Family Date

Princeton's Graduate School people? (honestly I don't know really what their position is) put together events every week for graduate students and their families. We try to go to one a month, because they are always an adventure (We actually went to two just this week.) and we like socializing with other grad students. They study the most interesting things.

This month we went to an event put together for grad students that have kids. We went to My Gym and played for a few hours. Matt was so excited. He usually doesn't take time off in the middle of the day, but there was a picture of a baby in a ball pit on the advertisement. He insisted that he'd come so that I could "just take pictures"...which is basically what happened. 

When we got there Matt grabbed Madeleine and threw her into the ball pit.

At first she didn't do much. She just sat there chilling out, but as more kids started showing up, the more excited she became about the balls. When the bigger kids started accidently knocking the balls out, Madeleine took it upon herself to pick them all up and put them back in.

But then she discovered the bigger balls...and the smaller balls were quickly forgotten.

Other than just letting the kids run around and climb on stuff, the workers put together small activities for the kids. The funniest by far was the puppet show they put on at the beginning. It was about 3 little ducklings that get kidnapped by an alligator. Madeleine was in tears. Matt and I were shocked that she was so emotionally tied to this story, and we couldn't help laughing as we tried to comfort her. After all three ducklings were kidnapped, the mother duck asked for her babies back. The alligator gave her the three ducklings back...along with a lot of other puppets. When the last baby duck was saved, Madeleine stood up and starting clapping and went up to pet them. :)

They also made a fort, bubble time, and made a zipline.

Madeleine thought the zipline was awesome.

After that to end our family date, we got ice cream and Matt went back up to work.

I love this activity. Honestly, I'm kind of regretting not getting a pass during the winter. It's pretty hard to keep Madeleine happy in our house when it's so cold outside. I'm so excited to go to Utah next week and take her to the park. We are getting a bit impatient for spring around here. :)