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Sunday lineup.
Sunday lineup.
Another successful trip to Chuck E. Cheese. They came home with a stuffed llama, cotton candy, and a few random balls.
These two finished the paint booth!
Today the big boys wanted to go back to Chuck E Cheese. Ben wasn’t sold on the idea. I didn’t care either way, but I was adamant that homework had to be done first. Teague decided to try and help Ben with his homework, which was adorable. He was really good about truly helping and not just telling him the answers. We got there and the big boys played through their play points pretty quickly. Teague was only too happy to help Ben quickly spend the rest of his play points. Then we made the last minute decision to take home pizza for dinner. Everybody wins.
Not only did we go back to Chuck E Cheese, we got take out for dinner. The kids were so excited.
Alex’s current paid job – painting the back stairs.
Back to Chuck E. Cheese.
Alex has been having a lot of fun with his new 3D printer – an ice cream gear shifter for Wade’s mini truck and a tiny tug boat.
Alex helps Ben use his credits when he still has tons and everyone else is done. Ben gets the tickets and doesn’t even really realize or care that 30 credits are gone in 5 minutes. For this particular game. I actually put in the credit and wanted to play (it turns out it was the last credit). Alex spun the wheel before I could. I stood back and said, “Let’s see what measly amount of tickets you win.” That lucky son of a gun won the jackpot – 100 tickets.
We’ve been “encouraging” the big boys to spend more time outside. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when they both agreed to play with Ben on the trampoline when he asked today – separately of course. I’m pretty sure Alex regretted his decision as soon as he got on the trampoline. His workout class has made him incredibly sore and jumping was pretty much out of the question.
Today is my single day of having two children. Kaitlyn is at camp. Teague is in Memphis. For the next four days, Ben has a class in the morning (Art Party) and Alex has a class (weight lifting) in the afternoon. They did convince me to make another trip to Chuck E Cheese. I think they were excited to split the 250 credits between just two people this time.
(Note how the two lefties are almost in synch as they play.)
When Wade took the boys to Chuck E Cheese last Friday, he mentioned that he had even looked into the Summer Pass to offset the cost. I had never even realized they had it has an option. Before I took the kids on Kaitlyn’s birthday, I did my research and realized a Summer Pass actually made a lot of sense for us. (I rarely buy passes anywhere. Normally you have to go two or three times to make it worth it and we never seem to make it to the same place that many times in a season.) In this instance, the Summer Pass was actually cheaper than what I would pay for a single visit. That doesn’t even take into account the other perks that came with the card. Now we have been multiple times in a just a week. The kids are in heaven. They get 250 game credits to split and we just stay until they are gone.
Alex has a favorite game – Despicable Me Jelly Lab. You strategically release a coin and try to have it land on a certain spot. If you get it right, then you get a card. Each card is worth 15 tickets, except the rainbow cards which are worth 30. If you get a “set of jelly” then you get 100 tickets. The catch here is that one of the jelly cards is incredibly rare – the peanut butter and jelly card.
Because of the nature of this game, Alex runs through his game credits incredibly fast. He’s pretty good about hanging out or helping the other kids with their credits. Kaitlyn and Ben tend to play all kinds of games. Some of those are very slow paced games.
Kaitlyn planned the day (as the birthday person gets to do). We started the day with Granny’s coffee cake and a few presents.
Kaitlyn’s chosen “fun” activity was Chuck E Cheese. (The boys were happy to go back.) We ordered pizza and played games for an hour or more. Tickets were won and prizes were collected. Alex’s gift to Kaitlyn was several thousand tickets – probably one of her favorite gifts this year.
Kaitlyn had chosen a local Chinese restaurant for dinner, but unfortunately it was closed today. We pivoted and had another of her favorites – Qdoba. Then it was cake and presents!
Ben, Kaitlyn, and I had plans to meet friends at Silver Lake today. I was quite shocked when Teague and Alex decided to join us too. Alex didn’t go near the water but he did build a sand castle. Teague didn’t get in the water but he did catch fish. The day was glorious if you were on the beach (my point of view), but a tad bit chilly in the water (I could tell by the kids’ lips when they came out).
Today’s adventure was all Wade’s idea. He hyped it up and along we went. Wade and I were thinking we would rent three kayaks, but the littles had other ideas. Kaitlyn has had an irrational fear of small water craft since adventure camp several years ago. (She didn’t have a bad experience or even fall in the water, but has zero interest in being on the water.) Ben saw the paddle boats and that’s all he wanted. To make everyone happy, we ended up with one kayak and one paddle boat.
I remember taking paddle boats out when I was a kid. I remember them being fun, so maybe the adult I was with did all the work? Because this time I was the adult and they were hard work! It was a hot sunny day and I was worn out by the time we got back to the dock. Thankfully at the end I had Alex and Teague with me and I made them do some paddling.
I laughed so hard tonight. Twice Alex has sent Teague with money to walk to our local convenience store with directions (very specific directions like in the very left freezer on the bottom behind the red ice cream) to buy him ice cream. Both times Teague has come back with the wrong item. This time Teague even tried to FaceTime Alex to make sure he was getting the right thing.
We started the day with a group outing to a lighthouse. Everyone but Grant and Kaitlyn made it to the top. There were a lot of stairs and Kaitlyn didn’t like that you could see through the metal grated stairs all the way to the ground floor below. It was incredibly windy on top but we managed a picture.
We went back to the house to drop off the big boys and get bathing suits for everyone else. Then we went back to the beach the lighthouse sits on for a morning of fun in the sun.
We fed everyone lunch and while they were relaxing, the moms snuck out for an hour or so to a local winery!
When we got back the kids wanted to go to the pool. The pool has definitely been a favorite and it’s such an easy way to entertain a bunch of kids!
And because we only have a few days, we ended the night back at the local family Fun Center. Every single one of us rode the go karts – we had the course to ourselves. Then we spilt up and people did roller coaster, zip line, arcade, etc.
We started the day by taking everyone on a Dune Buggy ride through the sand dunes. It was great!
Then the big boys bailed on activities for the rest of the day. We took the rest of the kids back to the dunes. It was a crazy hike to reach the beach!
The girls had been begging to go the Family Fun Center so we ended the evening with an outing there. The girls surprised us all by wanting to do the big drop!
The kids and I thought we had calculated out our trip to arrive at our rental house at exactly the same time as our friends. Traffic and construction had other plans. We pulled into the driveway about 30 minutes behind the Kubickis and about 45 minutes before the Strouds. But we were all together in time for a perfect evening of hanging out!