Dublin Carnival

And what is the first thing you need to at a fireman's carnival?  Ride a firetruck right??!!

And then eat french fries and funnel cake.

And then off to ride the boats.  The pictures not the great, those boats were super fast.

And the good old duck pond!  This time Dave won a whale.

And finally a carousel ride with mom.

Swim lesson's day 5!

Tiffany you are so much fun!!

So super close to swimming all by himself.  A huge improvement since the beginning of the week.

Trying to splash Pies!!

Great job Dave!!  Tiffany, thank you so much for teaching Dave, we will be sure to call you to set up lesson's for next year!!

Swim lesson's day 4!

Today was Day 4 of swim lessons.  Above Tiffany is holding little fish under the water and Dave had to look at them under the water.  He did a great job, he had his face in the water tonight, a huge improvement since Monday!

Floating and feeling more comfortable!

Practicing kicks, again a huge improvement from Monday, he needs no help at all now!!

Using the kick board all by himself!!

Learning arms.

Swimming almost by himself!

Check out our review!

Click here to see our Disney's Family Fun Race Car review for Mama Cheaps!

You can only imagine my excitement when Mama Cheaps asked Dave and I to review some products for her! We are huge fans of Disney's Family Fun magazine. They always have cool make at home projects and recipes. I love when my new issue arrives in the mail. I make myself a nice pot of tea, sit down and read it from cover to cover. I was ecstatic today when a package arrived on our door step from Family Fun! Dave sat waiting to see what was in the brown box. To his sincere delight it was Disney's Family Fun Create Your Own Race Cars! Before I could even take a look at the box Dave began to exclaim "Mommy lets do this right now, I can't wait to make them!" I had one very happy 5 year old that had to get to work right away!

The directions were super easy to understand and came complete with easy to follow illustrations for Dave. The cars are tubes similar to a toilet paper roll and come ready to be customized by your child's imagination. The only things that have to be done are painting, customizing the car with stickers, and adding wheels. The first step was to paint the cars. At first I thought that the paint brush included in the kit was going to be too small. However, as Dave started to paint it seemed to work perfectly. The smaller paint brush also helped to occupy Dave for at least 20-30 minutes as he tried to get the paint job just right. I think that a larger paint brush would have caused him to complete the craft too quickly and may have resulted in frustration that the paint job didn't look "just right."

After painting the exterior of the car it required a short period of time to allow for the paint to dry. Although I did not actually time the amount of time for the paint to dry I would estimate that it took no more than about 30 minutes. I did notice though that as the cars were drying, some of the tube seams began to peel away from the rest of the tube. A little scotch tape mend and they were back to normal. I think that the wet paint just made the tube peel apart a bit. It wasn't a major problem and easily fixed.

After the cars were all dry it was time to add the stickers. This was fairly easy for Dave to do. Some of the longer stickers presented a challenge with being placed straight and neat. The longer stickers required some adult help but for the most part Dave was able to do it himself. Once the cars were decorated it was time to add the wheels. I had to do this part for Dave. He found it hard to push the wheels all the way onto the little metal bar so that they would click in place. The kit comes with two small metal rods that act as the car's axel. The kit also supplies four wheels that are installed onto the axel by the child. Once the car is painted and stickers are in place the child must then thread the axel through two small holes in the car tube. Once in place the child must then install two small wheels per axel . The wheels should "click" into place to ensure proper installation. Once the wheels were on it was time to play!

Along with the directions for the construction of the race cars were a few suggestions of other crafts that you could make to accent your playing experience with the race cars. The other crafts included a milk jug car wash and billboards and a race track made from cereal boxes. I'm certain Dave and I will be adding the carwash, billboard, and race track to his collection in the very near future. In the meantime we went onto www.familyfun.com and searched "Street scene mat." The website provided us with a printable street scene that only required me to tape the pages together in order to create the scene. Once again, this process was quite simple. Thanks Mama Cheaps for asking us to review this product for you.  We had a fun time creating the cars and playing with them. Dave and I would both highly recommend this fun product!

Swim lesson's day 3!

Reaching down to get the rings. Tiffany holds them a little bit deeper each time so that Dave had to get his face in the water to get them.

Belly floats all by himself!

Dave's favorite part, the kick board.

Swimming with just a bit of help.

And every class ends with jumps!

Wordless Wednesday

Swim lesson's day 2!

Tonight was Dave's second swim lesson. Can you tell that he couldn't wait to get in the water!

Trying belly floats with your face in the water.

A little help with kicking.

Look no help!!

Jumping in again.