Monday, March 1, 2010
Abby and Ally's first trip to Vertical Escape 2/21/10
The girls (Abby especially) have been begging me to go climbing lately and I took Jack skiing the day before so I decided to finally take them to VX. They were so excited and were so cute in the little full-body harnesses. Abby needed the smallest shoes they had and Ally needed one size larger. It had been over 6 months since I was last there, so I had to go through a safety refresher course. I was glad because I really couldn't remember how it worked and wanted to make sure I was doing everything safely for my girls. Abby was the first to go and she was awesome! She only made it up a few feet before coming back down but I was impressed at how well she got the hang of it. The hand-holds are meant for adults so they are pretty far apart and were hard for them to use, but they did great and were able to stretch when they needed to. Ally went next and she did great too but she didn't have the strength as Abby so she couldn't go very high. But she did not get scared at all like Jack did his first time so I was very proud of them for that. They each went about 15-20 times and we were there for a couple of hours. Abby was able to climb to the top of the small section near the front and ring the bell, so that was pretty exciting! I had a couple of people ask me how old she was because she looked so little when she was 20 feet up on a wall. I think this might be something Abby does more often because she really seems to get excited before her turn and was just so good and fast at finding the footholds and moving her body up the wall. We knew she was a climber, but I think she might really be good at this some day. They were having a big competition the next day and the owner said it was open to kids as young as 4, so maybe we'll keep practicing and try to enter that next year. Anyway, I really enjoyed my time with the girls and really enjoyed getting them out to do a good activity. I really want to continue doing stuff like that with them and hopefully climbing will be one more activity we enjoy doing together.
Our awesome family vacation to Destin 7/18/09 – 7/25/09
Our trip to Destin was the best family vacation we’ve had so far and I wanted to take some time to write about it. I should have done this a long time ago, but we’ve just had trouble finding time recently. The blog has been suffering from it too. Anyway, I created a website for Dan and Gayle Fulton’s condo and to “pay” me, they let us stay there for free for a week. It was completely awesome for many reasons. For one, I think it was the first time we’ve taken a weeklong vacation with just the 5 of us so we had lots of quality time together and got to do lots of bonding. The other part was that the condo was free, so that let us spend lots of money on other things like going out to eat and seeing a lot of the sights and doing lots of activities. Another part that made it completely awesome and probably one of the coolest things about the trip for me was that the ocean water was absolutely perfect!!! It was calm and clear and a beautiful turquoise color. It was as warm as bath water and there was no seaweed or any other “icky” things in the water. The kids literally played in it for hours and hours on end. Missy said it was the first time in her life that she actually enjoyed playing in the ocean! I think we just got completely lucky because Dan and Gayle said the water is hardly ever that nice. If we are able to go back some time, I want to go that same week in July and hope for the same water. We rented a canoe one day and paddled out to about 20 feet of water and you could see all the way to the bottom with ease. Some of the other things we did include:
Visiting a really, really cool community called Baytowne Wharf. It’s a gated community where people live, but they have a little town square in the middle of the community with tons of restaurants, bars, etc. and they open it to the public at night. They have something going on every night of the week with things like fireworks, inflatable bouncy toys, movies, bands, etc. We saw the fireworks and the inflatables and the kids loved it. We also ate at a couple of the restaurants that were really good too.
We rented a boat one day which was probably the highlight of the trip for me. We made it out to that submerged island called Crab Island and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life! The island was about 2 feet below the surface of the water, so it was very easy to pull up, drop an anchor, and walk around. We walked over to a houseboat selling ice cream and talked to the guy and he ended up being from Evansville! What are the odds? I loved letting the kids sit on my lap and drive the boat because I can still clearly remember doing that as a kid on my Dad’s lap on his boat on the Ohio. Missy took a picture of each one driving and I treasure those pictures. Unfortunately we tried to save a little money and rented a pontoon boat rather than a deep V boat because a deep V would have been much better in those waves. I tried to go out of the pass into the ocean but the current and waves were way too strong! I was heading out the pass, but decided to turn around and go back inland and as soon as I did that, the current kept pulling the boat out to the ocean! I had to practically gun it to make any progress. It was very eerie to hear the engine running that fast and look over to the shore and see that we weren’t moving at all! I got pretty nervous for a min. there, but finally realized that we were making progress, so it wasn’t too bad. I would have loved to have a more ocean-going vessel at that time though so we could have enjoyed the waves and current. Next time!
We also took the kids to a little amusement park and they had a blast there too. It was pretty darn expensive and made us realize what a bargain the Fall Festival was! But they had some decent rides and we didn’t mind spending the money since everything else on the trip was pretty cheap. Jack and I rode the go-carts a couple of times and he really enjoyed that. Ally wanted to ride the bumper cars so I took her to do that and Abby wanted to ride the bumper boats so Missy took her to do that. It was pretty late by that time and the kids were getting tired and Ally ended up having a meltdown so that was fun. I think I even overheard someone say something like “Man, if that was my kid, she’d be dead” about Ally! That was our last night and we still had to go shopping for souvenirs so we took the kids to a souvenir shop next door at midnight! They did really well considering how late it was and how tired they were.
We ate at some really cool restaurants on the trip too. Most of them were pretty crowded and we had to wait to get a table, but I didn’t mind because we had plenty of time and usually the view was incredible. My favorite one was AJ’s Steakhouse. It was right at a marina and we got to see lots of boats coming and going while we were there. We even got to see a charter fishing boat come in and display their catch for us. The kids really enjoyed seeing the HUGE fish!
We also spent a lot of time at the condo pool and the kids had a blast there too. Ally learned to swim with her face down while we were there and Jack made a ton of friends with other boys there and ended up playing baseball beside the pool. One boy had an inflatable bat and ball and I’d pitch it to them and they’d hit it and run to the pool and I’d try to throw them out by hitting them with the ball. It was a lot of fun. We also played that game where I’d throw a ball and they’d run and try to catch it while jumping in the pool. We probably had 6-8 kids playing that with us for a while.
It was definitely a great trip and I hope we can do every year. I just made some more updates to the Fulton’s Condo site and I hope they ask us if we want to go down there again this year. Even if we have to pay a little to rent it, I think it will be worth it because of all the fun things to do in Destin and that wonderful Destin Ocean! As we were driving home, when we crossed the Florida border into Mississippi, Missy said, “OK kids, say goodbye to Florida” we looked back and Jack was just sobbing! We asked him what was wrong and he said, “I just don’t want to leave Florida!”
Visiting a really, really cool community called Baytowne Wharf. It’s a gated community where people live, but they have a little town square in the middle of the community with tons of restaurants, bars, etc. and they open it to the public at night. They have something going on every night of the week with things like fireworks, inflatable bouncy toys, movies, bands, etc. We saw the fireworks and the inflatables and the kids loved it. We also ate at a couple of the restaurants that were really good too.
We rented a boat one day which was probably the highlight of the trip for me. We made it out to that submerged island called Crab Island and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life! The island was about 2 feet below the surface of the water, so it was very easy to pull up, drop an anchor, and walk around. We walked over to a houseboat selling ice cream and talked to the guy and he ended up being from Evansville! What are the odds? I loved letting the kids sit on my lap and drive the boat because I can still clearly remember doing that as a kid on my Dad’s lap on his boat on the Ohio. Missy took a picture of each one driving and I treasure those pictures. Unfortunately we tried to save a little money and rented a pontoon boat rather than a deep V boat because a deep V would have been much better in those waves. I tried to go out of the pass into the ocean but the current and waves were way too strong! I was heading out the pass, but decided to turn around and go back inland and as soon as I did that, the current kept pulling the boat out to the ocean! I had to practically gun it to make any progress. It was very eerie to hear the engine running that fast and look over to the shore and see that we weren’t moving at all! I got pretty nervous for a min. there, but finally realized that we were making progress, so it wasn’t too bad. I would have loved to have a more ocean-going vessel at that time though so we could have enjoyed the waves and current. Next time!
We also took the kids to a little amusement park and they had a blast there too. It was pretty darn expensive and made us realize what a bargain the Fall Festival was! But they had some decent rides and we didn’t mind spending the money since everything else on the trip was pretty cheap. Jack and I rode the go-carts a couple of times and he really enjoyed that. Ally wanted to ride the bumper cars so I took her to do that and Abby wanted to ride the bumper boats so Missy took her to do that. It was pretty late by that time and the kids were getting tired and Ally ended up having a meltdown so that was fun. I think I even overheard someone say something like “Man, if that was my kid, she’d be dead” about Ally! That was our last night and we still had to go shopping for souvenirs so we took the kids to a souvenir shop next door at midnight! They did really well considering how late it was and how tired they were.
We ate at some really cool restaurants on the trip too. Most of them were pretty crowded and we had to wait to get a table, but I didn’t mind because we had plenty of time and usually the view was incredible. My favorite one was AJ’s Steakhouse. It was right at a marina and we got to see lots of boats coming and going while we were there. We even got to see a charter fishing boat come in and display their catch for us. The kids really enjoyed seeing the HUGE fish!
We also spent a lot of time at the condo pool and the kids had a blast there too. Ally learned to swim with her face down while we were there and Jack made a ton of friends with other boys there and ended up playing baseball beside the pool. One boy had an inflatable bat and ball and I’d pitch it to them and they’d hit it and run to the pool and I’d try to throw them out by hitting them with the ball. It was a lot of fun. We also played that game where I’d throw a ball and they’d run and try to catch it while jumping in the pool. We probably had 6-8 kids playing that with us for a while.
It was definitely a great trip and I hope we can do every year. I just made some more updates to the Fulton’s Condo site and I hope they ask us if we want to go down there again this year. Even if we have to pay a little to rent it, I think it will be worth it because of all the fun things to do in Destin and that wonderful Destin Ocean! As we were driving home, when we crossed the Florida border into Mississippi, Missy said, “OK kids, say goodbye to Florida” we looked back and Jack was just sobbing! We asked him what was wrong and he said, “I just don’t want to leave Florida!”
Jack’s first snowboarding trip 1/23/10
Jack has been dying to try snowboarding so Missy and I finally took him a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to try it too so we decided to rent snowboards but take our skis just in case. I tried to learn as much as I could about it by watching several “how to” videos on the Internet and it looked pretty easy. We got there and everything went very smoothly. It was a warm Sunday afternoon and it was not crowded at all. Missy loved it because the temp. was about 45 degrees so we didn’t get cold at all. The first thing I noticed was that the boots were VERY comfortable. Much better than ski boots. We could walk in them very easily and they just felt comfortable. Jack was pretty excited to finally get a chance to go snowboarding and we took a bunch of pictures with us and our boards. We walked over to the “kiddie park” and put our feet in our boards. That was the easy part! Jack did pretty good, but man was that hard!!! It is just such an un-natural feeling and the hard part is that when you start to lose your balance, you can’t move your feet to correct yourself. They are locked in the bindings so all you can do is fall and we did plenty of that! One thing I remembered from the videos I watched is that they want you to learn how to do it with one foot in and one foot out before you put both feet in, so we did that for a while and that really helped. I could easily make it down the hill with one foot out so I could catch my balance when I started to fall. Jack did much better too, but it was still very hard. We did that for a couple of hours and we both were starting to get a little better and make it down the hill without falling so I decided to shoot some video of Jack. I stayed at the top of the hill and let Jack go down first. He made it all the way down and fell at the bottom by the people waiting in line to get on the moving sidewalk. He just lay there, face first for a while, so we figured he was just tired. But then we saw a guy come over to him and help get his feet out of his bindings, so we knew he was in pain and we rushed down to help him. He was crying and still in pain. Apparently when he fell, he twisted his back leg and couldn’t untwist it himself so we thanked that guy for coming over to help him. He was fine, but it kind’of shook him and Missy up a bit, and he said he wanted to go get his skis! I wanted to try do it some more and try to learn how to do it, so I kept my snowboard and went to get Jack’s skis. Once he got those, he was ready to hit the big slopes and go fast like he always does. So we went over to the far left slope and skied there for a while. Missy and Jack were doing great and skiing down quickly, but I could not for the life of me, keep up with them. For some reason, I could not freekin turn left! I think it was because I only had one foot in the bindings and couldn’t get enough of an edge, but that slope curves right the whole time so no matter what I tried to do, I just kept sliding to the right and could not go straight! I’d have to walk up the hill and get to the right side about 4-5 times before I could get down the hill. I was getting VERY frustrated and VERY tired so after about 4 hours, I finally decided to turn in my board before I killed myself. I was getting to the point of exhaustion and I knew I’d end up hurting myself if I didn’t quit soon.
We had a great time and it was a great day of skiing, but I have a newfound respect for snowboarders. It looks so cool and easy when you see those guys sliding back and forth across the hill, but man, that must take a ton of practice to get that good. When you’re 40 years old and only go 2-3 times per year, it’s really hard to learn how to do it. I think Jack was pretty disappointed too. He still wants to learn how to do it so I think I’m going to buy us each a used snowboard at the next Paoli Swap Shop so we can learn without breaking the bank. With rentals and lift tickets for all 3 of us, it ended up costing $200 for our trip and we really can’t do that very often. If we had our own boards, Jack and I could go for about $70. Hopefully I can find a couple of decent used boards so we can try it again next year!
We had a great time and it was a great day of skiing, but I have a newfound respect for snowboarders. It looks so cool and easy when you see those guys sliding back and forth across the hill, but man, that must take a ton of practice to get that good. When you’re 40 years old and only go 2-3 times per year, it’s really hard to learn how to do it. I think Jack was pretty disappointed too. He still wants to learn how to do it so I think I’m going to buy us each a used snowboard at the next Paoli Swap Shop so we can learn without breaking the bank. With rentals and lift tickets for all 3 of us, it ended up costing $200 for our trip and we really can’t do that very often. If we had our own boards, Jack and I could go for about $70. Hopefully I can find a couple of decent used boards so we can try it again next year!
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