Silly's Landmark Summer

We timed our trip so Cakes and Silly wouldn't miss their fun events the last week of school. Silly had Field Day and a Class party on the same day. Scott and I were both there for field day, but then I had to go to Cakes' Fifth Grade Luncheon, so Scott and Bubba stuck around for the party.

Be careful!

Not sure if he was having fun or not...

Can you tell it was a really hot day?

With his best friend - they were lucky enough to be in the same class for two years

Waiting to get wet

His teacher had an owl theme all year, so each of the kids decorated one of these masks. Silly went with Darth Vader; Scott stapled a straw from their smoothies for a light saber.

Bubba thinks it's pretty awesome

Turning 8 is a big deal when you belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Silly hit that milestone back in May. Scott was supposed to be going out on sea trials at some point, and then we had our Disney trip, so all of Silly's birthday festivities were delayed for a while. Thankfully, we have an awesome, and understanding Bishop who was willing to let us schedule a baptism whenever we could make it work. 

But first! A birthday party! He's been wanting a Lego party for a long time, so that's what we did.

Scott enjoyed LEGO Bingo as much as the kids

LEGO cake

Presents!

Scott's party contribution was drawing LEGO faces on all of the cups. The kids thought they were pretty cool.

Then the big day - baptism! Silly asked Papop to be the speaker, and of course he did a great job. He talked about covenants and said something I'd never thought of before, God never asks us to make a covenant without also giving us a way to renew it. Love that man! Then Silly was baptized by Scott. Silly was so adorable; as soon as he came up out of the water he looked right at Scott and flashed him this great big happy grin then went right back to his poker face. After he was confirmed a member of The Church and given the Gift of the Holy Ghost, Bishop Dudley asked me to bear my testimony. I told him there are pictures I keep in my head of the significant events in my life, and that smile he flashed his dad will be the image I keep of his baptism.

A few pictures of the crowd: nobody had any surprise announcements this time.

The family

And more of the family

And one last one

After all of those adventures, he jumped right into Cub Scout Day Camp. He had an awesome time and caught the fishing bug. He was one of only a few boys who caught a fish and he's been bugging us about going fishing again ever since!

This happened a few times after day camp

There was a Pack Meeting the week after camp so the boys could get their patches and belt loops. Silly earned his Bobcat and belt loops for fishing, hiking and flag football.

Getting pinned - I am an official Scout mom now!

His crowning achievement this summer was fishing in the Chesapeake Bay with Papop, 2 uncles and 3 cousins. And he was the only one who caught anything! Dad sent me this picture of his catch. :-) My Albanian BIL told me he was very impressed with Silly, and that says a lot because that man loves to fish.

He definitely started 3rd grade with a lot of stories to tell!

A New Love

Cakes discovered a new love this summer (not that she had an old one, so maybe first love) - volleyball! She had been on my case for a while about signing her up for a team or class somewhere, but everything I found started at age 12 or 13 so we were kind of stuck. But then in the last little while, lots of youth volleyball classes and teams have popped up. The only thing that would fit our schedule back in May was a 5:00 class out near the beach on Friday, which is the absolute worst day and time to be heading that direction! But we made it work because she's been wanting it for so long. She had a great coach and learned a lot of basic skills.

Then a place much closer to home had a summer rec league so she could be on an actual team and play some real games. Her team was called Setting Ducks. She's playing with SERV here in Chesapeake and we're happy to be supporting a local organization. Going from a 45 minute drive down to less than 5 minutes doesn't hurt either!

She had so much fun! And we liked seeing her competitive side come out. Volleyball is extremely structured and rule oriented, but that is what my kids thrive on when it comes to sports. If you tell them this is your position, and this is your job, then that is exactly what they will do. She always knows where she's supposed to be and what to do.

Beaches, Donuts and a Hurricane

After Silly's baptism a few cousins stuck around and we all went to Sandbridge the next day (except for Silly who was at camp). It was just me and my mom with 7 kids, and she wasn't felling well, so it was really just me watching all of them. They are super good kids though, and Bubba was the only little guy, so it wasn't a very tough job. Scott wasn't there to dig a big hole like he usually does, so Bubba had to do his own thing. He didn't get in the water a whole lot, but he had fun. The two oldest boys came and checked on him every now and then to make sure he was having fun, which I thought was really sweet. They have little siblings, so I guess it was just a normal thing for them.

The big boys

I didn't manage to get any pictures of the girls because they hardly left the water! They were good about not drifting off.

Bubba obviously had plenty to keep him busy

He takes this sand work very seriously

We had a hurricane come through around July 4th; it was pretty pathetic as far as hurricanes go, so much so that I can't even recall it's name. We drove around looking for flooding and other storm damage without much success. The place to go after a storm is the beach, so we sett off in that direction and made a little pit stop at the new Duck Donuts. We hadn't had them before, but we'd heard plenty about them.

Apparently we were so excited about donuts and storm damage we forgot to comb anyone's hair...

Looks like they like them

Then we went to the ocean front to enjoy getting sandblasted and count the number of crazy people out surfing.

It was very windy!

Bubba wanted to me hold him so the sand wouldn't get him so much, don't think it helped a whole lot!

We did find one flooded parking lot to walk through and that was about it. Silly was really mad that he couldn't walk through the giant puddle because he wore his sneakers.

More Magic

Our last day of fun got off to a rough start. At some point in the middle of the night, Bubba threw up on the bed he shared with Philip. We thought he'd just eaten too much junk and that would be the end of it. Got up in the morning and went down to eat the breakfast buffet; I took Bubba in line with me and he threw up a little more in line (so sorry to all those other people in line!). I went and sat at the table with him and kept the airsickness bags I'd taken from the flight to FL handy. Didn't do me any good. He then threw up all over the floor at our table - not just a little bit, a whole lot. At this point we were cutting it close to the time to catch the bus to Magic Kingdom. We quickly debated whether I should keep him at the hotel for a while and try to meet up with them later. Instead, I got him back up to our hotel room, gave him the quickest shower ever and clean clothes, then raced down to the buses (I'm telling you, I've never stayed in a hotel that had so many corners) and made it just in time. Poor Bubba still didn't look too good. After all my sympathy and probably a few too many "I'm so glad that's not me/us" statements regarding all the poor people with strollers, we decided to have pity on our little sicko and rent a stroller for the day.

We started off with a few mellow rides to make sure Bubba was going to be alright. Scott and I thought the sarcasm of Jungle Cruise was completely hilarious. Either no one else on the boat was really listening or they don't enjoy that kind of humor. I know every word is scripted, but our guide was so good. We wanted to crack up laughing, but no one else was, so we kept it in for the most part. Our favorite line was her last one, "One last joke for all you psychics out there..." and then nothing, We rode The Magic Carpets of Aladdin (pretty much just a variation of Dumbo) then went to a couple of short shows; Country Bear Jamboree, extremely corny, but Scott remembered it from when he was a kid and wanted to see it again; and The Enchanted Tiki Room, also corny and outdated, but the old folks liked it,

Bubba made it through those things just fine and by then it was time for us to ride Big Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain. He was a good little barometer all week of which rides were good and which were not so; if it was good he seemed to get a little turbo boost from it. Big Thunder was just what he needed to get him back to his usual little self. We took a little raft over to Tom Sawyer Island; the kids liked it but I wasn't impressed. Then we had some lunch at Peco's Bills before heading over to Pirates of the Caribbean; it's really the same ride it was years ago, they just added a few Jack Sparrows into the scenery.

And that was that! We went on everything we wanted to ride. Silly still wanted a t-shirt, he'd seen one at Splash Mountain that he liked but we didn't want to buy it right then and thought maybe we could find it in the Main Street shops, but couldn't. Scott went all the way back to Splash Mountain while the 4 of us waited in line at Plaza Ice Cream Parlor to get some treats. Scott hadn't bought anything for himself yet, and wanted a nice golf shirt, which is pretty much what he gets on every trip. His only choices were Grumpy or Mickey, so he went with Grumpy.

Somewhere in there we watched the Main Street Parade, which was worth watching for the experience of it, but my kids aren't all that into characters so it wasn't a major moment for them. I got lost during a night time parade when I was a kid, so I told them all about that. I also went to Disney my senior year of high school for a show choir competition. I pointed out the stage we performed on and they were not impressed.

Gotta take this picture, right?

I wore my BYU hat all week and I think I only got one comment; Bubba wore his VT hat everyday, and Scott wore a VT shirt one day and got commentary all day long. He thought that was pretty awesome.

Then we went back to the hotel and I dealt with all of this while Scott took the kids swimming. Fun stuff! I also avoided a potential disaster for the morning. Our taxi company had called to confirm our airport pickup the day before we left, so I was kind of waiting for my phone to ring all day, but it didn't. I called them Friday night to make sure we were all set and discovered I had accidentally made the reservation for the next Saturday. Oops! Good thing I called to confirm.

We must have really worn everyone out because all three of them slept past 8:00 Saturday morning and that is an extremely rare occurrence, for the boys anyway.

There was a brand new, really cool playground right outside our hotel room. They actually finished it while we were there, so the kids got a chance to go play on it before we checked out.

View from our little porch

Silly thought the rollers on this slide were pretty cool

Riding the elevator with a little assistance (which he didn't much appreciate)

By himself this time

I, of course, liked the musical elements

Bubba's shirt - totally perfect for him!

And that was Disney World! Definitely worth the wait, had a great time, Less Drowsy Dramamine is a miracle drug, Cakes won the award for wettest person in all of Animal Kingdom, Silly survived a typhoon and Bubba managed to limit his throwing up to just the one morning. Scott has now become the Disney World guru for all of his friends who have gone since we went. He's got a whole paper written up about it.

Now for the Magic

We stuck to Fantasyland and Tomorrowland for our first day. Our plan of attack was to head straight to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which we did, but they were experiencing some technical difficulties and told everyone it might be hours before it finally opened. So we went next door to Dumbo The Flying Elephant first (Bubba now loves Dumbo) then the Barnstormer. That was a fun little roller coaster and we met a cute family there that had an odd number of people too so the dad talked to us, introduced himself, and asked if his daughter could ride with our daughter. It worked out just right.

By the time we got through that the Mine Train was open again. Here's where I should say that the Touring Plans app and membership we bought was completely, absolutely worth it. I think we only paid about $12 for the plan; it saved us so much time and was always more accurate than the wait times posted by the parks. This was most clear at this particular ride. We knew we'd have a long wait, and when we got in line there was a cast member there who kept telling everyone the wait time from that point was 80-90 minutes. Touring Plans said 45, so we stuck it out, and their estimate was right on target. Later in the day the wait was much longer, so we definitely made the right choice. We used that app far more that Disney's. Anyway; even the wait was pretty fun, there are things to see and do along the way, and the ride was super fun! I've always loved the Seven Dwarfs and this was definitely a favorite ride.

Thankfully, none of my kids were even remotely interested in meeting any characters and don't give a hoot about princesses, so we were able to avoid all of that time consuming nonsense. (I was also grateful many, many times that we decided to wait until our kids were out of the baby and toddler phases. My heart went out to all those poor moms and dads pushing strollers and carrying babies around in that heat!) Winnie the Pooh was across the way so we got in line for that. Again, lots to do so the kids didn't really even notice they were waiting.

Hanging out in Pooh's house

Sad little Eeyore

Working in Rabbit's garden

We just about suffocated at Tomorrowland Speedway. You're standing on hot asphalt the whole wait, then driving on hot asphalt and there's no shade anywhere, just nothing but really hot! The kids had fun driving though. Cakes was old enough to drive herself, so I helped Bubba and Scott helped Silly. They had a really good time in spite of the temps.

Monster's Inc Laugh Floor was extremely funny, Buzz Lightyear was fun, Stitch's Great Escape was  lame. Space Mountain was totally awesome - I didn't feel sick at all, but I did scream my head off the whole time. I always feel like my head is going to hit something on that ride. I rode it at about 8 years old with my mom, oldest sister and younger sister. I screamed my head off then too; my younger sister was so scared she never even made a peep (at least that was our theory). The kids absolutely loved it.

We ate a tasty lunch at Cosmic Rays, then rode Peter Pan's Flight, which was fun and it's a small world, which hasn't changed at all. And of course I sang along for most of the ride, which my children didn't appreciate much.

It was only 1 or 2 o'clock by then so we waited in line for The Haunted Mansion, which was pretty outdated and not at all scary (this from a girl who's pretty easy to scare). After that we did a little shopping; Cakes got a Winnie the Pooh and Bubba got a Baby Dumbo.

Proof they were there

Proof I was there

A more mellow day

We decided to take it easy Wednesday before we spent the next two days being really hot and crowded at Magic Kingdom. If we were to ever go back, I think we would plan on one less day and not bother with water parks. We've got Water Country and Great Wolf Lodge around here, so Typhoon Lagoon wasn't all that thrilling. We went on all the family rides first and we gave Shark Reef a try. Papop (my dad) taught Silly to snorkel a few summers ago and he loves it, so we thought we'd give that a try. Cakes and Bubba wanted nothing at all to do with those little bitty sharks. Silly didn't want to swim with sharks either, but he really wanted to snorkel. I snorkeled once in Hawaii and said I would never do it again, but this little pool was like 30 feet across, so I thought maybe that wouldn't be a big deal. Nope. Still a big deal. Still don't like it. Still have a hard time breathing if I think about it too long. Sorry dad! This girl will never be a scuba diver. Ever. Silly was funny. He was swimming along just fine, but at some point he actually saw a fish or a shark and then he just wanted to get out of there. He can say he swam with sharks though!

There was one little kid area that Bubba and I stayed in while Scott took Cakes and Silly to ride the big slides (are you noticing that he takes the big kids a lot? it's because I'm a wimp). He must have gone down that slide 150 times, over and over and over, never getting tired of it. Once we reunited, everyone wanted to go to the wave pool. Now, we know wave pools. We've been in a few. We know the waves start when the bell or alarm rings. But clearly we were not familiar with typhoon pools. We ran into the water right as the alarm sounded, having no idea that this wasn't the typical waves turn on for so many minutes, then off for so many minutes scenario. No, this was just one huge tidal wave that caught Silly completely off guard, tumbling him every which way underwater and battering him into the nonslip surface. Thank goodness he had on a rash guard, because his poor little body would have been completely torn up otherwise. He was pretty scraped up even so. Scott had to take him to the first aid station where they patched him up and gave him lots of extra band-aids. He's a tough kid though, so it didn't really slow him down, but we sure felt bad about it! The ladies at the first aid station were impressed that he managed to scrape something other than his toes, that's what they're usually bandaging.

After a little break at the hotel, we went back out to explore Epcot's World Showcase, but first we had to ride Test Track again because Bubba loved it so much, and gave Mission:Space another try, since that was the first ride we attempted and didn't yet know the trick to getting Bubba on those 44" rides. Scott and I took Bubba on the calmer version and let Cakes and Silly try the wilder one. They take you into this briefing area first and I could not take it! I was on the verge of screaming to be let out and/or hyperventilating. And that wasn't even the ride! Thankfully, there was an opportunity for wimps like me to get out before moving on to the actual ride. Plus, we were worried about Cakes and Silly - they'd gotten too far in front of us and still had their cards with them; we were both worried the cards would be left on the ride and that would be the end of our fun! They were super responsible though and kept track of them.

Then it was time to be piggies traveling the world. We started off with cronuts then visited the UK. Silly gave the classic British phone box a try.

He doesn't even know what a payphone is!

Bubba was more interested in the regular payphone

But he gave the red one a try too

We stopped by France for some sorbet, one of Scott's all-time favorite things. I was expecting the serving size we got in France, forgetting I was in America, so we ended up with these giant waffle cones of sorbet. If I'd known that I would only have bought 1 or 2. Somehow we managed to eat it all. :-)

Cakes jammin'

We ate a few more goodies over in Germany and then finally satisfied Silly's craving for some Chinese noodles at the Lotus Blossom Cafe. That boy could live on any kind of Asian noodle if given the choice.

We mostly just walked through each country, stopped in at a few stores. We did go on the Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico; that was a nice, cool break from the walking and the heat. Then we stuck around until 9:00 to see the IllumiNations show with lights, fireworks and music. It was pretty cool. We had a good view, but were still towards the back of the crowd so we could make a quick exit. Scott and I seem to have this special snack for beating the rush and we got back to our hotel without any trouble.

And that concludes Day 4. 

Next up: Magic Kingdom!