***I am having technical difficulties so pictures will be posted at a later date.***
The hospital had it's annual leadership weekend this past weekend and when I told the kids we were going to Hollywood, they got all excited - - "We're going to Hollywood, California?!!" I had to repeat myself about three times that no, there is a Hollywood in Florida too. Fortunately, that was still exciting for them.
Hollywood, Florida is on the Atlantic coast between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Last year we went to Marco Island which is on the Gulf side down near Ft. Myers and it was so terrific we were hoping to go again. But alas, the hotel is under renovations so we couldn't go. Instead, it was the Diplomat Resort & Spa in Hollywood. In prior years I might have thought "Wow, it's great we are going so far south so that we can still swim in the warmer weather and water." No need this year. It is seriously still in the upper 80's here and the kids were swimming in a non-heated pool just yesterday. I think we are skipping fall this year and just going straight to Christmas. Global Warming at its finest. Ha!
We left early Thursday morning for the 3.5 hour trip there. Duncan's meeting started at 1:30 so the plan was to get lunch on the way down. We were in the mood for breakfast and after some digging on Yelp, we found a place, Giorgio's Bakery & Bistro, about five minutes from the hotel that served breakfast until noon. We made it just in time. What did we do before smart phones? The restaurant had seating right along the Intercoastel so we had a great view of boats passing by. The food came really quickly and was excellent but the best part was watching the kids, especially Brady, chase all the birds that kept coming and trying to steal food off our plates.
I was curious as to what our sleeping arrangements would be at the hotel because unlike prior years where they've had suites which have pull-out couches, etc, this hotel did not have that. It is getting a little crowded for all of us sleeping in one room (although technically, it still works because Colby sleeps in his pack and play - - actually that's a joke now that I think about it -- and Brady sleeps on the floor) but we were hoping to have more room than that. We called the evening before and found out we indeed had two connecting rooms so the girls were very happy since it meant they would have their own beds. Of course, you know as I write this they are snuggled up together in the same bed in their room despite having another bed at their disposal. Apparently they have different standards while on vacation.
We were very pleased that we could check in early at 1:00 before Duncan's meeting so that we could get settled and then go down to the pool and ocean while he was occupied. The kids had high hopes for the ocean but as we walked into the pool area to make our way to the ocean, their friend, Sarah Chobotar was standing there talking to an employee about how she had just gotten stung from a jellyfish. Yikes! That put a damper on things. The story was that this time of the year the jellyfish are in abundance. Shucks. That limited it to just playing in the sand. The odd thing was that the kids kept finding dead jellyfish everywhere and it turns them into this white translucent squishy object that they were picking up and playing with. Turns out hunting for dead jellyfish is a lot of fun. So at least it wasn't a total bust.
The weekend went very well. The kids had a great time with their friends - - David and Jonathan Biri, who they see frequently and then also some they don't see often like Carlos and Isabella Poloche. Calleigh was in a separate class this year for grades three and up which was overseen by Tracy Mastrapa who does an excellent job. Aubree was also by herself for K-2. Isabella will be eight soon but she is in second grade so she was Aubree's companion for every session. It was so cute seeing them because they are the exact same size and they would go everywhere arm in arm, giggling. Most of Aubree's friends are Calleigh's friends so it's nice to see her with her own (although Calleigh was also hanging around with them too). This left me with the boys, of course. I could have left Brady but the little ones have to be three and potty trained to be left in the class. The question is - - will Colby be potty trained by next year? If he's anything like Brady, that will be a "No!" A few years back, they had a nice older couple (who were from Massachusetts so obviously they are nice!) who would do a whole Sabbath School type class but since they've left, it's been more like a babysitting service where you drop off the kids (if they're potty trained) and they have stations where you play cars, do crafts, watch a movie, etc. There isn't a program or anything. So mostly I would just sit there on the sidelines and watch the boys play with the cars which it seems like they did for hours - - especially Colby. It all went fine but then Sabbath morning, when a program would be nice, the lady ended up putting on Tom & Jerry! Because we all watch Tom & Jerry on Sabbath morning, right??! I suppose I should have said something but you kind of just redirect the kids to a different spot. But then it got me thinking, I need to recruit someone to come do an actual program here like they used to do.
Friday afternoon after we had lunch at Panera (you're on your own for Friday lunch), part of the family headed to the beach while the other part headed to the room for a nap (lucky me!). For whatever reason, the jellyfish weren't a problem any more. I don't know if they died or what but the kids all got into the water with no problems. Go figure.
Tom and Jerry aside, Sabbath was a neat day. The hospital organized this whole event where all of FH leadership would help pack bagged meals made of rice, beans, and seasonings for the needy. We have taken the kids to do this each year (at our church, etc) so we were very familiar with the process. The instructions were that it was for grades three and up but we were confident that Aubree was capable and since Duncan was a table leader, we knew it would be fine. The neat thing was that when we got there we found out that the food was being shipped to Haiti. Each week for our Bible class, we read about a country - - it's population, religion, challenges the people face, etc and then we pray for the people. On Tuesday of that week, we had learned about Haiti and prayed for those people and now we were packing meals for them. Pretty awesome. The girls did so great. They packed for over 1.5 hours with not a complaint. Brady really wanted to do it too but it was just too quick for him. I could probably have helped him but I had Colby to contend with. In the end, everyone together packed over 250,000 meals. I hope they do it again next year. Great idea whoever thought of it.
Saturday night, though, was the pinnacle for the kids. In prior years, Saturday night has always been a night of fun whether it be some bouncy houses, face painting, ice cream sundaes, etc. Some years have been better than others. But this year, wow, they set the bar REALLY high. It was a whole carnival in one of the giant ballrooms. It was amazing. You really felt like you were at a carnival. They had clowns, people on stilts, giant balloon characters, a bunch of bouncy houses and rides, ice cream, popcorn, and a whole section with midway games complete with prizes (like giant stuffed animal prizes). Best of all, to me, was the man walking around with the monkey you could hold! It was like a dream come true for a kid. About thirty minutes in, things took a scary turn when I heard them calling some of the big wigs over to this particular ride where you have to jump over and duck under this swinging arm (it's just a blow up so you wouldn't get really hurt if it hit you). The game has these platforms you stand on so they got some of the VP's to stand on each platform, I guess for fun to see who the last man standing would be. Well, right after it starts, Rob Fulbright who is/was the Administrator of the Orlando campus, tried to duck out of the way or something, and ended up doing a back flip off the platform. It wouldn't normally be a big deal because it's all padded (like a bouncy house) but somehow he hit something metal with his back. They made an announcement for everyone to leave the immediate area and we saw the paramedics arrive. Thankfully after about thirty minutes, one of the doctors from FH who was there, announced that he was okay but they were taking him to the ER. As he was being wheeled off, Rob gave a thumb's up - - like how a football player does it during a game when he's carted off. We all breathed a sigh of relief. We found out later that he had broken three vertebrae. Scary!
The only thing stinky about the weekend, literally, was having to share a bed with Colby. Duncan took the other double in our room since I knew I'd be bunking with Colby. He fell asleep in bed with me and when I tried to move him, he woke up and started crying so it ended up being an all night thing which meant I kept waking up seemingly every hour. At some point, I realized that the bed smelled like pee - - sure enough, he had wet through his diaper. Yay for me! At least I didn't have to change the sheets myself. The next night I was like "Yeah know, just take the whole bed for yourself." After he fell asleep, I put pillows all around the edge to keep him from falling off and then I moved over to the bed with Duncan. I was worried that he might be perturbed that he didn't have any hair to fiddle with all night but he slept fine. So that's how I played that and it worked much better. Of course, most places we go, I don't have the luxury of another bed to move to so it would be nice if he could kick this habit!
Last year they changed how they do the weekend. They no longer have meetings on Sunday mornings so it was nice to be able to eat breakfast and then leave. There is always much to be done at home!
Going back to the week before to get caught up with events...We had a field trip on Tuesday (the third) to learn about the Jesus film at the headquarters for Campus Crusade for Christ. I knew virtually nothing about it but when one of my homeschool groups sent on an invite, I thought it sounded good and it worked with our schedule. I had totally forgotten about it until the night before and it only ended up being us and one other family but it was so, so good and so, so perfect for what we are studying in school. This year for Geography we are studying various countries. Every two weeks, we "fly" to a new country and focus on that country for the two weeks. We started off with the US (which really was a review from last year since we studied the US for the whole year) and then our next country is Mexico. To go along with that, we are studying about various missionaries and their work in the corresponding countries. We are doing a read-aloud right now about Cameron Townsend who went to Guatemala (not exactly Mexico but close enough!) as a missionary and ended up translating the New Testament into a language for some local Indians who didn't even have a written language yet. We are still reading the book so we don't know all that he has done yet but I've heard through the grapevine that he started Wycliffe Bible Translators, which is here in Orlando, and which is the entity that translates this Jesus film into many languages. This Jesus film was made in the late 70's in English, but then over the years people realized that when you are trying to reach people about Jesus who have never heard of him, it is so much more meaningful if Jesus is speaking to you in your own language. Thus was born the idea to "dub" the voices into other languages (subtitles aren't good enough!) It is truly amazing how you can take recorded voices in say, Swahili, and have it look like the film is actually in that language. The tour we did was showing us how they they do that. They have translated the film into over 1,300 languages. It was really, really remarkable and I was truly touched by our tour and even shed a few tears when they showed us footage of people watching the film and learning about Jesus for the first time. We will go on a field trip to Wycliffe later in the year and then the kids will see how Cameron Townsend has been so instrumental in making this Jesus film come together. Such a great tie-in with our school year even though I didn't even plan it.
For the past week and a half, I've been diligently working on getting clothes tagged and organized for a consignment sale this week. I missed out on doing the one in September but they are having a special holiday one this week and I jumped on it. I literally have 18 bins of clothes (AFTER I consigned) sitting in my guest room right now and I feel like I have clothes coming out of my ears. I got a lot of clothes in the early years from Jennifer and I didn't want to consign her clothes so I had been waiting for her to go through them and take her stuff back. That means that I've had like two years worth of Colby's clothes accumulating without getting rid of them. You can only consign 200 articles of clothes at each sale so I'm never going to catch up. I need to come up with an alternate plan of what to do with all this stuff. It would be nice to find someone needy.
A little anecdote although not really about the sale - - I went a few days ago to drop my stuff off and since it was the evening and Duncan was home with the kids, I thought I'd do a few errands while out. About a month ago, I made crepes for the first time. I so love the crepes at First Watch and have been wanting to try it at home but never got around to it. While I finally did and I have to say, I nailed it. It came out perfectly and really tastes like the ones from there. The only problem is that strawberries (they are strawberry and banana crepes with strawberry yogurt on top) are not exactly in season right now. They are $3.99 a pound at Publix but I have been able to find them at Costco for like $5.50 for two pounds. Well, last time at Costco, they had no strawberries at all. I have been yearning to make the crepes again so I thought to myself "I'll just make a stop at my old Walmart while I'm here in Casselberry and pick up some strawberries." Low and behold! When I got in there, they were $6.94 a pound! I checked the label to see if they were made of gold. I mean, the only thing and I mean the ONLY thing Walmart has going for it are their prices and if they don't have that, what DO they have left?! Case in point, as I was walking around (yes, I still stayed because I'm also out of Stripples and I know those are cheaper than Publix) I see these two guys standing there and I'm not lying when I say the guy's pants were down in the back to his knees. He had boxers on underneath so I couldn't see anything but that's how he strolled around the store as if it was perfectly normal (and sadly, maybe it is). But then, ironically, these same two guys get in line behind me to pay and when I look at them, they only have about 10 things in their cart and six of them where Morningstar products! I started looking at them in a whole new light. I guess if they are fellow vegetarians then maybe they aren't so bad!!
Usually I would show pictures to tell what else we've been doing but I guess that will have to wait. Technology is both a blessing and a curse.
Have a great week.
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