Month: July 2021

On Saturday Abe was exhausted and I was still very sick with Covid, so we both spent most of the day napping while the kids ran feral. Abe did take some pictures.

On Friday morning I was feeling very sick, so Abe took the kids to swimming lessons. It was their last lesson of the summer with Aubrey so she let the kids try her mermaid tail. When it was Clarissa’s turn, she refused to take it off and Ammon never got a turn, but he seemed happy diving for rings.

In the afternoon I took the Covid test, and within two hours learned that I have Covid. I was not surprised because by that point I had lost all taste and sense of smell, and all of the other symptoms aligned. I felt very grateful I was fully vaccinated because I can only imagine how bad it would have been without that. Still, I was pretty miserable all day.

Abe had to work a full day, but when he finished we did some laundry together and then he fed the kids dinner and put them to bed while I shivered under some blankets. We were supposed to leave on our Chicago road trip today but obviously cancelled that since we now need to quarantine.

We finished the day by watching a couple episodes of Ted Lasso together. We love that show so much and laughing through a couple episodes helped turn both of our moods around. I had not been very kind (to put it extremely mildly) about Abe working while I had Covid, and Abe had felt stressed because of the prospect of falling further behind in work. But we ended the day in a good place. Thanks, Ted Lasso!

On Thursday I took Basil on a long walk in the morning, and every time I started to run I felt flush and feverish, so I stopped. I started to suspect I might have a mild virus and so did Mary and Ammon’s piano lessons on Zoom. After that I cleaned and had a little fight with Lydia about harp practice, after which I took the car out to wash and vacuum it and calm down. I always feel so bad for Lydia when I lose my temper, and sometimes it is best to just remove myself from the situation so I don’t make things worse.

While I was out I went to Aubergine and mid-meal realized that I was experiencing Covid symptoms. I scheduled an appointment to get tested and went home to go to bed, where I spent the rest of the day.

We did drive to the dealership and picked up our new car (and I didn’t make remote contact with anyone, since I just stayed in the same car there and back) which the kids named Black Beauty. We were thrilled when they named it Black Beauty because it gave us hope that they will keep it cleaner than our last car, which they named–with the greatest affection– “Pigpen.”

The only thing of note on Tuesday as that we showed up to ballet and realized they weren’t having lessons because of dance camp. Knowing now that I had Covid but wasn’t experiencing symptoms yet, this was very fortunate.

We did go visit my mom right after, but we all stayed in the car and gave her some bread we had picked up from Kneaders. We were on our way home to continue the massive cleaning and organizing kick I was on, and I am so glad we didn’t get out of the car and expose my mom unknowingly!

I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, organizing closets, and organizing Mary and Lydia’s room. We also taped up ripped books and organized all of the picture books in the play room by color. They used to be organized by country and category, but they would get all out of place all of the time. ROYGBIV is mentally easy and visually appealing, so it’s my default organizational method for clothes, books, and everything else. It felt so satisfying to stand back and see everything look so good.

On Monday I started organizing the garage at 6am, and I didn’t stop organizing and cleaning the house until 10:30pm. It was really fun to get everything in order! The garage had been beyond unbelievably disorganized. There were small mountains of stuff everywhere, and every time we arrived home from a trip we just dumped everything in the garage before heading out on the next trip. So I laundered everything and put away everything until all the piles were gone.

Then Mary, Lydia and I picked up Basil from the dog boarding facility and took him straight to the dog wash to clean him up. Everyone was so thrilled to have Basil back!

Then I came home and moved on to the pantry which had been another disaster. It was so bad that I could barely squeeze into the pantry to get stuff because the floor was covered in kitchen gadgets and open boxes of cereal. So I cleaned and organized the pantry until it became useful again.

And then I moved onto every drawer in the kitchen, which was also out of control. There are still some cabinets that could use help, but they are so high I can’t reach them without a small ladder.

It took me the whole day to clean and I am not sure what the kids did this day, but I do have some cute pictures from it!

Oh now I remember. The kids spent a LOT of time doing their nails, and when Lexy came in the evening they did their nails again. They also did a lot of dress up and played outside a lot. I am sure there were screens involved, although I did tell Mary and Lydia they are forbidding from watching anything–other than movies we watch together as a family and the Olympics–until the summer is over.

On Sunday we got up at 4:30am. We basically just woke up, brushed our teeth, and walked to our car. It was still dark, and next to our car we saw this strange looking bird and had to take a picture. I can’t tell if it is a vulture or a duck, or something in between?

After returning our car to Hertz we headed through security and boarded our plane by 7am, and because of the time difference we arrived in Utah before 11am.

Our original plan was to catch church and then do a picnic with Anthony, Malika, Jon, and everyone’s kids, but I was so exhausted that we drove home, showered everyone, and the kids and I napped while Abe drove up to visit with Anthony, Malika, Jon, et. al. They had a great visit and Malika made some delicious tarts that Abe brought home for me to experience. I was so disappointed to miss out on the visit but physically incapable of doing more than sleeping while he was gone.

Abe came home after the visit and took a long nap, and then we doordashed some dinner and put everyone right to bed. Florida was so fun–and exhausting!

On Saturday we packed up our bags and drove to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

We got a later start than we wanted, but we still got to see a lot of things. The first things that we did upon entering was–use the bathroom! Honestly, excessive bathroom usage was a constant preoccupation for us in Florida. Maybe it was because we were drinking more water because of the heat, but the kids had to go all the time, and every time one kid announced he or she needed to use the bathroom, Abe and I would make the entire family use it. We were sticklers.

After using the bathroom we went to one of the buildings Abe had checked off as a must-see, only to be greeted by a woman who who smilingly stuffing tickets into everyone’s hands and telling us to hurry to the line for the bus. We never made it back to that building and still don’t know if there was anything to see inside or if it was just the place to get bus tour tickets!

At any rate, the bus tour was excellent. We loved learning the history of NASA and some of its impressive, huge buildings. I think one of the statistics was that the base for the rockets weighed over 38 billion TONS, and that the crawlers it was on moved 35 feet per minute or something like that. How can the earth support a structure that weighs so much? Isn’t that the weight of a mountain? And Florida earth is pretty soggy, so I seriously don’t understand how it could support those structures. Apparently Nasa understands, and the buildings appear to be solidly vertical, so I guess that’s all that matters.

We ended at a place where they had reconstructed the room that launched the first rocket that landed on the moon. They had a show where you could actually hear the people talking before and during launch, and you would see the desks light up to represent which person was talking. It was very moving and I had tears in my eyes by the end of it.

We also watched another presentation in a different room about the moon landing itself. I had no idea it was such a close call! There were obstacles to Neil Armstrong’s landing that were very hard to overcome and I think he landed with less than three seconds to go before he ran out of fuel. If he were to have run out of fuel, he would not have had enough in the tank to make it back to earth. That he made it was amazing!

We ate lunch under one of the rockets that had actually made it to space. I forget which one, but it was enormous.

After lunch we took the bus back to the main visitor complex and let the kids play in the space playground. Abe and Lydia watched an iMax movie about astroids.

While Abe and Lydia were at the movie, Clarissa got stuck at the top of the crawly part of the playground, and I ended up climbing up a rope tower and rescued her. The security guards were so nice and gave us water afterward. I was really proud of Ammon and Mary, both of whom helped her a lot. I was hoping she would overcome her fear and keep crawling, so I didn’t interfere until at least twenty minutes had passed. During that time, I watched Ammon cheer Clarissa unceasingly, calling out, “Go Galissa! Go Galissa! You can do it Galissa!” Mary was also encouraging her, sitting right next to her and helping her while other kids got impatient. I was so proud of Ammon and Mary, and I kept hoping Clarissa would trust them enough to inch her way forward, but in the end it was also kind of fun climbing the rope tower to rescue her.

After that we took a bathroom break and then were prevented from re-entering the playground because a mother couldn’t find her child. The space playground is dark the the worker says kids get lost all day long. I drilled Clarissa and Ammon on my full name in case that happened to us, and when we got back in we discovered Abe and Lydia waiting for us. Abe and I watched the kids do the space slide a bunch before I realized I could catch the last iMax and sprinted there. It was about asteroids, and I am now a new convert to the cause of planetary defense. One of the obvious goals of the visitor complex seemed to be to convince the visitor that space exploration is purposeful, beautiful, and necessary, and I left relatively convinced. (Surprisingly, Abe was less so. Space-time is one of his favorite new areas of interest, so I was surprised that he wasn’t more easily converted to the NASA message.)

After the complex closed at 5pm, we drove back to Miami to our airport hotel. En route we ate dinner at the Whole Foods in Palm Beach. I realized we hadn’t drunk any Florida orange juice so found some local juice there and had everyone drink some with dinner. So yummy!

Our hotel was a Homewood Suites near the airport, and it was so yucky that I had trouble sleeping. I kept thinking about the recent condo collapse in Surfside and wondering if the building was up to code. I was super happy when the alarm rang the next morning and it was time to go.

Universal Studios turned out to have, far and away, the best rides of any of the theme parks. We did not know this until after our first ride, the Spiderman ride. It was a 3D/4D ride, and we learned that there is nothing, NOTHING like a 3D/4D ride to make you feel like you’ve entered a different reality. Wow. It was amazing. The littler kids honestly thought they had entered the Marvel Universe. I thought I had entered the Marvel Universe. There was water, fire, and the 3D/4D effects were mind blowing. By the end I could have sworn Spiderman just saved me from half a dozen bad guys. Thank you, Spiderman!

After the Spiderman ride we did the King Kong ride. Universal makes their lines as entertaining as possible, and the line for the King Kong ride almost topped the ride itself. There was one part where you entered a large room, and a figure at the front was chanting in an unknown language and the holes in the room started to light up with fire until it built to a big, scary climax. Very spooky.

After the King Kong ride, Ammon and Clarissa cooled off in a splash pad before we headed over to Harry Potter world to buy insanely overpriced wands that have decreased radically in quality since the last time we were in Harry Potter World two years ago–now they are $60 pieces of plastic! But they do perform spells, so we shelled out so the kids could do spells.

Then we had lunch at the Three Broomsticks, and after we did the Hogwarts Castle ride. There was a lot of logistical movement at the end because Mary was desperate for a bathroom and we spent a lot of time running kids back and forth between the bathroom and child swap, but in the end the older girls, Abe and I all managed to ride the ride. It was the best in Universal.

Afterward there was a downpour, so Lydia and I went and got treats for everyone. We brought back treats which the kids ate on a picnic table before playing for an hour in the rain with their wands.

After playing magic in the rain, we headed to Dr. Seuss land where we rode a lot of rides because there were hardly any lines. We rode The Cat in the Hat twice in a row because there was literally no one in line. After three days of waiting in line, that felt amazing.

After Dr. Seuss, Abe was unable to convince Lydia to ride the Hulk roller coaster with him so he went by himself. One of the highlights of the day was being with the kids watching the roller coaster and hearing them scream “HI DAD!!! DADDY!!!! WOO-HOO!!! DADDY!!!” to every single group of riders until we finally got a hold of Abe and confirmed he had completed the ride.

It turns out you need to book dinner in advance because at 10:30pm the Universal restaurants are bustling. We could not find a seat anywhere but at Red Oven the host kindly let us in even though it seemed like it was against protocol. I was so grateful for his kindness/pity, and oh my goodness I am still thinking about that pizza. I didn’t expect it to be anything special but it was outstanding.

Well, the Magic Kingdom was a marathon day. So to make this post as efficient as possible, I am just going to list 1. the rides we went on 2. the places we ate and 3. the pictures we took.

1. The rides: the carousel, Peter Pan, It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion, Teacups, The Snow White and Seven Dwarves ride, the Magic Carpet, the Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
2. We ate at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe for lunch, Pinocchio’s for a snack, Liberty Tree Tavern for dinner (at 9:30pm), and had a lot of popcorn in between. Ammon accidentally plunged his hand into someone else’s popcorn bucket as they were refilling it. (He was confused because the buckets all looked the same.) The vendor kindly gave them a replacement bucket. (And if they hadn’t we would have.)
3. As follows!

We passed the time waiting for dinner by making videos about our adventures so far.

At Epcot, my favorite Disney Park EVER, we did the following:

1. Met Elsa and Anna. 2. Rode the Frozen ride! (It was amazing.) 3. Gran Fiest Tour 4. Listened to the Chef drummers 5. Watched some Princesses drive by 6. Spaceship Earth (my most favorite of all the theme park rides, and the whole reason I took my family to Epcot!) 7. Test Track 8. Soarin’ 9. Mission: Space 10. Watched the fireworks 11. Ate lunch at Chefs de France 12. ate dessert at Les-Halles Boulangerie-Patisserie 13. ate fish and chips and Japanese shave ice for dinner 14. Watched the China show 15. ate Norwegian school break and other snacks 16. bought the kids bubbles and fans to amuse themselves with in line. I am sad we did not do Living with the Land but I only found out about that right now while googling the names of the rides I forgot. Next time I am going to do a better job planning because Disney is waaaaaay to expensive to leave with regrets about things undone. Lesson learned.
2. Pictures as follows!