Great Wolf with Great Friends

It's been our tradition for the past few years to have some great sleepovers with the South family. This way, all the kids could play for as long as they want, and the adults could also have time to play games, chat, and have fun!

We decided to have the biggest sleepover of them all as one last celebration before our move.  So, one Saturday morning, we popped all of us into the van and drove the 2 hours down to Great Wolf Lodge!

On the way down we stopped at Steak and Shake for a pre-lodge meal.  It's always so expensive to eat actually at Great Wolf and Steak and Shake is always so kid friendly.  The kids wore their hats, built their little paper cars, and dined on mac and cheese and shakes to hopefully give them enough energy to make it through the day at the waterpark.

Then, it was off to check in!  We got there about noon and our room wasn't ready yet, but we were allowed to head in to the waterpark.  The check-in desk gave all the kiddos their wolf ears, and after some obligatory photos we were off!

The kids had a great time playing.  The big boys were finally tall enough to go down some of the bigger slides and once they discovered the mat racers they wanted to do nothing else.  Benny was a bit less sure of the slides and wasn't tall enough for the big ones.  He loved playing in all the various pools and spraygrounds though.  Anna wasn't sure of it all, but toward the end she warmed up and she and Benny had some great playtime in the little kids' area.

The great thing about going with another set of grown ups is that you can have some times to ride some of the slides with just the adults.  Now, people had been talking up this Tornado ride to Kara before she came.  It is the only one there that the big boys weren't yet tall enough to ride, and it certainly has a big drop in it that will take your breath away.  Kara was petrified and had built it up in her head. So, after we had been there a little while I dragged her up to give it a try.  We got done with the ride and she looked at me and said-was that it?  She had it so built up that the real thing turned out to not be that big of a deal after all, but it was fun anyway.

After we'd had our fill in the waterpark we went to check out our hotel room.  The kids had their own room and the grown ups had theirs.  We also had a little back porch where the kiddos had a great time climbing the fences.  We all cleaned up and headed down for a buffet dinner at their restaurant where the kids got to chow down on as many rolls and as much mac and cheese as their wanted.  Again, they just loved being able to do it all with their buddies.

The night wrapped up with a trip to the arcade where the boys got to spend money to play games and get tickets which bought them the tiniest trinkets you could ever imagine.  That's ok because they had a great time and came home with some great bracelets and other plastic treasures.

Then, it was back to the room for bedtime.  Well, we put the kiddos in their room to jump around noisily for a while and we broke out the wine!  Since we all love playing games we tried one that Mark had brought this time and had a great time playing with stops every once and a while to tell the kids to settle down or get quiet.  Finally, after midnight, with Anna sleeping in our room with the light on, we all settled down and got some rest.

The next day brought more fun at the waterpark.  We checked out of our room and headed down for a little more play before we had to go home.  It was more of the same and more fun for everyone.  When we hopped in the car to go home everyone was happily tired.  The big boys managed to watch movies the whole way home, but the little ones passed out and got some much needed rest.

It was a great weekend, and boy do we miss these guys now!

(our pre-lodge meal)

(Love this picture of our little wolves!)

(Please Mom and Dad, can we go in?)

(Evan aims and fires!)

(a silly break with my big boy)

(Benny has a ball on the teeter totter.)

(Monkeys!)

Field Day

When I was little, I always loved field day in elementary school-the day when everyone got to play games outside for the whole day and usually have popsicles at some point.  So, I was really excited when I heard that Evan would be having a Kindergarten Field Day.  I knew I wanted to volunteer and see what it was all about.

I showed up on the morning of field day and a bunch of other class parents clearly had the same thought that I did.  So, we had plenty of parents to help and not a whole lot of work to be done. That's ok because we had a great time watching and playing with the kiddos.

Once we went out to field day, the PE teacher had set up stations for each of the Kindergarten classes to rotate through.  Keep in mind, there are 7 Kindergarten classes, so that was a LOT of stations! They rotated through the parachute-

 ball toss at the beanbags-

playground, sponge relay race-

frisbee toss-

rolling scooter toss-

and noodle tag-

 Evan liked them all, but I think he especially liked playing on the big kids' playground, tossing the sponges which of course soaked all the kiddos, and what kid doesn't like running around a field and tagging each other with pool noodles?  He did also like the frisbee toss where he could pair up with his good buddy Ursula.  For most of the stations they definitely emphasized teamwork and individual goals instead of picking a winner which was just Evan's style.

It was a great day and it was so much fun to watch him being so comfortable and having so much fun with his class!  Maybe next time I'll bring in some popsicles!

Five!

The next day after the big double boy birthday, it was actually Benny's official fifth birthday.  How is that possible?

So, as usual Ben got to choose what we were doing that day.  The only wrinkle was that it was also Mother's Day.  I was okay with letting him have the day, but my boys' did manage to treat me to a delicious fondue lunch.  It was the first time I'd ever had fondue french toast, but I think it was an inspired invention, yum!

But really, this day was for Benny.  We opened all of his presents, many of which were basketball themed.  He was especially excited about the basketball goal for his room, and a big one for our driveway.   He enjoyed opening his presents, but Benny wanted to do one thing more than anything else on his birthday and that was to go to Chuck E. Cheese.  So, for dinner we headed on over.  As usual, the boys ran around with their tokens like chickens with their heads cut off.  They couldn't really decide which game they wanted to play.  They found enough games to spend their tokens, spent a lot of time crawling around in the play gym over our heads, and polished off their pizza.  We finished off the day with some delicious Minecraft cupcakes.

I can't believe my little Benny B is five and starting Kindergarten soon!  He is happy, healthy, and we are so lucky to get to experience every moment with him.  Ben is Ian and I's little enigma.  We always say that we can trace his brother's personality traits back to either parent.  Benny is his own man.  He is a little extrovert.  He loves being the center of a crowd.  His preschool class and even Evan's Kindergarten class flock to him when he comes in the room and he thrives in it.  He loves to make jokes.  While he can be so bubbly and animated, when he is tired and something bothers him, he can dissolve into a little puddle, my poor little dramatic boy.

Ben loves to run, and he enjoys soccer, especially hanging in the back and waiting for a strategic kick when the ball comes near.  His swimming is really coming along since his last swim lessons and he loves to explore the water.  He's recently developed a love for basketball and loves to shoot hoops or at least dribble the ball around.  Ben's reading skills have recently exploded and he is reading anything you put in front to him.  He knows how to read words that I certainly never taught him.  He's going to blow those Kindergarten teachers away.  Benny also has the most amazing spatial skills.  If you're lost, he can figure out how to get home.  While he's not that in to writing or drawing right now, I'm sure that will come with time.

At his five year old check up, Ben was the picture of health.  His eyes, ears, and all of his parts were healthy.  He was on target with all of his developmental milestones.  He is still a little peanut, but surprisingly his weight was a higher percentage than his height which I never would have expected from my little string bean.  Because of a change in the NC policy, he had to have another shot at this appointment.  He wasn't expecting this, and unlike last year when he was completely stoic and tough about his shots, this year he let out the most blood curdling scream-my poor Benny B!

Here are his numbers from the appointment:
*Height: 40 inches (2-3rd percentile)
*Weight:35 pounds (10th percentile)

We're looking forward to all sorts of new adventures with our big five year old this year!  We love you Benjamin James Davis!

(The birthday boy opens his presents.)

(my little monkey)

(How big does he look in his new Spurs shirt.)

(Yes, he really ate that many pieces of pizza-or at least parts of them!)

Double Birthday Boys

For the past few years we have celebrated the boys' birthdays together in one party.  It has worked out so nicely that we decided to do it again this year.  However, with the possibility that the house could still be on the market, we decided to plan a party at someplace other than our house this year.  We knew the theme would be Minecraft and we picked Pump It Up as our location because the boys thought a bouncing birthday party would be lots of fun!  We also did the party a little on the earlier side this year just in case things got crazy before the big move.

It definitely was an easier way to do a birthday party.  When the day arrived, we simply loaded up the cake (which Ian slaved over for several days, but more on that later) and we arrived at the party location 15 minutes prior to our party time.

The boys both had lots of friends from their classes there as well as several of their joint friends and neighbors.  Uncle Reid and Aunt Candice even drove up from Charlotte to join in on the festivities.  Everyone had a great time bouncing.  They spent 45 minutes in one room, 45 minutes in the next room, and then about that long in the food room eating their pizza and cake.  Their were several Pump It Up workers keeping an eye on everything, and while they were a bit rambunctious at times they did keep the kids excited and having fun.  The boys even got to go in a wind tube and feel hurricane force winds.  They had a great time!

When we were all putting on our shoes to head into the pizza room at the end of our jumping, one of Evan's friends, Diego, finally arrived.  His dad said that he had really wanted to come even though he knew he'd be late and miss most of the party.  I felt bad that he hadn't gotten to bounce at all, so we let Evan and Diego go through the obstacle course a few times before we all went in for pizza.  I give Diego so much credit because most kids I know would have been sulking for the rest of the party because they missed so much, but he just kept on smiling and had a great time with the pizza and cake.

Once we were in the food room, everyone finally got to see Ian's cake masterpiece.  This year, it was a Minecraft themed cake of course, so Ian had constructed it all out of individual blocks of cake of three different flavors-vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate.  Then, he frosted them and created a whole Minecraft world. It was really awesome and the boys loved it!  A good time was had by all, and when we got home we just crashed before a present opening extravaganza thanks to some very generous friends.

It was so great to see the boys surrounded by so many people that care about them.  It was a great day!

(The birthday boys are ready to party!)

(Uncle Reid jumps into the bouncy house.)

(A view of one of the bouncy rooms)

(air hockey, anyone?)

(Evan climbs high.)

(Benny runs around.)

(Everybody is excited to go to the next room.)

(airborne Evan)

(monkey Benny)

(Evan, Ben, and Macie in the hurricane capsule)

(Ian's Minecraft masterpiece)

(time to blow out the candles)

(blocks of cake)

(Evan goofs off with one of his best buddies, Nathan)

(Aunt Candice sits pretty.)

(The whole groovy crew-Happy Birthday Evan and Ben!)

Intermediate Parkour!

Evan has been taking parkour lessons for about two years now.  I'm sure some of you are asking, what on earth is parkour!  If Evan hasn't explained it to you by now, I'm getting pretty good at it.  First, I ask people if they've seen American Ninja Warrior on TV.  If they have, problem solved-that's what parkour is.  If not, I ask them if they've seen the first Daniel Craig James Bond movie.  In the opening scene James Bond chases someone through a city jumping and flipping and doing some pretty nice parkour.  If they've seen neither, then I just explain it to them that it's gymnastics without the gym or skateboarding without the skateboard, or basically just running, jumping and doing a bunch of flips out in a park or the real world somewhere.

So, that's what Evan's been doing for the past few years, and he LOVES it!  There were definitely times over the past few years when I've wondered if he was actually making progress or if he was just sitting in the gym getting distracted or goofing off.  However, he was actually putting in lots of good hard work over the past few years in between a few spurts of silliness, and as a result he's learned a lot.

About six weeks before we moved, they did assessments in Evan's parkour class.  They had Evan and the other kids do a bunch of skills and tested to see how far they'd come.  Since we had to take a few weeks off for Ben's swim lessons, Evan had to make up some of the assessment after class with Coach Jay.  They were in there for quite a while, and when they came out, Evan was holding the little assessment checklist in his hand and had the biggest smile on his face!  He had qualified to move up to intermediate parkour!  I was so proud of him.

Then, I went into the office to look at scheduling for the intermediate class.  Now, we would only be there for about six more weeks, but I wanted him to have the chance to do some intermediate classes.  I had the option of signing him up for a class that met at a similar time in the evening but was with a different coach.  Or, I could sign him up for one that didn't start till 7 in the evening but was with Coach Jay.  Since it was only for six weeks, I decided we could do the late night classes, just for that long.  He really wanted to stay with his coach.

So, we went to six weeks of intermediate parkour and had a ball!  Plus, I think he learned a lot from the more advanced kids.  We were really sad to have to leave parkour and Coach Jay in Durham, but hopefully we will find an equally good spot in St. Louis!

(Evan shows off his parkour assessment!)

(Evan practices his back handspring in intermediate parkour.)

(intermediate parkour at its best)

The Durham Bucket List Continues

As I said earlier, with a new house bought and our current house sold, we really did have a bit of a lull in all of the activity of moving.  So, we wanted to make sure to hit up some of our favorite Durham haunts before we moved on.

After our fabulous day at the Duke gardens, we had to head to one of our other favorite Durham places, one where the boys and I have spent many, many hours.  We headed to the NC Museum of Life and Science.  I don't know what I would have done raising my boys without a membership to that place.  In fact, I was at the museum with my parents and Evan on the day I went into labor with Benny!

We started off the day at a birthday party for one of Evan's classmates, Lucy.  It was so nice, she actually invited both Evan and Ben!  It just shows how often Ben has visited that class and how ready he is to join in on the Kindergarten fun himself.  So, we all had a great time at Lucy's party in the butterfly section of the museum.  The boys love the butterfly house because there could be the possibility, no matter how small, that a butterfly would actually land on them.  While no butterflies actually landed on us this trip, it was still fun.

After the party with the butterflies we went to another of the boys' favorite stops in the museum, the dinosaur trail.  Now, they are not very into wandering around and looking at all of the dinosaur statues, but boy, do they love the fossil dig.  They could spend hours in that pit searching for sharks' teeth and all other manner of rocks, shells, and bones.  I have to say, with all my hours in the fossil pit, I've gotten pretty good at finding sharks' teeth myself, and I can always leave the pit with a few for any kids that want some.  Oddly enough, the big attraction of the day at the fossil pit for the boys was Lucy and one of her friends from the party who were using the magnifying glass party favor to burn leaves.  My boys do love fire, especially Evan, so that was a big hit!

We didn't make it to every corner of the museum that day, but we did make it to one other favorite spot that still baffles me as to why they like it so much.  There's a spot inside the museum where they have hooked up a projector from the ceiling.  That projector displays a series of lines and circles on the floor below and they move and change.  The boys absolutely love running back and forth jumping over those lines and circles.  We keep saying that we need to build one of those projectors into our basement, so we'll see if that happens.  Finally, after one last picture in front of the big rocket ship, we said goodbye to the museum and headed to one of our other favorite Durham spots that just happened to be nearby.

(starting fires with the birthday girl)

(our lucky day-two four leaf clover finds!)

(hugging the rocket ship goodbye)

We had to stop by Locopops before we left!  Locopops makes the best popsicles, or Mexican style paletas, and we've stopped by many times after hikes on the Eno or other Durham adventures.  They even have a chicken flavored version for the times when Ripple is with us.  This time though, it was just the human contingent.  I was surprised when everyone but me opted for the fruit juice versions while I had my traditional creamy Mexican chocolate flavor.  It doesn't matter what you get, you can't go wrong with Locopops!

(Mmmm...Locopops!)

The day finished off with something that wasn't necessarily Bucket List inspired, but it was still fun.  Since the boys had been in to sporting events of all kinds recently, I wanted them to be able to see the Kentucky Derby.  So, after our morning adventures, we headed home.  Since you're supposed to dress up for the derby, we all found some silly hats, Ian and I concocted an official Kentucky Derby beverage, and we all sat down for the most exciting minute in sports. We all picked our horses, and I'm happy to say that mine turned out to be the official triple crown winner, American Pharoah!  Too bad I'm not a wagering person!

(watching the Kentucky Derby-somehow I don't think we were quite as stylish as some of the other attendees!)

Brave

With summer rapidly approaching I wanted Ben to do one more set of swim lessons.  I had thought about having them both do half of the swim team season before we actually moved and I thought this would be good preparation.  Turned out we had WAY too much to do before we moved, but the swim lessons turned out to be great preparation for the summer anyway.

They had two different groups for the swim lessons-the Pikes and the Eels (I don't remember which one is which).  They would take them all together on the first day of lessons, assess them all, and divide them up in to groups according to ability.  Since Benny had taken probably three different sessions of preschool lessons already with the YMCA in his lifetime, I was hoping that he would be in the higher group and really learn to swim independently before summer.

On the first day of lessons there were a TON of kids there and a bunch of teachers assessing them.  However, as I was watching them assess, I saw that they only had Benny in the water twice for a brief period of time the whole time we were there, and they didn't learn very much about his swimming.  Sure enough, when I came back the next day, he had been put back in one of the lower groups.  I think lots of the time they just assume he's younger than he really is and place him according to that.

Well, I don't normally like being the squeaky wheel, but in this case I thought it was warranted.  I explained to the lesson supervisor Stanley that I thought Benny could handle being in the higher group based on what he could do.  So, he just switched him.  Then, I was nervous about whether he could really handle it.  Turns out, it was a success, and the teacher pushed him more than he had been in the past and had him trying to swim by himself a little.  He really liked it and I feel like he was learning.

Then, we got to the last class. The teacher he had had for the previous classes was gone, so Stanley was substituting.  About halfway through the lesson I look over to the pool and do a double take.  I ask the mom sitting next to me, "Is my son swimming without a float?"  Sure enough, Stanley had him swimming all by himself for quite a distance, something that he was yet to accomplish in any of this other lessons.  He got done swimming across most of the short distance across the pool and I was so proud of him.  He immediately started crying.  It stressed him out, but it showed him that he could do it.  Then, at the end of the lesson, he took everyone in Benny's group to the deeper competition pool and wanted them to jump off the swim team blocks and swim to the wall.  Ben wanted nothing to do with it and started crying again.  Finally, we convinced him to jump off the blocks with Stanley holding his hand.  He wanted Evan to come watch him and then he was willing to.  Sure enough, even though he was scared, he did it!

In the end, he learned a little during the two weeks of lessons, and then he learned more in the one day with Coach Stanley than he had in lots of days of swim lessons before that.  I am so glad that I pushed him into that group.  After those lessons, something clicked, and you should see my little fishy swim across the pool now with ease!

(Ben practicing his kickboard skills early in the lesson sequence)

(Look how far Ben has progressed after one lesson with Coach Stanley!)

(My big brave boy jumps in with Stanley.)