Kalahari!

For Spring Break last month we went to Kalahari, a huge indoor water park and theme park that's about four hours away in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. This was our second time going there--we went two years ago for Spring Break also, but for a shorter amount of time. It's such a fun place! We are definitely fans of water parks and theme parks!

John was so excited when we got there. He was even super nice to Sam. 

(If only that had lasted beyond the first day of the trip!)

Kalahari is actually a very large desert in southern Africa, so everything in the resort has an African-styled safari kind of theme. Some day I want to go on a real safari to Africa, but for now, I'll settle for Kalahari and for other awesome Africa-like places like Animal Kingdom in Orlando (where we're going later this year!).

The main lobby:

Sam and a bronze warthog (Pumba!).

The kids with Kenya the elephant. 

 

I love hanging stringed lights like these at one of the restaurants that we ate at a few times.

At another restaurant for dinner. Note Peter's huge book on the left side of the table. He carted that thing around everywhere! (Thanks Brandon Sanderson.)

 We had a lot of fun at the waterpark. I really admire John, who is fearless and will go down any slide that he can. It's nice that he's old enough now and a strong enough swimmer that he can go off on his own for awhile and we don't have to worry about it. And Sam was a whole different kid this time around. I was so, so impressed (and surprised!) that he went down the "big kid" slides because he is much more cautious than John is. I thought for sure that he'd just stick to the little kid area of the waterpark, but he ended up loving the big kid slides and the huge water fort. He even went down a raft ride with us (one of the big tube slides) and he loved it and wanted to go again and again. That's our boy! I was really so proud of both the kids. They are so much fun! 

This is the baby/toddler/little kid section of the waterpark. It's really nice and calm and fun for the little ones. When we came here when Sam was two, he spent pretty much all of his time here. He played here again this time, but we spent much less time here than I thought we would because as I mentioned already, he was ready to move on to the area of the park for the bigger kids (sniff, sniff). 

I would do a cute "Then and Now" photo comparison of Sam at the top of this very slide and of him playing with these musical turtles and floating down the little kids' lazy river when he was two and now four, but I don't have the time, so you can look at the post I did two years ago to compare if you'd like.

And here's the "big kid fort," as we called it. Sam was very cautious here at first, but he soon warmed up and then he couldn't get enough of it. He went down these slides again and again (and again!). It was great that he and John could do it together. It's really fun as they grow older and can do more of the same things.

This spewing totem pole was cool.

Sam started with the smaller covered slides. Success!

Next he moved on to the much longer green and yellow ones that you can see in the pictures above. I was nervous about him doing those, but he was just fine. I guess he's older than I sometimes think he is (sniff, sniff again).

This was his first time going down the green slide. He did a little slide/flip as he came down as you can see in the picture on the right, which I thought for sure would freak him out, but he was fine and ran right up through the fort to get in line again.

And then he conquered the yellow snake slide.

This is the only picture I was able to get of John and Sam going down the slides together. 

It's blurry and Sam is turned around but it's good enough for documentation purposes. :-)

These slides were a piece of cake for John and he went down much bigger ones that he's now tall enough to go down (which I don't have any pictures of because most of them are enclosed). 

Examining pruny fingers.

John enjoyed shooting hoops in the pool while Peter and Sam did some swimming.

I usually avoid pools because I wear contacts and don't want to get my head wet. My favorite kind of pool is a hot tub--and Kalahari has some great ones! We also had fun in the wave pool (I have no problem going in that one!) and floating down Kalahari's long lazy river.

After such busy, fun days, Sam would unwind at bedtime with a video and snack in bed and a roaring fire.

What a life!

In my next post I'll write about the theme park and some of the other fun things we did!

Five Things for Friday

1. I wish Cadbury Creme Eggs came in dark chocolate. How has this not happened yet? Every chocolate candy seems to be jumping on the dark chocolate bandwagon. Cadbury Creme Eggs would be so delicious with a dark chocolate shell. I don't enjoy them that much anymore--the milk chocolate shell is just not doing it for me. That's the disappointment I have to deal with every Easter season.

2. There was a picture on Pottery Barn's Instagram account this week that had my dream bed in it. It was on a beach and it was the loveliest picture of a bed on a beach that I've ever seen. I very much wanted to put it on here, but Instagram won't let me do it and I can't figure out how to get around it. All I was able to manage to get from Instagram was my profile picture and Pottery Barn's PB logo. Ha ha!

Oh wait, look! I figured it out! Don't ask me how because I'm not sure.  

This bed on a beach would be a dream come true (barring any rain and bugs!).

Absolutely lovely! Just looking at this helps me to feel more relaxed.

3. I like these pictures of Presidents Bush and Clinton sitting together at the NCAA men's basketball championship game on Monday night. These are two great men and I'm glad that they're buds. (At least until the presidential election of 2016--which I can't wait for--if Hillary and Jeb Bush run!)

4. Now for some meaty stuff. I've been thinking lately about how I rarely write on my blog anymore about social issues/politics/controversial things/news events of note. I used to do that a lot more and I'm still very interested in all of those things, but now my focus on my blog is more on documenting me and my family's life and experiences, with a bit of fluff thrown in for fun (numbers 1 and 2 above are especially good examples of the fluff I can churn out). I don't have the time to blog anymore like I used to, so I write about the things that are most important to me that I most want to have on record for the future. If I truly feel passionate about something and feel like I need to share it on my blog, I will, but I usually don't have the time, the energy, or the inclination.

But that doesn't mean that I don't think about lots of things. If I had the time and the inclination, perhaps I'd write more extensively about issues like the following that have been on my mind lately:

-Ordain Women. I disagree with them, and like all movements that are destined to fail, I think they'll fade away with time. I don't say that to be flippant and dismissive because I know that this issue really matters to a small percentage of women in the Church, but that is truly how I feel about it. 

-I think it's completely ridiculous and really sad that the new CEO of Mozilla (Firefox) stepped down because people found out he donated to Prop 8 in California a few years ago and made a huge uproar about it. They say he was being discriminatory (for a personal and religious belief in his private life that really has no bearing on his professional life), but don't they realize that they're being discriminatory by persecuting him for supporting traditional marriage, which he did quietly, respectfully, and privately? It's so hypocritical that it boggles the mind. In the name of supposed intolerance they're being intolerant themselves. Even some prominent gay-rights activists have said that what happened was wrong. This post from The Matt Walsh Blog is more heated than I am about this debacle but it has given me much food for thought on the matter.  

-Well now that I've gotten warmed up, here I go. This is the issue that's bothered me the most this week. I was disappointed that Chili's canceled their fundraiser this past Monday for Autism Awareness Month. They were going to donate a percentage of participating diners' proceeds to the National Autism Association, but lots of people raised a big fuss about it on Chili's Facebook page because the NAA is sympathetic to people who believe that vaccines may have hurt their children. So Chili's canceled the fundraiser and the NAA didn't get anything from them to help families who are affected by autism. I think that's really sad.

I know vaccines are good, and of course I believe in them, but guess what? 

There are people out there, myself included, who have had experiences with vaccines that make us suspicious of and cautious about our children's vaccinations. I believe that they can cause harm to {some} children and people; not many, but some who are more sensitive to what's in the vaccines than most people are. Whenever I see a pro-vaccination article shared on Facebook or some other place that bashes people who are cautious about/wary of/suspicious of vaccines, I feel a little sad and defensive, because I know from personal experience that some parents have good reason to think twice about how their kids get vaccinated. And that is not based on the discredited 1998 study that they're always saying we base our beliefs on. My caution comes not from misinformation or ignorance but from experience and research. I feel that the vaccination schedule for all kids is stacked heavily with too many vaccines at once for their little developing systems, and that some kids are very sensitive to this with tragic life-changing effects, and that for safety's sake the vaccines should be spaced out more than they are. 

I rarely see anyone stand up for those of us who choose to think twice about vaccines. Many of us have a good reason for feeling the way that we do. It doesn't mean we're right...but we very well could be.

(Just a note: my children are fully vaccinated and so am I, but we skip things like flu shots, and I spaced many of their vaccinations out, especially when they were younger.)  

Whew! I hope I haven't alienated too many of you after all that. And you thought you were going to get a totally fun, lighthearted Five Things for Friday, didn't you? :-) It did feel good to get that out. Maybe I should opine more often?

5. Next week I'm taking an unexpected trip to New York City with John and Sam to see my sister get married in Central Park! It's unexpected because my sister and her fiance are eloping but they recently decided to ask close family to be there. I am so happy to be going back to one of my favorite places for such a happy event. 

Central Park.

It's been nine years since I've been to New York. The last time I was there was when I was pregnant with John. I knew the city quite well when we lived in New Jersey because I went in once or twice a week for classes I was taking at NYU and for job interviews and going to the temple and things like that. Peter and I had some great date nights in Manhattan. One night when we were in Times Square on our way back to Penn Station after dinner, he changed the color and moving graphics of the Prudential sign at the top of Times Square for me. He had the special codes to do it by phone because he worked for Prudential. I was so impressed and it's one of my favorite memories of the city. See the sign down below? 

 I got to know Manhattan well, especially Midtown, and after awhile I stopped walking everywhere or taking a taxi and became good at using the subway. I knew I'd made it when people started asking me for directions on how to get places. Now it's nine years later, and I don't remember how to use the subway that well (I definitely don't remember all the different subway lines!), and while I do remember the layout of Midtown pretty well and where things are, my city smarts aren't quite as sharp as they once were. 

It will be humbling to be back as a tourist! And it will be so much fun! 

We aren't going to be there for very long and we'll spend most of our time on wedding festivities, so there won't be a lot of time to go out and do things, but that's okay with me. It will be great to be back.

Ahhh, this picture brings back happy memories of a very happy time in my life!

Okay. I'll stop now. I got all of the above images from my "I Love Manhattan!" board on Pinterest. LOL!

I have a dream to live and work in Manhattan, someday, somehow! 

But until that happens, I'll just have to enjoy taking occasional trips there about every 9-10 years. :-) 

Nine Years Old!

Last month John turned nine. I really can't believe he's nine! I feel like that makes us enter into a new phase of parenthood. 8 and under is young; 9 and up just seems so much older. I feel like 9 is almost in the pre-teen range. I'm still trying to mentally adjust to having a 9-year-old because I've always pictured myself as a mother of young kids; older kids, not so much (which doesn't really make sense because kids have to grow up!). I relate really well to children but not as well to adolescents and teenagers, so I'm a little anxious about the years ahead. But I'm excited about them too! 

 Anyway, enough about me and more about the real subject of this post--John and his birthday!

The night before, I kept up with the tradition I started a few years ago of putting streamers over his door.

The presents were set out on the table so that he could check them out in the morning.

His birthday was on a Saturday so his party was on the exact day of his birthday (which means we only had to do one cake!). He had a sports/Pokemon party at the rec center--sports because the kids played games in the gym (like basketball, kickball, and dodgeball), and Pokemon because that was what the decorations were. I got all of the Pokemon things at partycity.com for a reasonably good price. It was a pretty easy party and the kids had fun.

The party room:

We had about 15 balloons blown up just before the party at our local grocery store. I wanted each of the kids to be able to bring one home, but that didn't happen because soon after we got to the rec center they all started popping! These are the ones that were left by the time I took pictures, and half of them ended up popping too. What a total waste of money!!

Sam hid under the table for awhile because of the popping balloons. They really were loud and startling when they popped!

Playing games in the gym. There's John with the ball.

Sam tried to play too. I was impressed by how nice the older boys were to him!

After the gym games it was time for dinner (pizza) and cake and lots of drinks (those kids were thirsty!). I wanted to schedule the party in the middle of the afternoon so that we wouldn't have to deal with a meal, but there wasn't availability to do it then. So dinner it was, and John opened all of his presents at home later since there wasn't very much time to do it there.

The Pokemon cake. I made it myself. (Just kidding.)

Here he is opening all of his presents at home that evening. 

He got lots of Pokemon stuff (big surprise there!).

It was a fun day. I was totally exhausted by the end of it. Next year for his 10th birthday John wants to have his first sleepover party. I'm not sure about that yet, but if we do that it would probably be just a couple of boys (two or three at the most), which in some ways would be easier than having an official party somewhere with all of his friends. Decisions, decisions, that are still a year away.

I want to add a few pictures of John's 8th birthday because I didn't do a post about that last year and I want to include something about it here on the blog. It's hard to believe how much he's grown between then and now!

March 8th, 2013:

John was really into geography and the United States last year, so my mom (who was here visiting for his birthday and baptism) made this fun USA cake. 

Note the inclusion of Alaska and Hawaii!

Playing with his new remote-controlled Spiderman that could crawl up and down walls!

A few pictures from his baptism the next morning:

 John's baptism was a very special experience for our family. It was even more special because all four of his grandparents were there, and so were the families who are our closest friends, as well as two of John's primary teachers. It was so nice. That evening we went out to dinner at Red Lobster (John's favorite restaurant) and the waiters sang "Happy birthday" to him when they brought out his dessert. It was a very fun and meaningful weekend for John and our family!

A Pity Party for Boo Boo

Last month our dogs went in for their annual check-up at the vet and got their shots, which made them tired and lethargic for the rest of the day. Boo Boo laid down in his favorite spot on the stairwell and Sam took full advantage of his lethargy by wrapping him up in blankets and setting up a little party around him. He was delighted by Boo Boo's acquiescence because normally Boo Boo would just get up and walk away. 

That's Boo Boo under the blankets, just laying there, too tired to do anything about the blanket on his head. 

 Then he started perking up a bit, but not enough to find his way out from under the blanket.   

The claustrophobe in me sympathized and uncovered his head. 

I don't know if he's looking at me with anger, depression, or total surrender. Probably a combination of the three.

These next two pictures are my favorites. Boo Boo is resting his head dejectedly on Angry Birds Chewbacca while Sam laughs his head off, enjoying their rare little "sleepover party." It's so nice when a dog is drugged out and cooperates so well!

Good times.

{No animals were harmed in the creation of this blog post!}