It's summertime again!

As much as I'm looking forward to summer vacation, I also dread the days that all my kids will be home and complaining of having nothing to do. Last year I was felt that I was the busiest mom in metro manila, driving to and fro taking one child or two to some lesson that they're taking during the summer. This year my husband and I limited the summer lessons to 2 per child. I have 4 so we have 8 lessons all in all to pay for. I'm not sure which will be more expensive, next year's tuition or summer expenses :)

I plan on limiting the TV time of each child so keeping them away from it will be a big challenge. So two weeks ago we had a family meeting to agree on the things that they wanted to do during the summer. There were the usual picnics at the park (we have a really nice park in our village), biking, painting, baking cookies, swimming in our inflatable pool. But the surprise was that the kids wanted to visit some museums! We've had a summer before where we took them to all the museums that we knew of, and there were some good discoveries. I did some research and found the following:

National Museums - there are 2, the other one is in a newer building which I believe was the old Finance building. The coolest thing you can see there is a shipwreck. My boy loved it. In the other one there was a fossil of a whale....even cooler

Ayala Museum - We've seen this at least 2 times already but still the kids want to go back to see the dioramas. I guess since they now have Civics in school the things they see are more relevant to them.

Malacanang Museum -I've always wanted to visit the malacanang but that part of Metro Manila I generally avoid because of traffic. This year maybe I can make that trip, small sacrifice to keep them out of the couch watching Disney channel...I so dislike the show "That's so Raven"......moving on.....

Shoe Museum - I'm really not looking forward to driving for half a day to look at shoes the rest of the day, but I'll do anything not to turn on that TV for at least a day.

Air Force Museum - This one I just found on the internet. Since my son loves anything that's connected to the military we'll definitely make a trip there.

Other museums you might want to visit is the Central Bank museum along Roxas boulevard and the Lopez museum. In the first one I think during the whole time we were there we were the only visitors....come to think of it, we were the only ones in the Lopez museum too! My kids found it cool that they saw books in the original handwriting of Jose Rizal!

The Museo Pamabata is worth a trip IF you've not been there before. It's sad how some exhibits are no longer functional because I guess Filipinos generally do not know how to behave in a museum. We were there for a school field trip just recently and I was disappointed to find out that there was nothing new added in the last 2 years I think. We were there a couple of years ago but there were no new things added.

Well, good luck to you dear parents and enjoy the summer!