Weekend Top Five

A good weekend. Each day started out cold and rainy, and ended up beautiful.

Here are my top five:





5. MIL visit and Noah's field day
My MIL came for a short visit Friday afternoon. I was originally supposed to have a garage sale and she was coming down to take Aaron for a few hours, but I ended up moving the sale and she came down anyway. After some grocery shopping due to a huge sale on meat, we went out to a park by Noah's school to pick him up from his "walk-a-thon" (kind of like his schools' version of a field day).

No surprise, Noah spent the entire half hour walk with the girl from his class.

Noah's on the left
4. Baseball game
For Noah's second game, he and I rode our bikes to the ball park, which was a fun change. Noah finally got to play "catcher" for one of the innings. He struggled a little because the pads kept falling off of him and he seemed a little scared of the ball at first, but it was much more fun than hanging in the outfield, which he did all three of the other innings.





3. Meijer Gardens
My brother and his family were here for the weekend. So after a very rainy beginning to Saturday, we decided to take the kids out to Mejijer Gardens.

The butterfly exhibit was supposed to close at the end of April, but there were still quite a few flying around. We were fascinated by one big African moth. It was bigger than our hands and the volunteer there was very knowledgeable about all of the butterflies.








There is also an arboretum and sculpture park. I will be sharing my favorite sculpture later in the week.


Here's Aaron and the bear sculpture















The kids had fun playing in the children's garden, including a HUGE treehouse with different rooms and rope bridges, but my favorite part was the nature trail they have. It runs along a river and ends up at an old farmhouse and barn.















The major event of the nature trail was "turtle spotting". They were everywhere. The turtles were very active and we saw a ton of them. My sister in law won the award for being the expert frog spotter.










I even got a cute picture of all five cousins peeking out of the little kids' gate










2. Mother's Day Gifts
Steve got out of bed early Sunday morning to make a pancake breakfast for us before church, and I opened my presents from the boys. Steve had taken the boys to one of the Michael's craft nights to make me cards and had also helped them to paint trivets for me. Noah was also proud to have made a stepping stone for me. I can't wait to find the perfect place to put it in the yard.






1. Mother's Day Afternoon
We had a nice relaxing visit at my parents' after church for Mother's Day. My brother's family was still there as well as one of my stepbrothers and his family. We came home mid-afternoon and it finally got warm outside so Steve took the boys outside to play for a little while.








The Week Ahead:
We have baseball games Monday, Wednesday, AND Friday this week, and Noah's Spring concert Thursday night. Top it all off with my student recital on Saturday afternoon. Should be a busy week. I can't believe there are only three more Mondays to deal with before summer vacation. Woo Hoo!

Have a great Monday.

Weekend Top Five 4/13/09

What a wonderful Easter day we had yesterday! It's days like that, no matter how few and far between, that make all of the other days worth it. Beautiful weather, agreeable moods, a few new toys to play with outside, and of course, chocolate galore!

So of course, the Weekend Top Five is filled with holiday weekend activity.


5. Easter Service at church
My hand bells only had to play one song, which was with the choir and a brass quartet our church had hired. The performance went great, which everyone was relieved for, since the rehearsal had been pretty rough.

My most exciting thing was that we finally got a really nice family picture while we were all gussied up. We never did one last Christmas because of finances and the church directory one before that was awful, so this was the first good one we got in about two years. Aren't my three guys handsome??


4. Easter Baskets
I found out Sunday afternoon that both boys had apparently "inspected" the baskets before we got up, but they didn't actually touch them, so I let it go in the name of excitement.

I had made up baskets for them with a little bit of candy and several little gifts each.



















Aaron was also pretty excited to see what the "Easter Bunny" had brought Mommy in her basket too.















Noah got a HUGE Bakugan ball and new magnetic cards to play with his bakugans. He spent pretty much the rest of the day taking it everywhere and seeing which magnetic things would pop it open.














3. Easter Egg Hunt Outside
Since it was forcasted to be an absolutely beautiful Easter Sunday (which it was), we had decided to hide the plastic eggs filled with candy outside in the yard this year for the boys to hunt for. After hiding them outside the night before, I started worrying about whether they would still be there in the morning, or would passersby see them and help themselves.

What I hadn't counted on was the fact that our yard is filled with VERY HUNGRY squirrels who were so interested in eating the candy that they would actually EAT THE PLASTIC to get to the candy inside. We found three plastic eggs eaten through.









But the boys still had a great time hunting...


Noah needed a little gentle reminding to slow down enough to make sure Aaron got some eggs

















But Aaron held his own quite well and we needn't have worried.











When they came inside to dump the candy into their baskets, we learned the second thing to remember about hiding eggs with candy outside...DON'T USE REESE'S PEANUT BUTTER BUNNIES. They were the only candy that melted so badly that we needed to throw most of them away.














2. Fun Easter Afternoon Outside
With our families still out of town and since I made meals all week long for Spring Break, we decided to eat lunch out at a restaurant and then come home to hang out for the rest of the afternoon. After a nap for Aaron, and the egg hunt (above) we stayed outside the rest of the afternoon.

One of things I was MOST excited about was teaching Noah how to throw a football.

Aaron had gotten a football as one of his Easter presents and I was able to teach Noah how to use the laces to hold it and throw it. I have been waiting forever to be able to play catch with him, and he was so excited to be able to do it the right way.





While Noah and I were playing catch with the football, Steve and Aaron spent a LONG time with Aaron's other new Easter gift, a bubble rocket.

This is thing is so cool. Usually bubble toys last about ten minutes and then they're forgotten. Not this one! The boys played with it for hours off and on all day, and we went through two full bottles of bubble solution (but well worth it)



It was fun watching Steve come up with new and creative ways to catch the rocket after the boys launched it.












Yes, we did other things this weekend as well. We went to Deb's daughter's birthday party on Saturday, but the pictures are too fun to see so I am waiting until Friday to post the entire story.

5. Visit with my Mother and Grandmother
On Friday, my mother was in town (really, 45 minutes south of here) visiting my grandmother so we went down for our semi-annual visit with her. I will leave details out as to why twice a year is plenty.

Since usually the visits are somewhat awkward, I decided to invite them to come to the Kalamazoo Public Museum with the boys instead of hanging around my grandmother's apartment. It turned out to be a very good idea.

I really enjoyed spending some time walking around the museum with my 93 year old grandmother. I thought it was funny as we were entering the museum to look up and see the street name that we were on was the same as my grandma's name, Eleanor.

Of course, I had to take a picture.












It was so neat to watch her look at the exhibits. Usually, I spend my time chasing the kids and never really get to see anything.

This time, I pretty much left the kids to their own devices, and hung with my grandma through many of the exhibits. Here she is looking at the movable art exhibit.












The most fun was walking through the "old time Kalamazoo" area and hearing stories about so many of the things she saw, which she either has or had replicas of to this day. And then when we got back to her apartment, she had fun showing me her examples of the things we saw at the museum.


So even though we had to put up with my mother saying swear words around the kids and talking to them as if they were babies, it ended up being a neat couple of hours to spend with my grandma. She also had purchased some new books to share with boys, sending home several of them with us. Once a teacher, always a teacher!





Ahead this week: I HAVE to find a new OBGYN. I have been meaning to get a hold of my step-sister-in-law (say that five times fast) who practices north of here to see if she can recommend someone here in GR, but I haven't had a chance yet. It is starting to become more dire every day that I need to get going on this.

Also this week, open applications for Schools Of Choice are Monday morning to try to find a school for Aaron for next year, I am driving for a field trip for Noah on Wednesday, and I am finally back to being Friday room mother this week. Because of circumstances, it has been a long time since I have fulfilled my duty.

I hope you will come link up if you posted about your holiday weekend. The weekend top five has been less active lately and I would love for us to share linky love again. I cant wait to see how all of you shared this wonderful weekend with your families as well.

Have a a great week!

Friday Photo Story: Our Marathon Day at Magic Kingdom

After a long week of "vacationing", there were still quite a few rides at the Magic Kingdom that we had wanted to experience with the kids but had not had a chance to. So, like you read about here, we had a character dinner with my family scheduled on Friday, our last day at 4:00. We were planning to go to dinner and then hang around the park for the rest of the night to watch the night parade and fireworks.

Steve and I decided that since it was our last day, we would make it count and do a marathon day, from the time the park opened until after the fireworks ended at night.

We knew it was going to be a long and exhausting day, but we are SO glad that we chose to do it. It was the most fun day we had in the parks by far. There were lots of things that we didn't even know about that we got to experience since we got there at opening.

We started out bright and early at 7:00, hoping to get to the parks before it actually opened at 9:00. We got into the outside gate around 8:15 and waited among the crowds (remember this picture from Wednesday?).

The first surprise came at about five minutes to 9. A "welcome show" was held right outside the entrance and all of the characters arrived by train to open the park. It was exciting...you could feel the energy. I didn't get any pictures because we were looking right into the sun, but we did get some video of it. Noah passed some time by taking silly pictures of Steve with my camera.



















When we first walked into the park, we headed right to the "lands" that we wanted to do.

The first thing we came to was Aladdin's Magic Carpet. No line! Cool!

The boys and I jumped right on while Steve went to get fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.








After riding it once, the ride operator told us we could go again if we wanted since there were no people. After two more times, Steve came back, got on and we went yet one MORE time.














Hyped up from our good luck, we headed to Pirates of the Carri bean. Again, NO WAIT. Walked right through and onto a boat. We were even more amazed when we discovered the operator of the ride was a student at the school my taught at before he retired. What a small world! Although the ride was dark and eerie, the kids handled it quite well and we were off to more stuff.





We moved on to Splash Mountain (again, no wait) but as we loaded, the ride broke down and we had to get off...first broken ride of the day.

So off to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Our fastpass was for 10:15 and it was 10:00 with a five minute wait. Let's go ahead and go...

Here came our first glimpse of the day of Noah's "demons" from the Everest ride two days previous (which I mentioned in this post). The kid who LOVED every roller coaster he had ever been on in his life, started crying uncontrollably because he was so scared to go on the ride. Steve and I struggled between one of us taking Aaron and the other sitting off with Noah or just biting the bullet and doing it.

Yup, the bad parents that we are, we just moved him along. I kind of felt that if he was going to get over this issue, we needed to just do it. The part that he was scared of was because that DARN Yeti jumped out at him. It took a lot of convincing that nothing would jump out at him on this ride.

We got through it one time and our fastpass was ready so we just turned around and rode it again. I still can't believe we were able to ride that ride TWICE in a row.

So off we headed to Haunted Mansion. Once again, NO WAIT. We walked right in again.

Noah had recuperated a little from his "trauma" and we loaded into the cars. The spooky music kind of freaked them both out a little but they were fine...
UNTIL..
Oh yes, yet another ride broke down. And where should it break down? The spooky graveyard with loud creepy music and ghosts continually popping out at them from behind gravestones. We sat there for a good 8 or 9 minutes before we went again. No one was interested in doing this one again.


So it was now around 11:00 and we had done most of the rides we had wanted to tackle the entire day. So we headed to Dumbo and waited in a line (still only 30 minutes) and checked that ride off the list.



















We did actually get back to Splash Mountain, where Noah started in on his minor panic attack again, but he got over it when we told him to just watch the story of Brer Rabbit which we had read at home. Once again, the ride was still not quite working properly, and there were major "log jams" and we kept ramming into the logs in front of us while the ones behind us kept ramming into us. The good thing was that I didn't get wet, which was good because everyone else was coming off it soaked and I really didn't feel like being wet for the rest of the evening.

Then it was off to re-ride Space Ranger Spin, which had been the favorite on Monday. My score, sad to say, did NOT improve. I still don't understand how Aaron can get 1000 points, Noah can get 1400 points, I can get 4000 points and my STINKER of a husband can get 50,000 POINTS.














While over there, we took in the people mover through Space Mountain and the Monsters, Inc. Show (which was very funny).



















We stopped to eat our sandwiches we had brought for lunch and were starting to get tired so we headed up to ride a few spins around the park on the railroad. By that point, it was time to start gathering for the afternoon parade, and then head over to dinner with the family.














We also were caught by surprise by a neat character show right out front of the castle that even included it's own little firework show. Aaron was talking about seeing "the REAL Peter Pan" for days afterward.














After dinner, we needed to actually WAIT for rides since the fastpasses were gone, but we didn't mind. We made it to the jungle cruise, where Aaron was invited to drive the boat for a little while














I thought it was kind of neat that every time there was a crowd waiting for a parade, a Disney "cast member" would put out fun activities in the streets for kids to do. Noah is quite the hula hooper!














Are you exhausted reading this? I am again just writing about it. But it really was a good thing that we did it. I was glad we did it on the last day so that the "grumpies" from being tired the next day were spent in the car on the ride toward home.

My T13 for next week will be the images from the evening from this long and eventful day. But for now, I need to go take a shower, get dressed, and take Aaron to the park.

Have a great Friday!

Dinner With Pooh and Friends

My brother and SIL were generous to treat our entire group (11 of us in total) to a character dinner at the Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom on our last night of vacation.


Yup, we do stand out a little all in red







The four of us had been in the park since it had opened that morning, so we were a little more grumpy than we should have been when we first arrived, but luckily, the spirit and joy returned pretty quickly when:
A. We got a look at he amazing spread of food at the buffet
B. You just can't be grumpy when Tigger is bouncing around
C. How excited the boys were to see their cousins again

After getting our group settled between two tables, we took turns heading to the buffet for food for children and ourselves.
Noah was still on his eating freeze because of the dumb tooth (that STILL wont come out) but was thrilled to head over to the dessert bar with my dad and pile his bowl full of ice cream and sprinkles.









We were honored to be visited by Pooh



















Piglet














Eeyore



















and Tigger, who definitely had the most personality of the characters. My niece and nephew had autograph books for the characters to sign and Tigger got creative in signing by using Aaron's head for a desk














and then Aaron reverted into his silliness and started his "poking" problem again, to which Tigger,(just like Lilo earlier that week) made it clear that poking WAS NOT okay. I really liked how the characters could get their needs met while still staying in character and being kind to overzealous children (aka Aaron)














Noah opted to "play it cool" with a high five, rather than the typical character hug



















It was a nice way to spend our last meal together and two weeks later, the boys are STILL talking about the ice cream with sprinkles that grandpa got them.

I know they don't read this blog anymore, but a big Thank You to my brother and SIL who treated us to this special dinner anyway. We appreciate you including us.

Have a great day everyone!

First Morning and a Breakfast with Character

ard
After two full days of driving, we went to bed Sunday night in our condo looking forward to beginning our vacation with a bang.

Monday morning was Steve's birthday so Steve's parents who were also down at the same time wanted to spend his birthday with him. They treated us to a character breakfast at the Polynesian Resort.

We were supposed to meet at the resort at 8:30 to check in for the 9:15 breakfast. Since we were up early anyway, we decided to head over early and see if we could get a quick trip around the park on the monorail. (We didn't know that we were in for A LOT of monorails before the week was over!)
We got to the resort at 8:00 and went to ride.

Since the monorail was empty and it was early in the morning, we were invited to be "assistant engineers". We stepped right into the front by the driver and posed for our first of MANY "brother shots".


They were very excited to be able to see right out the front...




until it started moving.
Then, Aaron got a little freaked out and ran to hide in my arms for the remainder of the trip.





At the time we were worried that this was going to be Aaron's reaction to everything at "The World"




As I will share later, that worry vanished very quickly.

So after our quick spin around, it was time to head into the Polynesian to be seated for our breakfast. We were each given leis to get into the Ohana spirit, which the boys quickly shed as soon as they could. Mine remained in the stroller the rest of the week.

Steve was excited to get a birthday card from the characters at the breakfast.

















Aaron was a bit grumpy for a large part of it and we chalked it up to nerves. Noah also was acting a bit under the weather and it was the first time of many throughout the day that he was starting to run a FEVER. I ended up leaving the breakfast table to run to the gift shop to get him some chewable Tylenol, which he took at regular intervals the entire day.

I will continue on THAT story another post.
But the characters were still a hit. It seemed that each time we started eating (or getting a child to eat) a character was appearing, tapping the boys on the head as a greeting.










Our breakfast for the morning was served "family style" which meant that a big tray of food was delivered to the table and we took what we wanted. When it was empty, they would bring more on request. It was a very different kind of dining experience.

The boys were visited by...




Mickey
















Pluto














Lilo



















and Stitch.









For some reason, along the way, Aaron picked up a strange habit of poking the characters. The characters each handled it a little differently, but the best was Lilo poking Aaron right back!










Also included in the breakfast was a parade for the children with characters around the restaurant.


Aaron did not participate. Instead, he sat at the table crying because the characters wouldn't pick him up and carry him around. Did I mention that he was having a grumpy morning?





After the breakfast, we were off to our first morning in Magic Kingdom.

I'll share more about that later. I will also be sharing about the other character meal that we were generously treated to later this week.

Have a great Tuesday.