August Happenings

I am SO FAR behind on posting.  I considered just skipping all of the stuff that happened and just going forward, but I'm way too sentimental to leave anything out.  Here's a look at the second half of August.

 Kate and I had quite a few water balloon battles.

My cousin Sandra visited from Florida.  Collin, Reagan, Kate and I had a great time with her.  The kids swam in the pool at her hotel and we went to Panera for lunch.

We went blueberry picking on a super hot day.  It was the end of blueberry season and the bushes were pretty bare.

I purchased two of these huge containers to fill, and we didn't even fill one.  It was just too hot and the pickings were too slim.  We did get enough to make our favorite blueberry muffins and blueberry pie!

Reagan had a great summer of gymnastics with this group of girls.  I think they are all still together for this season.  Reagan is competing at the Xcel Silver level this year and this means that she is now competing sanctioned.  I don't know enough about gymnastics to know what this really means, but my explanation is that her scores are more meaningful and will be used to determine eligibility in meets.  (FYI:  the two girls in the front middle are half of a set of quadruplets!)

 Tyler met his favorite country singer, Brantley Gilbert.

 We could not let summer slip away without tie dyeing.

Kate had her very first soccer game.  She is having fun being part of a team.  Kate runs back and forth with her team, but she isn't really interested in getting too close to the ball yet.  She is happy to go in whenever her coach calls her though!

We ended August with a bang.  Ha ha!

We had an end of summer party and I guess I was too busy having fun to take many pictures, but I have a couple of some of the kids watching Tom's fireworks display.

Now I have to catch up on September before this month is over!

Around Here

We have quite a lot going on this summer.  I always debate whether to sign up for a bunch of things or keep it to a minimum. The best summer for us is one full of new things to try and still plenty of time for family fun.  I think of summer as the best time to try new activities, learn things that are not taught in school, and spend time with friends and family.  So, that is what we are doing!

Field hockey started for Reagan last week.  She loves this sport.  I'm glad she does because it is popular in town and she will be able to try out for the middle school team in a few years.  Field hockey is once a week for two hours.

 Collin and Reagan started their weekly tennis lesson with Steve.

We went to a magic show at the library.  It was cute.  The magician has received a lot of awards and has performed at the White House nine times.  He used a few books in his show which was neat since it was a library performance.

It was hot over the weekend, so we went to the beach on Saturday and Sunday.  On Saturday, the kids had a blast with friends and a cousin.

Reagan and Addie

Kate and Ayla

Cousin Riley with Reagan

Collin and Jack

Yesterday, Reagan went to Edaville with Auntie Cyn, Uncle George, and Riley.  They had a great time!  It was very hot, so the rest of us decided to go to the beach instead of the amusement park. Reagan said it was a lot of fun though, and she loved hanging out with Riley.

Collin started his second robotics camp this week; he did a week of robotics at the high school right after school ended.  This week, he is at Wheeler, a private school in Providence and Seekonk, three hours a day. He showed me a video about a robot named Jibo that is so very cool; I want one!

I'm off to pick Reagan up from her friend Makenna's house now because that child must have somewhere to go and someone to see every day!!!

Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure - Part Four

We spent our fourth and fifth days going between the two parks revisiting our favorite rides.  Here are a few random pictures from those days.

It was considerably cooler the last two days (only in the 60s), and I wasn't thinking clearly when I let the girls run through the Curious George splash park.  At one point, a boy pressed a button that made a HUGE bucket of water dump out all over Reagan and Kate.  They were freezing, and we had to go back to the hotel to change.  On the way, we saw Woody Woodpecker and Curious George, so we stopped for pictures, but you can tell that Reagan was cold!

We all had a lot of fun during this trip.  It was a very quiet week and because we stayed on Universal property, we had fast passes for everything but the big Harry Potter rides, so we were able to go through both parks without much waiting.

Some random observations:

• The parks were very clean, even the restrooms were clean and well stocked whenever I used them.
• I'm sure the timing of our visit had a lot to do with this, but the park was never overcrowded when we were there; that was very nice!
• I ate a lot of churros (we all did).
• The parks are definitely better for older kids who like big thrill rides, but there was enough there for Kate to enjoy.
• There are a few characters for photo ops, but not many.  This was fine for us.
• If you're looking for a good parade, go to Disney!  The parade was very short and there was no wow factor.  
• We didn't watch any of the shows; none of them appealed to us.

Favorite rides:

Tom - Hulk Coaster
Grandma Susan - Transformers
Tyler - Dragon Challenge
Collin - Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey
Reagan - The Mummy and Rip Ride RockIt
Katelyn - She has a few favorites:  E.T., Flight of the Hippogriff, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish are the three she mentions most, but she also mentions the Simpsons and Spiderman regularly; she loves rides!
Me - Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts

Food:  It's an amusement park.  We don't like to spend too much time eating when we are in amusement parks.  For us, we are there to enjoy the parks, not sit down and eat.  We ate quick breakfasts in our hotel and grabbed something quick for lunch (usually pizza or something else fast) in the park for lunch.

Once we ate lunch at Emeril's restaurant, and we LOVED Emeril's Tchoup Chop (at our hotel) so much that we ate dinner there twice.  The food at Tchoup Chop was fantastic, really so very good, but the service was over the top.  I think it was the best service I have ever had at a restaurant.  The waiter cut Reagan's steak for her!!!  That meant she got special treatment (right up her alley) and Tom and I got to just sit back and enjoy our meal without having to cut the steak ourselves.  The second time we ate there, we sat at the kitchen bar where we could watch everything going on in the kitchen.  The kitchen staff were 100% cool and collected and incredibly organized; there were no Gordon Ramsay type moments!!  The chefs gave us treats and talked to us and it was a very nice experience!  Reagan had a few flavors of this Ramune soda at Tchoup Chop, and she loved them. She also liked the experience of the beverage because you have to push a marble down into the bottle before you drink it; it was just different and fun for her.

Overall, it was a great vacation and we would all love to go back someday.

Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure Part Three - Harry Potter

There are two Harry Potter sections, one in each of the parks, and they are both amazing.  Diagon Alley is at Universal Studios and Hogsmeade is at Islands of Adventure.  We took the Hogwarts Express to travel between them once, and that was neat too.  I wish we had watched the movies before going to the parks because no one in my house has been interested in reading the books yet (I read the first two or three a long time ago, but no one else has), and it has been quite some time since we last saw the movies.  It was all still pretty fantastic though.

We tried a cup of Butterbeer, and it was delicious.  I originally thought it was an alcoholic beverage, but it isn't.  It's like dessert in a cup, kind of like a frozen butterscotch and caramel drink.  We shared that one cup, and everyone thought it was good.  We ordered ours frozen, based on the recommendation of the server.

Flight of the Hippogriff is a roller coaster that Kate was able to ride, and oh boy did she love that thing.  Once while the rest of us were on a Harry Potter ride that she was not tall enough to ride, Tom and Kate rode Flight of the Hippogriff five times in a row!

Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts was my favorite ride.  

We all enjoyed the Potter areas, and if any of my children become fans of the books, I would love to go back for an even better experience.  There were a lot of children dressed in Potter type robes carrying wands (there were areas where you could stand on a spot and perform a spell to make something move) and a lot of unique individuals (you know, piercings and brightly colored hair) in Potter world, and that was all well and good, but I did think the adults dressed in costume with their own wands in hand were a bit odd.  Whatever you like, I guess, but I can't imagine spending $50 or so on a "magic wand" for myself.