This Week at the Waterstrauts

No birthdays to celebrate mean less blogs. But, I figure it's been a few days, so here we are. We haven't been up to much this week, and cancelled lots of maybe plans, but Hayden and I did go out to cracker country home school day on Friday. 

We made candles.. 

...saw some animals... 

...did some knitting... 

...made some games.... 

...ran into Lonnie and Jan with their grandkids... 

...visited the old school house.. 

...worked the gardens... 

...pumped some water... 

...washed some clothes... 

...and ironed them too... 

...and churned some butter... 

We also visited the post office, and Hayden ran around like a mule squeezing out sugar cane, before we went out to lunch with Asa. But, I missed all that as my camera batteries died (and then my phone, I might be terrible at charging things and it shows when Asa is in the office and not home to charge it for me!) 

With Asa in the office this week, we tried to get back into some sort of semblance of school work. We've spent months doing a little here and there, but mostly things like Presidential birthdays, and the Finding the Fendersons. At some point we had to get back to book work. I mad everyone brand new checklists and laminated them. This time, I made them all on my own instead of using pre-made ones, and they're much better. We've got a few new things we're going to be working on, which I'm excited about, but I'll fill you in on those when they happen. 

You all probably remember our Flat Peyton project. Well, that seems to have run it's course, as he didn't travel much at all last year. Hayden was begging for the same project with a few tweaks. He had made Flat Hayden forever ago, and wanted to get him finally out and about. (Though he did already go on a trip once to Alabama when he was first made!) 

We had some great offers for his first trip, but it was pretty clear who we were settling on first. My Aunt is headed to El Salvador on Friday, and offered to let Flat Hayden tag along. In order to get him there on time we had to write a letter to go along with him and make him a facebook page real quick, so there isn't much there yet. We're going to work on filling it all out this week though. In a fun change of pace from Flat Peyton, Hayden is going to be blogging about his adventures instead of keeping a scrap book. I'll link to that after we get it all set up too, so you can follow his adventures. 

Since we had lots of book work this week, I wanted to give the boys some fun incentives, and since we never quite got around to game week this summer, I thought we could incorporate them for good behavior and attitudes. Asa worked on the questions for  Who Wants to be a 100-point-are and I pulled out our old board from last year. 

I was only going to post a picture for each of the boys.. but I feel the sequence of pictures is pretty entertaining. Calib was up first. 

He came out with 35 points, and Peyton was up next.

Peyton ended up with 20, and Hayden went last, earning 25. If you don't know how points work, it's the Waterstraut currency the boys use to buy things like staying up later, playing extra games, or having extra snacks. Occasionally, they can change them in for actual money as well. 

We still had some plinko chips from the summer. I give those out for school work, and then they drop them once a month to see how many points it translates to. 

We also played 100 point money drop. It was a show on a few summers ago, you can google it to see how it works out. But, its a tough one, and nobody ended up with any points. Though they did have fun doing it! 

Saturday was the big day, they got to play everyone's favorite: Deal or No Deal. 

I made three boards, and used index cards for the cases, so it was super quick for me to put together. 

Hayden went first and picked case number 8. It's important to note that I wrote the amounts in the cases, then shuffled them up, then didn't look while I taped them to the board, and then numbered them. So, I had no idea what was in any of them either. 

Again, I enjoy the sequence of pictures. 

Hayden eventually took a deal for 50 points.....

..but his case contained 80. 

Calib went with case #17. 

He refused to take any deals... 

There was either 18 or 90 in his case. He turned down the final deal of 52 points, stuck with his case... 

...and ended up with only 18 points. (The 90 was in the last case he didn't pick, #13). 

Peyton then thought case #13 was lucky and picked it for his. 

His brothers cheered him on... 

...and Peyton ended up taking a deal for 40. 

But, it wasn't a great deal, there was 70 points in his case. 

In other news, next week we're having a mini 'villains week' (mini meaning they still have lots of book work). The boys will each be picking a fictional and non-fictional villain to create a villainous file on. I made these too. I think they're fun. We're going to do some presentations and have a villain inspired dinner on Saturday when we give out the Villain Awards! 

We did make time to go over to swim with Madison though. 

Then she was over on Sunday, and there was some nerf gun madness. 

Speaking of Sunday, we were supposed to go to the Rays game. We had free tickets and everything. But, everyone was concerned we might miss the Bucs win. I had my doubts (I mean, did you see them the first week?), but Calib and Asa really didn't want to miss it just in case. The last time the Bucs won, I was in Saint Louis to see the Broncos play (even they lost that day!), so it'd been a week short of a year since I had seen the Bucs win (on TV at least, in person it's been nearly two years... and we're season ticket holders!) If by chance, they pulled it off, I didn't want to miss it either, so decided to nix the Rays and watch the Bucs on TV instead. And you guys, they won! It was ugly, and we nearly lost it after being ahead, but ultimately the Bucs FINALLY won a game, so I'll take it. Now, if we could do something about a home game win. We did end up selling our Giants and Cowboys tickets (luckily before Tony Romo broke his collar bone, prices are going to plummet now!), and thanks to those two games, we've recouped about 75% of what we paid for our season ticket package. We figure on average now, it costs $9 a ticket. Not too shabby. 

Monday Asa and I headed out to renew our annual passes for Disney. We are all going next week, but we were itching for a date day, and figured the boys always hate having to stand around while we renew our passes. Plus, until they were renewed we had no way to book fastpasses. And spoiled family alert, I am not about to go to Disney without fastpasses. It just made sense to go take care of it now. 

We made reservations for breakfast at the Wave, a small restaurant in the Contemporary resort. We're loving the Disney breakfasts lately. Trail's End is always a good breakfast, and the Tonga Toast at the Kona Cafe is a must have,  and you can't go wrong with the breakfast buffet at Cape May. Plus, Disney breakfast can be had late enough to act as a lunch, but it's cheaper (and even more so with Tables in Wonderland!) 

If you get to the Wave anytime between 11-11:45, you have to order the buffet. Before then you can order a la cart. I didn't know that before we showed up, and I wasn't sure what I was going to order, but the decision was made for me, buffet is was. 

They had an AWESOME yogurt parfait bar (I'm going to need orange blossom honey on all my parfaits from now on, please and thank you!) 

They had some standard breakfast pastries. 

They also have their own special eggs Benedict, this one has a key lime hollandaise sauce. 

They had standard eggs, but they also have frittatas, and I've heard sometimes they have some omelets that are pretty good.  Way down at the end there there's fresh homemade biscuits with sausage gravy. (The biscuits are so light and fluffy, they're REALLY good). 

Trails end has french toast bread pudding, and it's good, but it has nothing on the banana fosters bread pudding at the wave. Trails end wins in the breakfast potato department, but the cheesy hash browns were pretty awesome. I, however, was there mostly because of the sweet potato pancakes. It's their signature dish, and it is AH-MAZ-ING. Add the pecan maple butter on top, and it's soooo good. 

Asa and I decided we would eat here again, but maybe order a la cart. Getting the sweet potato pancakes off the menu will only set you back $10, while the buffet is just over $20. 

We headed over to the Magic Kingdom after we let our breakfast settle, it's just a short walk from the Contemporary, so that was nice. It always a pain to renew our tickets, because for some reason it takes forever, then we're never all linked. This time went relatively easy, but we were still at the window for 20 minutes or so. Ugh. First World Problems. 

We wanted to make sure they worked ok, but the Magic Kingdom was pretty packed, so we weren't going to stay. But the train was at the station, so we decided to take it around. Everyone goes to the Magic Kingdom just to ride the train around, right? 

After we had finished the business of renewing our passes we headed over to Port Orleans Riverside. (Also fun side note, I finally got my floppy pool hat! I waited and checked on it every time I went to Target, just waiting for it to drop to 70% off... and it finally did! Set me back a whopping $4!) 

It's super pretty there, and we've decided it's next on our list of Disney Resorts to stay. 

We were there for the pool, because it was a hot one. (I feel like it's never going to cool down). We headed home after a couple hours of lounging by the pool, in time to beat the evening traffic. 

This week we also got a box from my mom. She sent us back some of our fair stuff. Peyton finally got his ribbon. 

I also got back all my presidential pez dispensers. Yay! I missed them. 

The boys got their checks too. Hayden raked it in with $42. 

Peyton's winnings totaled $38

And Calib ended up with a respectable $31. 

There's also a whole mess of ribbons to sort out. 

In other news, I've been killing the coupon game lately, but this has to be the best I've ever done. I got everything pictured (plus a newspaper) for $7.77. That's 60 cents an item! 

My savings total was $48.51. Totally killed it. 

This week is shaping up to be more of the same, we have a couple of "maybe" things on the calendar, but for the most part I'm trying to get them back into a school routine (until October hits, and then it's just scheduling madness!) We've got a work from home week this week, which you know I love (you guys, I had Eggs Benedict made for me for lunch, plus it's double the parents to help with school work). 

Next Up: Tacos and Football, Disney Magic, and *maybe* we'll finally get to that zoo day.