Day 2: EPCOT

We woke up in Disney World.  Ahhhh.  We had breakfast with the no-masked characters at the Grand Floridian.  When Lyla was little she was deathly afraid of all the characters that had fake heads.  She's over that now, but this is still one of the best character meals for her.

What a beautiful place!

In addition to pins, the girls are collecting smushed pennies.

And we're off to EPCOT.  I love EPCOT.  I love the rides, and the countries, and the exhibits.  We had some fast passes, but we also went to stand in line for some of the rides because the lines weren't too bad.  I suppose April is a good time to go to Disney.  Most people's Spring Breaks are over and the summer crowd hasn't come yet.
Anyway, we had to do Soarin'.

Nemo's ride is always fun too.  And it's usually just walk on.  

This time we knew we wanted to do Test Track as much as we could too.  So we waited in line and and had fast passes for that one.  It is such a rush to ride at 60 mph on the part of the track that goes outside.  Whether your car "wins" or not, its fun!

It makes me a little sad that the Figment ride never has many people in it.  I remember this ride from when I was little, and my girls like it too.  Lyla decided she especially likes Figment.  So her two favorite Disney characters are now Stitch and Figment.  All of the interactive things at the end of the ride are really cool too!  I guess it's good its never crowded because you don't have to wait to do the activities, but I wish more people thought it was as cool as I think it is.

The fountains outside in EPCOT are also super fun.

We all needed a little treat in the heat.

I remember the Kim Possible missions that they used to have in EPCOT that were pretty awesome.  Interactive displays are hidden all over the place in the countries.  Now they have changed the missions to Perry the Platypus.  Phineas and Ferb is such a funny show!  We all were excited to help Perry foil Dr.Dufinsmirtz's plans.  We did the mission in France and at the end we even got to see Perry zip-line across two buildings unbeknownst to the crowds below.

Sisters.  How sweet!

We saw some pretty amazing performers in the plaza in France.  There were two chair acrobats and then a really great juggler. Then we saw the acrobatics and clown skills of a troupe in China.  I think the girls are motivated to improve their circus skills!

My favorite fireworks show is at EPCOT.  The pyrotechnics combined with the lazer show on the lake is always my favorite.  We never get a good seat though.  There's always too much we want to do to spend time standing around to stake out a spot to watch the show.  So we settle for a second-best spot to watch from.  It's always still amazing.  

Day 1: Can I Get An Amen!

To begin our Spring Break trip, we drove down to Jacksonville, Florida.  We spent Saturday night there and then chose a church to attend Sunday morning.  Gwyn is taking Confirmation at our UMC so this would be a great experience for her to attend a very different church.  We picked a Southern Baptist Church to visit.  Ya'll.  They had golf carts to pick us up in the parking lot!  It was that kind of church.  They had an amazing choir and orchestra too.  It was a production, but it didn't feel like a show - does that make sense?  These people were praising the Lord!  I loved it!  The singing was on fire, the preaching was on fire (without the brimstone), and it was just one of those services that left me wanting to raise my hands and dance in the aisles.  (I restrained myself)

After getting our worship on, we made the rest of the drive down to the Happiest Place on Earth.  We stayed at the Floridian this time.  What a beautiful place!  I felt like we were at one of those resorts highfalutin people went to like in the movie Dirty Dancing.  The foyer in the building we were in even had a neat-O penguin fountain.

After getting settled in with Monty and Pop, we went to Downtown Disney to look around and eat.  We ate at Planet Hollywood, where the girls were super excited to see Peeta's suit from Hunger Games.

We also had to go to the Lego Store.

And of course shop for pins.  

And who can resist a ride on Pluto?  Apparently not Jason.  :)

Sproutwood Farm

I received a flier from Sproutwood Farm that they were having an open house with activities and music from 11am until after dark.  It was even on their website.

2015 Season Kick Off Party & CSA Open House

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March 21, 2015 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

March 21st, 11am until after dark…
All activities, parking, and food are free to the public.

I checked the flier several times, because it is a known fact in our house that I get details mixed up and we often end up places at the wrong time, wrong day, or wrong whatever.  So we went to Sproutwood farm around 4.  Plenty of time to get in on the fun that goes on until after dark, right?
Well I was concerned when we pulled up and there were only 2 cars there.  But we walked in anyway.  No people.  No activities.  No music.  I checked the flier again on my phone.  I was not the crazy one this time!  So when we finally found someone, they told us the open house had been at 11, but it was all over.  I asked about the times on the flier, but he had no clue why it said that.  He told us that the observatory was open though, so go up to it.  Ok.  That's cool.  Except the guys were closing up the observatory.  :/
So one lady was still there and let the girls make a Great Horned Owl Nest to put up at home.  She was really nice and apologetic about the time mix-ups.
So we ended up wandering around Sproutwood and playing on their "playground" for a while.  There was one other little boy there.  It's a pretty neat place, and the girls love going there.  So it wasn't a total loss.  But man!  I make enough mistakes on my own without flier info. being wrong!

Spring IS here... Technically

It may only feel like Spring inside, but we are hopeful!

And the first day of Spring means free Rita's!

The Almost, Next To, Underneath NYC Day

Well, our trip to NYC did not go as planned.
We joined a group from our church on a bus to go to NYC for the day.  I had found a great walking tour of Central Park for us to do.  Alas, it was not meant to be.  The weather did not cooperate, and neither did my planning skills.  We settled for being dropped off in Times Square.  The only thing we knew for sure was that we had tickets for the Empire State Building at some point.
We did get some goodies at Carlos's Bakery, then walked to the Nintendo Store.  We were all in good spirits at this point.  We then decided we could walk to Central Park and go to the museum that was on the walking tour that was free.  This is where the wheels came off.
First of all, it's a long walk.  I'm ok with that, but kids with empty stomach.... not so much.  Second, I had the wrong museum in mind.  So we walked up Madison Ave., up the length of Central Park, to the MET, which is not free.  And would take a long time to see adequately to feel like we got our money's worth.  We didn't feel like the hour and a half we had to spend were worth the cost.  So we ate street food outside the MET and proceeded to try to figure out how to get to the Empire State Building from there.  We should take the subway right?  Of course!  But the stations are also a long walk away.
Then Lyla had to use the restroom.  Guess what?  There aren't any.  Anywhere we could find.  And you can't use the restroom at the MET without buying a ticket to get in.  So, accidents do happen.  And we avoided getting arrested for urinating in the street.  But Lyla got some new pants out of it in the end.
We did make it to the subway station.  And we did figure out how to buy tickets and get near the Empire State Building.  Then some of the stations were closed and we had to get off and get on a different line.  The ladies at that station were totally unhelpful, but somehow I deciphered their mumbling answers to my requests for directions and we got on another train.
At long last, we did make it to the Empire State Building.  The attendants were cautioning people that there was 0 visibility, so we could use our tickets another day if we wanted.  Um, no.  We are only here this one day so up we're going.
I have to say that this was the highlight.  The Empire State Building is amazing.  The elevator alone is crazy.  To go up for far so fast, then get on a different elevator to go up even farther is mind boggling to me.  And because of the low visibility, the place was almost empty.  We basically had it to ourselves and about 5 other people.  Other than one rude employee, the people inside were really nice too.  We got to meander through the exhibits and listen to the audio tours.  I suspect this would usually be a good way to kill time in line, but we go to go at whatever pace we wanted.  The exhibits are really amazing and I just kept being in awe of how the building was made and what it took to complete it.
And finally we emerged at the observatory in a cloud.  This was a really surreal experience.  You could tell that we were crazy high up, but we couldn't see anything so it was a little disorienting.  Every once in a while there would be a hole in the cloud that you could peer through and see the city below.  There were the pictures on the audio tour to show you what you could see from each vantage point if it was a clear day.  It was a crazy sort of end to a crazy day.
Once we came down (which by the way caused Gwyn extreme ear pain), we gave up on the subway and decided to get a cab back to the World Trade Center Memorial where we were to meet the tour bus to go home.  We could not "catch a cab" though.  I guess we don't really know how to do that unless you call for one.  But an UBER driver did stop for us, so that worked out. Except that then the charge was four times as much as a cab calculator told us cab fare should have been.  What 'cha gonna do?  At this point we were all done, and it didn't matter.
We did have a little time to spare before the bus arrived so we were able to walk around the World Trade Center Memorial.  The girls knew what happened on Sept. 11th, but this really gave them a perspective.  The huge holes where the buildings stood is a very poignant reminder of loss.  And the size of the space and the number of names displayed really made them realize the magnitude destruction on that day.
So I feel like we did go to NYC.  We almost got to see cool things.  We were next to cool things.  We did go underneath, even though that was the point in the day that Jason and I came closest to an argument.  But I don't really feel like we experienced NYC very well.  To top it off, two of the three girls ended up with Strep Throat the next day, so they weren't feeling their best the whole day to begin with.  All the girls said they never want to go to NY again, which is really unfortunate.  I don't think this day should be representative of a trip to NYC.  So I will take them there again, preferably on a day with good weather and a better plan of action.

Fill the Freezer!

I finally did it.  I got some friends over and we packed freezer meals.  We make ten meals for each of five families.  It will be so nice to have that option when I see that a day will be hectic!

It was nice to spend some time with these ladies too.  It's hard to schedule time to chat and hang out with other ladies now a days.  But we all freed up some time to make these meals and got to hang out as a bonus!  All our kids for to play while this happened so they were happy too.  

I so need to do things like this more often.  Both practically for the meal planning, but also for the sanity-saving that being around other ladies works.  I'm not so sure I want to be the one in charge of getting all the groceries next time, (buying $500 worth of meat is kinda weird at the grocery store) but its worjth it!

The New Ride

Well, we did it.  We didn't mean to do it that day, but when the planets are aligned....

It was getting to the point that we were about to have to put several thousand dollars into our van or get something new.  Jason did a lot of research and found a reasonably priced, 7-seater, with good gas mileage, and all wheel drive.  So we drove down to Gaithersburg to test drive one.  Little did we know that we would drive home with it that day!  What can we say other than they met all our requests, matched our lowest price offer, and have us the Outlander off the floor that had more options.   They even gave us better financing than we had found on our own.  Umm... Ok!

So we are all excited to have the new car.  We keep our vehicles until they die or cost too much to repair (like the van) so this is a special day for us.

The van was a good one.  We got 40,000 more miles out of it than it was statistically supposed to last.  It had crossed the country at least 3 times and traversed from the North to the South countless more.  And while I won't exactly miss the van, I am appreciative of the time we had it.

Oh and the new car's name is Mango Mertle Montgomery, Mango for short.  :)