Ciccotti Center, Easter Crafts, Circus Giveaway

Perhaps you’d think that after a health department shutdown at the Ciccotti Center in Colonie, I wouldn’t want to bring my precious darlings back. Ummmm. . . nope. I definitely follow the “let’s strengthen their immune systems” school of parenting.

We had an excellent time. The kids played for 3 1/2 hours, and the older kids probably could have lasted longer. We’d been to the Ciccotti Center before, but that was before both my girls were swimming. If you’ve got very little kids, there’s still plenty of fun, including zero entry areas, the small playground you see below, and a few small and not-scary fountains. My girls couldn’t decide if they liked the lazy river or the big slide this time. I liked that the grown-ups could sit in the hot tub while surveying the kids, which you could do if your kids are swimmers like mine or if you have enough parenting management skills that you can enforce a perimeter.  The cost for non-members is $12/person, and since we’d scored free passes, it cost the three of us $12 instead of the normal $36. My friend and I were pondering the worthiness while sitting in the hot tub. At first I thought, “Nah. . . I’m too cheap.” But then she pointed out that the trip to the movies with snacks had cost us more. And we absolutely had more fun longer than we’d had at the movies, along with a ridiculously easy time getting everyone to bed tonight. So I’ll revise it to worth it once in a while.

The one bummer was that you’re not allowed to eat food in the swimming area, and you can bet that kids who are running around like crazy for three hours are going to get hungry. You’re only allowed to eat in the lobby, but in order to hang out in the lobby, you have to have dry clothes instead of swimsuits. Now, it’s quite possible that there might be some sort of unsavory work-around, like, for example, stuffing several people into the family changing room and turning the diaper-changing station into a buffet table. But that would be way too gross. For, you know, normal people with some  dignity.

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Someone asked about Easter crafts and/or egg decorating for very little kids. I talked about a fun little kit last year. Worked great for us, but might be slightly too ambitious for the toddler set.  I also did a post about a decoupage vase that you could use on plastic eggs instead. Another idea is those foam sticker kits that you find at craft stores. Someone gave the girls some stickers years ago, and they loved decorating the eggs. Then we strung them up on a pretty string to make a garland, and I still wish we’d made more of them, because they’re sweet and festive. I hang them from the chandelier over our dining table. Here are a few of them:

Anyone have any other fun Easter crafts for little ones to share? Please add them to the comments.

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And, finally, the winner of our second Circus Family 4-pack of Tickets is Jen O, comment #12!  Thanks to everyone for participating. I’ll be updating the playground list within the week, so hopefully we can all benefit from the contest with all the new playgrounds added. When I first ran the randomizing thing, it came up with #20, but that was me, so I did it a second time for #12.

If you want to buy tickets to the circus on your own, here’s the link.