And the Rest of April!

Once we were home, it was right back into the fray!  Of course, we saw what we could of the eclipse-- we didn't get full coverage here, but it was pretty close.  It clouded right up during peak coverage, just like the last time we had an eclipse here.  You can't win.  But it was still very cool!

If you zoom in and look really closely, I actually got a pretty cool picture of the sun about the size and shape of a thumbnail

I hadn't bothered to order glasses, so I was glad the school gave them out!  Camille cracks me up...

Our neighbor's cat, Caramel, came to hang out with us.  And then proceeded to squat in our grass puking up a hairball.  Gross.

We got a package from BYU containing some swag for their newest recruit.  I truly love this picture of Bentley-- I was worried he was only going to BYU because we basically told him he had to, but this is one very genuine smile from my eldest!  I'm so excited for this next chapter in his life (even though I know I'm going to miss him like crazy)!

We had a "hands tied" meal with the Young Men and Young Women where we sat everyone around a giant square and everyone's hands were tied to their neighbors', and then we served them salad and spaghetti and watched as chaos ensued.  Eventually it evolved into a food fight of sorts, which we were expecting-- we made them walk around (still tied together!), trying to pick everything up!  And then we served them ice cream, which meant they had to figure out how to get back to their seats!  It was hilarious and they looked like they were having fun, so that was a win!

Jadyn decided to just not bother with silverware, which is a choice, I guess!

It kind of looks like they're doing an elaborate dance?  

Notice the kids trying to climb over the table

At some point they decided that it was easier to go under the table!

It was at this point that Craig and I finally kicked it into high gear working on the condo and getting it in better shape to show it.  I also had Craig take a few new pictures of it, since the one we had posted on Zillow was kind of dark and forbidding looking.  

But this looks nice and friendly, doesn't it?

And yes, we finally got renters, and I handed over the keys last Wednesday, so that's a huge weight off my mind.  We've never had it empty for that long before (almost five weeks?)-- I think I got spoiled finding renters so quickly in the past!

Adam and I found time to go kayaking, something I think we didn't manage to do at all last spring!  When we first got out on the water, we thought there was a lovely mist over it, then we realized we were just seeing so much pollen!  😂  On a related note, I've been taking double the recommended dose of Zyrtec and my allergies have never been better!  I've even gotten where I can swallow the pills pretty consistently.  It's a spring miracle!  (Not really, those pills are tiny.  But I'll take any win I can get!)

And speaking of Adam, he made sure he took our spring family portraits, too!  I never would have gotten around to it without him reminding me-- I'm so lucky he's my friend!  So now we have two of our Four Seasons of Smiths!

We'll start with my favorite-- Adam happened to find these amazing azalea bushes and how great of a backdrop are they???

My pants are certainly apropos!

And we're all wearing crocs!

I love the clouds and sky behind us!

We probably use them too much, but fences are such an easy way to make the pictures a little more interesting!

And now that the weather has been so nice, I've discovered that it's really lovely to take the chickens down to the grass and read a book while they peck around the yard.  I feel like I'm accomplishing something-- being a good chicken owner-- while I get to sit and read!  The kids arrived home from school during my reading chicken time, and we learned that the chickens really like all the keychains on Camille's backpack!

The face Camille pulls during this!

We had a YWs activity where Craig had the girls building fires and I had them practicing a mountain climber's knot out in the parking lot.  (That's pretty much the only knot I can tie, but I'm really good at that one, thanks to a lot of practice when I was at Girls Camp many decades ago!)

Lydia, Julie, Marianne, McKinley, and Lilyann, somewhat tied up 

Violet and Julia working on their fire

And now, time for s'mores!  (Not sure how Calvin snuck in there, but all the girls love him, so they were probably happy to share their s'mores with him!)

L-R standing: Ella, Sabrine, Liberty, me, and Missy, and then sitting, Abby, Megan and Megan (with Brahm) and Valerie

I got to spend a few hours at the hospital holding my friend Brianne's very sweet baby.  She'd been in the hospital for a couple months and finally got to go home last week, so that was very happy news!

We had a very busy afternoon, so I had to make a time sheet for Craig and I so we didn't forget anything...  (The main activities were just tennis lessons, piano lessons, and an open house for rising 6th graders at the middle school, but there were a lot of moving parts to make it all happen!)  And this barely included Bentley and Kendra!

We did not plan this.  How did they end up so adorably matched???  Beth, Sydney, and Camille, playing at Pen Park before tennis lessons!

And Saturday was prom!!!  Once again, I can't believe Bentley is a senior and so close to being done with high school!

How handsome is he?

He didn't ask anyone, but had a big group of friends which changed for each activity, but here they are for pictures  

I love that the guys got matching pajama bottoms for themselves (and I was very impressed that Bentley still managed to get to church early enough to set up and bless the sacrament)!

Last fall the trampoline mat-- which was here in the yard when we bought this house nine years ago-- finally died a very painful, ripped-to-shreds death.  I bought a new mat and net, but decided not to fix it until after winter.  So the kids are very excited to have their trampoline back, now that it's spring! Here, they were jumping while spraying each other with a hose.

And last but not least, Ryder his end of the year band concert!  He played great and Craig and I were pretty happy to enjoy a Tuesday evening where we weren't in charge!

April was a good month for us!

Day 5-- Everything Else!

For our last day, we actually let the kids sleep in a bit.  Then we ran around, once again packing lunches, but also packing up everything else since that had been our last night in our VRBO.  We got the van all loaded and then passed around sunscreen to all the kids while Craig drove.  Getting into the park was a zoo-- each step of the way (parking, bag checks, ticketing, plus the walking to and from each of these locations) was a crowded mess and for the first time the kids (and me!) fully appreciated how nice we had it getting there early each day.  Good work getting us moving, Craig!

We'd made a list of everything we either a) still hadn't done or b) wanted to do again before we left and Craig kept us on task.  There were a few rides at Universal that had been shut down on Wednesday because of the rain, so we started with those.  And Kendra and Craig were excited to watch the Street Construction Drummers, so we made sure we caught one of their performances.  Craig had absolutely LOVED the Bourne Stuntacular show, so we saw that again.  That really was super cool-- they used a hyper-realistic movie screen in the background and as the camera angle on that changed, the sets would move to match it-- it was actually hard to tell who were live actors and who were actors on the screen!  My favorite moment was during a car chase (yes-- they'd have cars moving on the stage and, again, the screen behind them would make it look like they were racing all over the place) and Jason Bourne leapt from his motorcycle and pulled himself up onto a street lamp, and as he pulled himself up the whole thing switched into slow motion so the actor was pulling himself up super slow and it looked so cool and must have taken a TON of muscle control!  It was wild!  We also saw the horror makeup show, which was hilarious.

I wanted to take pictures with the giant shark from Jaws , and once we were there, each kid wanted their own picture with it.  I think each of the kids' pictures sort of represent their personalities-- it's kind of amazing:

Bentley's a goofball

Kendra just wants to love on the giant scary monster shark

Ryder has to up the ante on Bentley's goofiness

Colton has to come up with something new, so he goes with nervously thinking about the shark

And Camille is going to fearlessly just poke at the shark

And, of course, one with the whole family

Then we had to ride the Hogwarts Express to Islands of Adventure so I could fully appreciate Platform Nine and Three-Quarters this time!  And it was super cool-- I'm glad I made sure we did that again!

(Please excuse the terrible camera work at the end-- apparently I can't stop filming without nearly dropping my phone...)

I love that Craig took a picture of me taking a selfie-- how meta!

And we got a picture of the Jurassic Park gates in the day time!

Once we were back in Island of Adventure, we rode the Jurassic Park river cruise which was super fun, and also the Hulk rollercoaster, which nearly had some of my kids blacking out (Camille did NOT ride this one-- I think she wouldn't have forgiven me if I'd tried to make her!).  We also rode Hagrid's motorcycles one last time.  That ride was pretty much everyone's favorite, but this was the longest we ever had to wait for it, and by the time we got off, we were all DONE.  Everyone was tired, their feet hurt (my hip was hurting-- what the heck?), and we were finally ready to head home.

While Craig took Ryder and Colton to buy t-shirts, I went and got one last brownie milkshake from the Chocolate Emporium (heaven!) for myself and for Craig.  And the kids got churros.  I'd wanted to get a picture of us with the Universal globe, but we were all too tired to trek all around the lake to get to it, so we settled for this shot:

It's back there!

And then we climbed back in the van, and began driving home!  We didn't have any sort of plan for the return trip-- we didn't know what time we'd end up leaving the parks or how long we'd be able to stay awake as we drove, so we just figured we'd play it by ear.  As it was, we ended up getting "dinner' at Buc-ees a little after 9pm, and then drove all night.  Craig and I alternated driving and sleeping, with Craig insisting that each driving shift get shorter and shorter so we wouldn't push ourselves too hard.  It was a tough call, because I have NEVER been a person who pulls all-nighters.  But I knew we'd get a terrible night's sleep cramming all seven of us into a motel room, so I figured if I wasn't going to get much sleep either way, we may as well go with the cheaper option!  

We pulled into our driveway right around 7:30am, so that's pretty good, if you ask me!  I was excited to get back to my own shower and bed.  And Craig was excited to make cinnamon rolls (it was conference weekend, after all)!  We tried our best to watch Conference (and we were very thankful we didn't have to be up and running things at church the following morning), but I will admit that a lot of the weekend looked like this:

And that's okay!

It was a wonderful vacation.  I'm so happy that everything went so well.  The only problem was that by the time we got home, I felt like I needed a vacation to rest up from our vacation!  Isn't that how it always goes, though?

Day 4-- SeaWorld!

I'd insisted that we spend a day at SeaWorld during this trip.  I hadn't gone since I was in high school and I really wanted to see the killer whale show and have my kids see it!  I was so excited!  I'd even paid all kinds of extra money* to do the VIP Orca Tour, and three of the kids had decided to spend their own money to do it, too.  Unfortunately, the day before, while I was standing in a line somewhere, I got a voicemail telling me that our excursion had been canceled, but I was welcome to either reschedule it for next week (impossible) or switch to a different tour (lame-- it's killer whales or nothing, as far as I'm concerned).  So that was a bummer.  But I was still excited!

True to form we got there before the park opened and as soon as we could get in, Camille and I hurried off to the dolphin nursery while Craig and the other kids went to ride all the roller coasters.  We watched the dolphins for a bit and then stopped by the shark aquarium, which was also very cool.  I wanted to see the killer whales, but that part of the park was still closed for another hour, so next we saw the sea lions and a bigger dolphin pool, and then we saved seats for everyone for the first dolphin show.  (We also stopped by the customer service desk to ask about my canceled tour-- I was worried that if I didn't check in or something, they would claim we didn't show up and keep our money.  But the lady at the desk assured me our money would be refunded, so that was a relief.)

They were throwing fish to the sea lions and this super creepy stork was hanging around trying to steal the fish.  The girl tossing fish had a pretty impressive throwing arm!

The sea lions were cute, but also extremely loud and smelly

I'm kind of proud of this picture of a hammerhead swimming over us!

Craig, meanwhile, had taken the other kids on most of the major rollercoasters at the park (there are five or six, I think?) and hurried through the shark aquarium, too, before joining us at the dolphin show.

(This is Ryder, but mostly I just love the scene behind him here!)

We didn't take any pictures of the dolphin show, but it was really fun-- just seeing those bottlenose dolphins leap out of the water and do flips is crazy impressive, and when they get six of them leaping perfectly in synch, it's just amazing!  If you're bored, you might want to watch the show on YouTube!

We tried something new this time around and got an all-day food pass.  We were hoping it would save us some money and make everything a little less stressful and more fun, but it didn't really work the way we wanted it to.  For one thing, the bracelets didn't work super reliably-- at the panini place, they couldn't get Bentley's to work at all and while they finally just let him have his food and told us to go to customer service to get a new one, it took forever while they tried to figure out what to do.  We also realized, too late, that there were a bunch of food booths that wouldn't take our passes, which was especially disappointing because they were doing a sort of food festival with international booths set up all over the park and it would have been fun to sample a bunch of them!  But we weren't going to pay more money for food after all that!  The other lame thing was that the places that did take our passes had insanely long lines.  At one point I just stood in line while Craig and the kids did some other stuff, and they joined me as I was getting inside the building, only to discover that there was still another hour wait to go.  It was ridiculous (although the food was pretty good!).  So I think we got our money's worth, but it didn't make us very happy or make eating any less stressful.  (Also, SeaWorld had a No Outside Food policy, unlike Universal, so we didn't bring snacks or lunch or anything.  But then they didn't even check our bags, so we totally could have just packed lunches!)  Anyway, I hate trying to play games like that, it's annoying.

The first orca show was at noon, and even getting there pretty early, the only decent seats I could find were in the splash zone.  I figured the odds were we wouldn't get wet anyway and plunked myself down where I had a nice view of the killer whales swimming around before the show started.  And Craig snapped this great shot right as it began:

I am enraptured

The show was super cool, but I have to say, it could be so much better.  They don't let the trainers get in the water with the whales any more, which I understand, but it means they can't do half the amazing tricks they used to do.  And even the stuff that they do have the whales do, they make a point of explaining that these are Very Natural Behaviors (or they're done for the whales' health) so don't worry, audience members, everything is fine here.  And I'm not gonna lie: that's dumb.  No one cares.  (Okay, that's not true, a few very loud protesters a few years ago cared.  But you know what?  Even those people would come watch the show as soon as they were done protesting, so I don't think they actually were bothered by it, either, they just wanted something to complain about!)  They also spent quite a bit of time showing a video about how great killer whales are, but it hardly told you anything about them, other than that they're apex predators and therefore we should not pollute.  It was fine, but I'm pretty sure it could be way better.

Because there wasn't as much for them to make the whales do, one of the things they did do was have a whale swim by just splashing everyone in the first ten or so rows.  We got drenched.  Everyone in the splash zone got drenched.  Craig was...  less than thrilled.  I thought it was pretty hilarious.  It was a beautiful warm day and we dried off pretty quickly!

These are our wet faces, I guess

People were getting hungry again, so that was when I held our place in line while Craig took everyone to some of the spots Camille and I had already visited:

Is that scuba diver is holding up a "Help me" note???

After we'd eaten, we went to the sea lion show, which is pretty stupid and slapsticky, and yet, still pretty fun.  Before it began, they had a very grumpy, sarcastic mime wandering around and he was the honestly the funniest thing we saw all day.  Who knew?

Then we wandered around seeing all the animals we'd missed and riding a few more rollercoasters

The sting rays were a huge hit-- they really didn't mind being petted and they're just so soft and slimy-- who can resist?

(Not this girl!)

Kendra was especially excited about the manatees

I sent Craig and the kids to get dinner while I saved us seats for the final killer whale show, this time not in the splash zone!  I had EXCELLENT seats and had to keep fending people off.  So naturally, right as the show was starting, some lady in an electric scooter with a huge shade roof parked in the handicapped section, completely blocking our view of the shallow spot where the killer whales come out of the water in front of the audience.  Not only that, her husband stood for a chunk of the show, blocking even more of my view.  I couldn't believe it.  The show was still amazing (and it was nice not getting wet, especially at 8pm!) but it really was frustrating.  (Craig even asked her if the shade roof could be removed or put down or something, but it couldn't.)

And then the park was closing!  As we were heading out, Bentley managed to stomp on Camille's foot and make it bleed, so then she was very unhappy.  Fortunately we saw a few more dolphins at the nursery pool as we were leaving and that cheered her up very quickly.

*When I first looked up the price for this VIP tour, it was listed as $129.  So I asked the kids if they wanted to do it, and they all had to hem and haw for a bit before they made up their minds.  So it took me a couple days before I actually purchased the tickets.  And when I went to buy them, they'd shot up to $149!  I wanted to ask the kids if they were okay with this new price, but I didn't dare risk the price going up again, so I just bought them.  But I felt bad spending the kids' money without their express permission.  And then, as I was checking out, SeaWorld added taxes and "convenience fees" so now the tickets were $170!  Each!!!  And I felt even worse about the whole thing.

The good news in all this is when they did cancel, the kids didn't really care.  In fact, they were pretty happy to get their money back.

And then I got my refund a few days after we returned home and SeaWorld had kept $45 of it-- they weren't giving back all those convenience fees.  Even though everyone had assured me my money would be refunded.  Then I was seriously TICKED.  I tried calling about twenty times and the only time someone answered, she said she "wasn't authorized" to refund that money and the only people who could were all "in meetings."  You'll be shocked to hear that they never called me back.

I finally just called my credit card company and told them to reverse the charge.  I'm still so mad about that.

And I'm even more angry because I love SeaWorld but now I just feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with them and they're trying to make me hate them.  Why are they trying to ruin something that should be so great???

But still-- I just love those killer whales so much!!!!