their bathing suits and put everything outside in the shade of the play set.

Beat the Heat

Beat the Heat Beat the Heat

They had so much fun!! I told them they could eat the ice cubes which they thought was awesome! They pretending they were cooking, baking and running a restaurant. This week we had a friend over for a play date and they quickly asked if they could show her how much fun the ice cubes were. It was great.

Beat the Heat

Our other “cold” fun involved the awesome water beads I have posted about before. I made a bunch of water beads in assorted colors, put them in small portion cups, added water and froze them.

Beat the Heat

I set the girls up with 3 frozen water bead pods each in a plastic shoebox. I added a containers of water and some other kitchen tools. They both got really excited about when they saw the set up. For this activity I made sure they knew these couldn’t go in their mouth.

Beat the Heat Beat the Heat

They started out pretending they were cooking with them and running an ice cream shop. Very quickly Nadia started talking in science terms. She wanted to see what would happen to the ice and water beads if you held it in your hand or if you dumped water on them. Then she set one of them in the sun to see it melt. She was curious if the water beads were going to stay in one piece when it defrosted or if they would fall apart. They played with these for a very long time.

Beat the Heat

Nadia found that once they melted, they disintegrated. Then they proceed to smear them all over their arms and legs and say it was lotion. Near the end of playtime they smeared them all down the slide to see if they could go faster 🙂

Beat the Heat

I gave them 3 at a time and it seemed to be just the right amount for all the inventive ways they decided to use these. They have asked to do this a couple more times and had just as much fun as the first time. This is a big hit and I will be making up another batch to keep in the freezer soon.

The widget below is an affiliate link for Amazon that shows some of the stuff we used in this activity 🙂