SeaWorld Orlando!

I LOVE a Fall Break family trip! I've been planning this one for a few months and even though several things tried to derail it, we were able to go!

Mom has a condo just south of St. Augustine, Florida, and we used that as our home base this week for a few day trips of places we hadn't been or hadn't been in a while! We were up BRIGHT AND EARLY on Wednesday and left the house at 6:45 to head to Orlando to SeaWorld! The boys have been in recent years, but I hadn't been since they were toddlers and Eddie had never been before.

The weather was cool, the crowds were low and we had just been there for a minute when we were on our first ride of the day! (As I've gotten older, I MUCH prefer Disney's version of rides - "family" rides - and like roller coasters less and less. I think I rode TWO rides all day - and that was enough for me!)

I was there for the ORCAS. Wooohoooo! So excited to see these beauties!!! We went to SeaWorld when I was in middle school and I LOVED seeing them then. I'll have to dig up our old pictures. When we went in 2014, the orca stadium was closed so we saw them swimming, but nothing like what we got to see Wednesday. They're incredible. I'd LOVE to see them in the wild! James was amazed because he thought they were 8-10 feet. He's been to SeaWorld in the past 3 years but they didn't see the orcas at all (middle school trips = roller coasters only!) and he expected them to be about shark-size. Imagine his surprise!

I made the boys stop and look at ALL the animals on this trip!

Last time we were there, the dolphin tank was a touch tank. The keeper said that the dolphins had gotten really good at snatching phones and people had decided to feed the dolphins so they backed us up behind a rope unless you paid to do the close up viewing. Bummer!

At the end of the day when the boys had ridden everything, we let them go off on their own (!!!) to ride anything else they were interested while Eddie and I took in the second orca show of the day. I'm telling you, my whole ticket was purchased just to see them. If I'd gone alone I would've sat and watched their tank all day! 

We enjoyed our time at SeaWorld. If you've never been, you need to know that it's not Disney, but it has stepped up the theme park side in recent years. I suspect that the orcas' days are numbered since their breeding plan has ended. I know that's what is best so I wanted to be sure I saw them again before they aren't there anymore. SeaWorld felt smaller to me than Disney's parks. It wasn't crowded at all, but I can imagine on a crowded day it would feel tight quickly. The weather was AMAZING when we were there - we were never hot. Enjoying this in the "off season" was perfect. I'll also share that we bought our tickets online while standing in the security line to enter. The ticket booth price was DOUBLE the online price and they wouldn't have told me that if I hadn't known. If you see a deal and know when you want to go - grab it! We did not do the All Day Dining. We ate lunch in the middle of the day and the boys bought ice cream. I don't know that we will go back anytime soon since we've "been there, done that" now, but it was a great day spent for Fall Break!

 

Welcome, Fall!

 It's my FAAAAAVORITE time of the year! Hallelujah! Welcome, fall!

Labor Day weekend marks the end of the summer for me. While it will still be HOT here for weeks and weeks, I'm willing it to be cooler.

I've gotten the Halloween decor out of the attic and will spend the next few days putting it out. I have Pumpkin Muffins on my list to bake today (the boys will LOSE THEIR MINDS). I'm watching the cozy/creepy movies and reading the cozy/creepy books! I. cannot. wait!

Sharing my 2024 Fall Bucket List and my 2024 Fall Movie/Book Lists below! Enjoy!

Summer Bucket List Update!

Back again with a post-Labor Day update on our Summer Bucket List. I've made one of these since James was about two years old and while it doesn't dictate our summer quite like it used to, it's still a fun way of measuring all we've done! James' elbow "sprain" put a damper on quite a few things - Drive, Chip, and Putt and FSU Swim. Lake Oconee never happened because of a spring flood that caused a renovation that hasn't quite been finished. We never got to quite a few of the fun things - zip lining, putt putt, the arcade, and bowling. Maybe we'll wrap those up in the fall! I honestly forgot we'd even seen Garfield, but that means we saw THREE movies over the summer which was probably pretty good for us. As kids I feel like we went to the theater WEEKLY! (We've learned that Tuesday is the DAY TO GO!) It was a fun and fast summer! I'm ready for pumpkins and cooler weather! The Halloween decor is going out tomorrow!

 

PYC

 If you tell James he can only do ONE thing all summer, he will choose PYC. Our church has gone to PYC for the past few years (I think James missed going to the first one, but he has been three times and now Will has been once). Camp is held at a church camp about an hour away from our house, but it's out in the middle of the woods and they stay in cabins and basically just unplug for a week of Olympics-themed games, country competition, cafeteria-style food, and worship. They come home dirty, stinky, and exhausted. I don't know how they don't sweat to death since it's outdoors practically the whole week, but somehow they grin and bear it each year and LOVE IT. Our youth director changed churches at the end of this summer so James is already sweating whether we will go back next year, but our church usually goes with about three other churches and if we don't go, we will probably send him with one of them. It's just a FUN week of old-school church camp!

I'm posting some of the pictures that I snatched from our church's Instagram and some that were sent from me. You'll notice a trend with Will - if there's a baby, there he will be! Some of these were blurry online so they're blurry here...Sorry!

(Someone was in hog heaven "going" to the square dance with a pretty senior girl! LOL! Life. Made.)

And that's it! Lots of fun, lots of games, lots of late nights...they come home gross and exhausted and counting the days until next year! It must be a LOT of fun!

Island Mini Trip!

Right before school started, we drove over to the coast to visit our baby cousins and see a movie with them. We wound up spending the night so we were able to eat a few times with them, play, and enjoy visiting. (We did NOT sleep great, though - James was on a leaky air mattress and I just don't sleep great when I'm not home!) Merritt and I held a QUICK Bookworms Book Club meeting (we read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh so we watched a little bit of the movie, painted mice, and played Mouse Trap). One of the highlights was that James wanted to go downtown and shop, but he was the only one. Shepherd asked, "Do you have a wallet? Do you have a phone? Why don't we just drop him off!" We didn't drop him off - we all went shopping for a little while with him. We saw Despicable Me with them before heading home and loved our time together!

Fishing and Faith

 The past few summers, our youth group has met on Tuesday nights during the summer at the home of some church members. This particular family owns a good bit of land and they have a large pond. The kids eat dinner (usually burgers and/or hot dogs), fish, and have a devotion. It has become a favorite of my boys and plenty of the other boys in the youth group as well (and several of the girls!). It's a hot time, but my children would stand beside that pond for HOURS to fish. James caught his personal best this summer and took it the next day over to a taxidermist to have it mounted for his wall for all time. I've never seen him so excited about something. We have some changes happening in the youth group right now, but I know that my boys hope that Fishing and Faith NEVER changes. Here's to many summers of evening fishing, friends, and becoming deeper in faith.

A Fall, a Fracture, and FSU

 Waaaaay back in June while the boys were at camp and Eddie and I were in the mountains, we got a bright-and-early phone call from our youth director letting us know that James had fallen playing basketball and had hurt his elbow. Activate: Grandmamma. Ughhhh. After a quick phone call to my sister-in-law who worked in a town close to James, she told us where to go for a walk-in x-ray. Because we were 4 hours away, Eddie's mom went and picked James up and took him to the urgent care where they looked at his elbow, x-rayed it, and sent him on his way in a sling. They were told a doctor would look at the x-ray and call us later to tell us what they thought.

That night while Eddie and I were having dinner, I got a phone call from the doctor who said that she didn't see a fracture on the x-ray BUT she did see evidence of a "fat pad/sail sign" that usually only appears if there is a fracture. She told us to keep him in the sling and to see an orthopedic doctor as quickly as we could to confirm the fracture and go from there. Double ugggghhhhh.

Because she called me after 6pm, I didn't get a phone call in to the orthopedic doctor until the next morning. It was a whole debacle of back-and-forth phone calls and we left it with the urgent care needed to fax James' x-rays to them before they would even make us an appointment. That was Thursday.

I think I called them back on Friday and never heard back from them.

SO...when we picked James up on Saturday we were just waiting for Monday to roll around.

MEANWHILE, James was supposed to leave on Monday for Swim Camp at FSU. Cue the tears. This was a VERY expensive camp with his club swim team and he'd been REALLY looking forward to going. On Thursday after calling the orthopedic doctor, I sent an email to the FSU camp and told them what had happened. They called me back and told me that it would be better to just cancel him (we had our fingers crossed that's what they would say, but I wanted THEM to tell me to cancel in hopes of getting some of our money back or giving us a credit for next year). It was such a disappointment, but also SUCH a relief to get some of our money back. They told us that the camp costs could be reimbursed, but he wasn't sure about the dorm cost. We wound up actually getting EVERYTHING back, though. He's looking forward to going NEXT year, but is bummed because a few of his teammates will be seniors this year and they won't go back next year.

In addition, we were cancelling/not committing to several swim meets in the meantime. He wound up missing TWO meets because of this injury.

Finally, on Monday (a week after he fell!) the orthopedic office called us and made an appointment for Wednesday. When we got to that appointment, they took more x-rays and as soon as the doctor walked in he said, "First of all, take that sling off - you don't need it." WhaaaaT? He said the doctor that read the x-ray was being VERY conservative and there was no break and he couldn't even see a fat pad/sail sign. Because they were conservative and because James couldn't be seen in ortho for another week after, he basically set himself back because he was in the sling for a week and didn't use his arm. He was cleared immediately for ANY activity that he felt like doing. He wound up taking about two weeks to get full use back - it was sore from being in the same position for a week and it was weak.

This whole thing was SUCH a bummer...but it could've also been MUCH worse. We were glad it wasn't broken! He was bruised and swollen so he definitely hurt it, but it could've been way, way worse. Whew!