Week 26:Marriage: Betting Someone Half Your Crap You'll Love Them Forever

Man, I kind of wish someone would take half my stuff and chuck it out the window. I have learned this week that we sure do have a lot of it. This is why it's good to move every couple of years, out with the old- in with the new. Unfortunately, I think I'll be keeping my husband- so I have to sort through it all. (It's unfortunate that I have to sort through all our stuff, not that I'm keeping Asa, of course)

I know this is a short week, as I posted a blog Thursday, but I'm going to be rather busy the rest of the week, and have fun things to report, so here we are. However, I'm slightly confused why I'm at week 26. I know I'm not the best at helping Calib with his fraction homework, evident by his waiting for Asa to get off the phone with the Fios people about switching over internet and TV to the new house without a lag (because God forbid we live without either!), instead of just asking me. What was my point? Oh right, 26 is half of 52- and it's not my half birthday yet. So, how did this occur? Have I been labeling wrong? Am I just ahead of the game? I'll have to research I suppose.

Well, since you just heard from me Thursday, I pretty much just have my weekend to share. It was a groupon-fabulous weekend. If you don't use Groupon, you totally should. It's a great way to do things in your area you may not have even known existed, at a hugely reduced cost. This weekend we went to the Xtreme Fun Center, and Swam with Manatees. Neither of these things are usually in our Entertainment Budget price range, but Groupon makes it work.

Friday, Calib came home with his run club t-shirt. Every kid gets a run card, with a punch each time they do a lap. Once they get to 125 laps, they get a t-shirt. Calib gets one every year, but it seems earlier and earlier each year. He was the first one in his class to get it this year, he said he knew of one other 5th grader who also got it on Friday, so he's on track for the coveted speedy otter award at the end of the year! I think he's going to pick up cross country the second he can in middle school. He's quite the awesome runner. I have no idea where he gets it from.

Friday was also Pirate Day for Hayden at school. I couldn't find my camera, so I have no picture, but he was pretty excited about wearing an eye patch and a bandanna to school. I guess they were celebrating Gasparilla at school. We are yet to get on the Gasparilla train (it's celebrated every year here in Tampa), but I keep thinking 'maybe next year.' It draws quite the crowd. Either way, it's a Pirate Festival- and apparently worthy of being celebrated in kindergarten classes.

Also, just a quick note to acknowledge the passing of a great TV Show. For five years, Asa and I faithfully watched Chuck together- Mondays, Sundays, Fridays- whatever random day NBC decided to stick this gem of a show. Friday night was the series finale, and oh boy did it ever deliver. If you've never seen the show, you are missing out. I'm choosing to believe Sarah got her memory back, her and Chuck lived happily ever after, and had lots of spy babies. The End.

Saturday Morning we got up and had breakfast before heading up to Crystal River. It is about an hour north from here. And, shout to to my mom and grandma for my gps because it would have been REALLY hard to find without it. We went to the end of this little tiny road, and there, on the river, was a tiny cute little shack with a dock and a bunch of wet suits and flippers hanging from some outside racks. We had to get the swim in before Hayden turned 6, because 5 and under were free for this excursion. The guy happily took our groupon, which didn't include the tax, so we did have to shell out $3.49 cents. Pretty awesome. The groupon included our rental gear, so he hooked us all up with wet suits, googles, snorkels and flippers. We went to put on our wet suits, and usually I wouldn't be seen in anything that snug, but they are actually more forgiving than you would imagine. Not that I let anyone take a full body picture of me in mine though. The boys were ADORABLE in there's though. We were assigned to Mick's boat, with another family of four- but their kids were teenagers. Mick started off the boat and off we went.

So, anyone in Florida knows about the Manatees coming in to warmer water when the gulf gets too cold for them. This is why we had to wait so long to use the groupon. (I bought it before we went to Alaska) The rivers/springs up in Crystal River stay 72 degrees year round, and so the manatees swam to this area to survive. 72 degrees may sound warm, but I assure you, it doesn't feel that warm. On the way out to the river, Mick told us about some encounters people on his boat had with manatees. They are VERY people friendly animals. Moms will swim up with babies, and once they introduce the baby to everyone, the moms will take off for a nap, and leave the baby with you to play. They often like to play/take people's snorkels and masks. They also like to give hugs, and LOVE to have their bellies scratched. He even told a story about how one kid refused to wear the wet suit, and the manatee really liked his swim trunks. So much so, the manatee took them.

Hayden was very unsure of this whole process. He wasn't thrilled with the wet suit, the snorkels seemed over whelming, and his fear was pretty evident when Mick talked about how many pounds manatees weigh. But, we assured him the manatees wouldn't hurt him, and he did not have to swim with them if he didn't want to. Mick even said he could stay on the boat with him until he decided if he wanted to go or not. We rode the boat for about 10 minutes, out to an area where there were a couple manatees. Because so many people want to swim with the manatees up at Crystal River, there are roped off area's humans are not to go, manatee safe havens if you will. We stopped and the other family got off the boat along with Calib and Peyton trying to get a lone manatee to play, but the manatee seemed uninterested, so we boarded the boat and went a few more minutes down the river.

We stopped over by a roped off area, where about 5 other boats had stopped. I think one was another tour group, and the other boats were just some random people. There were also a lot of kayaks going by. You could see at least two dozen manatees hanging out in the roped off area, and a few swimming around outside. We got into the water, being as quiet as we can be. Manatees do not like noise and splashing, so we had some pool noodles to just kind of float around on. Hayden actually got right off the boat and into the water. Asa headed off with Peyton and Hayden, and I stayed behind and just floated with Calib. The water was very clear, and probably no more than 4 feet deep. There were two sleeping in the water, but you can't pet or disturb a sleeping manatee. Just being in the water with them was very cool though, and you could stick your mask under the water to see them close up.

Calib and I decided we would just float, and see if anyone would come up to us. Sure enough, in a few minutes, Mick quietly called out "Just behind you". Calib turned around, saw the manatee, and then turned back to me, and I could see the terrified look on his face. He just yelled out "I'm scared!" and then he quickly composed himself, all tween like, and said "I mean, I'm cold, I'm cold". He missed out on petting the first one, as it swam by. Eventually, another one came up to him, and he got it together, and began to scratch the underside of it's belly. The Manatee rolled over, with his tummy sticking out of the water to get a nice belly rub.

After Peyton and Asa had pet a few manatees, they decided to take a swim down an offshoot of the river down to a spring where it was crystal clear, about 40 feet deep, and swarming with fish. I stayed behind with Hayden, and Calib who quickly decided after his experiences with the manatees he was done, and he got out of the water, and onto the boat where Mick supplied him with some hot chocolate. Calib then got out my camera and took a couple pictures of me and Hayden in the water.

A few more swam around us, and I would get to pet a few. But Hayden never made it over to one in time to pet it. Here's the problem, you had to be really quiet, and float (Not Kick!!) for the manatees to want to come up to you. Hayden was neither of these things. He kept saying how badly he wanted to pet one, but eventually his lips were chattering so much that I had to make the executive decision to get out of the water. I know he was disappointed, but the manatee swim does come up on groupon a lot, and after this experience, I would certainly purchase it agian. Although, I would do it not on a weekend, when there is less people around, and early in the morning, when the manatees are more active. We got back on the boat, got ourselves some hot chocolate, and then Asa and Peyton came back and boarded the boat. We saw a few more on our trip back to the docks, along with a whole lot of pelicans. Also, fyi, wet suits are actually easier to take off than they are to put on. I had no idea this was the case, but I was quite pleasantly surprised.

We got back around dinner time, and hung out with popcorn, sofa beds and watched Moneyball together. (Well, Hayden sat closely by and watched Phineas and Ferb Across the Second Dimension and had to be reminded not to sing 'I've got a brand new best friend and it's me' song too loud) Good Movie, I totally recommend it. Also, super cool the kids watch more than just kids stuff these days. Gear Up Groundhog day for February second, because that's totally happening.

Sunday after boring stuff like cleaning up the house and doing homework, we went out to the Xtreme fun center in Largo. Included in our groupon was 4 games of laser tag (we had to add one for Hayden), 8 batting cage rounds, and 200 arcade tokens. We got there right when they opened at one to minimize the birthday parties, and whiny kids trying to cut in line for deal or no deal. Laser tag was super fun. We all strapped on our laser tag backpacks, and spent our 12 minutes decimating the red and blue teams. Hayden LOVED it, and started cackling quite the evil laugh every time he got someone. Look out for that one. Calib and Peyton kept trying to shoot me, which they thought was funny- but didn't really do anything since we were on the same team. Afterwards, all of us minus Hayden took two rounds in the batting cage, while Hayden made friends with a little girl, and paid for their date to the air hockey table. She was cute, but too much of a sore loser to be Hayden's type. I guess it's not going to work out for those two crazy kids

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Then we started in on spending our tokens. Today I learned : 200 arcade tokens is A LOT of tokens. He originally had plans to divide them up, but that idea was quickly deemed unnecessary, as we'd play more and more games, and it didn't seem like the pile was getting any smaller. I did learn not to move back up north, because if crazy taxi is any indication, if I slipped on black ice, I would surely over correct and end up in a ditch. We played basketball, and air hockey, and pretty much every game, until we started in with the ticket games. Deal or no Deal was super fun, and yielded us a lot of tickets- but then, Calib hit the jackpot on one of those spin to see how many tickets you get. While Calib was still celebrating his windfall, Hayden played the same game getting the jackpot of 100 tickets AGAIN. Someone needs to take these kids to Vegas, stat! Peyton then inserted his token and won 1 ticket. He was pretty bummed about this, and we moved on. With two tokens left Peyton decided he wanted to play the game where the timer moves up quickly, and if you hit the button and get it to stop on 1000, you win 300 tickets. He wanted to try it- and he hit it ending on 998, getting 10 tickets. So, he put the last token in- hit the button- and landed on 1000. A 300 ticket windfall for Peyton.

The guy at the ticket counter was super nice too. He wasn't the usual annoyed at kids for trying to add up their tickets and decide what they wanted. He took one look at our 1200 tickets, and told each of the boys they could have 550, and then didn't even care when Hayden went over by 50. I really need to go give them a good review. The boys ended up with all kinds of random things- but Peyton got this really big stuffed snake. He's pretty impressed with himself because he got a stuffed animal from an arcade, which to a kid seems like an impossible feat.

Today I started getting some things packed. The closet is turning out to be quite the daunting task, and Asa and I are now taking bets on how many trips we'll have to take to the new house before we're all moved in. He settled on 26, I'm thinking 30. It's like that 'how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop' question. Except, I am going to keep a tally. I did mapquest it today- it's 2.98 miles from here. We also played flashlight tag. I so would have won that last round, but Asa was making a racket in Calib's closet which made the kids open the toilet room door (because they back up to each other), and they found me first!

And the Award for..

Best Impression: Hayden with the tall laundry basket on his head " I. AM. A. RO-BOT. BEEP. BEEP. BOOP"

Caught Red Handed: Calib Skyping Grandma way past his bedtime

Best Idea: Hide-n-go-seek in the dark, in the new house, before anything is in it. New Waterstraut tradition forming right there.

Next Up: Keys, Birthday Cake, 100 Goldfish, and Mickey Ears!