Sleeping Beauties

The condo we stayed in had the same square footage as our house. That either says something about the size of the condo or something about the size of our house—you decide.

One of the rooms was decorated with a Mickey Mouse theme, and that's where the girls stayed (since, you know, it had two twin beds in it instead of a queen (like the room we stayed in) or a king (where Andrew's parents stayed). They loved it.

Monday, June 24 (Universal Studios, Day 1)

Bright and early Monday morning we struck out to Universal Studios, traipsed through the parking lot for over twenty minutes, and finally made it through baggage checks and into the actual park. It was quite the hike and, unfortunately, we didn't think about that again until our day was done and we had to make the trek back. It was a trail of tears, I tell you.

Our day began with tears, too, because the day started hot and Rachel busted out her fan and went to cool the back of her neck and caught her hair, which got all twisted up in the motor. We did manage to pull it free, but there was much screaming and crying. Our day was just filled with tears.

Universal Studios was fun, don't get me wrong. But let's just say it's not the happiest place on earth. Disney is much better suited to young families than Universal.

Let's start at the very beginning

My birthday this year was a million times better than last year! Let's list the reasons why, shall we?

Last year: NICU

This year: Florida

Yup. That just about sums it up.

We had a relatively tame day, just relaxing by the pool while Grandma and Grandpa went to the temple for a wedding. The pool is pretty awesome, though the bottom of it is made of a gigantic emory board or something. The upside is that my feet have been stripped of dead skin and are silky smooth. The downside is that all of my skin junk (and everybody else's) is just floating around in the water. Yum, yum.

But the water was warm and wonderful so I put my thoughts of swimming through people's foot gunk aside and enjoyed the pool. It's mostly about 3 feet deep, with a zero-entry side (Miriam's favourite), a water slide (Rachel's favourite), a splash pad (Benjamin's favourite), and a "deep" end (4 ft. 10 inches) where the grown ups didn't have to be all hunched over to be completely in the water (our favourite).

We spent all morning at the pool.

Cue pictures...

Here's Benjamin at the splash pad:

Kennedy Space Center

Our first stop yesterday was the Kennedy Space Center, which ignited a desire in both our girls to become astronauts. The space center is huge. It's basically the entire island—and whatever they don't use as launch pads or runways is a conservation zone so there's a lot of wildlife around. We saw a little inlet swarming with alligators and manatees. Since the space center is a no-boat zone the manatees are safe from boat propellers at the island; however, I can't say how safe they are from alligators. Apparently they are second only to the Everglades for the number of alligators (thousands!) in one area and are second only to Alaska for the number of bald eagles (they have 41 nests, if I remember correctly).

Considering everything within a 3-mile radius of any given launch pad is burnt to a crisp, I have to wonder how conservative their conservation is, but I suppose they have things pretty well figured out.

Cocoa beach

I wasn't going to blog tonight, and really I probably shouldn't because we had a long day and I'm exhausted. But I'm going to post anyway because there are too many good pictures to share. I just love the beach.

Technically we split our day between the Kennedy Space Center and the beach. The space center was neat but the beach was wonderful. I'm sure if you asked other people who had been with me today which activity was their favourite they would have answered completely opposite. I think space exploration is fine and interesting but I happen to think the beach is wonderful.

What can I say? I'm a mother. Space exploration for me is when I go one night without a child climbing into bed with me. And NASA is cutting (or has already cut) their low-level space exploration and is focusing on how to do "deep space" exploration. I don't know what that equates to in motherhood. Maybe not smelling like spit up anymore? That's a far out idea.

Anyway, after spending the day at the Kennedy Space Center, which I'll write about tomorrow, we headed to Cocoa Beach. We walked from the parking lot (which was free at the pier—and we couldn't believe it ourselves) to the beach without our swimming gear. A big thunder storm had just rolled through and had cooled things down considerably and we weren't sure if we'd be getting in the water and blah, blah, blah...

But we had Rachel with us.

I mentioned that to Andrew. She's not going to test the water. She's incapable of testing the water.

Yellow

Miriam enjoys drawing a lot and has impeccable fine motor skills for someone her age. I'm not sure if she draws well because she draws a lot or if she draws a lot because she draws well. However it works she draws all the time and so it was that she was in the car, drawing pictures for Grandpa.

First she drew a picture of a bumble bee and a butterfly dancing through the sky together. The bumble bee was striped yellow and black, it had six legs, two wings, and two antennae. The butterfly was blue and yellow. There was a sunshine in the sky and all in all it was a fairly accurate picture. She wrote "MiRiAM?" in big letters (with the question mark at the end because she thinks question marks are fancy) and handed it up to Grandpa.

Next she drew a picture of a beautiful princess with big puffy sleeves and ribbons all over her dress, blowing in the wind. She wrote "MOMY" on the picture and handed it to me.

"Oh, thank you," I said.

"That's not for you," she explained, rolling her eyes. "It's for Grandpa. Pass it up."

"But it says mommy on it."

"It's a picture of you for Grandpa."

Well, of course it is. What else would it be?

Miriam announced that her next picture would be a self-portrait. I assumed, when she began digging through the container of crayons, that she was hunting for a pink crayon (since that's been her favourite colour since birth, basically) but she surprised me when she started grumbling about yellow.

"Yellow, yellow, yellow. Where is that yellow? I need yellow!"

"Oh, do you like yellow now?" I asked.

"Uh, no. That's just the colour of my hair. Come on!" she said, as if it were blatantly obvious.

Her 'come on' was perfectly reminiscent of Gob from Arrested Development, if you've ever watched that show. We have. And apparently we've also quoted it a little too much around the children (who are sometimes actually respectful, believe it or not).

Pelican's

This morning we danced around on our new deck and found a few butterflies were equally happy about the new addition to the yard. I helped Rachel catch one, which she kept for a few hours. When she went back outside to let it go it flew out of the cage and sat on the lid for a while. Rachel tried to get it to climb onto her finger but it flew away after tasting her finger with its legs (butterflies taste with their feet—ask Rachel, she'll tell you).

She comes bearing gifts

I don't know how long our girls have been counting down the days until Grandma comes but I'm sure it's been months. The day finally arrived (on Tuesday) and the girls could hardly contain themselves. They made welcome signs and bounced around the house while trying to get things tidy for Grandma.

We were a little late getting to the airport so instead of going inside to puck up Grandma we just did a curbside pickup. The girls were a little disappointed about not getting to use their signs but Grandma raved over them appropriately and the girls felt better. We stopped at Cook Out on our way home for dinner. It's a little drive-thru restaurant we've been wanting to try since our final shindig with the Wellings when we were introduced to the artery-clogging joy known as hushpuppies.

"They're like onion rings without the onion!" Andrew exclaimed.

In other words they're his new favourite food. He's always had a love/hate relationship with onion rings because he loves the batter but hates the onion. Fried batter's right up his alley.

Dinner was good but the girls could hardly eat, they were so excited to discover the surprises Grandma had in her suitcase. She brought birthday presents from Auntie Sarah (late for Benjamin and Miriam and early for Rachel) and from Naanii (though we have most of those on hold, except the books we gave to Benjamin), as well as some surprises of her own.

Here are the kids enjoying their new stuffed animals from Auntie Sarah:

Summer reading

This past Saturday we went to the summer reading program kick-off, which was a carnival of sorts. We got all signed up for the reading program and would have potentially had a lot of fun, had the lines not all been so long. There were booths for all sorts of things: face painting, balloon art, caricatures, and crafts.

We chose the caricature line and stood there for ever. We didn't ever make it to the front of the line, but while we were waiting in line Rachel went off and took a couple of turns on the bouncy castle/slide. Miriam was too afraid to try.

A clown came and visited us and let the girls hold a spinning plate on a stick.

Old news is good news

Not this past Saturday but the Saturday before, the girls had their last ballet lesson of the school year.

Everyone in the studio is constantly raving about Miriam, who apparently has beautiful feet and "lines" (which I think refers to her "poses"). She's certainly got a little ballerina in her. She lived Saturday to Saturday this last semester, always looking forward to her next ballet lesson.