We cleaned out the attic a few weeks ago and I found a Collector’s Tin of Crayola crayons that I’d kept from when I was a kid. It was something I’d forgotten all about, having received the tin as a gift when I was just a little too old to care about crayons anymore and so it was put away in a box and moved from apartment to apartment and house to house.

When I found it, I was sure that they’d all be melted since they’d been in a box in the attic for over a decade. Surprisingly when I opened the tin, the crayons were fine.

As a kid, one of my favorite things in the ENTIRE WORLD was a brand new box of crayons. Their smell!  Their newness! All in tact, their paper unripped. We’ve survived on remnants of restaurant crayons for all these years, with the exception of the box of 16 crayons that was on Carson’s Kindergarten school supply list.  My poor, deprived children.

Since Carson has recently started to be interested in drawing and coloring, I showed him what I found in the attic.

This box of 64 crayons, complete with built-in sharpener, and this kid! MAN! His mind was BLOWN!  He couldn’t get over 64 CRAYONS! In ONE box!  With a sharpener! He studied each and every crayon for a good half hour.

“Look, Mom!  This one says, ‘sky blue,’ and this one says, ‘salmon!’ Have you ever even HEARD of that?!”

He doesn’t want his sister to even look in the direction of the crayons, with her bull-in-a-china-shop ways.  He wants to avoid any risk of the 64 perfect crayons getting broken.

And when I was at the grocery store yesterday, I saw that they now sell boxes of 96 crayons.  I guess they’ve been selling these boxes for awhile, but I just discovered their existence.

Guess what he’s getting for Valentine’s Day? He is going to FLIP OUT!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Tate and I had a date set up for last Friday night, so despite feeling like crud-o-la, we packed the kids off to the trusty Parent’s Night Out program at one of the local churches.  This was the first time we’d been able to do this since August, Carson was actually sent off with the big, elementary age kids for the first time ever and Ella stayed with the other preschoolers.  The church makes you take a card with your child’s information on it and it must be used to get your child back.  No card-no kid.  I guess they send those to the dungeon at the church if the parents don’t have their card at the end of the night. I don’t want to find out!

The older kids only get signed in, no card was given when Carson was dropped off, which made Tate very nervous.  I’m protective of the kids, sure, but Tate is even more protective and he didn’t feel at all comfortable with the way it didn’t seem as secure for the older kids.  I brushed it off and assured him that he was being a little anal and to relax because it DATE NIGHT WOO HOO! (Cough, snort, where’s my cold medicine?!?!)

We ate at one of those Brazilian restaurants where the men come by with hunks of meat that they carve off for you.  Our date included three other couples- there was lots of laughing and wine sipping and general merriment.  It’s all fun and games until the bill shows up, amirite?!  HOLY $126 DINNER.  I mean, it was fun to hang out with friends and eat a lot of carved meat, but it wasn’t $126 fun.  This part of the post has nothing to do with anything-really it’s just a public service announcement:  BEWARE OF BILLS AT BRAZILIAN STEAKHOUSES.

You’re welcome!

So if you’re one of those sleuth types, you may have already realized that when we went to pick up the kids, we learned that the night didn’t go so well for Carson.  Somehow, not too long before we came to pick him up, Carson got separated from his class as they were leaving the movie room. He says that he went straight back to his classroom, but nobody was there.  Somehow he managed to make it all the way upstairs, where a volunteer eventually found him sobbing.

I have no idea what the actual timeline of events really is, I have no idea if his teacher ever even knew he was missing.  I’m confused how a child could get separated from his class and manage to make it past where I would have assumed adults would have been monitoring doors and up a set of stairs before he was found.  I don’t want to be alarmist or make a mountain out of a molehill, but you know-when you trust people to watch your child-and that is basically their SOLE responsibility, it’s a bit disconcerting that something like this could happen.

I hardly slept that night, waffling between being utterly FURIOUS and grateful that he was smart enough not to go outside or get lost in the church. (It’s one of those mega churches with a school attached, so he could have easily gotten lost in the building.)

I should have called the director of the Parent’s Night Out Program, but I was afraid that I’d cry and sound either like a blubbering mom or a maniac.  I did email the director, though, so that she’ll at least be aware that they LOST MY CHILD last Friday.  Obviously they need to put into place a better system for keeping track of kids.

Unrelated to any of this, my cold is almost gone!  So that’s good, right?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

I know that watching too much TV is bad, but I also know that movies and shows have inspired their love for not only reenacting the stories, but extending the stories with their own imaginations into epic adventures.

Our Saturday mornings are usually devoted to pajamas, waffle consumption, and cartoons. I somehow slept through the waffle portion of the morning and awoke to find Carson and Ella absorbed in the pages of a Tintin comic book instead of staring at the TV screen. While Ella and I enjoyed a girls weekend away several weeks ago, Carson and Tate had a boys weekend complete with pizza and a trip to the movie theater to see The Adventures of Tintin-where Carson has found new source of inspiration.

After school last week, I could hear them in the other room playing, caught up in an elaborate scheme to find the clues while getting away from the bad guys.

“Come on,” Carson yelled to Ella, “we can hide in here.”

“Tintin!” Ella called to Carson, “the bad guy has me!  Save me, Tintin!”

They went on like this, replaying scenes over and over, changing the details to include sword fights and capes. Running and hiding, they laughed and yelled and pretended to be in great distress.  I stealthily peeked in on them and they immediately froze when they spotted me, too shy to continue their acting.  I begged them to go on, to show me what it’s like to be the good guys.

But it’s not the same with someone watching, so I left them and listened around the corner as they picked up right where they left off in their Tintin adventure, defeating the bad guys with great gusto.

::

I’m so excited to be partnering with Hallmark for their Life is a Special Occasion campaign this year.  I will finally be forced to learn that there is only one “s” in “occasion!”  Of course, I am also so excited for the chance to share the stories from our life.

Hallmark is compensating me for participation in this campaign. As always-all opinions expressed are my own.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

“There’s not really enough snow for playing. It’s just a dusting. You can see most of the grass, for goodness sakes!”

“No, Mommy, see?” Carson pointed out the window. “There’s snow all over the driveway!”

Well, they did cancel school.  I guess it wouldn’t have been a real snow day if we hadn’t:

1. Taken 45 minutes to find all the hats, mittens, and boots.

2. Taken another 45 minutes to get dressed in double layers.

3. Made a snow angel in what little snow there was

4. Played for two minutes outside before:
a. Someone needed to pee
b. Someone complained of being freezing cold

5. Came inside and undressed, leaving a pile of wet clothes in a heap on the floor

6. Had hot chocolate:
a. With marshmallows

Truth? I love these days as much as they do.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

We received SEGA’s family friendly game, Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games (affiliate link) as part of a family game night package that also included popcorn, nuts, and candy for free.  I received no other compensation. All opinions are my own…and my children’s own. 

Left to their own devices, my children, especially Carson, would love nothing more than to spend all day, every day playing Wii.  I’ve had to set limits on Wii play, they’re only allowed to play on the weekends and only for two hours.

Both kids love all things Mario. We are well stocked with Mario games, their favorites being Mario Sports Mix and Mario Kart. These games can easily be played by young kids, unlike several games in our library that cause nothing but screaming fits because they are so complicated.  I’d seen Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games advertised and had considered it for a Christmas gift for them, so I was VERY excited that I was contacted to review the game with the kids.  When it came in the mail I just couldn’t wait until Christmas to give it to them.

Luckily Carson, age six, and Ella, age four, both easily picked up on how to play Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Ella actually loses interest pretty quickly in playing Wii, but she loves to watch her brother battle it out as one of the characters in discus, swimming, volleyball, track, and gymnastics.

Carson loves the new-to-him characters like Sonic and Vector the Crocodile.  His favorite game to play is the 4 x 100 meter relay, with Sonic, Silver, Shadow, and Knuckles.

“Watch this cool trick, Mom,” he’ll say as one of the Sonic characters performs some cool stunt that puts them in the lead.

This game is apparently not just for kids. After Carson and Ella were carefully tucked in bed, I caught my husband picking up the Wii remote to play a little Mario & Sonic.  I keep catching him as Sonic on the parallel bars in the gymnastics game.

This game is available for Wii right now!  Which? Is perfect for Christmas!  It will be available for the Nintendo 3DS in February.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks for your supportive comments.  And by supportive comments I mean, I could hear you sighing and shaking your head at me, but then gently smiling and telling me what I needed to hear.  You guys, we would so totally be friends in real life.

Okay, so let’s move on and pretend that I’m a totally normal, well adjusted human being that doesn’t project her feelings on unsuspecting bearded men wearing red suits!

Saturday night was my husband’s annual work Christmas party.  Since our babysitter was totally SELFISH and decided to go away to college (RUDE!), I had to find someone new to stay with Carson and Ella.

Let me back up a bit and tell you that both of my children had been sick, Carson especially so, but on Saturday they both seemed FINE.  Perfectly fine!  Healthy, even.  Carson seemed to be over his “puke in bed every night” illness, so I wasn’t worried about leaving him with a babysitter.  OH THE FORESHADOWING.

When the new babysitter arrived, Tate asked her about what she was studying in school.  Turns out that our new babysitter is training to be a paramedic, which fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) came in quite handy while she was on duty.

It was the pile of Carson’s sheets, his PJs, and Lou Bear by the laundry room that we found as soon as we got home that was the first clue.

I expected to find pure chaos when I found the babysitter and Carson. If I had ever had to deal with puke as a babysitter, I would have freaked the freak out! The babysitter, looking calm yet concerned, was just toweling off a freshly bathed and very pale Carson when I found them.  Apparently my poor little guy had puked in his bed and had some other “issues” of the bottom.  Super Paramedic Babysitter had already cleaned him AND his room up.

I apologized profusely to her for having left her with a sick kid and having to deal with vomit, etc.  She seemed completely unfazed.  “It’s just body fluids,” she said. “And it easier to deal with when it’s from a cute kid.”

“Just body fluids” that don’t belong to your own child, cute or not, are still BODY FLUIDS of the disgusting kind.

I felt like I should pay her double, no quadruple, and then offer to send her on an all expense paid trip to Jamaica or something.

And on top of all that, she’d cleaned up the kitchen after dinner. She wins at babysitting.

I’m not sure if I can ever call her again to babysit after all this.  I mean, can I?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Then I grew older and learned the truth.  No, he didn’t exist, but I still cherished the magical feeling the belief in Santa brought to all those Christmases. I can’t imagine my childhood without Santa! It’s a tradition I never considered NOT carrying on with my kids.

I’ll admit that I’m not really feeling Christmas this year.  Santa and all his cohorts with their gifts are making me feel overwhelmed. I look around my children’s playroom (and their bedrooms, and my living room, and under the couches, and in closets, and under my feet) and can see clearly that they have too much STUFF.  They’re completely spoiled.

They have no idea what it is to want for anything, let alone that other people struggle to have even the most basic of their needs met.  My kids will not only wake up in a warm bed Christmas morning and have a filling breakfast while wearing brand new PJs, they’ll also have a ridiculous number of gifts to open from Tate and I, from grandparents, aunts and uncles, and because he’s a part of our tradition, there will be gifts from Santa.  We are so incredibly blessed that this is the case, that we can provide their basic needs and much, MUCH more.  But the part of this that isn’t sitting well with me is that they EXPECT these gifts and in their innocent, age-appropriate way, they feel ENTITLED to these gifts.

Santa really is just a metaphor for “On Christmas, we get TOO MANY PRESENTS,” to the extent that Christmas seems like it’s just about gifts and that’s it.  And WE DID THIS, my husband and I.  We are the ones who have allowed Christmas to get out of control and haven’t showed them that Christmas is about giving and the celebration of Jesus’ birth.  I get that  Carson and Ella are just little kids and we have just wanted to fill them with magic and wonder, but I feel we’ve done a huge disservice to them by showering them with more STUFF and by perpetuating the myth of Santa.  Last year in an effort to put a limit on MORE! STUFF!, my husband and I decided that Santa would only be bringing one gift, he and I would give them two more for a total of three.  The thought process behind this idea was that Jesus got three gifts, so that’s what they would get, too.

But that doesn’t include the truckloads of gifts that will arrive from extended family.  Which?  I don’t want to deprive our family from the joy of giving either.

Then there’s this whole idea of Santa.  I’m mean, I simply can’t imagine Christmas without Santa, but I also feel like the whole idea of Santa is like an out of control car that we can’t jump off of.  It’s too late now to take Santa out of Christmas, and really, that’s not what I want at all.  In my heart, though, I feel really conflicted. I’m trying to get my children to love and believe in Jesus, but here in a few years they’ll find out that Santa isn’t real, but oh, that other guy, Jesus?  The one you can’t see either?  Well, HE is real. Yes, I know I lied about Santa, but I’m not lying about Jesus.  You should just trust me on this.  Really??

I’m struggling with how to make Christmas magical for my children without giving up Santa, but also stressing the Jesus part. (Or even if I were not Christian, I’d still want it to be more than just about STUFF, you know?)  What does the middle ground look like where Santa visits and Jesus is front and center and the kids get a few gifts and they APPRECIATE each one?  How do we jump off the runaway car?

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Last year, age five seemed old and he seemed like such a kid, but six…MAN, six feels like school-age kid.  Probably because he is a kid who’s, you know, school-age, but he’s got this whole life that’s separate from the rest of the family. This school-age kid takes the bus to go on field trips and says, “easy peasy,” when he talks about school, and has conversations with friends that I’ll never know anything about.

Six.  I’m pretty sure that six is going to be a good year (and expensive as he outgrows all of his clothes).

Grade: Kindergarten

Favorite thing about school: going to computer center

Favorite TV show: Monster Jam

Favorite food: Hamburgers, pizza, macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, french fries, and ketchup. Edited to add per Carson’s request: Pumpkin pie and apple pie.

Favorite toy: monster trucks

Best thing about being six: I learned how to ride my bike without training wheels

Favorite book: Captain Underpants

Favorite color: Blue

Favorite thing to do: Play Monster Jam on Wii on Fridays after school.

Favorite song: Life is a Highway

Favorite sport: soccer

What he wants to be when he grows up:  Monster truck driver.

Things only his mama would tell you:  He holds my hand after school. On his field trip to the pumpkin patch, he spent more time choosing a pumpkin for Ella than his own.  He loves that little girl with all of his heart.  He’s kind and sensitive, a worrier and planner. He’s easily frustrated, but he tries hard at most everything he does. He doesn’t like it when I ask him about school, but not as much as he dislikes shampoo and going to the dentist. He doesn’t like for his hair to be fixed and he likes his shirts to have pictures of trucks or cars on them.

This kid.  I just can’t believe he went and turned six on me.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Before I can really tell you anything specific about Disney, I need to give you a little back story on the dynamics of my family.  We are not exactly the best at getting along, particularly in slightly stressful situations (travel, crowds, trying something new…).  Tate and I snip at one another, I hate to use this word-but it’s the truth-we snip at one another CONSTANTLY when we’re stressed.  Our kids have always been the type of kids to throw tantrums, even in the tamest circumstances, let alone on an exhausting five day trip to Disney World complete with late nights and crabby parents.  You should go out to dinner with us sometime. We are SO MUCH FUN to hang around.

Then there’s my control freak tendencies.  Since I did the majority of the planning for the trip, I felt the entire weight of responsibility that everything MUST go well on the trip.  Reservation glitches, weather, the kids behavior, wait times at restaurants-all things that I can’t actually control-I knew I’d feel defensive if things weren’t going just as I’d planned.

These are things that I worried about this before the trip.  I wanted it to be perfect.  I didn’t want US to be the reason that the trip was a flop.

Something truly miraculous happened.  Maybe Disney pumps magical, calming pixie dust into the air, or they spike our drinks with xanax, I DON’T KNOW, but (almost) everything about our trip was PERFECT.  We all behaved and got along well and had the best time we’ve ever had together as a family.

Every night, the kids were visited by the Fairy Godmother, who left them a little gift.  (This idea came from my dental hygienist!  They know more than just teeth cleaning!) The kids ate this up and loved finding little gifts every morning.  Before we left, I went to the Disney store at the mall and bought a few little items and some gift cards so they’d have their own money to spend at the parks.  I wrote about how we told the kids about the trip, complete with their first visit from the Fairy Godmother at Southern By Proxy.  This part wasn’t really magical at all.

Here’s a rundown of everyday of our vacation, the FOOD! The PARADES! The FUN, all the MAGIC!  I know this is long, but I just wanted to do a one and done post, rather than a series of posts. Okay?

Saturday

We arrived at our resort, the Wilderness Lodge, and it was POURING rain.  The entire seven story lobby was filled with families playing board games, children coloring and hula hooping, families sitting in front of the large fire place, rocking back and forth in the rocking chairs.  It was like something out of a movie.

Our room had a great view of the lake and woods, the kids were SO EXCITED that our room had bunk beds.  We unpacked, then headed back to the lobby where Carson LITERALLY (yes, LITERALLY) hula hooped for two hours.  TWO HOURS.  Ella bounced from activity to activity, many led by Disney staff, coloring and playing games.  After TWO HOURS,  we finally convinced Carson to go back up to the room to relax before dinner.

We had reservations at 7:50 at our resort’s sit down restaurant, Whispering Canyon Cafe.  This was the only place that we had to wait a long time (45 minutes) to be seated. By the time we were seated the kids were exhausted (HULA HOOPING!  TWO HOURS), but our server was sweet and did her best to be quick.  The food was fabulous.  Since we got the free Disney Dining Plan promotion, we were also entitled to dessert.  They boxed up our caramel apple pies because we were too full and too tired to eat anything else.

Sunday

I checked the weather forecast for Orlando and it called for rain every single day of our trip.  100% chance.

So we bought, or rather invested in, some ponchos and boarded the bus for Magic Kingdom.

“We’re going to have fun, it doesn’t matter if it rains,” Tate said.  This?  Coming from Tate, Mr. Pessimistic?  Proof of magical pixie dust?

We had breakfast reservations for Crystal Palace, a character meal with Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet.  The food was all great, the kids LOVED their chocolate Mickey Mouse waffles that were basically brownies.  Brownies for breakfast!  It’s Disney World so it’s OKAY!  Carson and Ella were excited to meet the characters and get their autograph books signed.  They characters did a little Friendship Day dance that was a little lame, but it was sweet.

The first thing we’d planned to do right after breakfast was to get a stroller and get a “1st visit” badge, but it was raining SO HARD.  Ella saw Cinderella’s castle and desperately wanted to go there, so we just bypassed the stroller and badges and headed through the nearly blinding rain straight for the castle.

But we were all HAPPY.  The rain was annoying, yes, but we were standing right in front of Cinderella’s castle!  And then there were all these great rides!  The carousel, It’s a Small World, and the Peter Pan ride.  I never want to forget standing in line, Tate’s hand in the small of my back, looking at each other and silently saying, “This is perfect, isn’t it?”

We loved how most of the lines and rides were all covered so we didn’t have to stand in the rain.  As the day went on, the sun even came out a few times.  The whole day was spent riding rides and our favorite was the Buzz Lightyear ride.  We also stumbled upon a parade and got a front row view.  It was just amazing, the float and characters were so much fun to watch.

After a mid afternoon rest back in our room, we went back to Magic Kingdom for the Electric parade (AWESOME) and fireworks show (Also, AWESOME.  What we weren’t expecting was the movie they played on the facade of the castle.  It brought tears to my eyes.  The kids were really tired so we were holding them and somehow I ended up holding Carson.  My arms and back were on fire, but during the show, he hugged me and gave me a kiss.  Aw man, that right there was worth every penny spent on the vacation.

This was one of the very best days of my life.

Monday

Monday was Hollywood Studios day and the rain had miraculously stopped.  As directed by Shelly, our fantastic travel agent, we got there before they opened and headed straight to the Toy Story ride.  Tate didn’t really get that all those people around us, THOUSANDS of people, were all heading to the exact same place.  He kept checking the map and saying, “yes, this is the right way.”  I kept saying, “Yes, it is.  I think ALL of these people are going to the same place.”

The Toy Story ride is part ride, part video game and was really fun.  We waited about 45 minutes to ride it, which was our longest wait for a ride during the entire trip.

We also enjoyed eating at Pizza Planet, our dessert was a GIANT chocolate cupcake that was SO GOOD.  The kids played arcade games for awhile, which wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend time at Disney World, but they were having fun and we didn’t really feel like it was worth telling them “no.”

Other things we liked:  The Muppets 3D movie, the stunt show, and meeting Woody, Buzz, Lightning McQueen, and Mater.  Don’t tell anyone, but I was as excited as the kids to meet them.  Maybe more.  I’ll never admit to that, though.

Hollywood Studios had a Pixar parade with lots of great characters.  We were a little disappointed that Lightning and Mater weren’t in the parade, but it was still a really great parade.

That night we had another character dinner, this time with Cinderella, Prince Charming, and her evil stepmom and stepsisters, Lady Tremaine, Druzilla, and Anastacia.  We got to go to the swanky Grande Floridian to 1900 Park Fare for the dinner.  The stepsisters were hilarious!  Cinderella and Prince Charming were sweet and gracious.  Tate is not a fan of buffets, but we both thought the food was really tasty.

Tuesday

We got up early Tuesday to get to Animal Kingdom and go on the safari because Shelly said that morning was the best time to see the animals.  And see animals we did!  Giraffes crossing the road, rhinos, elephants, and a male lion, perched up on a hill.  We were all in awe.

Lunch could have been a HUGE disaster, they forgot to give Ella her food, then Tate spilled a full Diet Coke all over the table, himself, and Ella.  In the real world, this would have probably ruined the rest of the day, but in Disney World, we all just shrugged our shoulders, laughed, and wiped up the mess.  Seriously, I only mention this because it was nearly as amazing at the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom.

Poor Carson freaked out during the Bugs Life 3D movie, but the rest of us thought it was great.  At the end, the seats felt like bugs were running underneath and behind you.  I can see why Carson freaked out a little, but it was pretty funny.

After the parade, we rushed back to our hotel because we had dinner reservations at Downtown Disney at Fulton’s Crab House.  Ella fell asleep on the bus, so Tate carried her what seemed like a 20 mile walk to the restaurant.  Once we were seated, we learned that our Dining Plan couldn’t be used there.  Again, this is something that normally would just turn a perfectly fun evening into something NOT fun, but instead we just headed over Raglan’s.  It was an Irish pub that served Guinness, so really it was probably the perfect place for us.  We sat outside and enjoyed our dinners.

After dinner, we planned to browse all the shops at Downtown Disney, but it was ridiculously crowded.  After trying to look in a few stores, we decided to go back to the resort and watch the fireworks and the Electrical Water Parade from the dock at Wilderness Lodge.  I don’t think I care to ever go back to Downtown Disney.

Wednesday

We were so excited for Wednesday and our visit to Epcot.  While we were there, Epcot was hosting the International Food and Wine Festival and all during the week, Tate and I had been hoarding our dining plan snacks to redeem as we traveled through World Showcase.  Oh you guys, the food was AMAZING.  So were the beers, particularly those in the biergarten in Germany.  Tate and I really, really enjoyed those.

There were a few rides that we rode, but we mostly hung out and walked around World Showcase.  The kids seemed to have fun anyway, there was a mime in Italy that was really good, even for a mime.  For dinner we ate in Germany at Biergarten restaurant.  This was another buffet that was, OH MY GOODNESS, SO good.  We really enjoyed the band and the kids and I even got out and danced.  And they had more beer, very, very large beer, so it’s a good thing that we had a bus driver for the ride back.

(please pretend you don’t see the spot in between my boobs. Sweat? Dribbling beer? I don’t know. You just can’t take me ANYWHERE.)

So that was our trip to Disney World. It seemed like there was a surprise around every corner and yes, it was truly magical. We can’t wait to go back, even though I can’t imagine that another trip could ever be as amazing as this one.  I want to thank Shelly for all of her help in planning our trip, she did such a great job guiding us in the right direction and gave really GREAT advice.  Thank you, Shelly.  I also want to thank all the people who offered advice and tips.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.

Carson thinks we’re going to that place Mommy and Daddy went this summer.

“We’re going to Hilton Head, I bet. And we’re going to go to the Tiki Hut,” Carson told me. I don’t think he really knows that the Tiki Hut is not exactly for kids, but for adults on a ten year anniversary trip who are looking to get snockered and have a little fun. That sure did make me laugh, though.

“Maybe,” I told him. As much as I enjoyed the Tiki Hut, I’m certain that Disney World will be a far more exciting announcement to Carson.

Ella is sure that we’re going to St. Louis to see Bigfoot, the monster truck.  “WE ARE GOING TO SEE BIGFOOT!!!!!!” she said convincingly, slightly excited. Where she got this idea, I DON’T KNOW, but after I stopped laughing, her expectation got me a little worried.  I mean, monster trucks are her THING, Mickey Mouse and his crew have a big job ahead of them, convincing Ella that Disney World is EVEN BETTER than St. Louis and Bigfoot.

Anyway, I’m sure it’s all going to be fine.  It’s the happiest place on Earth, dammit, and dammit, we’re going to be HAPPY and have FUN!

::

In other news, I’ve been busy writing over at Southern By Proxy.

Ella still sucks her thumb.  Yeah?  And?

I talked about my top nine favorite books.  I completely left off #10, A Prayer for Owen Meany.  And I just finished a fantastic book, What Alice Forgot.  I could barely put it down. (Those links?  They’re affiliate links.  Maybe I’ll finally get to buy that pack of gum I’ve had my eye on.)

I’ve also been talking about the transition from stay at home mom to work at home mom.  All the same responsibilities and more!

©2012 Playgroups are No Place For Children. All Rights Reserved.