Tuesday evening while we were shopping at Ikea (which I will touch on later), I found a pamphlet for the Central Florida Fair lying forgotten on a kitchen playset. I picked it up and noticed that it was starting Thursday evening. In all the years that we've lived here, we've never been. I think I've always believed it to be some cheesy version of the great fairs of New England so I just never bothered to go. Well, now that we've moved closer to it, I thought, "Why not?" Normally the admission is $12 and the rides are a small fortune but since it was opening night, you could get in for a $1 with a canned good donation and the rides were $1. You can't beat that!
The grounds opened at 4:00 and I arrived with the kids shortly thereafter. There was a pig race at 5:00 that we didn't want to miss and then other various shows following that (stunt show, magic show, etc). Ron and Elaine met us at the pig race and then Duncan got there after work. So yes, the fair was all I remembered a fair to be...filled with a million different smells from all the gaudy looking food "trucks." You can't walk past a booth with stuffed animals without someone beckoning you "Step right up. Every kid's a winner." And I'm thinking, yeah, just what I need..the 112th stuffed animal to join the family. I will admit, though, I'm intrigued by the guy who says he'll guess your weight or age. I would think women would not be his target market. Wouldn't it be really awkward if he guessed too high on either one?
We enjoyed the pig race (although we were put in the awkward position of being on the team that was rooting for Piggly Willy or some name like that which was short for Bill Clinton) and then the girls were clamoring for the rides. I realized right away that there was NO possible way we would ever be riding more than one ride if we came on any other day. The rides were anywhere from three to five tickets and tickets were four for five bucks. Outrageous! Can you imagine paying four dollars for ONE kid to go on the carousel? Mind boggling. Due to the cheap price of a dollar, the girls rode probably six or seven rides with the highlight being the Ferris wheel that they rode with Duncan after dark (much prettier with all the lights on). Sadly, Brady was completely left out in the dark as you had to be 36 inches to go on any ride...even the completely tame ones. We started to say, "Next year" but with Aubree checking in at only about 38 inches at three years of age, I would say Brady's chances of being 36 by next year when he's two are slim to none.
I will end the narrative here on the fair and just show more pictures...
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| Pig Race |
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| Roller coaster by herself |
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| Stunt show. Waiting for the stuntman to jump to the cushion below. |
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| Did I mention that it was quite chilly? The girls got off the windy Ferris wheel (after which Daddy was shaking because he only had his on his flimsy work attire) and decided they wanted a snow cone for their treat. Not a wise move! |
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| As we were leaving (shortly after 9:00 pm), they were giving away yogurt. Not just one but cases of it. We got three cases of twelve yogurts each! |
This week has been a pretty busy one compared to some others. Saturday afternoon and evening we had the pleasure of spending some time with Cory and Amanda Reeves our dear friends who ditched us for Tennessee a few years ago. Cory was here for some work stuff so they weren't able to bring Noah and Jake with them which was very disappointing for the girls. They came and saw our house (they were the ones who originally moved to this community like six years ago and we made fun of them) and then we went to downtown Winter Garden to the Winter Garden Pizza Company for some supper. Cory and Amanda are mainly vegans but decided to make an exception! It's hard to resist the pizza there. The downtown is such a lovely place in the evening and we enjoyed our stroll back to the car which included walking past the splash fountains that happened to be on even though it was 8 o'clock at night. The girls insisted they wanted to just look at them. Yeah, right! I think they lasted about five minutes and in the end, as I suspected, they played around in those things for a good 20 minutes. They were obviously completely soaked and all I had was my sweater for them to dry off on. We made them drive home in their underwear but it had been completely worth it. Brady watched from a distance...enjoying their excitement but not quite having the courage to join in. Either that, or he's the smart one. Their flight left very early the next morning so we parted ways with them there and as usual, wished we didn't live so far apart.
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| Admiring the train village. Yes, still set up for Christmas but they didn't seem to mind. |
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| Calleigh streaking through |
Sunday morning Duncan went an a long bike ride. His race is coming up in a few weeks and he needed the practice. Unfortunately he didn't bother looking at the weather report and ended up getting stuck in rain while he was all the way on the other side of town even past his parents. His mom had to rescue him and bring him home. That afternoon he took the girls to Ikea while I stayed home with a sleeping Brady and got stuff done around the house. The trip to Ikea was to get storage containers for the play room...this is the room that Duncan got inspired to work on this week. It doesn't take much prodding to get the girls to Ikea as they are always literally begging to go there to play in the kids' area.
Monday was a joyous day because it rained and it rained hard. Oh, how you love the rain when you have your own yard. I mentioned in a previous post that we had discovered our sprinkler system had been turned off for some number of weeks and our yard was certainly suffering. Of course, there is less rain during the winter and you're only allowed to water once a week so your grass is more likely to be less green but we see plenty of nice looking yards. So the rain is a total blessing. We've also hired a company to come in and treat the lawn from time to time so we're hoping for a nice turn around. Also on Monday, Duncan picked up some paint so that he could paint the play room and we would thus be able to get the containers attached to the walls and get rid of all our plastic bins. He was able to paint in a couple of hours after work and get the containers done although he was up there pretty late. Aubree stayed up helping him as she seems to be the one of the two girls that enjoys helping Daddy with his projects. Eventually, the sleep overtook her as well and she gave it up right on the floor.
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| We love you rain! |
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| Okay, I guess Calleigh did help. |
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| Before paint... |
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| After paint...he left an area of white at the top because we're putting up a high shelf. |
Tuesday our big project was to get everything transitioned to the new storage which was a task in itself because every time I would empty an old bin and move it to it's new home, one of the kids would suddenly want to play with that item. Yes, it ended up being quite a long task but eventually I got it all done which included reorganizing their play room closet. After Duncan got home from work, we decided to make another run to Ikea to get some curtains, shelving, and perhaps a rug and table. It was also Kids Eat Free night so we decided to make an evening of it. And no, Duncan did not get the meatballs. The girls were thrilled to be back at the play area which just left Brady who is, of course, the worst of the three to take around in the store especially now that I'm not employing the binky save. Thankfully we were able to find curtains, shelving, and a bookcase we will lie on its side to create a bench seat underneath the window.
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Wednesday morning we headed to the mall so I could check out JCPenney in my never-ending quest of finding curtains for the rest of the house. Apparently stores haven't gotten the memo that the latest trend on curtain hanging is to hang the rod halfway between the ceiling and the top of the window (so says Pinterest). Doing this, obviously means that you need longer curtains and yet, the longest you can find, almost everywhere is 96 inches whereas I need at least 104. See the problem? And who wants to buy curtains on-line without seeing the colors up close and personal? Fortunately with JCPenney, if I buy some curtains on-line as least I can return them easily to the store. They did have curtains I liked, naturally only up to 96 inches in the store, but I was able to go on-line and buy the longer ones. They should come next week and I pray they aren't a dud. They're for the living room.
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| The mall playground after JCPenney. |
Thursday morning we were at Costco for our weekly shopping trip. We came out to get in the van and Calleigh goes over to the front tire and says "Uh oh, Mommy. We have a flat tire." She has done this every week coming out of Costco since we actually had the flat tire. Ah yes...a five year old's sense of humor!
Thursday was also exciting in that we booked some plane tickets to go up for Music Clinic in Maine the first weekend in April. My mother rented this beautiful house up there in Freeport like she did last year and the year before when we joined them there. I didn't think there was any chance of us going this year because April is such a bad month to be flying up there because of spring break but as luck would have it, the first weekend is not the expensive time to fly (the next weekend, a completely different story). In the end, I used a few frequent flier miles and since the tickets were reasonable to begin with, it ended up being $300 for three tickets. Duncan won't be joining us (we're saving his time off for other trips) and Brady is happily still free for a few more months. Anyway, needless to say we're very excited about going. You would think Calleigh would be overjoyed about seeing her grandparents and cousins but the very first thing out of her mouth was "Yay!! Now we can go to a hockey game!" Perhaps or perhaps not. I looked at the Bruins tickets and the cheapest is $60. Yikes. We used to go for like $20 every Christmas but I guess that's when they stunk and nobody was buying up the nosebleed seats. This is what happens when they're good (13-2-2 as I write this). So we shall see.
This morning we were off to yard sales. There weren't a lot of quality sales today except for two where I found some good clothes for Calleigh and then another one where I scored a Little Tikes outdoor play set. I've actually been looking for one for awhile but the prices on Craig's List were still more than I have wanted to pay. You may ask why we aren't getting a full size swing set and that's simply because I don't want to have to watch Brady like a hawk as he tries to climb up it every which way. Plus, we are working on a whole master plan for our backyard and we don't want to do anything permanent until we have that all figured out. In the meantime, I thought a "mini" set would do the trick for now. I got the one for $50 today which I thought was a great deal since it's $140 new. Happy times.
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In other news, I was about to to write on her that I'm done with nursing Brady. We were barely doing once a day so early this week if he asked for some (which wasn't every day) I just distracted him. It had been like four days since anything and then this afternoon after his nap he seemed to be in a lousy mood and started trying to put his hand down my shirt and saying he wanted booby. I playfully swatted it away and told him he was a big boy (plus, who knew if there would even be milk after this many days?) but he kept being so rotten and coming back over to me every few minutes. I finally relented and it was like he was on cloud nine. I honestly have no idea if anything actually came out but it seems like all he wanted was that closeness or something because afterwards he was cheery. I'm hoping that's the end though.
Also on the Brady front, his eating seems to be going downhill. It seems practically everything I put on his plate he says "Yuck!" to. Yes, this is undoubtedly his favorite word right now. I have no idea who planted this word in his head but everything from soup to biscuits to peas to even cheese, when he's apparently not in the mood for it, has been met with a look of disdain and proclaimed to be "YUCK!" As in, "Mother, how dare you even think of serving this to me!" At this point, I'm afraid he is going to be part of the Calleigh school of eating which is to say the school that barely likes anything as opposed to the Aubree school whose motto is "I'll eat anything or at least try it once." Hmmm. It's hard to be too frustrated since I am, perhaps, also part of the Calleigh school to some extent.
On that note, and now that I am thinking about food and want to raid the fridge, I will bid you adieu. Happy Sabbath!
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| "Man, I sure hope the next one's a boy." |
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| Helping me make biscuits to go with some homemade chicken noodle soup. |
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| Friday afternoon shopping with Daddy so Mommy can clean the house. |
