Another week in the books for our Spring Happenings and we managed to keep to our original plan for what we wanted to try to do. Last week was rough with the sickness going around but this week was great! No one was sick. Everyone was doing pretty well. Kenzie had school through Thursday and Friday started her Spring Break. That let us start our activities a bit early and add in something super fun.
We started our weekend with a visit to the library. The kids' programming was putting on a "Seeing Green" program in which the kids were able to come participate in some St. Patrick's Day crafts and activities. Kenzie loves these things and rarely gets to go anymore because of her school schedule so she was super excited to go. We met our neighbors and their little girl there and listened to a book then got to work on the activities. There was a sorting activity using Lucky Charms. This was one that Will really liked but I pulled him away eventually because I was worried he was going to try to eat the cereal that everyone's hands had been in. Ugh. We just got over a stomach bug. We didn't need another. There was a station that had baking soda with drops of food coloring in it that the kids could spray with vinegar and it would fizz. Both kids liked this. There was a station that let kids glue tissue paper to shamrocks. Both kids did this for a minute, but it was boring in comparison to everything else. Kenzie's favorite was the station with green shaving cream that you could dig gold coins out of. She loved it. She would dig them out, put them back, and start over again. Will refused to touch the shaving cream but he cheered his sister on so she would get coins for him. The librarian let them each take one with them so both kids have been super excited since about their "lucky coins" as Will dubbed them. We had a good time. It was a fun start to Spring Break.
We had super fun plans for later in the day too. Our neighbor works for Disney and he mentioned a while ago that he heard that Cirque Du Soleil does an open rehearsal/practice on Tuesdays and Fridays each week that anyone can come in to and watch an act practice. It is entirely free. Although there is no music, costumes, or makeup, you still get to see some of the artists doing their act and then you get a bit of background knowledge in the form of a Q&A with a couple of the artists. His family was planning to go on Friday and they invited us to try to go with them. (Same neighbors that we met earlier in the day at the library in case anyone was wondering.) Steven has been working A LOT lately and he actually had not had dinner with us all week because of his late schedule so while he would often take Friday off on weeks like this, he had to work as much as possible. We initially weren't sure if he would make it. He ended up being able to leave and we all met down at Disney Springs. I was worried about Steven making it on time because he got stuck in the same terrible traffic the rest of us sat in almost 30 minutes earlier than him. He came running up with a few minutes to spare though. This experience was really cool. There are 3 acts that you might catch and this time we saw the trapeze artists practicing some new tricks and figuring out some timing. The Q&A afterwards was really interesting too. Our neighbor is a teacher so her and I discussed coming again over the summer a few times with the kids. Once I told my parents about it, they decided that they want to do it during the week they are here in June when we stay at their timeshare with them. I highly recommend it. Also, if you go they often have a discount available for you if you wish to go to the show that night. This one was a BOGO deal which would have been awesome if we didn't have kids. $60 for 2 people is actually a great deal for Cirque. After that we wandered over to the kids' favorite place in Disney Springs... the Lego store. Will actually impressed me too when his little legs made it clear across Disney Springs as we elected to not bring a stroller. We only carried him a bit of the way. We carried him more on the way back to the car but he still did pretty well. Kenzie had to practically be dragged away from the Legos. She would have stayed for hours, I think. Legos are becoming a serious favorite around here. She is quickly progressing through the Lego Juniors and loves not only building using the directions but has moved on to creating her own things. Like the "museum" she made the other day that was actually pretty impressive. After Disney Springs we all went to dinner at Cici's. The kids love Cici's and ate a TON.
Saturday started early for me. I decided to try to run my first ever 10k distance. It went pretty well and I was feeling good afterwards. Good enough that I decided to help Steven do some yard work. This yard work thing is definitely becoming a thing around here. It is never ending. As the kids are getting older, I am more able to help him out too because we can trust them to hang around and either help or at least stay out of the way and out of too much trouble. He mowed the lawn and I started trimming the bushes. He had to help eventually because I was too short to get to the back of the bushes. The kids were even helping and making piles of limbs we cut off. Kenzie helped us bag it all when we finished too. They love being helpers. Eventually they got tired of it though and went inside to play while we finished. We finished just in time to make a quick lunch, pack up the car, and head out to Epcot.
We knew we wanted to try to go sometime this spring before it gets too hot and it was a bonus that we made it there during the Flower and Garden Festival. It is always pretty this time of year. Will ended up sleeping on the way down and he woke up in a not so happy mood so he was being obnoxious for our first few minutes at Epcot. He did NOT want to talk to Daisy. He has been in a slight anti-character mode lately so this didn't surprise us. He was fine though once we told him that we would go on Spaceship Earth. We then hit up the Cool Spot for a drink before heading over to Nemo. Nemo is always a highlight. The kids like the ride and LOVE the tanks after the ride. Will actually freaked out when we forcibly removed him from watching the dolphins. Once we showed him a new tank though, he was okay. Kenzie kept trying to tell me that she saw the same exact fish in about 6 different places. The issue was that it was a schooling fish and there was no way she could tell it from its friends. Crazy kid. She was adamant. After Nemo we went to ride the Land ride. The kids like the boat. Always. Then it was time for our FP to meet Mickey and friends. We weren't sure how Will would do. We started with Mickey and Goofy. He wasn't having it. Kenzie was excited, as usual. By the time we got to Minnie, we decided that Steven would walk him over regardless of his reaction and it worked to snap him out of it. We should have tried it sooner. By the time we were leaving, he wanted hugs from Minnie. I missed getting a picture and said that aloud so Minnie actually got his attention and made him come back for another hug. He went. It's funny how fast they can change their minds about things like the characters. After that we had dinner, which we brought from home before heading over to the countries. We had to make a pit stop to see Pluto. Kenzie made a friend and chatted with a little girl celebrating her 6th birthday while in line so that helped to pass the time while we waited. Will desperately wanted to be included and kept walking into the middle of their conversation to tell the little girl something we had done earlier in the afternoon complete with a lot of hand movement. Will was super into Pluto. He ran right up to him and both kids were getting a kick out of the fact that Pluto licked the autograph book and each of them. It was quite funny. We then walked over to Mexico and rode the boat ride before starting to make our way around the World Showcase. We stopped to see Snow White in Germany. While Will is sometimes okay with furry characters, he isn't usually into face ones though but Steven walked him over and it wasn't long before Snow White won him over. Next time we are just going to take him up to whatever character we are seeing the first time we see one to see if we can snap him out of his issues at the beginning of a trip. We also stopped in Germany to see the model trains. As usual, Will was like a ping pong ball and bounced back and forth screeching about trains. He was so excited. Steven stopped to watch a few minutes of the Simple Plan concert while I continued with the kids to the UK. We listened to some music while we waited for Daddy to come around the showcase before finally making it to our spot for the fireworks. We barely made it too. We had to wait about 25 minutes for a potty break because we chose poorly in what bathroom to use but we still made it. The kids love the fireworks (as do we) and we like to FP it because it is a good spot and far less crowded. After the fireworks, we headed out with a few thousand of our closest friends. It wasn't bad though and we were back to the car and changing kids into pjs fairly quickly. We made it home just after 10 and transferred both kids to bed. Then almost immediately went to bed ourselves because we were both exhausted. It was a very long day.
Sunday was more of the normal. Steven was working in the booth at church so he left early. I was working in the back with the babies so both of us were volunteering on the same week. I think we are both doing the same next week. The kids were pretty good in the morning and even took a quick bath without any issues so I'm thankful for that. Church was good for everyone. Steven had to run to his office to meet up with someone this afternoon to bring some servers in or something like that. Initially we planned to go with him and take a walk around Lake Eola but Will was taking a marathon nap when he left and I didn't want to wake him up. Next time. We are planning to go for a trip up there this week anyway to see one of his coworkers that the kids love to visit. We are all thinking of going to the main library downtown together when we visit. Hopefully we can make it work. I stayed home and started raking some leaves because the yard work never ends around here. The leaves are against us. Our plan is to bag the leaves and get them out for pick up tomorrow. We are at 26 bags so far this year so we will see how many we can add to that. This week should be fun as we do some fun Spring Break things and next weekend we have some other plans including a birthday party for one of Kenzie's school friends and (hopefully) a baseball game. We will see how it all works out.
We started our weekend with a visit to the library. The kids' programming was putting on a "Seeing Green" program in which the kids were able to come participate in some St. Patrick's Day crafts and activities. Kenzie loves these things and rarely gets to go anymore because of her school schedule so she was super excited to go. We met our neighbors and their little girl there and listened to a book then got to work on the activities. There was a sorting activity using Lucky Charms. This was one that Will really liked but I pulled him away eventually because I was worried he was going to try to eat the cereal that everyone's hands had been in. Ugh. We just got over a stomach bug. We didn't need another. There was a station that had baking soda with drops of food coloring in it that the kids could spray with vinegar and it would fizz. Both kids liked this. There was a station that let kids glue tissue paper to shamrocks. Both kids did this for a minute, but it was boring in comparison to everything else. Kenzie's favorite was the station with green shaving cream that you could dig gold coins out of. She loved it. She would dig them out, put them back, and start over again. Will refused to touch the shaving cream but he cheered his sister on so she would get coins for him. The librarian let them each take one with them so both kids have been super excited since about their "lucky coins" as Will dubbed them. We had a good time. It was a fun start to Spring Break.
We had super fun plans for later in the day too. Our neighbor works for Disney and he mentioned a while ago that he heard that Cirque Du Soleil does an open rehearsal/practice on Tuesdays and Fridays each week that anyone can come in to and watch an act practice. It is entirely free. Although there is no music, costumes, or makeup, you still get to see some of the artists doing their act and then you get a bit of background knowledge in the form of a Q&A with a couple of the artists. His family was planning to go on Friday and they invited us to try to go with them. (Same neighbors that we met earlier in the day at the library in case anyone was wondering.) Steven has been working A LOT lately and he actually had not had dinner with us all week because of his late schedule so while he would often take Friday off on weeks like this, he had to work as much as possible. We initially weren't sure if he would make it. He ended up being able to leave and we all met down at Disney Springs. I was worried about Steven making it on time because he got stuck in the same terrible traffic the rest of us sat in almost 30 minutes earlier than him. He came running up with a few minutes to spare though. This experience was really cool. There are 3 acts that you might catch and this time we saw the trapeze artists practicing some new tricks and figuring out some timing. The Q&A afterwards was really interesting too. Our neighbor is a teacher so her and I discussed coming again over the summer a few times with the kids. Once I told my parents about it, they decided that they want to do it during the week they are here in June when we stay at their timeshare with them. I highly recommend it. Also, if you go they often have a discount available for you if you wish to go to the show that night. This one was a BOGO deal which would have been awesome if we didn't have kids. $60 for 2 people is actually a great deal for Cirque. After that we wandered over to the kids' favorite place in Disney Springs... the Lego store. Will actually impressed me too when his little legs made it clear across Disney Springs as we elected to not bring a stroller. We only carried him a bit of the way. We carried him more on the way back to the car but he still did pretty well. Kenzie had to practically be dragged away from the Legos. She would have stayed for hours, I think. Legos are becoming a serious favorite around here. She is quickly progressing through the Lego Juniors and loves not only building using the directions but has moved on to creating her own things. Like the "museum" she made the other day that was actually pretty impressive. After Disney Springs we all went to dinner at Cici's. The kids love Cici's and ate a TON.
Saturday started early for me. I decided to try to run my first ever 10k distance. It went pretty well and I was feeling good afterwards. Good enough that I decided to help Steven do some yard work. This yard work thing is definitely becoming a thing around here. It is never ending. As the kids are getting older, I am more able to help him out too because we can trust them to hang around and either help or at least stay out of the way and out of too much trouble. He mowed the lawn and I started trimming the bushes. He had to help eventually because I was too short to get to the back of the bushes. The kids were even helping and making piles of limbs we cut off. Kenzie helped us bag it all when we finished too. They love being helpers. Eventually they got tired of it though and went inside to play while we finished. We finished just in time to make a quick lunch, pack up the car, and head out to Epcot.
We knew we wanted to try to go sometime this spring before it gets too hot and it was a bonus that we made it there during the Flower and Garden Festival. It is always pretty this time of year. Will ended up sleeping on the way down and he woke up in a not so happy mood so he was being obnoxious for our first few minutes at Epcot. He did NOT want to talk to Daisy. He has been in a slight anti-character mode lately so this didn't surprise us. He was fine though once we told him that we would go on Spaceship Earth. We then hit up the Cool Spot for a drink before heading over to Nemo. Nemo is always a highlight. The kids like the ride and LOVE the tanks after the ride. Will actually freaked out when we forcibly removed him from watching the dolphins. Once we showed him a new tank though, he was okay. Kenzie kept trying to tell me that she saw the same exact fish in about 6 different places. The issue was that it was a schooling fish and there was no way she could tell it from its friends. Crazy kid. She was adamant. After Nemo we went to ride the Land ride. The kids like the boat. Always. Then it was time for our FP to meet Mickey and friends. We weren't sure how Will would do. We started with Mickey and Goofy. He wasn't having it. Kenzie was excited, as usual. By the time we got to Minnie, we decided that Steven would walk him over regardless of his reaction and it worked to snap him out of it. We should have tried it sooner. By the time we were leaving, he wanted hugs from Minnie. I missed getting a picture and said that aloud so Minnie actually got his attention and made him come back for another hug. He went. It's funny how fast they can change their minds about things like the characters. After that we had dinner, which we brought from home before heading over to the countries. We had to make a pit stop to see Pluto. Kenzie made a friend and chatted with a little girl celebrating her 6th birthday while in line so that helped to pass the time while we waited. Will desperately wanted to be included and kept walking into the middle of their conversation to tell the little girl something we had done earlier in the afternoon complete with a lot of hand movement. Will was super into Pluto. He ran right up to him and both kids were getting a kick out of the fact that Pluto licked the autograph book and each of them. It was quite funny. We then walked over to Mexico and rode the boat ride before starting to make our way around the World Showcase. We stopped to see Snow White in Germany. While Will is sometimes okay with furry characters, he isn't usually into face ones though but Steven walked him over and it wasn't long before Snow White won him over. Next time we are just going to take him up to whatever character we are seeing the first time we see one to see if we can snap him out of his issues at the beginning of a trip. We also stopped in Germany to see the model trains. As usual, Will was like a ping pong ball and bounced back and forth screeching about trains. He was so excited. Steven stopped to watch a few minutes of the Simple Plan concert while I continued with the kids to the UK. We listened to some music while we waited for Daddy to come around the showcase before finally making it to our spot for the fireworks. We barely made it too. We had to wait about 25 minutes for a potty break because we chose poorly in what bathroom to use but we still made it. The kids love the fireworks (as do we) and we like to FP it because it is a good spot and far less crowded. After the fireworks, we headed out with a few thousand of our closest friends. It wasn't bad though and we were back to the car and changing kids into pjs fairly quickly. We made it home just after 10 and transferred both kids to bed. Then almost immediately went to bed ourselves because we were both exhausted. It was a very long day.
Sunday was more of the normal. Steven was working in the booth at church so he left early. I was working in the back with the babies so both of us were volunteering on the same week. I think we are both doing the same next week. The kids were pretty good in the morning and even took a quick bath without any issues so I'm thankful for that. Church was good for everyone. Steven had to run to his office to meet up with someone this afternoon to bring some servers in or something like that. Initially we planned to go with him and take a walk around Lake Eola but Will was taking a marathon nap when he left and I didn't want to wake him up. Next time. We are planning to go for a trip up there this week anyway to see one of his coworkers that the kids love to visit. We are all thinking of going to the main library downtown together when we visit. Hopefully we can make it work. I stayed home and started raking some leaves because the yard work never ends around here. The leaves are against us. Our plan is to bag the leaves and get them out for pick up tomorrow. We are at 26 bags so far this year so we will see how many we can add to that. This week should be fun as we do some fun Spring Break things and next weekend we have some other plans including a birthday party for one of Kenzie's school friends and (hopefully) a baseball game. We will see how it all works out.
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