State of the Family #41

So much going on.  So little time.  Here is where I get myself into trouble.  I go too long in between my posts and then I totally forget about everything we did in that time span.

There was school starting, of course, and Noisy Man got his own special post on how mommy had such a hard time letting him go.  He is still loving it, thankfully.  And mommy is adjusting to having him gone everyday.  I said "adjusting" not "liking it".  He loves getting to take his own lunch every now and then, running on the track, and reading.  It drives mommy nuts that he never remembers the names of the kids he plays with during the day, so I am clueless as to who is getting to play with my boy while I can't.

Poor Miss Firecracker didn't get her own post for her first day of preschool... sorry about that.  Mommy, again, cried, but at least made it out of the building before starting the waterworks.  Well, I can't really say that.  I first shed the tears on the way to the school, but collected myself and then kept them in until I walked away.  She was so ready to go, when I picked her up to give her one last hug goodbye she yelled at me to put her down.  I also cried when I went to pick her up.  I dropped her off my baby girl and when she came running out of her classroom after a morning of preschool, she looked so big.  I shed a few quiet tears as she ran towards me and gave me a big hug.

I thought Miss Thumb Sucker would be lost without her two older siblings around for 4 mornings per week, but she has barely missed them.  I think she is loving having reign of the house and not having someone bossing her around all the time.  I was a little worried that she wouldn't play by herself very well if there were times I needed to be getting things done, but I was wrong once again.  She is probably the best of the 3 of them at playing by herself.  Probably because she never really gets to and loves not having someone take her toys!

Other than school busyness and adjusting to those schedules we really haven't been up to too much.  Daddy tried to go on another fishing trip, but the trouble maker he is, got kicked off the lake after 2 days.  Seriously.  This poor guy rarely ever takes time to himself and when he finally does and plans a nice 4 day fishing trip, he gets sent home.  OK, so it was really due to toxic blue green algae levels being so high that they closed the lake to all activities, something rarely ever done, but it sounds better if I say he got kicked out.  They were actually having good luck too. 

Mommy and Daddy have been having some great times without the kids lately, which is rare.  We got to go to the Casting Crowns concert in Lincoln with some good friends, and for a fun weekend away with some other good friends.  Both were a lot of fun. 

Our weekend away was to Kansas City where we 'scoped' out the new Schlitterbahn's water park with Daddy's childhood best friend and his wife.  We told the kiddos we were checking to see if it was a good place for them to go or not (thankfully, they bought it).  We had a blast even though it was a chilly 78 degrees with a cool north breeze.  And who knew you could burn to a crisp while you were freezing.  Most of us came home with pretty good sunburns. 

Daddy and I are convinced we are jinxed when it comes to hotels though.  After our catastrophes on our last hotel stays, we had another couple set backs this time too.  The hot tub was only lukewarm which was majorly disappointing after you'd been freezing cold all day and we didn't have any hot water in our shower in our room.  We had to go to another room to shower.  Seriously, if you ever go anywhere with us, don't let us book the hotel room.  Something is bound to go wrong. :)




We are looking forward to a fun weekend full of apple picking and Husker football!!

Hotel Hilarity

Our far out vacation this year was down to St. Joe and Kansas City. Mommy's cousin got married in St. Joe, so we started out there. We went a day early so that we could just relax and play in the fun, little water park that they had at our hotel. Little, being the operative word. Some of the older kids in mommy's extended family were a bit disappointed, but it was absolutely perfect for our younger ones. It wasn't deeper than 3 feet anywhere so Noisy Man could have free roam of the place as long as he was within eye sight. He loved that.

Checking out the cool slides

We had a few hiccups with hotel rooms, however. The first one they assigned us to was right next to the maid's closet and one of the main stairways, so we asked for a different one. Well, come 8 pm that evening we find out our air conditioning in the new room is not able to keep up with the heat indices of 108 degrees. We called maintenance, but couldn't understand what he was saying and just ended up with a couple of fans to keep us cool enough to make it through the night. The next day we were upgraded rooms to a poolside suite with bunk beds for the kids. The hotel management was very good to work with and did a great job making everything right.

The wedding was lovely and the kids had a blast dancing and raiding the candy table. It was great to spend lots of time with all of mommy's family. I think family weddings are the best!

Miss Firecracker loved floating around in her cousin's fish!

The kids thought it was fun to hide in the dresser!

Mommy and most of the kids

The next day we went on down to Kansas City. We were planning on all going to World's of Fun, but with the heat being quite unbearable, we decided to go with an indoor option instead. We found a place called Paradise Park. It was, again, perfect for our kids. A fun children's museum section, bumper cars, arcade, and another place called the Foam Factory where you could shoot foam balls out of guns and cannons and all sorts of other things. It was all inside and air conditioned! There were go karts, mini golf and a playground outdoors as well, but we opted to stay inside.

Noisy Man loading a foam ball blaster

This was so cool.  The kids put the balls through this hole and a tube sucked them up,
sent them through a sanitizer and then shot them back into the ball pit!

Miss Thumb Sucker loved that all of the sinks were at her level. She would have
washed her hands all day if we would have let her!

Later that night, after a big family supper of pizza, the girls stayed at G'ma and G'pa's hotel and swam while most of the boys went to see Cars 2 in 3D. It was a fun family time. We ventured back to our hotel in KC to another horrific night. Evidently there was a Rob Zombie or some other death and hate and screaming type concert that night and all the crazies from it came back to our hotel on our floor and screamed and cussed at each other until 2:30 am. Misery. That is all I have to say. Of course, we didn't know exactly what was going on until some of them were wearing the T-shirts and talking about the concert in the breakfast area the next morning.

Daddy having fun with a foam ball gun

Miss Firecracker with her big win at the arcade

The last day we went to The Legends mall and did some school clothes shopping and ate at the T-Rex Cafe. It was a great experience and I was glad that Miss Thumb Sucker was not afraid of the life-like dinosaurs and meteor showers that were all over. Noisy Man and Miss Firecracker thought it was the coolest thing ever.

They had an awesome cooking area in the Edutainment Center

Roaring with T-Rex!

After 3 nights of not going to bed until 10:30 at night and running crazy all day long we were very ready to go home. The kids did awesome the entire trip with only one huge meltdown from Miss Firecracker on the 2nd day. Another great family vacation down in the books.

State of the Family #11

Returning from vacay at Mahoney St. Park! So much to write about. . . fun, fun, fun!

Miss Thumb Sucker was not a huge fan of vacation for 3 main reasons. 1) She was stuck in the stroller the majority of the time, being rolled around from one activity she really couldn't participate in to the next, 2) She FINALLY cut that tooth, so she ran a fever and was not feeling great the whole time and 3) She couldn't get a comfortable, long nap in because we were always on the move. She was in decent spirits throughout the 3 days despite these things going against her. She totally hated the pool. She is not a fan of the cold water and clings to my chest and whimpers every time I try to put her in it. I don't think I got any pictures of her doing this though. I'll have to try next time we go to the pool. It will be a great scrapbook page! I did get a picture of her crying by the ball pit though. She wasn't a fan of that either!

Miss Firecracker did awesome! She was so entertained that she barely had time to throw a fit at all. The only problem we had with her was getting her to go to sleep at night! She had so much fun trying to keep up with her brother that you would have thought she would just crash at night. But she was so wired from the excitement that she had a hard time calming down. She tried so hard to keep up with him at the indoor playground and was right on his tail with everything he did at Cablea's (yes, we spent 3 hours in Cabela's on our vacation. . . daddy's choice). She isn't quite as fearless as him in the pool, however, but she was all over that froggy slide. She came home with a blotchy sunburn though since we evidently missed a few spots just around her swim suit. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be slowing her down. She was all over the zoo as well, always trying to keep up with her brother. I always think of a t-shirt I saw a while back: "Monkey see, Monkey do, Monkey get in trouble too!" Makes me laugh at how true it is!

Noisy Man had a blast. Everything we did was right up his alley. He loved running around Cabela's checking out the taxidermy and playing in the tents and hunting blinds. A nice employee even gave us some free tokens to play the hunting games they have there. We had a hard time keeping track of him in the indoor playground as he was going haywire up and down the entire structure. We spent some time fishing, but didn't really catch anything so he bored of that quickly. The pool was his domain though. This is where it is hardest trying to find him. He has NO FEAR in the water and is everywhere. Up and down the slides, over to the wave pool, floating around the water, shooting the guns. Geeesh! He is hard to keep up with and hard to catch. Being the terrible parents we are, we kind of forgot about him and his more olive skin and didn't re-apply sunscreen to him when we did his fair-skinned sisters. So, he came home with a pretty decent sunburn and I am about in tears every time I think about how preventable it is and how awful I was not to put more on him. On a brighter note, he totally loved watching Toy Story 3 in 3D and tried grabbing a few things as they "came out" of the screen at us. And we finished the vacay off at the zoo, another one of his faves!

Daddy was a little disappointed with the 3 hour Cabela's visit. Really? What did he expect when dragging 3 small children? He says he didn't really get to "look" at anything. I told him he'd have to go back with out us sometime. He wasn't too opposed to this idea. Seriously, what woman and 3 small children want to stand around fishing lures for 45 minutes? He had a hard time in the indoor playground being over 6 ft tall and all, but still had fun chasing the kids around. He bored quickly with the fishing as well and complained the whole time about his legs burning during the paddle boats and climbing the observation tower - he complains just to make sure I'm paying attention - he had a ball at both activities! He is always right at home in the pool like his son and fried even worse than he did too. His stomach is as bright as a tomato. I think his skin isn't as indestructible as it once was and he needs to up his SPF requirements. There might have been a tear spotted in the corner of his eye during Toy Story as well, but it is hard to tell with the 3D glasses (shhhh. . . don't tell him I said that). And he loves the zoo as much as the kids since he doesn't get to go with us most of the time. Mr. Schedule he is, though, had a hard time with "vacation time" and getting the kids to bed late most nights.

I am just trying to recover! I had a blast at everything and came home a little fried as well. My skin is probably about the same as Daddy's and needs a higher SPF than I used to require. I bawled at the end of Toy Story and loved watching everyone have so much fun. Now I just need some sleep since Miss Thumb Sucker hasn't slept more than 2 hrs at a time in 3 nights and was up every hour last night. My favorite is probably the indoor playground and I was able to get around significantly easier this time that last time we were there! Last time I was 7 months pregnant and had a hard time squeezing up some of the tubes! This time I could almost keep up with the kids! I totally recommend this place - so much fun!

I'll add pics later!