Getting Our Jollies in July

After we got back from our Phoenix trip, we only had about a week and a half until the "meet and greet" for our school. We had so little summer left, and had so much partying still to do! Luckily, we managed to fit in a few things, like the following:

Our last two Family Fun Fridays

The first, on July 11, was pretty mellow...understandable, considering how tired out we still were from our Phoenix trip. However, the kids needed to get out of the house for some wiggles. Unfortunately, when it's super hot and humid (as July tends to be in Arizona), our options are sort of limited. At least we were able to spend the morning in Tucson, first frolicking in a splash pad...

As you can see, there's a park next door to the splash pad too!

 

...then eating lunch and hanging out at the Tucson Mall (oh, blessed air conditioning!). We spent a little time at the kids' play center; however, my girls are just getting too big to goof off inside that play area any more. Luckily, they seemed to realize it and we moved on quickly.

We also visited an organ store (as in, the musical instrument...the kids wanted to play on every organ in the store); the Build-A-Bear workshop (perhaps anticipating their Christmas present; ugh, it's going to be so expensive for them each to get one!); and best of all, a pet store that had dozens of puppies! Our dog-loving girls were in ecstasy watching all the wagging tails, and left almost in tears that they wouldn't be taking one home with them. I know there will be a dog in our family's future, but I don't know when exactly. I just know we're still at least a year away!

Our second (and last!) Family Fun Friday of the season was a bit more involved. It began with a trip to one of our favorite places...the International Wildlife Museum. It's always nice to check out all the taxidermied animals and learn more about the natural world.

 

It had been a while since we'd visited the Wildlife Museum, and a few changes had been made. There was a hall set aside for a photo-essay on penguins in the wild; a little further on, there was a "sensory safari" experience that the kids just didn't get. It's an exhibit that shows how visually-impaired people would experience a museum like this one; mostly, that involves them touching the exhibits. The small corridor is completely dark; you have to slowly run your hand along the left side of the wall to feel the fur/teeth contours of the animal statues.

It's an interesting concept, but all the girls could focus on was how dark it was inside the exhibit, and how scary it was for them to be in the dark with a bunch of dead animals. Then they made a game out of it and started running through the exhibit as fast as they could; needless to say, I was not pleased with them! Knocking down a bunch of other visitors in a dark room...nope, not a great idea.

At any rate, the kids behaved themselves at the museum otherwise. Unfortunately, after our visit, that Friday became less "fun," since it was time to head to Great Expectations for the "meet and greet" with our teachers. At we managed to squeeze in a Fun Friday activity alongside the "non-fun" meet and greet (I was also invited to a night of Bunco with some girlfriends; at least it was a fun evening for me, if not the kids!).

A glow-in-the-dark Pump It Up playdate

Fridays weren't the only day we had fun during these two weeks. On a whim, we decided to visit Pump It Up, the indoor inflatable playground that we've visited many times in the past. It had been a long time (more than a year) since we'd gone to Pump It Up, and so we decided to sneak in a visit before school started. As luck would have it, we chose to visit them on a special day.

 During the summer, Pump It Up holds a GLOW! Jump Time once a week (during the school year, it's only held in the evenings). For their GLOW! session, they turn off the overhead fluorescent lights, turn on the black lights and the disco balls, hand out glow necklaces, and let the kids run wild and free bathed in a whole new type of light.

 

Needless to say, the girls loved it...maybe even more than usual, since the atmosphere was so different this time around. There was one more new wrinkle: Pump It Up recently installed a "storm-wind simulator," that kids can use for an additional fee. The girls had tried one of these machines in San Diego early last year, and they begged and begged to try it out again, and I obliged because I am clearly a pushover:

 We helped out the juggler

James Reid the Juggler Extraordinaire comes to the Green Valley library every summer. He juggles bowling pins, balls, ribbons, bowling balls, miscellaneous sporting equipment, rubber chickens, and a host of other things. He's always fun to watch. He's also pretty handy with the Chinese yo-yo, which is basically a super-sized yo-yo. The string for a Chinese yo-yo is unconnected to the actual yo-yo (the axis of the yo-yo just slides along the string, which the operator manipulates however he wants). Mr. Reid wanted to perform a trick in which he swipes the yo-yo off of someone's head from a distance, but he needed a volunteer...

 

...and that volunteer turned out to be Lorelai! As you can tell by the pictures, she was pretty scared to be up there on the spot. She probably thought she'd get whipped in the face by the hurled string. Luckily, everything turned out all right, and she survived. But the show wasn't over; a few minutes later, Celeste was called up as a volunteer too!

Her role was a little less substantial; she was there as a "control group" who had to hold a bowling ball and verify that it was, in fact, as heavy and ponderous as they usually are. Having proven that, Celeste was sent to sit back down and Mr. Reid juggled the bowling ball along with a golf club and a baseball bat! And then he juggled three bowling balls at once! He's a juggling genius, I tells ya!

Lorelai learns to "Beat It"

Lorelai had participated in a hip-hop "mini-camp" class last summer, and I thought I'd let her try it out again, since it's her favorite type of dancing (Celeste had participated as well, but she was not overly thrilled with hip-hop; plus, she'd just had a whole year full of dance classes). Ms. Cindy is a really fun, enthusiastic hip-hop teacher, and I knew Lorelai would have fun doing another mini-camp. Best of all, Cindy allowed Lorelai to take the class for free (with a night of baby-sitting her kids as an exchange). It was very gracious of her!

This year, the kids did some dancing every day, but I didn't get it all recorded (too many errands to run in the meantime). However, their final day of dancing was pretty memorable. It was an "80s throwback day," in which the kids were to show up wearing 80s clothes. And what music did they learn to dance to? Michael Jackson, of course!

I had so much fun watching Lorelai get down with her bad self! She wants to take another hip-hop class sometime in the future, but we will have to check on Ms. Cindy's schedule to see if it will fit in. With band and the school play on the horizon, Lorelai may not have time to participate this year...we will have to wait and see! At any rate, it was a fun way to wrap up Lorelai's summer.

Summer's End Draws Near

I realize that summer isn't technically over until late September, but it already feels like late summer to me. Why? Because my kids are already back in school!!!!

Yes, my beautiful babies have been taken from me again, thanks to our cruel education system that doesn't care how much fun you are having with your kids during the summer. Our charter school always starts in late July, so you'd think I would be used to it by now. But even for them, this was an early first day of school...July 21st! That meant our summer vacation was only seven weeks long...despite having lots of fun, it just didn't feel long enough.

At the beginning of summer, both Lorelai & Celeste whined about how short their summer would be. However, when it came time to go school supply shopping, and when their teacher assignments came in the mail, they got excited for school again very quickly! They were all smiles on the first day of school, and only looked back when I asked them to pose for pictures.

Lorelai's class is teeny tiny this year; only 12 students in class so far! I'm not complaining.

I can't believe I have a fourth grader and a first grader this year. What's even more unbelievable is that soon, my "baby" Aurora will be in preschool three days a week as well! I am one step closer to becoming an "empty nester," and I really don't know how I feel about that yet. I have a lot of ideas about what to do with myself (part-time work, master's degree, community service, TV binging sessions), but who knows which of those ideas will be the best option? I am going to have to pray about this in the months and years to come.

We are all excited about this upcoming school year. Aurora's preschool teacher is the same teacher Celeste had two years ago, and Aurora is excited to experience Smart Scholars Preschool for herself. She is the biggest "mama's girl" out of our children, but a few of her friends will be in the preschool as well, so I think that will help Aurora transition more easily. In any case, she is overjoyed by the new backpack we bought her, and is asking every day when preschool starts.

Celeste is happy to have many of her best friends in her classroom again this year. Because of the cost of preschool, our lovely ballerina won't get to participate in dance class this year. However, we are going to try out Girl Scouts and see if that will satisfy Celeste's extracurricular cravings for now. She is already very excited about it, despite knowing next to nothing about the program. I should have known that our girliest girl would be gung-ho for Girl Scouts!

Lorelai's getting older and wiser, and her extracurricular schedule will get correspondingly busier. For example, this is the first year she's eligible to join the school band, and she's very excited to join up! She insists she wants to learn the trombone; it will be very interesting having another instrument besides the piano hanging around our house! In addition, there's going to be another school play at GEA this year; this time, it's Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which will likely be a bigger, more ambitious program than the previous year's Cinderella. Lorelai has declared she wants to play The Beast; I keep telling her that they probably can't gender-swap that role, but she is undaunted. Hopefully she will still have a good time participating, whatever role she gets!


As for myself, I am also getting geared up for my various school-related activities this fall. For example, I will be teaching twelve piano students (this is a record for me; hopefully I don't burn out too early on in the year). I'm also hoping to volunteer in all my girls' classrooms, in one capacity or another. Time will tell how all that plays out.

Our family still has a few more fun summer activities up our sleeves (we're going camping as a family this weekend, for instance), but it is a little hard to admit that this summer vacation is ending, and that our summer together went by so fast. Writing this blog post has helped, though, as I realize that we have many great things to look forward to this fall as well. Can't wait to share it all here!

Our Wet & Wild Phoenix Staycation 2014 Pt. 2

After a busy first day in Phoenix, we were a little tired. But not so tired that we didn't have a whole lot more fun the second day!

We roused ourselves early in the morning but didn't try to rush ourselves too much. We snuck over to a nearby Denny's for some breakfast, and then came back to our suite to get ready for more swimming! However, we had jumped the gun a bit...the water park wasn't even opened yet. We had to goof off inside our room for a bit first...

...but after that it was time to get wet again. Nathan chose to sit that morning out, reading in the shade of a palm tree instead. However, he anticipated only being at the water park for one more hour or so. Instead, our girls stretched the second water park stay out to two-and-a-half hours! They were having too much fun to leave.

Nathan got a little dehydrated (this was Phoenix in summer, after all), and most of our morning had fled before we finally left the resort to do other things. Maybe next time we come to the Arizona Grand (and there will be a next time!), we will stay for more than one night; it always feels like we are a little rushed for time and don't get to luxuriate in the hotel room. Plus, Celeste will get to actually ride the water slides next time, and Aurora will be swimming free! It promises great possibilities.

Once we checked out of the resort, dried off, and changed into our clothes, it was lunch time! Luckily it wasn't too far to our next stop...

IKEA.

 

There's no Ikea in the Tucson area, but there's a huge store crouching just off the freeway in Tempe, a Phoenix suburb. We've probably driven past it dozens of times since moving to Arizona almost eleven years ago...after all, it's on our way to the Mesa LDS Temple. But due to countless reasons/excuses over the years, we'd never gone inside. In fact, we'd never gone inside any Ikea store before. Well, almost...Nathan once stopped by their warehouse as part of a business trip, to pick up some office furniture. But he'd never spent long periods of time within the store before.

But! I was tired of getting funny looks from my friends when I told them I'd never been to Ikea before. It was past time to pay it a visit and discover the wonders hidden within. But I was a little nervous; I'd heard that its labyrinthine layout meant it could be hard to escape the store. Plus, on an episode of 30 Rock from a couple of years back, the main character and her boyfriend almost broke up due to a fight they had in an Ikea. The thesis of the whole episode was that Ikea ruins relationships! I silently prayed that my marriage would survive this challenge.

As it turns out, the store won us over early, mostly because we were hungry. We made it up to the dining area, not sure if we were going to buy a full lunch at the cafe or not. Nathan had looked up a couple of nearby restaurants we thought we might want to try. However, as luck would have it, the Ikea cafe in Tempe offers free kids' meals on Tuesdays. Hooray! Not only were we hungry, but thie deal appealed to our cheapskate natures. Ikea was pushing all our buttons.

We all opted to try Ikea's famous meatballs. They come smothered in a creamy gravy, and with a side of mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. Very Swedish, and very delicious! The girls devoured all their meatballs in short order, and Nathan and I had to start sharing meatballs from our own plates, as offerings to my daughter's huge appetites. The only downside to the whole meal was the noise; the cafe was very crowded, mostly with other families taking advantage of the "kids eat free" loophole. But we couldn't begrudge them their meatballs.

Since we'd come straight from a long morning outside at the pool, it felt nice to sit down in a cool building and fill up on a good meal. We were re-energized. It was time to make our way into the twisty, turny, never-ending showroom that is the second floor of Ikea.

It actually didn't turn out too badly; since we were only window shopping, we didn't feel too pressured to stop and examine anything too closely. And since it's a furniture store, there were plenty of spare seats on which to rest in case we got tired! The girls had fun trying everything out, and Nathan and I spotted a few things we might like to purchase at some point in the future.

As we made our way downstairs, through the massive warehouse and out into daylight again, we thanked our lucky stars that we finally found some shortcuts through the massive store. But overall we were pleased; it was a nice (if slightly overwhelming) first visit to Ikea. Something tells me it won't be our last.

But by now it was early afternoon, and time to drive quickly to Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb on the southeast side of town. There was a bowling alley/family fun center named FlipSide that we'd heard good things about, and we couldn't wait to see it!

We bought four three-hour unlimited attraction passes, and shared them between the five of us. That turned out to be more than adequate to fuel our fun. Sometimes it was a bit of a bummer for one of us to be left out of something, but for the most part we had no trouble taking turns. FlipSide was a really awesome place, and we wore ourselves out playing there.

Some of the games were mainly for kids, like this multi-story Blast Pad, in which you could climb, explore, and shoot plastic balls at one another:

There was a large laser tag arena as well. Lorelai and I loved it, the rest of the family...not so much. Aurora, in particular, was afraid of the dark room and the loud music. Maybe when they're all a little older it will be more fun to play. Another problem was that there weren't enough people in FlipSide for there to be constant laser tag battles; sometimes you had to wait a while for the staff to round up enough people. Hopefully that won't be a problem at our next visit (and the low crowds were certainly nice for every other part of the fun center!).

Possibly the kids' favorite part of FlipSide was the Laser Maze. It was a really simple idea: a completely dark room with lots of criss-crossing light beams stretching across the room at various points. The player simply has to get from the front of the room to the lighted target in the back, without tripping any of the laser lights. Each time a beam is tripped, time is added to your final score. There were multiple degrees of difficulty available (including a moving beam), and a two-player option, in which each player had to reach a separate target.

Best shot I could get of the Laser Maze; it looks a lot cooler in person

I think Celeste and Aurora, in particular, played this game a dozen times each. They had so much fun crawling, sliding, and bending to squeeze through all the light beams. It was nice and quiet in the room, so there were no obvious distractions.

We didn't bowl at FlipSide (bowling fees were separate from the attraction fees, and we wanted to focus on the games instead), but we did have the opportunity to try the mini-bowling alley, which was tucked away behind the full-sized bowling lanes:

It was kind of adorable to look at the tiny bowling balls, and the tiny bowling pins held up by wires, and the tiny half-length lanes. The younger kids loved it, though; it was a lot easier than regular bowling for them!

Another favorite were the bumper cars, which luckily everyone was able to ride by themselves!

One of my favorite Celeste pictures ever

I was a little worried about Aurora getting left out of the action, but she learned the controls pretty quickly and was zooming back and forth with everyone else in no time. What a tech-savvy generation we are raising.

 

Like the Laser Maze, the kids went back to the bumper cars again and again...

...and so did Nathan!

We played hard at FlipSide, and definitely got our money's worth. We also managed to score some prize tickets at the arcade, so all the girls got to pick out a new stuffed animal (Lorelai got a chipmunk wearing a "YOLO" sweatshirt, and Celeste & Aurora chose unicorns). By this time it was getting pretty late; we grabbed dinner at a nearby Subway restaurant, refilled the car with gas, and started the long drive home.

On the way south, we drove through several cloudbursts. The first rains of the monsoon season had come just a few days before; thankfully, the clouds stayed away during our time in the water park.
 We arrived home a little damp and a lot tired, but very happy. Even though our family didn't get a "full-length" vacation this summer, it has been really fun to go on a couple of these short trips. And there's one more overnight trip ahead next weekend...we're going camping! But first, I'll have to get caught up on the rest of the blog.