I can hardly wait until I get a new camera. Mine is totally falling apart. The battery is taped in, the lens cap doesn't close anymore, the pictures are turning out blurry, and it's *almost* not worth the trouble of taking pictures. But, alas, my need to document my children's childhood's outweigh the resentment I feel towards my camera of less than a year.
So, one day last week Asa and I went out for an errand date (you know where we have fun going out and running errands just the two of us with lunch or something thrown in). We did some stuff on some day, and I can't remember because I didn't take pictures. Blah. I think it was Tuesday, maybe. And I think we went to lunch, or something. Wait.. it's coming back to me. Costco, Costco seems like something we did. Oh yea, and we had Red Robin for lunch. I finally got my teal sunglasses I'd been eyeing (good thing I didn't buy them for $9 when I could get them two months later for $7), Oh and Ikea, we went to Ikea! We got a new bar to hang our new pots and pans off of, and new dishes which we desperately needed. I got a set that had 6 bowls, six dinner plates, and six salad plates for $20!
See, it came back to me. I just had to think about it.
The rest of the week I know, because I did suffer through and take some pictures. Wednesday we headed out to Disney. Not only was it a nice day, but we were on a mission (more about that in a second). Blizzard Beach is closed for refurbishment right now, so we headed on over to Typhoon Lagoon. Despite it being almost 80 degrees, there wasn't really a wait for anything.
After our morning at Typhoon Lagoon, we headed over to the Magic Kingdom. So, 99 percent of the time we park at the Polynesian. We usually get a dole whip to end our day, and its a shorter trip (I know, totally not according to disney rules, but whatever, we do it.) Except we get there and they aren't letting anyone in except those staying in the hotel or people with dinner reservations. So, we have to take the loop around to normal parking. By now its like 3:30 and theres still tons of people pouring in (not a good sign). So, we park, get on the tram and try and get on the monorail. Except the monorail is out of commission (getting all fixed up for the 'rush' of Spring Breakers the next few weeks). At this point I was so annoyed, and had we been there just because we probably would have bailed in favor of Epcot, but we were (as previously stated) on a mission. So, we waited for the boat, which took forever, and then finally got into the park which was packed.
To make matters worse, Disney is changing to this fast pass plus system where you have to sign up online to 'pick' your times for your fast passes (a ticket that gets you into the shorter line for a ride). Except, it's not really picking at all. It's like 'hey, heres these three rides you picked (all which HAVE to be in the same park), here's these random times for them. You can't mix and match these times, you have to pick one of the three scenarios which we present you. All of this is much more annoying than having to feed your ticket into a machine at the ride and then get a paper ticket for when to come back. It caters much more to the people who plan trips out WAY ahead of time, than passholders that go on a whim. Even worse, you need a magic band to do any of this. Passholders don't have magic bands yet (though we did call and a supposed 'special order' has been placed for us). We have 4 from staying in the hotel, where you can only register 4 people at a time. Not cool for families of 5, like we're really going to get two rooms! So, we can only get 4 fast passes at a time. There are kiosks where Hayden's ticket would work to register for him as part of fast pass plus, but then it's a whole mess of some of us have tickets, some don't, AND the added whammy of not being able to do it until you get INTO a park when tons of other people did it ahead of time. The whole system just kind of sucks. And I doubt we'll use it. Not to mention we have to check our stuff on our tablets since we don't have smart phones, and sometimes Disney's wifi is non-existent.
BUT, I'm telling you this because I did get FOUR fast passes to various attractions. I got them for space mountain, to meet Cinderella, and to ride Big Thunder Railroad. None of these were ideal times for us, but I needed the Cinderella one just in case, because as I said before, I was on a mission. I have a friend I went to high school with, Kristi---she calls me a super mom, but I think she's the super mom. Anyway, she's doing a project with her kids that'll last ALL YEAR (I do not have the patience for something this involved AND long running), but every week this year they are celebrating a new state. Her two kids, Noah and Mikayla are learning capitals, state birds/trees/mottos, doing craft projects, eating cuisine from that state.(I told you it's impressive!) She's even managed to drum up enough friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends to get mail from each state the corresponding week. Florida was up, and so of course I offered to send the mail. To be fair, when she asked for help she said even just a postcard from that place would be fine. But, I knew a postcard wouldn't do it for us.
A while ago, Noah and Mikayla hosted Flat Peyton. They had him at Halloween time and even made him a costume. They were very helpful in showing Flat Peyton around Michigan, so we decided we would make a Flat Noah and Flat Mikayla and show them around Florida. So we stole some pictures from Kristi's blog, and made a Flat Noah and Flat Mikayla. We took them to the Bucs stadium, the Rays stadium, to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, to the Manatee Viewing Center, to the beach-- just all over. We took pictures and made a book. The one place we didn't get to before I had to mail the book, was Disney. It rained the day we were going to go, and I had to send the book so it would be there for Florida week (last week). So I emailed Krisit to let her know we would be going DURING her Florida week and I would send her the pictures later.
So, despite the crowds, the parking, the monorail issues, and the fast passes, we HAD to get some pictures of Flat Noah and Flat Mikayla at Disney. I even went and collected them some 'my first visit' buttons. I am going to send them Flat Noah and Flat Mikayla, and I plan on sending the buttons along with them (It's on my to-do list for tomorrow, I swear!)
Asa took Calib and Peyton on space mountain while Hayden and I took some pictures of the Flat Gatchel's around Disney. We stopped by the new Snow White Ride,
And Dumbo (after taking the Flat picture, Hayden wanted one)
And to the sword in the stone, among other places.
But the one place I HAD to go was to see Cinderella, the real Mikayla's favorite. I was a little nervous the Disney employees would be weird about this, but they were SO nice. This Cinderella was WONDERFUL about it. So, thank you Cinderella! And, I hear Mikayla was thrilled with this development when she saw the picture.
We did hit Tom Sawyers island too, and we FINALLY found whats said to be the smallest hidden Mickey on all of Disney property.
We stopped in Adventure Land to have our dinner I packed, and the ducks really wanted to join us.
Asa seemed ok with this.
Calib, on the other hand, was so NOT ok with this. We might have to re-think ducks on the farm.
After dinner, we had a dole whip (the float kind! which you can only find in the Magic Kingdom)
We stopped to try on some hats. Sometimes, I take a picture and think 'Calib's so going to hate this one when he gets older'.
And the monorail was still out of commission so we had to take the boat back to the parking lot.
The rest of the week was fairly normal, trying to get home school going again after the Olympics and Tennessee was proving a bit difficult. But, we're working on it.
Saturday when Asa was working, I took Peyton and Hayden to a build n grow class at Lowes. This month they got to build a bird house.
And when we got home, I glued the last two patches onto their aprons so they are all up to date.
I got a ton of stuff done on Saturday with Asa working all day. I did a huge library trip and took Peyton to tween game day (we stopped by Sonic on the way home for 1/2 priced happy hour slushies), and I got all kinds of cleaning done, AND the next two months of my home school calendar. It may look a little light, but we're doing things slightly differently (I'll explain next blog)
Oh, hello Deleno!
Sunday we decided to have an 'unplugged day' we have these every once in awhile. The boys are lobbying for once a month, which I'd be totally fine with. They're so much fun! If you've never done one, I totally recommend it. No computers, video games, phones, ipods, Tvs, tablets, ect for one day.
We started out our day with board games. We finally broke out our baby jenga.
And then we all played Lifeboats, which somehow, though being the number one target, I won.
After lunch we headed out to do a ton of yard work. We've had an area in the backyard that's just been terrible since we moved in. There was this awful dying grass there, and stumps to things that were no longer there. I decided we finally needed to take that all out. The plan is to mulch it out, and put potted plants and such there to start our garden, and get some fruit trees growing to kind of get it down before farm-living. Plus, pots you can take with you.
Anyway, the boys did a great job helping. All of our neighbors lent some tools to the cause, which is awesome, because otherwise it might just not have been possible to get rid of it all.
Peyton also found a friend. Had the lizard been on me, I wouldn't have been quite so calm. Peyton, however, was fine with it.
This was previously a giant mess of awfulness. It looks A LOT better, and is ready for our plants once we mulch it out!
We were all super hot after the yard work, so we went over to the pool to cool off. It was our first trip of the season and rightfully so, it was still SO cold. But we all jumped in. Asa was the only one who really stayed in though.
After the pool, the boys and I got out the playdoh while Asa made an awesome dinner. He has been cooking nearly ever night, and making delicious meals.
I made a giraffe, the Pink Panther, and a bird.
We made some loom bracelets, while enjoying the later sunset on the patio.
And we finally broke out the croquet set, which was way funner than anyone thought it was going to be. I love that Peyton's just playing croquet in his pajamas on a random Sunday!
Maybel really enjoyed all the game playing that took place. She always had a new box to sit in.
We played some Disney cranium. Calib and Asa were a team, Peyton, Hayden and I were the other team (the winning team, that is)
I mean if you can't get that Asa is sitting on a Magic Carpet here (while humming 'A Whole New World') You can't expect to win, can you?
We finished up the board games with some Snake Oil. A fun game, if you've never played, you're basically using the random cards in your hand to make an item to sell to a certain customer. You have to give your pitch and hope they pick you. I've never laughed so hard.
We finished up Sunday's unplugged day with 5 rounds of sardines in the dark. Nobody can ever find Calib.
Today the boys got to work on school work. I've made them all check lists to help lessen my load a bit. But, our 'together' activity the next month and a half or so is going to revolve around government. Since we're heading to DC in April and May, I want them to have some understanding of it. This weeks focus: levels of government. Today we talked about local governments, tomorrow we'll have our election. There's already some heavy campaigning. But, I'll save that for next week's blog.
Oh, and shout out to the Gatchels for letting us be a part of their state project, and sending us this awesome post card thank you!
Next Up: I probably won't be back at it until Wednesday as next week we have plans for a VERY full Tuesday. But until then, there will be some elections taking place at the Waterstrauts!
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