Birthday Celebrations

Since moving to Florida and buying all kinds of annual passes, we have not been celebrating birthdays in the traditional way. Well, I guess in part we do. We still have cake and a birthday meal. But, instead of a party or big gift (their choice when we lived in Maryland), here, when it is your birthday, you get to choose a theme park and then dictate the day.

Anna wanted to go to Busch Gardens, but we convinced her to wait until the weather was nice. To reward her for her patience, we decided to go on a day when crowds are very light--which meant pulling the kids out of school. We haven't done that yet this year, at least not for something fun, so we figured one day was okay. We went on Monday, February 3rd, a mere 4 months after her actual birthday. (whoops!) We arrived at park opening and went straight to Cobra's Curse--a family favorite. We ended up riding it 5 times that day! Anna rode all the roller coasters, most of them multiple times, which I think was her birthday goal. We pretty much could just walk on whatever ride we wanted. It was very fun. We also saw a lunch time doo wop show and a pretty amazing ice skating show. Luke rode the log flume 5 or 6 times and absolutely loved it. They have two really cool playground areas, they are multi-level, with climbing nets, crawl tubes, and rope mazes. All the kids enjoyed running around. We ended up leaving around 3 and had an easy drive home. The day was amazing and a huge success and I wish we could skip school and work more often!

We loved the Sesame Street topiaries

The birthday girl!

Today, Saturday, February 8th, we celebrated Kara's birthday. She chose the Magic Kingdom. We got there at opening and went straight to Space Mountain. We were on and off in about 15 minutes. By the time we got off, the line was probably around an hour. And, by mid-afternoon it was over 2. We rode several rides in the first 2 hours and then our fast passes started. We had lunch and spent about an hour on Tom Sawyer's Island. The wait times were crazy by now, for example, 80 minutes for Haunted Mansion. I remember when February was a slow month! But, Kara had planned perfectly and we did all our rides during the first two hours plus our three fast pass rides (Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder and Peter Pan). After that, we got ice cream and did the show-type attractions: Hall of Presidents, Carousel of Progress and Monster's Inc. We left around 5 and had a relaxing night at home. It was a nice day.

On a funny note, Anna and I were both wearing Hollywood Elementary shirts. I teased her that we were twins and thought she might go change, but she went with it.

Luke was nervous, but has gained some bravery since the last time he rode. He loved it!

They look a little nervous...

My favorite ride photos come from Haunted Mansion

A nice family photo.

It's been a fun weekend. Friday night we went to Sea World. We bought the dining plan, so it is nice to go, have dinner and walk around for a couple of hours. They are having their version of Food and Wine and we got a special dessert--Cheesecake in a cone. It was pretty good and we look forward to trying more items. There was an amazing sunset and I had fun trying to get a good picture.

In random news, Luke got picked for Rocker of the Week. He was the first boy picked when school started (his teacher alternates between boys and girls) and was the first picked after everyone had their turn. It was a fun week for him. He got to bring in items for their estimation jar (fun sized M&Ms, there were 32 and he said guesses ranged from 5 to over 100), an item for show and tell, and his favorite book. He is really doing amazing in kindergarten.