Florida - Day 5, 6 & 7

Update from Day 5 - When Cora woke from her nap, she started vomiting shortly thereafter.  So, my Dad and Lyn ended up going out for dinner and we stayed in and ordered pizza.  She was quite sick for a few hours and seemed to be bouncing back just before bed time.

Day 6 - Cora slept all night and seemed to be feeling better in the morning.  Although we had planned on going to Universal Studios, we decided it would be best to stick around the house to make sure this flu bug was out of her system (and that none of the rest of us picked it up).  Fortunately, Cora felt great all day.  We enjoyed a very relaxing day in the pool.  My Dad and Lyn went out for a few hours to Downtown Disney/Disney Springs.  Overall, I was really not that upset about missing another park.  The parks really are exhausting (for all of us!).  We really enjoyed our pool time and the 80 degree weather!

For dinner we went to Carabba's (my favorite).  When we got back to the house, we packed everything up an went to bed early, knowing that 4:15am was going to come quick!

Day 7 - Well, 4:15 am came quick.  Fortunately, we all were up and moving (none of us slept well) and out of the house just before 5 to get to the airport to catch our 7:25am flight.  We had an hour layover in Baltimore and landed in Flint just after noon.  We grabbed a bite to eat and were actually home around 2:30pm.

What a great trip it was!  However, it's so nice to get back home and get everyone back in to their routines, including Tom and I!  I'm very much looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight!

We are already trying to decide where our next vacation will take us.  We all agree that we think it will be a long weekend at Niagara Falls either in the spring or next summer.  My kids really have no idea just how lucky they are to be able to travel and see so many sights at their young ages.  We are also very fortunate to be able to provide these memories for them, and to have such great kids to make memories with.

Florida - Days 3, 4 & 5

Thursday - Day 3
We decided to take it easy after a long, fun day at Sea World yesterday.  Plus the kids were anxious to get into the pool!  We swam all morning, had lunch here at the house and then in the afternoon Dad and Tom put up a ceiling fan for cousin Lynn and the kids both napped for about 3 hours!!  For dinner we went to Giordoni's pizza and had Chicago style deep dish pizza.  The kids were entertained by a guy who made balloon animals for them while we waited for our food.  Since it was raining we stayed in for the rest of the evening.

Friday - Day 4
We went to Disney's Magic Kingdom.  Our understanding is that we came at a "slow" time of year.  I honestly cannot imagine coming at a "busy" time of year.  Crowds are just not my thing!  There were a lot of people, however the wait time for the rides really was not that bad, averaging 10-25 minutes.  There was really only one ride that we wanted to go on but didn't get to because of it being an hour long wait.  I think everyone's favorite was the Space Mountain roller coaster, followed by Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.  Other rides that we went on were Pirates of the Caribbean, Swiss Family Treehouse, The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, Walt Disney World Railroad (took us from one end of the park to the other), Haunted Mansion, It's a Small World, Mickey's Philhar Magic, Under the Sea-Journey of the Little Mermaid, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, The Barnstormer (a little roller coaster), and Tomorrowland Speedway.  We splurged and had lunch at the Crystal Palace and got to meet Tigger, Pooh, Piglet and Eyore.

All day long, Cora was super quiet and almost in a trance.  She went along with everything that we wanted to do, didn't whine at all, but was just not herself - just like she was at Sea World.  On the way home, we grabbed McDonald's for dinner and soon after she perked right up and was herself again.  Again, we think it's just sensory overload for this little country girl.

Saturday - Day 5
Hard to believe we are on the tale end of our trip.  Today we started out the day swimming for a couple hours, had lunch at the house and then hit a couple of flea markets (for Dad, of course!)  I'm glad that we had another rest day scheduled cause we are all tired, especially the kids.  Cora is currently napping and is easily going on two hours now!

Florida trip days 1 & 2

 We 

Day 1 - We flew out of Flint on Tuesday, December 1st.  Thankfully we had an uneventful flight and made it to Orlando in just under 3 hours.  It was the kids' first time flying and they were nervously excited, but both did well and stayed awake the entire time.  We came to our "rental house" (cousin Lynn's house), unpacked, the kids swam for a bit, and then we headed out for dinner.  We ate at The Ale House in Davenport.  Leave it to my dad to find us a good deal....kids eat free on Tuesdays!!  We even got to sit outside and eat, the temperature was about 80 degrees.  By the time we got back to the house, we watched a little tv and we were all ready for bed!!

Day 2 - We got to Sea World just before the park opened.  For the first couple hours, we felt like the Griswolds at Wally World....we were riding rides all by ourselves with no waiting in line! It was great!!  It did get busier later in the afternoon but it still wasn't too crowded.  We watched many shows - Shamu whale show, the dolphin and bird show, the sea lion and otter show, and the animal show (trained cats, dogs, a mouse and a skunk, too!).  The shows were incredible!  The kids agreed that their favorite part of the day was the Shamu roller coaster.  Cora was deathly afraid of all the big birds who were crowding around at lunch time, otherwise the kids did really well and thoroughly enjoyed the day, as did the adults. We went to Manny's Chophouse for dinner afterwards (by recommendation from cousin Lynn) and enjoyed two for one fajitas!!  Luckily the kids napped on the way there and were in much better moods after their naps.  When we got back to the house, we went swimming in the pool.  When I tucked Cora in that night, she told me that she had fun today but really wanted to do nothing tomorrow and not have to go anywhere.  I think she was a bit overstimulated for the day.  I think she is a lot like her mom - a bit of a homebody who doesn't like crowds of people!  I have to admit, I was also looking forward to a day of complete relaxation!

I will have to add more photos later.... My phone filled right up from the day at Sea World so I don't have many photos on my iPad to upload right now!

School days!

It's amazing that the summer went as fast as it did, but all good things have to come to an end.  School started on Tuesday, September 8, 2015.  Blake is in 3rd grade and his teacher is Mrs. Bular.  Cora started kindergarten with Mr. Williams.  The kids were both fairly excited to start, yet did not want summer to be over.

They could not get out of the house early enough!

Ready for his first day!

They still love each other! :-)

Kiddos and Tom

Miss Cora -  not the slightest bit nervous!

handsome dude!

What a beauty she is!

Me and my girl

Blake and I

Sneaking a kiss!!

Tom and Blake

Tom and Cora

Kids getting dropped off at Sandusky Elementary

Cora waiting for her classmates.  She started getting a little nervous here, she didn't want me to leave "just yet".

The first day was a half day.  Cora was absolutely exhausted, as this video portrays:

The next day was a full day.  They both came home with lots of energy left over and said that they had great days!  Cora's favorite part was music class.  Blake said his favorite part of the day was the dinner I made! (pot roast and mashed cauliflower)  Cora literally talked for about two hours straight telling me all the details about her day.  She said she made two new friends - Brooklyn and Kaylee, and also Kylee.  She told me that there is another girl in her class that sits at her table but that she is not friends with.  I asked her why not?  She said that this girl doesn't listen to Mr. Williams and even got under the table and laid on the floor.  So, I'm glad she's picking the less troublesome friends so far!  Blake was not as chatty about his day, but he said he still enjoyed seeing all his friends again!

Blake is also playing youth football.  His first game is 9/20.  Cora has mentioned that she would like to take karate lessons......so we will see.

Meet Blake Arbaugh

With school starting next week, (Blake - 3rd grade and Cora - kindergarten) we just received letters in the mail today from the kids' teachers.  I love that they are both strong believers of communication!  Blake's teacher requested a letter from us telling her about our son - strengths, weaknesses, personality traits, etc.  Rather than her having to wait and figure these things out months from now, if she knows up front she will be able to focus on these things right from the start.  I think it's a fabulous idea and although I don't know Mrs. Bular, I like her already!!  Cora has Mr. Williams for kindergarten and since we already know him (he was Blake's teacher and he goes to our church), we are also very excited about that!

As I was working on the letter to Mrs. Bular, I thought it would be a good idea to share it on this blog.  It really does describe him very well at eight years old and it will be neat to look back on years from now.  I'm well aware that my letter is probably 3x longer than anyone else's, but hey, I'm ok with that!  When you're proud,  you're proud!  Here's the letter:

8/31/15

Dear Mrs. Bular,

Allow us to introduce Blake Arbaugh.  Blake is an energetic, compassionate, honest, trustworthy, righteous, Godly, intelligent, eager, competitive, rule-following first-born child.  Sports are his passion, especially baseball.  Although he has excellent leadership abilities and qualities, he often likes to sit back and observe at first before jumping in feet first in new situations.  Blake’s mind is always turning and the questions that he asks absolutely amaze us.

Blake has a lot of strengths.  Tonight at bed time, Blake and I chatted about his strengths.  According to Blake, his strengths are: athleticism, science, math, reading and spelling.   I have to admit, he was right on.  Blake is a superb reader, well above his grade level.  He truly enjoys reading, especially if the content is sports related.  He is also an excellent speller and he also does very well with math, science, and sports!   To be very honest, I don’t feel like Blake has been challenged much the last couple of years.  Thankfully, learning comes very easy to him; however I would like to see him be challenged a little more this year.

He confessed that his major weakness is Music. “Mom, I’m not a very good singer.”  I assured him that not all of us were natural born singers, and that is ok, as long as we do our best.  He felt that his other weakness is division – he said he just doesn’t get it, and that was really bothersome to him.  I reminded him that he hasn’t been taught division yet, so that’s okay that he doesn’t understand it!  (I also promised to give him a division lesson this week!)  We discussed his weaknesses further and agreed that he does have a few things that he needs to work on.  The number one thing is to slow down.  We feel that if he learns this concept, everything else will fall into place.  In his journal last year, he often cut the entries short because he wanted to hurry up and finish.  This resulted in scarce detail and many grammatical and spelling errors.  When he would bring his journals home and we looked them over and reviewed what he did wrong, he knew exactly how to spell the misspelled words and where to put the punctuation and capital letters.  The same thing happened on his math tests.  Although he scored very well, he might get one or two wrong.  When we reviewed the questions he got wrong, he knew the correct answer instantly, he either didn’t finish reading the whole question or read so fast that he skipped over a word (the downside to being a strong reader!).

We are very fortunate that the strengths outweigh the weaknesses; however I think that’s probably pretty typical of a pair of proud parents.  As parents, we believe that sports are important because there are a lot of life lessons to learn, but no matter what – education will always be number one.

I can’t tell you how much we appreciate the letter that you sent to us, stressing the importance of communication.  We could not agree more!  What a fantastic idea for you to request this letter to help you get to know our son better right from the start!

Email is a fantastic communication method for us and we can always be reached on our cell phones as well.  I strongly encourage you to email me anytime, especially if there are any issues with Blake.  Last year a couple of times Blake would get his name on the board and he really took it to heart and was very upset about it.  His teacher would always email me just to give me a heads up and to let me know exactly what happened and how serious or not serious the incident was.  Not because Blake wouldn’t tell us (he always confesses immediately), but because Blake would be very upset about “getting in trouble” and we would otherwise not really know how serious the offense was.  Don’t worry – he’s a GREAT kid and these incidences were few and far between.  Usually it was a result of him talking a little too much!

Again, as proud parents I could go on and on about Blake, but I think you should have a pretty good snapshot of him to know what to expect.

Sincerely,

Shannon Arbaugh

Chicago - Day 3

More info to come....

Chicago - Day 2

We took a morning stroll to Einstein's Bagels and bought enough bagels for two days of breakfast.  After breakfast we headed out to Navy Pier.  Our first stop was the Chicago Children's Museum where we spent a couple of hours doing lots of "hands on" things.  The kids really enjoyed it!

Blake & Cora in front of the dinasour

Blake climbing from one floor of the museum to the next!

Blake and Cora getting all suited up for some construction work!

Cora making dams and playing in the water.

Cora "driving" the fire truck

It looks like a scale, but when you stand on it, it actually measures your height.  My kind of "scale"!! 

Here's Cora!

Cora working with some tools

Blake's final project

We all worked together to build a skyscraper.  It's tougher than it looks!

Cora's dominos

Here they go!

Next we walked around Navy Pier.  In my opinion, it was nice but basically a big money pit!  We took a ride on the Ferris Wheel and it only went around one time and cost us $32 for the four of us!

Swings on the Pier

The Big Ferris Wheel

Blake and Cora riding the Ferris Wheel

Tom and I on the Ferris Wheel (photo by Blake!)

After resting at the hotel for a couple hours, we later ventured out to the Disney Store and a few other stores on Michigan Avenue.  For dinner we ate at a fast food Mexican restaurant off the strip and then got ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

Day 2 was a little more relaxing than day 1.  We were really looking forward to Day 3 and seeing our Tigers at Wrigley Field!!

Chicago - day 1

We left last Saturday, 8/15 and went to Todd and Kristin's for the day.  We got to celebrate Braden's birthday and relax in the pool!

Quite honestly I didn't get a lot of pictures because I spent most of the time relaxing in the pool!!  Hey - it was Day 1 of our vacation, so it's ok!!

We left the next morning before 9am to head to Chicago and arrived at our hotel around 11am.  Fortunately we were able to check in immediately.  We stayed at Mile North hotel which was just a block of Michigan aka "Miracle Mile."  It was a fantastic location!

 Blake and Cora checking out the view from our hotel room.  They thought the tall buildings were pretty darned impressive!

Our hotel

 Fortunately our hotel was located right next to Gino's!  Needless to say, that was our first stop for lunch!  The kids were pretty excited to be able to write their names on the walls, and Tom and I were pretty excited to try some hard root beer for the first time! (It was delicious!)

Me and my girl

Next stop was the American Girl Doll store.  Cora was lucky enough to have Christmas money saved up from Grandma Sue so she could buy her very first American Doll!  She picked out the one she wanted right away.  It's amazing the resemblance they share!  She was SOOOO excited!

 Cora named her "Gracie"

While Cora and I were at American Girl, Tom and Blake checked out the Lego store and Blake spent some of his birthday and Christmas money there!

Next stop was Millenium Park which was about a mile walk.  It was a little tough on the kids because it was close to 90 degrees that day.  The kids weren't overly impressed with the "Bean", they just wanted to find that ice cream truck and get some ice cream.

The Bean

Our reflection in the Bean 

We took the LONG way back to the hotel to do some sight-seeing.  Apparently I was the only one who was excited about that.  Oh well, we saw some beautiful sights!

Trump Tower

Tom & I - photo by Blake

 And....we finally found the ice cream truck!

No Chicago trip is complete without some Garrett's popcorn!

No, we didn't buy these, but we did stop by the Hershey store!

We went back to the hotel and ate leftover Gino's pizza (it was still delicious!).  Then we waited until closer to dusk to go to Chicago 360/John Hancock Observatory to see the city from above.

 The kids checking out the view

Gorgeous!

Phew, Day 1 was a busy day and we were all very exhausted that night!!