Tonight was the winter concert for the middle school bands. Lance was really needed at the church, so he and Josh spent the evening there and I had Cole and Tess. Not optimal, but oh well. We got to the school a good 20 minutes early to discover one last parking spot and no empty seats in the gym. I was able to wrangle a few extra folding chairs, thank goodness, because standing for an hour with those to kids of mine? Not an option.
Cole and Tess were about what you would expect a 7 year old boy and 5 year old girl to be at an extra-crowded middle school band concert - not very well behaved. Before we left I had told them to get some books and toys to take. But did they do this? No. Cole had nothing and Tess had 2 Minion finger puppets and a plastic fly. Apparently I still need to be more of a supervisor when it comes to stuff like this. Fortunately, I had come armed with bribery candy, so all was not lost. It wasn't fun; Cole was a punk. But we survived.
And the music? It was pretty awesome, actually! Spencer is in Wind Ensemble, which is generally the 8th grade band. (He's only in 7th.) He also tried out for and made the Jazz Band, which is the best band to be in. He plays the saxophone and piano for that.
So here are some clips from all of the songs he played. I didn't record the entirety of the songs because they're kinda long and I generally had to stop recording to get after one of my two little imps. I tried recording Cole and Tess, but they were just punks about it.
Oh, and here's the two little sections in the program that included Spencer - they ran out of programs and I had to borrow one from a nice lady for a minute. (Cole was very offended when I gave the program back to her - he had every intention of stealing it and made his plan known. Loudly.) ((I wish I were kidding.))
Apparently Spencer was playing the piano for this one, but I was in such bad seating I couldn't see him and didn't know. (I would have recorded more had I known!)
Spencer has a solo at the end of this song!
This one includes punkish Cole and grouchy Tess.
Another solo by Spencer.
The first Wind Ensemble song - we were so far away there was no way to know where Spencer was.
For the last song they played "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch", which was actually their best song, but YouTube is being weird and won't upload or publish it. Dang. (Grandparents, if you really want it I can email it to you.)
Despite the crowded conditions and the punkish children, I'm glad I went. You did a great job, Spencer! I'm proud of you!
Once again we decided to skip Thanksgiving this year. We were going to do the water park thing only every other year, but last year's trip was enough a downer that we decided we really needed to go again this year. I mean, last year's wasn't awful, it just wasn't as great as it could have been. It was like we had a bad taste in our mouths that had to be replaced with something better. This year's trip did just that!
This year we stayed at the Kalahari in Sandusky, OH. We decided on this resort because it had great reviews and was a full 30 minutes closer to us than Wisconsin Dells - hey, that's a full hour less of driving. Worth it.
The drive was only 4.5 hours, but it was dark 90% of the way there, which made it feel so much longer. The kids were excited and wound up by the time we got there, so we stayed up a bit to unpack and unwind. Our suite was huge this time! Lots and lots of space - I never felt like we were cooped up with 4 crazy kids. I don't think the decor was as cozy as the Wilderness Lodge, but in the grand scheme of things that's not really a big deal.
We had two full bathrooms, the one on Lance's and my side had jets. Ooh-la-la!
The living area. Like how we dry our bathing suits? Why in the world do these places not offer those spinner things that get all the water out of bathing suits?
The kitchen. We ate breakfast and lunch in our suite, preparing such fine delicacies as Eggos, breakfast corndogs (sausage with pancakes on a stick), Easy Mac, and chicken tenders. I also offered a variety of fruits and vegetables, which were on the whole ignored. On the first day I decided to have soup instead of macaroni and cheese. The kids were tickled by this (who even knows why?) and for the rest of the trip their mantra was "I like soup". You could hear Cole randomly saying this from other sides of the suite, in the pool, and even on the way down slides. It pretty much became a running joke the whole weekend.
Master bedroom.
Kid bedroom. They weren't fans of sharing beds, but until they start contributing financially to these trips they have no say. 😊
On the first morning we were up well before the water park opened, so we read and talked and watched this fine programming on on the Hallmark Murder Movie channel. Yes, those are kittens in front of a holiday fireplace. Sometimes there were puppies. Sometimes a cat and a dog. We especially liked the cat eating out of a pumpkin. I can't believe how long we watched this channel. The kids were enamored.
The chairs and couches at places like these? They always look nice, but aren't generally very comfortable. At all.
See that bowl of clementines on the table? Underneath the oranges were a bunch of mini candy bars. Guess which got eaten first? (Ha.)
The water park was really big and really awesome. Lots of great big slides and lots of kiddo areas for shorties like Tess. We're reeeeaaallly hoping she does some good growing over the next two years. Lance and I had to take turns watching her while the others got to go on all the fun stuff. It wasn't the worst, but it got pretty boring after a while.
There was actually a pretty great lazy river - it had sorts of decorations, like hyena statues and such. Kinda Disney-esque, only no animatronics. Usually lazy rivers are kinda dull, but this one was fun! (Side note - I lifted all these pictures from the website. I didn't want to bother carrying my phone around to take pictures at the water park!)
Here's the water coaster - part water slide, part roller coaster. It was fun! You'd sit in this little raft thing that got zipped up and down and around so fast. Cole was in love with this ride - that boy loves fast and dangerous.
This funnel slide was super fun, too. You'd go down this slide and then shoot into this huge funnel, eventually falling through the hole down into a deep pool. I went down head first, which is as fun as it sounds. (Read: not very.)
I loved this ride! We nick-named it the toilet bowl. You'd go down and around this big slide and then get shot into this bowl, where you'd make a couple of rotations and then go through the hole. It was the best when I went with my 3 boys - we went so fast!
The wave pool is where we spent the majority of our time, mainly because Tess loved it. It became a good meeting spot. We spent so much time there that I'd still feel like I was in the waves when we got back to our room.
That first afternoon, as we went back to our suite for lunch, I realized I was having an allergic reaction to something. My face and chest were all red and rashy, and my eyelids were slightly swollen. It didn't hurt, but kinda stung and itched - pretty miserable. I showered, because I figured it was something to do with the chlorine. I looked pretty awesome. But I covered up and put some make up on and looked presentable enough to go out in public after lunch. We wandered the resort and looked at the sights. Like this bronze gorilla.
And this Instagram stand in the arcade.
You had to walk through the arcade to get to the water park, which DROVE ME NUTS. It was like herding cats every time we went through there.
Then we played a little miniature golf, which was actually pretty fun, mainly because I had a pretty good game.
More gorilla action.
In Wisconsin we would eat Thanksgiving dinner at Buffalo Pete's, which was just cheesy enough to make it really fun. In Sandusky there are no fun restaurants like that open on Thanksgiving. In fact, there were hardly any restaurants open at all! So we ended up at Ruby Tuesday's, which wasn't bad but was just slightly depressing for some reason.
Well, at least to me. I don't think our kids cared at all.
That night the kids and Lance went swimming again, while I opted to stay in the suite and try to recover. I took another really long shower, which helped a little. I tried to take a picture, but it doesn't really do the rash justice. Earlier that day I had made a quick run to WalMart and picked up some Benedryl and hydracortisone, both of which seemed to help a bit.
The Benedryl made me sleepy if I wasn't moving, so I did things like bake cookies (we brought frozen dough) and put out these Thankful Leaves. Earlier in the month I had cut a bunch of these out on my Cricut and then had the kids write down something they were thankful for.
Some were darling, like this one Tess made.
Others, less so.
Spencer is ALL ABOUT friends now. ('Tis the age, right?)
My dad snuck this one in while he was visiting us the week before.
Josh wrote this one "Having lice and getting treats." Yeah, nope. See, Cole got lice, too. So that was fun. And I ended up buying him some Tic Tacs (per his request) as a reward for being so good with the combings. Tess also got a little toy. Josh's jealousy knows no bounds, no matter how much I try to persuade him that lice is NOT WORTH IT.
Oh, the joys of boys and potty humor. Although I think we can all agree that Ewoks are pretty great.
Friday morning I was up bright and early ordering a new fridge at Black Friday prices. WOO-HOO! But my credit card company thought it was fraud. And Best Buy's website freaked out. And NINETY MINUTES ON THE PHONE LATER I finally told them to just cancel it because I was on freaking vacation and my kids and husband had already left to go swimming. I was actually pretty nice through most of it, but the final 5 minutes I pretty much lost it. GROWL. I mean, seriously, if you have the customer, the store, and the credit card company on a 3 way call WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD IT BE SO HARD TO BUY SOMETHING?! I wanted to buy the fridge. Best Buy wanted to sell it to me. Capital One wanted me to use their card. And yet it did not work.
Until later in the day when I bought the fridge through a different transaction.
(Side note: this morning I woke up to a text telling me that the original fridge had not really been canceled. In fact, it had been purchased and I now had TWO fridges on the way. WHAT THE WHAT?!??! Best Buy got a rather testy call.)
Anyways....
We swam the morning away and spent the afternoon seeing "Moana", which was okay. Not the best movie I've ever seen, but certainly not the worst. I liked that a girl was the main character and there were no love interests. Because you don't have to have a love interest. Also, I really liked the chicken side kick.
That night we decided to make up for the lackluster meal of the night before and went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. We introduced the kids to the Bloomin' Onion. Spencer is now a convert. It was all super yummy and the kids, for the most part, behaved themselves.
We spent several more hours at the water park that evening. I could tell it was time to go when no one was willing to stand in line for even the best slides. Poor Cole had a sobbing melt down on the way back to our suite; he just did not want our vacation to end! Direct quote: "We'll never come back here again and it was so fun!!" and "Why can't we go on trips all year long?" It's hard to reason with and comfort a heartbroken 7 year old boy who could run around a water park for a week and not be tired. Fortunately, some more cookies and some time in bed watching a movie helped heal his heart.
The next morning it was back to reality. We had to pack up and head back to Indiana. But not before I got one self-timed picture in front of this wall in our suite. Going home is always to worst part of a vacation!
As you can see, the kids were all a bit worn out on the way home. That's the sign of a good vacation, right?
I think we'll probably stay home next year. For one thing, Tess has never had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner that she remembers. And for another, Lance and I may be doing some traveling at the beginning of November - we can only spend so much time and money on trips in one year, right?
It might seem weird to skip Thanksgiving. But I know that my kids will remember these trips and our time together as a family far better than any elaborate meal. And quite frankly, so will I.
Monday night was the Super Moon - the closest the moon has been to earth in 69 years. Big stuff around this house. It actually turned out to be great for Family Home Evening; Cole gave a lesson about the moon (read: I read facts about the moon when Cole didn't know what to say) and then we went on a walk around the neighborhood, waiting for the moon to rise.
It rose and it was pretty impressive. It was so bright out! I downloaded a star finder app on my phone and the kids had lots of fun playing with and fighting over it. Good times.
It must be mentioned that all of this was done with light or no jackets on, because it's the middle of November in Indiana and it's been in the 60's and 70's. Crazy.
That night while the kids were getting ready for bed I walked into Cole and Josh's room to find Cole standing on his bed, facing the wall. As soon as I walked in he pulled down his pants and yelled
"SUPER MOON!!!!"
I gasped and said something along the lines of "What the what?!?!"
Cole quickly pulled his pants up and looked slightly guilty while giggling uncontrollably. He thought it was Josh walking in. This seemed reasonable.
At the beginning of November we had our annual piano recital. (I'm SO on top of this blogging thing!)
In the weeks leading up to the recital it was all I could do to get those two boys of mine to practice their pieces at all. Seriously. It's like they didn't care at all about how well they did during the recital. Which kills me because when I was a kid all I wanted to do was practice because the thought of making a mistake in front of everyone was just awful! But my boys are apparently not built like that. There are good and bad things about this sort of attitude; I have yet to decide which side I'm leaning towards more...
So Josh did pretty well on his pieces. A few mistakes here and there, but nothing terrible. Spencer, however, got up to play a song but didn't take his music. Which was weird because I had never before seen him play that song without the music. He obviously thought he had memorized it. He thought wrong. Halfway through the song he got stuck and sat for a while. Then he got up, got the music, stood at the piano while figuring out where he was in the song and the right fingering, and, instead of putting music on the piano, walked all the way back to his chair, put the music on top, walked back to the piano, and then finished the piece.
It was odd.
He had no explanation for it.
I don't think he thought it was odd at all.
Twelve year old boys are weird.
So here are the boys playing a bit of their songs.
(At the end of this one is where Spencer realized he was in trouble... )
The two piano teachers who hosted the recital both played their own songs and were amazing. Seriously, as a struggling Primary pianist I was in awe of them!
At the end they got their traditional roses. Doesn't the music pennant in the background look so cute? I'm always so thankful to Sheri for all the work and effort she puts into teaching piano lessons and doing these recitals!
Afterwards we enjoyed refreshments. I brought this awesome cheese and fruit platter because I'm European like that. (I also brought M&M brownies, because I'm no dummy and know that kids want dessert, not cheese.) The green cheese was actually really good - a cheddar and sage blend. And the cheese to the left was cheddar and cranberry - so yummy!
Another year of piano. If only I could convince my boys that practicing actually helps you improve. This is a concept they still seem to be testing.
