Routine

With the school year back in session, life is continuing in its routine pattern. I could almost copy and paste last week's entry: we went to Hollywood Studios again on Wednesday night. Luke had baseball, Kara had lacrosse. Anna and I volunteered again. Although, this time it was at the concession stand for the football game. There was no XC meet this week, and Jack enjoyed staying for the entire football game.

Anna went ice skating with a friend on Saturday. It made her a little sad. It has been about a year since she quit skating and while she misses it, it didn't feel the same to be back. Luke had another baseball tournament, it did not go well; his team is in a bit of a slump. 

It doesn't get any more high pressure than this. Luke was up with the bases loaded and two outs. He worked it to a full count. He ended up walking, which meant the game was 10-9. However, the next batter grounded out and they lost the game. 

On Saturday night, Kara and I went to Howl-O-Scream, SeaWorld's Halloween event. It is a much smaller scale event than HHN (Universal). HHN has 10 haunted houses, SeaWorld has 5. SeaWorld does have more scare zones and shows, but nothing is quite as elaborate. Although, there was one house that I thought was really good (Atlantis) and another that had an interesting concept that was unlike anything we had done (Delirium). But, overall, I would say it was just okay. I don't really enjoy the 'scariness' of these events, rather I enjoy the sets and production aspect, which HHN excels at. We did enjoy riding the rides in the dark and went on three of their coasters twice with very little wait. So, it was definitely worth going to, although I don't think it is something we need to do every year. Maybe an every-other-year-if-we-get-a-good-deal kind of outing. 

I took the morning off on Tuesday (the 24th) to take my dad to a doctor's appointment. He is doing better and is much less foggy than he was a few months ago. It is hard to believe that we are coming up to a year since the surgery that started his mental decline.

Now, we are mid-way through a slightly less routine week. School was canceled today (Thursday) for a hurricane. It is passing well north of us, but is definitely a dangerous storm. We aren't seeing any bad weather and school will be back in session tomorrow. Kara and I took advantage and went to HHN last night. It was much more crowded than we expected, but we had a good time. I still had to get up for work this morning, but it was nice for Kara to stay out late and then sleep in.

One house Kara and I visited had a 20-minute posted wait. The line isn't visible from the main park, you have to walk backstage to get to it. When we saw the line, we knew the 20 minutes was wildly inaccurate. But, it was a house we wanted to do so we decided to wait. This particular line is indoors and has about 20 switchback lines. Someone had blown up a balloon and it was bouncing through the crowd. Any time it fell to the ground, everyone booed. We ended up waiting for 46 minutes and the time flew by. That balloon united the crowd. Many people put their phones away and joined in the group effort of keeping the balloon in the air. Unfortunately, it popped as we neared the end of the line, but for about 30 minutes, we were one team with a joint purpose. 

Blue Balloon for President!

I guess that is about it. As a few updates--Anna has not heard back from Panera and the Flying Tigers lost their next two games and the championship.