Our June/July 2014 summer vacation to the American southwest was fun and filled with National Park goodness. We are grateful for the National Park Service’s “Military Annual Pass” program which saved us nearly $80 in entrance fees on this trip. Here’s the summary of everything we did: Drive to Durango Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge RR … Read more
I have several posts to write about our trip out west in June, but between my full time work and making sure the kids are squared away this summer, I’ve been quite slow.
Feel free to browse these Grand Canyon photo albums and at the end of this post I’ll attach the text of the post I wrote for GeekMom about the Grand Canyon, which has a little of everything but not quite so much detail.
I’ve decided it’s time for me to get my list in writing. I turn 40 later this year and I figure that’s half of my life complete (based on U.S. census tables), so it’s time to set some goals for the latter half of my life. I see and hear about things all the time … Read more
On the last day of the boys’ Spring Break, we took a field trip to Mobile’s Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center. I went in thinking it would be an all-day museum, but we ended up not spending much time there at all. The kids enjoyed it, but there seemed to be a lot of empty space in a seemingly very large building. It wasn’t crowded at all while we were there, our school district seemed to be the only ones in the Gulf Coast region having Spring Break as early as the college kids….
This past weekend our family made yet one more trip to Orlando, so I could run my 2nd Disney Princess Half Marathon, and the boys could experience the early mornings and fun people watching with me. We stayed at Walt Disney World’s newest hotel, a value resort called The Art of Animation Resort, and we visited Sea World with our dear friends the McNabb family.
We repurposed the Incredibles costumes we wore last September, which was our plan all along. Unfortunately, my plan was for temperatures to be in the 50s like it had been most of the previous 5 years of this race. Instead it was quite warm.
Our family got to spend last week with Dave’s family in New York. Even though Jacob, Timmy and I get to go annually — the boys spend some time up there — I sometimes go up to pick them up from their visits…Dave hadn’t been since 2009.
We flew the family up this year, driving to Panama City Beach so we could take advantage of a low-stress Southwest Airlines route to Islip, New York…on Eastern Long Island. This made pick up/drop off easy for Dave’s parents. The boys were wonderful during the travel both to and from New York.
The enjoyed playing with their stuffed animals on the trip up to New York. They were each allowed to bring two. It sounds strange, but they play pretend with their animals very nicely and don’t fight. I’ll take it!
The family spent most of the week relaxing; Dave and the boys played with LEGOs and Lincoln Logs, and the whole family enjoyed going through box after box of photographs from when Dave was younger.
The kids are definitely enjoying their summer vacation so far! Apparently Jacob was working extra-hard this school year because I hadn’t seen him this happy in a long time. School and baseball just wore him out, I guess. They’re enjoying sleeping late, staying up late at night and not having to get dressed until lunchtime. Oh, the summer life!
Since school ended last Thursday, the kids have been doing little else besides playing games, riding their bikes and playing catch in the backyard.
While under our virtual house-arrest, the boys got along GREAT and Dave and I could catch up on several household tasks. We had visited Target on Friday and let the kids choose one video game and one board/card game each. We enjoyed all of that and then some: Uno, Phase-10, Rummikub, chess, Monopoly, Guitar Hero and even our new “Go” board game.
I also helped out with this week’s Cub Scout Day Camp. Even though my boys can’t go (because of our upcoming Road Trip), I had received a request to help out with some craft preparations. I offered my assistance and I received a task that was PERFECT for this past rainy weekend: FiMo clay Star Wars action figures. You press the clay into the molds, then bake a pan full of them at 230F for 30 minutes to harder. They are to be used in snow globes (Hoth?) that will be made with baby food jars.
Here is a picture of what I was working on. Cute, aren’t they? They weren’t easy but with the rainy weather, we had all the time in the world! I had to make 150 of these.
Of the dozen-or-so characters to choose from, there are the only ones that will fit through the mouth of a classic baby food jar. These were among the best of the batch. Most of the Yodas looks more like Gizmo from "Gremlins", and most of the Obi Wans and Chewies had no discernable faces. The molds for these were made by "Kenner" years ago. I tried to find a link to the mold product but can't find any.
WARNING: This is a LONG post. I debated dividing it into two parts, but couldn’t find an easy dividing point. So instead I put in some headers to try to break up the story a bit. It was our entire motivation for our trip to Atlanta last weekend: we had Braves tickets! During Jacob’s … Read more
This is officially called “The Confederate Memorial on Stone Mountain”. It’s the largest relief carving in the world…at least until the Crazy Horse Monument is finished. We all know who the guys are…who knows the horses’ names? As I’d mentioned in yesterday’s post about The Varsity, the only truly scheduled activity we had coming into … Read more
