Entry for August 31, 2006
Caleb got to take the day off from school today, so that we could to to Topeka to get his yearly checkup with the neurologist. I am a small town girl. Here's our town.
This was taken right in the middle of the day. Look at all that traffic!
Well, Topeka is an entirely different story. I'm very comfortable getting to the neurologist. It's on the edge of town, I know the exact turns, and which lane to be in (although, I got honked at today, when trying to get over.. he was just a bully driver though, I had PLENTY of room). I told Caleb and Jonas we could go to McDonald's after the appointment. I saw a sign that told me where it was, right on the street I needed to get out of town, so, I was comfortable getting there. It only took about 5 minutes to find it. Easy. Brave me for driving there.
But, then I needed gas. It's 1.69 in Manhattan, I saw a station near the hospital in Topeka that had gas for 1.53, near McDonald's was 1.63. So, I braved it, in trying to get back to the doctor/hospital area. It took me like 20 minutes to get back there, winding streets, so incredible lost, because the traffic was too bad to make my left hand turn to just go the exact opposite. Oh my. Stupid city traffic. But, I found the gas station I was looking for, and discovered that the gas was actually cheaper than their sign advertised, it was 2.44! Well worth my time. And they were giving away Reese's peanut butter cups with the purchase of a soda. Ahh, what a lovely gas station.
Thank goodness I am back in my sleepy town again, with no traffic.
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Entry for August 30, 2006
Last year, I made three halloween costumes in 2 weeks time, without a sewing machine, entirely by hand.
But, they play dress up with them several time a month, so, I guess it was worth it.
This year, I requested, that they give me more notice. (And I got a sewing machine for Christmas too!). I showed them all of the patterns they could choose from, but they didn't like those options. They did state that they want me to make the costume though, they're much better that way.
Well, after much thought, we have come up with our costume choices, three months for me to get them put together. Caleb is going to be Sorcerer Mickey. I'm looking for a good deal on a hat and mickey hands, and I will make him the sorcerer robe, with a gold belt. Easy costume. Alex wants to be goofy. I'm going to make him blue pajama bottoms, orange pajama tops, and a brown vest (I think I have those colors right). We can take a stuffed goofy shopping with us to get the colors perfect. Now, I'm looking for a good deal on a goofy hat. They had a great goofy hat at disney world.. a plush goofy face, I can't find it online though. I have found a goofy hat that looks like goofy's hat, with ears. We'll probably go with that. Jonas wants to be Donald Duck. Oh my. That will not be a simple one to make, and I can't find one to buy (I know, I'm looking a bit early). I've come up with the following idea.. yellow pants, for Donald's legs, fluffy white shorts, with a tail (that will be hard though), and a blue sailors shirt, or something like that. I'm searching now for a donald hat, but, those are harder to come by than I thought.
So, a bit early, but, I don't want to be preasured like I was last year. Plus, what a great excuse to use that sewing machine that I got!
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Entry for August 25, 2006
We've decided to start camping. Jared's goal is to get us in Rocky Mountain National Park this fall, during elk mating season.
So, tonight was night one of camping, our first attempt. The kids had a wonderful time, we were set up right next to the water's edge, good for skipping rocks. They collected tons of wood for the fire, set up two tents, then the winds started. We decided to stick it out as long as we could, it was quite windy, as we ate our hot dogs and marshmellows. When the lightening started, we packed up and left.
We told the boys they could camp in the living room, in the tent, they were quite thrilled. I also agreed to make the same breakfast I was going to cook over the campfire tomorrow for breakfast. (hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and sausage links)
Alex wanted a movie made of him skipping rocks:
Jonas wanted a movie made of him being a four year old.
There are plenty of photos on flickr of our evening out.
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Entry for August 22, 2006
Jonas and I have spent the past two days playing a Spongebob video game, Battle for Bikini Bottom. Yesterday, I actually gave myself a HUGE headache, trying to get one of the Golden Spatulas (we only need 75 to win, I think). Oh my, I get a bit too wrapped up in the game.
The way it works, is he plays, until he gets stuck, then hands me the controller, then I get so stubborn, that I HAVE to beat that area. I never did get that frustating spatula, in case you were wondering. I even had Alex try, when he got home from school, and I went online to see if I was doing something wrong (I wasn't).
So, today, we switched to Mille Bornes. Fun card game, straight from my childhood.
My mom was shocked at how good Jonas is at this game. He's an intense little player. The hippo is on his team.
But, now, Jonas is back to Spongebob. I've told him, I don't want to play. We'll see how long that lasts.
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Entry for August 21, 2006
Caleb joined me on a mother/son grocery trip this weekend, where he explain (again) that he is planning on inventing a car that does not require gasoline. This will be beneficial to him in two ways, he told me, the first, is he will save money on gas himself, and with the rising price of gas, that alone will make him rich. The second benefit he told me, was that everyone else would want this car, so he will be rich and famous, which is good, because it will cost him money to have an indoor swimming pool.
He also explained that he was planning on taking engineering classes in high school, and several math classes, because he feels both of those will be benefical for an inventor. He also explained that he's trying to get really good grades now, so that he can get scholarships for college, because all of the rich people go to college.
He also is planning on living right outside of Disney World. His previous plan was to live in Chicago, but, I guess he's decided it would be fun to visit Disney World in his spare time. I'm glad his plans include scholarships.
The boys cleaned this weekend, Jared had them pick up everything they wanted to keep, everything else was put into a bag to store in the attic. The bags of toys will be brought out next spring for the city wide garage sale, and the kids can sell their extra toys. They ended up with about 10 garbage bags of toys they don't care about. They also found homes for everything they did want to keep, so, it's more organized. We can now walk through our gameroom. I just finished hauling everything up to the attic. We've only lived here for 1 1/2 years, and our attic is already half full (and it's a big attic).
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Entry for August 18, 2006
They are off, to their first day of school.
Caleb has the teacher he wanted, and we agreed, she seemed to be a very nice teacher. When he went to open house on Tuesday, and pick out his desk, she walked over to him, and asked for his name. When he told her, her jaw dropped, and she announced "I can see your face now!". The hair threw her off.
Alex has the exact same classroom as last year. His first grade teacher switched rooms with his new second grade teacher. He doesn't like the joke "I hope you can find your classroom ok!". That's not funny. He was willing to give me a goodbye hug though, unlike his "cool" big brother.
Jonas gets to rule the house now. He announced that we are going to watch Dora the Explorer all day long. Also, he gets to arrange the Geotrax track how he wants. He loves ovals and circles, and his brothers prefer to use up all of the tracks to make very fancy, elaborate layouts. They never leave any extra tracks for his ovals. Here he is, with not one, but TWO ovals. Life is good.
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Entry for August 17, 2006
I had the brilliant idea, that we could go to the swimming pool on our last day of summer break. I had my camera, so I could blog about it, the kids read, and did workbooks to "earn" the trip to the pool. And it's closed. We were out walking, and noticed that it was a bit quiet, as we were walking toward the pool, and sure enough, a mom I know stopped to tell us, they just discovered it was closed themselves.
So, we walked downtown and got sodas instead. I have photos of sad boys in swimming trunks buying sodas, but, I'm too lazy to get them off of my camera.
We have been playing unlimited video games to celebrate school starting.
Today is the last day of "dad-r" which is a summer program at our house, where the boys are rewarded for educational things. Reading, doing workbook pages, writing letters, doing reports, and such. They get points. Points get traded in for prizes. Prizes are good, from picking what's for dinner, to a new video game system, to a night at the Great Wolf Lodge. The boys are frantically trying to get more points before bed tonight.
Edit: There are my sad boys, buying soda.
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Day Eight
Our last day at Disney World. Even if I postpone writing about it, it still doesn't put us back there.
We started off our morning, by agreeing to listen to a time share presentation. We were very interested in reading material about the disney time share, but were told by the people at the parks that they don't give away reading material unless you go listen to the 1 hour talk. Jared asked them, if we called from home, you wouldn't send us anything? They told us Nope. We were told, to compensate us for our time, we would ge free fastpasses and ice cream. The kids got to play video games and watch disney movies while Jared and I listed to the talk. So, we signed up early. We stored all of our bags with the bell hop services, and the time share people came and picked us up to go to our meeting.
Well, we dropped the kids off in the kid area, and went to sit down with the lady (already we were about 20 minutes behind schedule). She asked Jared (who's a very honost man), "Why are you here?" What a crummy opening line! Jared told her, we were told this was the only way to get the reading material. That we were only here, to get the reading material. She told him she would be happy to give us the material, but there is no way we would understand it. He assured her, he was a pretty good reader. Really, her customer service skills were just terrible. She wasn't prepared for his answer, didn't know what to do with us. We signed up for it, we were there, she could of just said "that's right, let me tell you all about it!" But, instead, she went and got us the reading material, we went and grabbed our children, and the timeshare folks gave us a ride to Epcot (where we requested). We only spent about 10 minutes with her.
I don't think the kids were too broken up about leaving, they weren't getting turns with the video games. And I don't think the kids area was more fun that a theme park.
So, off to Epcot we went.
Caleb was in charge of Pal Mickey today. He probably had the most fun with Pal Mickey, and still plays with him. Pal Mickey will tell jokes and play games at our house, but he doesn't know where he is.
We started off first going to Club Cool, where there is free soda from around the world. While we were there, Alex got one of his souvenirs. He got a build your own icee cup. He got to pick the color of the cup, the feet (goofy, micky, stitch, minnie) and the hat (same and the feet). He went with an entirely stitch themed cup. The lady there gave him a sample of the blueberry icee, because she KNEW he would love it. Sure enough, he did. He still uses this cup, every day since we got home.
Alex loved this cup, didn't set it down, even while playing in fountains. At lunch we were even able to get another blue icee, to refill his cup with.
We were really relaxing today. Our plan was to just slow down and enjoy Epcot. We didn't get to go inside very many shops at the World Showcase, or even look around much the last time we were here. Our plan was to visit all of these shops today. It opened at eleven.
We wanted to ride the ride in Norway today. A viking type ride. This was our first stop.
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We then made a point to visit each and every Country. They had Kidcot Fun Stops, where the boys made a mask, and got a charm and a stamp on their mask. In China they also learned what year they were born, and had their name written in Chinese on their masks. If you got all 11 countries, you get a poster.
Alex posed in front of several fountains, Alex and Jonas took advantage of some cutouts to pose in. Jared tried sushi, and many many drinks from different countries, we just ate at the american restaurant, not adventurous at all. I wanted to eat at Mexico, but Caleb didn't think it was enough like Taco Bell.
Now, while we were in "America", Jonas decided that he didn't want to get all of the charms on his mask, and all of the stamps. So, he stayed with Jared, while his brothers and I went to that area. About 15 minutes later, when he relized he had one less stamp than his brothers, he paniced. He REALLY wanted that poster at the end. So, Jared took him back to get that missing stamp and charm.
While we were in the United Kingdom, we met Mary Poppins, and Caleb tried on a Peter Pan hat. Also, when we were at the Kidcot Fun Stop, Alex turned and whispered to me "How do you say yellow in French?", because he had asked in France, and wanted to use this new knowledge. I told him, that they speak English in the United Kingdom, not French. The lady working there laughed, and told him, "Actually, we speak PROPER English."
The boys got their final charm and stamp, and the covetted poster in Canada.
We then rode Soarin' one last time. We had fast passes thanks to Jared (he went to get them while we were in Club Cool in the morning). Soarin' was having problems though, so it actually took us about 30 minutes, with our fast passes. But, we got to ride it.
Jonas wanted to ride Living with the Land one last time, but we just didn't have time. We got bonus fast passes for it, so, Jared gave them away, to someone waiting in the standby line. It was now 4pm, our bus was suppose to pick us up at 5pm to go to the airport.
So, we headed back to the resort. We were planning on eating dinner in the resort, before leaving. But, we were cutting it very close. So, we got our food to go, and Jared carried them in the brown bag all the way to the airport. We had to fetch our bags from bell hop services, and then wait for our bus. I had to quickly rearrange what I wanted to be in our checked bags, vs what I wanted to be in carry on. All before the bus came. We also were able to grab 5 extra mickey mouse head rice krispy treats with our extra snack credits to enjoy at home.
Here the boys are, eating their last Mickey Mouse meal, at the airport. Whenever Alex sees these photos he says, in a very serious, panic like tone.. "I don't like this part!"
Our airplane tickets didn't specify our seats, and we ended up having no one sitting next to each other. The one lady we spoke with about this problem, really didn't care, but another lady did, and told her to fix it. She announced over the loud speaker that anyone with a single seat, would they be willing to help out a family of five with children. Only ONE person came forward! Luckily, they had a seat next to one of our seats. So, it worked out, that I sat next to Jonas, Caleb was one row behind us, Alex was one row in front of us, and Jared was no where near us.
Jared has a wonderful photo of the boys, on a tram thing, taking us to our plane. A good-bye photo.
http://flickr.com/photos/jaredks/189289717/
When we arrived home, our battery was dead in the car, it was pouring rain, and AAA couldn't find us, to jump the car. We eventually got help, and headed home. Our car wasn't shifting properly, Jared and I were so exhausted, but we made it. The car hasn't had that shifting problem since. We got home at 1:30 am.
That concludes our trip. 8 days, 7 nights, Orlando, FL. We've already planned on returning tentatively in November of 2007. We loved it. We plan on joining the timeshare (we won't use the lady that was so rude to us, even though she gave us the business card). It's called Disney Vacation Club. Fun Fun Fun. It's better than typical timeshares. There aren't any given weeks, it's all based on points. You buy points, and then can spend the points whenever you want, and where ever you want.
We also have vacations planned for this winter (Galveston, Tx) and this summer (a National Parks 15 or 16 day tour). We have a hard time just sitting still, and not planning a vacation. The kids are planning on picking Disneyland for the summer of 2009. I get to pick where we go during the summer of 2008. It's still up in the air. I'm probably go to have us heading east, so we can stop off in St. Louis. (Everytime I pick, we stop in St. Louis, so we can visit some very good friends). So, I'd take suggestions, for the summer 2008!
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Surprise!
This is what is happening outside of our house. This is where Jared parks his car. No one told me a thing. That's my trash can, waiting for the trash truck. The trash truck's going to fall into the huge hole they're digging when they pick up my trash. In the spot that Jared parks.
I have no clue what's going on. Perhaps some just rented the backhoe and decided to dig to be mean. Really, no clue.
Our dogs are fiercly protective of our home. If a car slows down when driving by, they bark, and bark, and bark. If a car or truck parks anywhere where the dogs can SEE it, they bark and bark and bark. When the trash truck comes, they must bark, but, hey, it must work, the trash truck leaves every time it comes. So, they keep barking. So, the dogs are in the laundry room. Still barking, because it's quite noise, with the pounding and digging. But, at least the barking is muffled.
Did I mention, that I have no CLUE why they're digging a hole where Jared parks. Why wouldn't someone tell me?
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