Sesame Place take 4!

On Monday we went to Sesame Place. It was our third theme park owned by Sea World that we attended within about two weeks as Aquatica is also owned by Sea World and our fourth ever visit to the park. It wasn't crowded, which was good, but it also wasn't really warm enough outside to fully enjoy the park. There was a new rollercoaster which the kids really enjoyed. There are only two roller coasters. I rode each of them three times on Monday. Some of the water slides were closed; I'm assuming it was because of the cool air temperature. The water temperature was much colder than it was at Aquatica or Legoland. I didn't even wear a bathing suit. Paul's parents did wear them, but they never got wet. Paul and the kids were the only ones who braved the cold water and did some water slides and the lazy river. We also saw two shows "Elmo the Musical" and "The Magic of Art" as well as the parade. The kids also had their picture taken with several different characters. Ian was bummed we missed Bert and Ernie, but I think otherwise we did meet the characters they wanted to meet. I was exhausted by the end of the day. It's supposed to be a little less than 3 hours away, but we hit some traffic in both directions. Both times we hit the traffic a little before we reached our destination. We listened to most of a book on cd  The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry and the kids also watched a Despicable Me dvd during our 6+ hours in the van. We had eaten an early breakfast before we left, packed a lunch, and ate dinner in the park because the group ticket we had purchased through the babysitter included one meal and one drink. Sesame Place really is a very nice amusement park for young children. I'm guessing this was our last hurrah there given Nadia and Ian's ages. I took over 100 pictures. I haven't even looked at all of them yet, but a few are in this post.

We've done a variety of other things over the past several days aside from Sesame Place including....

1. a pond critters program at Montour Preserve on Saturday,

2. attending the (free) Kids' Café lunch in our town park on Friday and Tuesday,

3. the kids attended VBS at the church where they go to AWANA on Sunday night and Tuesday night,

4. the van got new front brake pads and rotors on Tuesday morning,

5. and the kids all had their first tennis lesson of the summer on Tuesday evening. It was Oliver's first lesson ever as he was too young to take lessons last year. The downside of where they are taking lessons this summer is the drive (in Bloomsburg so it's farther away). The upside is the lessons are free, and all three kids can take their lessons at the same time (although Oliver is in a different group than Nadia and Ian are).

Today the kids and I will meet Paul's parents and Paul at Sight and Sound in Lancaster to see their new production about the life of Jesus. After that the kids and I will drive down to Maryland where we'll be celebrating Andrew's 13th birthday, going ice skating, visiting Fort McHenry and Port Discovery, and attending a colonial program at Fort Frederick before driving back home on Saturday evening. I had planned to take the kids to Lake Tobias on the way to Lancaster. We've been to Lake Tobias three times before (twice in Oliver's case), but the last time we went was 2014 so I'm certain Oliver has no memory of the place. We have had plans the last two years to go there that have been scratched, and that's what happened again today because I am exhausted. I have been exhausted for more than a month. Many times while we were in San Diego I just wished I could be in bed rather than at Disneyland or Sea World or whatever. This morning I just can't seem to force myself to get out the door at 8:15 as originally planned. There are so many things to do in the Lancaster area or in Harrisburg (which is on the way there) that I like to do something else in conjunction with a show at Sight and Sound to make the drive more worthwhile. In the past we've done things like the Turkey Hill ice cream tour or toured the replica of the tabernacle, but I'm just too tired today.

8 1/2 Years Old!

Today is Ian's half birthday! Our middle child will be turning nine years old in six months.

If you want to see a big smile on Ian's face just make one of these statements:

1. "I'll play Legos with you." (Nadia is the one who plays Legos with him the most).

2. "Let me give you a hug!" This boy loves to snuggle!!

3. "We're having pepperoni pizza for dinner!" We almost always buy cheese pizza, but I keep a package of pepperoni in the refrigerator for Ian, and he turns his slice of cheese pizza into a slice of pepperoni pizza.

4. "You can watch Ninjago." He watches it via Amazon Prime.

5. "You can stay up later tonight." Nadia and Oliver both are known to ask to go to bed at their bedtime or even earlier. Ian gets the least sleep of the three kids as he's almost always the first one up in the morning.

6. "Look at the baby!" He loves

to see babies of all kinds.

7. His favorite books series are Imagination Station (he's read all of them), Magic Tree House, and Paddington Bear books. He usually only reads when I ask him to do so.

8. He loves to practice the piano. He's now in the same books as Nadia because he practices far more than she does. When he wants to earn an iPad turn, his first choice is usually to practice the piano. I wish my mom could hear him play!

9. He plays outside far less than his siblings. He spends many hours playing with legos.

10. Aside from legos, his other favorite toy would be his stuffed animals - particularly his Mario ones. His most recent addition to his collection is a red Yoshi. He gets them off of eBay, and they come straight to our house from Hong Kong or China.

11. His favorite fruits are golden delicious apple slices or red grapes.

12. His favorite vegetable is green beans.

13. His favorite subjects in school are piano, science, math, and spelling. He says he likes (but doesn't love) history and reading.

14. He has an amazing memory.

15. He prefers to go to the worship service than to the 1st/2nd grade boys' class. During the school year he usually goes to the worship service during the first service and kids' choir during the second. In the summer he goes to the worship service in the first service and Kidzway during the second service.

16. He spends the most time holding the guinea pigs compared to everyone else in our house.

17. He still loves everything related to Mario and Star Wars.

18. He had his first big role in a musical at church in May. He did a great job as a pirate!

Seals and sea lions

These pictures were taken at La Jolla Cove - my favorite day of our vacation. Ian forgot to pack his bathing suit for the vacation. Thankfully Oliver had packed two swim trunks so Ian used one of his most days. The day we went to the beach Ian thought he wasn't going to get in the water so he just wore regular clothes, and he ended up swimming in those! Ian borrowed Nadia's swim shirt when we were at Aquatica, but then even though we put a lot of sunscreen on Nadia, she burned herself. So I bought Oliver a new swim shirt at Target so that all three kids could wear a swim shirt at Legoland. There have been plenty of warm days here in PA in May/June, but it seems we're going to have a similar experience tomorrow at Sesame Place as the high is only supposed to be 70. We didn't go to Sesame Place last year, which means the last time we went Oliver was only 3. We figure this is probably the last time we'll go as Nadia will be outgrowing the park. Paul thought we should go once more mostly for Oliver's sake. Hopefully we'll have a good day tomorrow!

Pool Party

Many of the past years I have paid a fee so that our family could join a swimming pool for the summer. The pool graciously refunded our membership fee in 2012 after I discovered I was on bedrest and wouldn't be able to take Nadia and Ian swimming that summer. Due to the kids' schedules plus rainy or cooler days, last year I decided it wasn't financially wise to join the pool this year. Thus far I am not regretting my decision. The pool we stayed in Baltimore for one night had an indoor pool. The Airbnb condo in San Diego had two outdoor pools and a jacuzzi. We spent one day at a water park (Aquatica), one day at a beach, and they was a water park within Legoland. Next week we are going to Sesame Place, which also has a lot of water slides. We plan to spend a week on Long Island in July - which means trips to my aunt's indoor and outdoor pools and her cabana at the beach. The kids can swim every day (weather permitting) during horseback riding camp the last week of June. They can swim one day at Camp Good News. Nadia and Ian can swim every day (if they

want to) at Camp Susque. I have signed Oliver up for one more week of swimming lessons (in August) and Nadia for a week of diving lessons (also in August). I think they'll have plenty of chances to go swimming this summer even though we don't currently belong to a pool. Yesterday we were able to get in free to a pool 15 minutes from our house because the library was having a pool party there. The air temperature was a lot warmer than it was most of the days we were in San Diego (low 80's) but the water temperature was FRIGID as in much colder than any water we encountered in San Diego. We had planned to stay at the pool for two hours, but we only stayed for one because it was so cold. I had my suit on and planned to swim, but I changed my mind after stepping in the water. The kids did get eventually jump in completely, but they were cold!

The kids slept in again yesterday morning. I expected them to sleep in on Thursday morning because we had gotten so little sleep on Tuesday night, but I wasn't expecting them to get so much sleep two nights in a row.

Oliver went to bed at 8:00 on Thursday night, and Nadia and Ian went to bed at 9:00. It was almost 9:00am before the boys woke up! Nadia woke up around 8:30. I guess switching back from PST to EST has helped Ian out as he usually wakes up by 6:30am. Not counting Paul, I was up first, and when I came down I discovered the neighbor who has what is always by far my favorite yard sale of the year was having her yard sale yesterday and today. Usually we are down there before 8:00 the first day of the sale, but I didn't have the heart to wake the kids up. We arrived around 9:00 and I spent about 45 minutes going through the clothing and shoes. Most things were $1 each.  A few things were cheaper (as low as 25 cents) and a couple of winter coats went for somewhere between $3-5 each. Altogether I spent $76.25 which means I bought a LOT of stuff. There was one coat I didn't get. I went home and checked to see if I had one in that size for the boys, went back to buy it, but someone had already bought it before I returned. After the kids ate a really late breakfast (9:45!) we put away all their new

clothing (some in their dressers and some in the closet for future seasons/years). They played for awhile and then we headed to the town park for the Kids' Café.

I have seen the Kids' Café advertised the last five years, but we never visited it. This is their sixth year of providing free lunches for kids (ages 0-18) Monday through Friday during the summer (every day except July 4). It's a ministry of the Methodist church in our town and they partner with other individuals, companies, and local organizations to make it possible. The kids had received free lunches in previous summers at a splash pad in another town, and I assumed the lunches would be similar to what they received there (sandwich, vegetable, milk, etc.). When I read the library's newsletter this week and the librarian was mentioning the burgers from the grill at the Kids' Café on Monday I realized I had been wrong in my perception of the meals served at the park. I toyed with taking the kids on Thursday, but I just wanted to stay home ALL day that day. So yesterday I told the

kids we'd check it out, and if they wanted to have lunch at home that was fine. Well they were serving pizza from Ciro's (the place we usually get our pizza from in this town), watermelon, yogurt, apples, and applesauce with milk to drink. The kids enjoyed the food and playing on the playground before we went grocery shopping (the park is right behind the grocery store). We won't go regularly due to the kids being in camps so many weeks, but I'm sure it won't be our last visit this summer. They gave a schedule highlighting some of the special meals and activities for the month of June.

After the pool party we made our first trip to the library in more than two weeks. Nadia didn't want to wait until today to go because she was *dying* to see Paddington 2. So we got some books and dvds, came home, had dinner, and watched Paddington 2. I had two things on our agenda for today but since we ended up being out and about so much yesterday, I scratched the art project at the Children's Museum off the schedule. The only place we are

planning to go today is a 90 minute Pond Critters class at the Montour Preserve (about 15 minutes from our house). I also need to plan my lesson for tomorrow as I'm teaching the Bible story twice most weeks this summer during the second service (once for K-2 and another time for grades 3-5).

The pictures in this post are from our trip to San Diego Zoo last Wednesday. Some of the favorite animals from that day were the panda bears, African penguins, koala bears, meerkats, and primates. We all rode the bus tour, but beyond that we traveled on foot because Paul's parents had rented motorized wheelchairs and that meant we couldn't ride the sky tram, kangaroo bus, etc. We did all ride an elevator together. At the very end of the day we split up, and two of the kids did go on an escalator with me. We did a lot of walking on this vacation! I was impressed with Oliver's ability to keep up at the age of five. It wasn't that long ago when he was still riding around in a stroller at places like this!