Kara's Birthday Weekend

As I know I have written many times, our kids get a choice on their birthday: a party with friends, a gift, or an outing (when they were little, the outing was frequently Great Wolf Lodge). On Sunday, Kara turned 14 and she chose a gift. 

Her birthday extravaganza started on Friday. She skipped school and we went to the mall to let her pick out Doc Martens boots. She also got some goodies at Bath and Body Works. Then, we went to lunch at her chosen restaurant--Olive Garden. We were going to go to Fun Spot that night, but the forecast wasn't great, so we stayed home.

Trying out the brownie lasagna.

Showing off her new Docs

Saturday, she wanted to go to the library. I took her, Jack, and Luke (Jack drove) to the downtown branch, which is our favorite. While we did that, Thomas took Anna to ice skating. After lunch, the girls, Thomas and I went to Universal Studios. We started on the Studios side and rode Jimmy Fallon. Then, we went to MIB. They shut the ride down right before our turn. We ended up waiting an extra 30ish minutes because someone lost a flip flop and demanded it be retrieved. The worker said that normally if someone loses something they make them wait until the end of the night to get it at lost and found. She said this person must have been very demanding, since they try not to shut down rides, especially MIB, which is 23 years old. It was annoying to wait, but the story made it worthwhile. Can you imagine the level of self-importance that would make you inconvenience hundreds of people to get back a flip flop now versus at the end of the night??? Especially when they sell footwear at the park. Weird! 

We had dinner at Kara's chosen spot, Red Oven Pizzeria in City Walk, one of my favorites. Then, we went to Islands. We rode lots of rides with very little wait including walking directly onto Trolley in the Sky! We left around 8:30. I think the girls would have stayed longer, but Thomas and I were tired! 

Trying out the Mardi Gras cake.

The castle lit up for Gryffindor during the nighttime show.

Caroseussel!

Strike a pose in City Walk

Sunday was Kara's actual birthday. We had donuts for breakfast and spent a lot of the day baking. Kara wanted to make her own cake. I assisted and took care of dish duty. Her theme was "chocolate covered strawberries." She made a strawberry cake from scratch with homemade chocolate buttercream. She put a layer of strawberries in the middle and decorated the cake with chocolate covered strawberries. The individual parts were amazing! But, I am not sure the chocolate frosting complemented the strawberry cake as much as a plain buttercream or strawberry frosting might have (writing this in case we make it again so we remember). Regardless, it was very tasty and she did a fantastic job. I think it is the best buttercream I have ever tasted (espresso powder put it over the top) and the strawberry flavor in the cake was on point. Kara also made the cookie dough for the Valentine's cookies she is going to make for her friends. In between baking, we went for a walk and she played poker with Thomas and Jack.

We had the cake and she opened gifts--a Wicked shirt from Jack and Etsy slime from Anna and Luke. I hope she felt very loved and celebrated during her weekend 'o fun. It is hard to believe she is 14 now. We looked at pictures and read stories from previous birthdays. We feel lucky to have her for our daughter! She also received many many texts from many many friends.

Ren Fair, Wicked, etc

Jack asked a few months ago to go to a Renaissance Festival, at the time there were none in the area. But, we didn't forget his request. So, when we saw one coming to Melbourne, we decided to go. It wasn't nearly as big as the one in Maryland, but it was fun. We saw a few shows. Everyone agreed that the jousting was the favorite. Jack was a little disappointed, he expected it to be more historical, but it was just like every renaissance festival/fair I've ever been to (more fantasy than history). My brother lives nearby, so he met us there. Then, we went and saw his new house. It was a fun day.

The "wheel of death" was cool, we had seem him perform in Maryland and enjoyed his show at both events.

Wicked is playing at the Dr. Philips Center. Kara is really interested in theater right now, so I wanted to take her. But, tickets were really expensive and there weren't many seats available. I decided to try my hand at their ticket lottery. And, I won! We got tickets for $31 each. We had to go on a Wednesday night, and we didn't know where our seats would be until one hour before the show. But, $31 was way less than any seat in the house, so we vowed to not be disappointed no matter what. And, our seats were great! They were in the 4th row, off to the left. The view was very slightly obstructed, but overall was way better than expected. I am not sure how those seats were chosen. I asked the people to the left of us (so even more obstructed than ours) if they were also Lucky Seat recipients and she said no and volunteered that they paid $125/ticket + fees! We both loved the show. Elphaba and Glinda were especially amazing. Although, Kara said she liked the show Anastasia, which we saw in DC, better. We didn't get home until 1130, but both us were fine getting up for work/school the next day.

View from our seats.

If you can't read the sign, it says "Our World Famous Gummy Bears." Obviously, we had to test that out. Kara said they were really good.

Anna made a friend at ice skating and met her at the open skate on Saturday. It was the first time Anna has done the games at the skating session and she had a good time. She made some skating goals for 2023 and is interested in learning a routine to compete. She is going to look for a coach and see what happens. 

Grainy picture of Anna skating. It was captured from a video I took of her practicing a jump.

Luke and Anna spent a night at Marta's a couple of weeks ago. She took them and her grandson, George to Legoland on Saturday. They had a very fun time. Kara went with me to pick them up on Saturday night. We got to town early and did some shopping and she got a milkshake from Andy's, which is a Winter Haven staple. I am still doing no sugar, so I didn't get one. But, Kara said hers was amazing. She let me choose for her and I got her the fruit salad milkshake, which doesn't sound appealing, but trust me--it's the best! We stayed for dinner at Marta's house and then made the drive home.

In other news, Luke had his first baseball tournament this weekend. His team only won 1/4 games. But, Luke played well. He had some great defensive plays. In fact, he had an unassisted double play. He caught a ball and then tagged a runner out. So, that was cool. He also did well with batting. Jack had a basketball game, I was with Anna at ice-skating, so I missed the game, but his team won and Thomas said Jack played well.