Today we went to Save the Bay Day at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s new Brock Environmental Center.  We walked around and saw the exhibits and then competed in an oyster filter challange.  Did you know that a single oyster will filter (completely clean) fifty gallons of water a day?  Brooke and Alex were on a team (with my help of course) to build a oyster filter.  We placed many many different items (coffee filters, sand, string, marbles, cotton balls, rocks, oyster shells, paper-towels) over the opening to a mason jar.  Then the program director poured very dirty water in it.  We competed with 3 other teams to see whose water would be filtered the best (i.e. be the cleanest).  Brooke and Alex won!  They got to pour their filtered water into a tank with living oysters and crabs to enjoy!  It was a cool experience.

We are getting close to the end of our summer season with school starting for Brooke next week so today I took the kiddos to the beach.  We had a lot of fun mostly swimming and boarding, but also playing in the sand.

After attending Alex’s friend’s birthday party at the Virginia Zoo we were free to walk around the exhibits.  We had a good time looking at the animals.

We have spent about 5 out of 7 days a week at the pool this summer.  I don’t often take pictures because we are playing in the water, but since that is what we spent most of our time doing this summer I grabbed these of us having lunch at the pool the other day.