Hershey Park - Part 3

We found out that with a purchase of a next-day ticket, you are allowed to enter the park at 7 p.m. the evening before for a "preview".  So we took our nifty coupons, bought our tickets and headed into the park.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous.  It was mid-70s with low humidity - a perfect evening to be outside.  As soon as we walked in, a piece of candy walked up to us.  Bella was a little afraid of it, but Elias thought it was really cool.

If you ever go to Hershey Park, definitely take advantage of the preview! We felt that we got two days at the park for the price of one, even though it was only for 3 hours. The lines were so short (some rides had no line at all) that we rode twice as many rides as we could have ridden during the same span of time in the middle of the day.

The kids got their desire to ride something out of the way right away with the carousel. Josh and I were trying to get the "lay of the land", so we could plan our day tomorrow, but the kids just wanted to ride, ride, ride!  We went on almost every kiddy ride that evening.  And Elias had his first experience on a roller coaster!  We went on the Wild Cat first.  It is a wooden coaster and it was SO rough.  I felt like my head was being jolted off my neck and that my teeth might crack!  I warned Elias that wooden coasters were rougher before we went on, but I had forgotten just how much.  I was actually sort of surprised that Elias wanted to jump right on another as soon as we got off the Wild Cat.  The Wild Mouse was right beside the Wild Cat, so we basically got right on.  I was not a fan of this coaster either.  It takes you up high and then you sit upright and go quick and then slow in a zig-zag pattern that whips your neck back and forth.  Again, I thought I was going to need to see a chiropractor after this ride too.  Now, I love roller coasters and am willing to try any of them, but I like my coasters to go fast, so I don't have to think about how high up I really am or how little metal is actually keeping me from hurling to the ground!  So the fact that this ride took you up high and then went slow was also not an enjoyable aspect for me.  Again, Elias loved it. He wanted to ride another coaster, but there was no time before the park closed.  Because Josh stayed with Bella while I took Elias on the coasters, we have no pictures of Elias' first coaster ride.

We stayed until the park closed and the kids took one more ride on the carousel before leaving. The weather was still beautiful and the kids were being troopers, despite the fact that it was way past their bedtime.  We got back to our hotel, where I had set out pajamas and tooth brushes and had prepared the beds before we left at dinnertime.

We were getting Elias showered and when I walked back into the main room, I found Isabella laying over the bed on her stomach, with her feet still on the floor, fast asleep.  Needless to say, she didn't get a shower that night!  I finished getting her in her pjs and into bed.  Again, thanking Josh for the choice to get 3 beds, since Elias was still wide awake from his thrilling ride on the coaster!  But as soon as we turned the lights out, he was asleep too.  We all slept so well because the room was so quiet, dark, and evenly temperatured.  It was a good thing, because we had a long day the next day and it was 11 p.m. before we got into bed!

The girl on the ride with Bella was a stranger, but to see them chatting away during the ride, you would have thought they were best friends!

Check this out!

September is Compassion blogging month, so you'll hear a little more about Compassion than usual possibly.

As a Compassion blogger, I enjoy telling people about my sponsorship experiences, but I am officially giving you the request to go to Compassion's "Sponsor a Child" page and pray over the children who are still waiting to be sponsored.  Also, while you are there, you can use it to teach your kids about other countries and cultures that the kids pictured live (Google is an amazing thing!). 

Hershey Park Vacation - Part 2

So after we got settled into the room and hopped in the van and headed over to Hershey's Chocolate World.

We didn't really know exactly what they had there or how much everything cost, but we did know that you could make your own chocolate bars.  We took the free riding tour of the "factory" and how chocolate is made.  The kids really enjoyed it.  They had singing cows and the smell of chocolate was in the air everywhere, so how could they not?

After the tour, we went to the "Create your own chocolate bar" counter to get tickets for the kids.  But there was a problem.  They wouldn't allow kids under 8 to go in by themselves.  The tickets were a little pricey, so we were scrambling to decide whether to just let Elias go in by himself and the other three of us just hang around outside and wait, or to pay for either Josh and I to go in with the kids and the other just sit outside and wait, or just forget the whole thing.  Elias really didn't want to go in alone, even though Bella was surprisingly okay with not doing it at all.  But after just a couple minutes' deliberation, we decided that it was a family vacation and that we all really wanted to do it together.  So we all had to get in our beautiful protective wear to go in.

It was pretty neat.  You first had to go to a computer screen to make your selections of how you wanted your bar made. I didn't get a picture of this set of computers, because there were people waiting behind us, so we had to hurry - especially since the kids changed what they wanted to do to their bars about 2 or 3 times each!  You first had to select white, milk or dark chocolate as your base. Then you were allowed to put 2 fillings in them and then decide if you wanted sprinkles on top. Josh got the most adventurous with a white chocolate base, butterscotch and chocolate chips and then sprinkles on top. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have more filling choices, but it was still a lot of fun.
After you made your selection, you then went and watched the chocolate bar get made.

 After the bar got all its fillings, it then ran under a milk chocolate bath.  The end result was a candy bar that was about 3 times the width of a regular hershey's bar and VERY chocolatey! After the candy bars go through this final step, they have to dry.  As they dry, we were told to go design our packaging at another set of computer screens.

The last picture is the bars getting put in boxes by the machine before they exited and were then packaged in our designed packages in tin collectible containers. I neglected to get a picture of our final products.  But you could choose from designs and colors schemes they had and just add your name or you could get as crazy as you wanted to be and completely design your own. Josh again, got the most creative with his packaging. I was overwhelmed by the choices and felt a little rushed by the people milling around waiting to use the computers and was busy helping the kids too, so mine was pretty basic.

After we finished making our candy bars, we headed up to a Hershey Kiss packaging station that is part of the free exhibits.

The kids are waiting patiently for their turn in their "Factory Worker" hats.

First they had to fill their containers by using a machine that dropped them into the container.  Bella is still wearing the apron from the chocolate bar making.

Then they had to shake the candy down, which was quite a production.

Then they were told to kiss them goodbye as they ran through the packaging machine.

You could pay to have Factory Worker ID badges made and also have their picture put on the Hershey Kiss container, but since we had just paid for the chocolate bars, we had them leave their Hershey Kiss Containers goodbye after we took this picture.  The pictures that they took were really cute and the kids wanted the Hershey Kisses and the containers, but a few minutes after we left, none of us thought of them again!

We went outside and sat on benches and let the kids eat a bite of their candy bars.  It was pretty messy because they were already still a little warm from being made and it was hot outside, but they were really good.  We had a really good time at Chocolate World and it was a good start to our trip. 

We were all getting pretty hungry and we had to go on the search for food in the town nearby.  Since we wanted to go back to our hotel anyway to drop off stuff and get a breather, we just grabbed a pizza from Pizza Hut and took it back to our hotel.  This was definitely a really cheap option for eating too.  Since we already had drinks and chips, it only cost us $10. The kids got to watch t.v. while they ate and Josh and I got to rest a little before we prepared for the next part of the day - a preview evening in Hershey Park!

Hershey Park Vacation - Part 1

I started this post about our vacation the week after we returned home - the first week of July - and I just never had the time to finish it.  But I have decided to go ahead and share it, if only for our own memory-keeping!

This is actually a picture from the trip home, but it is the only picture I took in the car.

We booked our trip to Hershey Park about 2 months before the date we were going, which was a big deal for us, because we normally don't make concrete vacation plans.  But then we barely thought about the trip again until 2 days before we were due to leave.  So I made a big list of things to bring, called the hotel with last minute questions, printed the directions, and checked out the websites to try to make a plan.  I wished we had started preparing before Sunday, but our lives are just always so jam-packed, we often live by "triage" - dealing with the things that need the most immediate attention first.  So, this means things like this get put off until it is absolutely necessary.  And on top of our schedule, a head cold that had passed between Josh and Elias had finally caught up with me, so I spent most of the weekend before we left in and out of bed. 

But we made no plans on Monday and Tuesday and I began to feel better, so we were able to get everything packed and ready by Tuesday evening.  We even had time to have an impromptu play date with some friends we don't get to see nearly enough on Tuesday afternoon.  
We left early on Wednesday morning.  The kids were a bit cranky before we stopped for breakfast, but the weather was great for traveling and Josh and I had actually went to bed at a decent hour the night before, so the trip was pretty enjoyable overall.

As a side note - our hotel offered slight discounts on the Hershey Park tickets, but we were looking for other deals online, but didn't find any that we didn't have to join something or put in our personal information, etc..  But we stopped for breakfast at a random Chick-fil-a in Cumberland, Maryland, and there were discount tickets sitting right inside the door for the park for $12 off of the admission price.  Now there are several things that make this such a huge blessing.  First, we had planned to stop at a Denny's or a Bob Evans to have a sit down breakfast, since we were going to be having a quick lunch in our hotel room when we arrived.  We couldn't find a Denny's and the kids voted against Bob Evans.  So we were trying to think of where else we could go.  We had stopped at a Chick-fil-a in Cumberland on another trip and knew there was a play place (which is a great way for the kids to get their wiggles out), so we decided as we were passing the exit to stop.  This restaurant is not even on an exit with lots of other tourist stops - like gas, other restaurants, etc..  Also, Cumberland is more than 2 hours away from Hershey.  We never saw the coupons that we got at any other restaurant we stopped at the entire trip - even those closer to the park.  When we gave the coupons to the ticket booth attendant and she said that those were the best coupon discounts they offer.  At $12 off of each admission, we saved $46 dollars!  I was so thankful.  Since we hadn't read them well, we had taken a coupon for each of us, but we only needed one.  So I tried my hardest to give the coupons to others who were standing in the lines, but many of them had already purchased their ticket.  But I was able to make a family of 8 people very happy, which made my day!

Anyway, we had a little trouble finding our hotel.  I started getting a little nervous as we turned into a little neighborhood that either the hotel wasn't as close as they had advertised or we were severely off track.  But we found our quaint little motor lodge right in the middle of this little neighborhood street.  There were beautiful shade trees and a gazebo in the front courtyard and it just felt homey.  When we got to our room, I was thanking Josh profusely for his hotel finding skills.  Our room was seriously almost as big as our first apartment.  It had a full kitchen, minus a stove, and three beds!  I wanted to kiss Josh for this!  One reason we hate staying in hotel rooms together is because our kids do not sleep well with others, especially each other.  Because the room was so big, it was easier to control the temperature of the room also. Our room was on the top floor and everyone had their own little entryways to their rooms.  There was obviously no hallway noise, which I really have trouble sleeping through, so we all slept the best we have ever slept in a hotel together.  I will share a little more on our hotel experience later, but it definitely put us all back in a good mood from the "travel crankiness" that had crept in.

Since we still had a full day ahead of us, we ate lunch in our room of food we had brought from home and prepared to leave.  Right before we walked out, the electricity went off because of some work they were doing on the lines, so we had to take all the food we had put in the full size fridge and put it back in our coolers.  We were glad to hear that the power was supposed to be back on by the time we got back and the temperature was very mild that day, so the room wouldn't get too hot - this was especially a blessing because 2 days later, was the weekend that the whole East Coast was having temperatures over 100 degrees!

Look for Part 2 (hopefully very soon) - The trip to Chocolate World

2 + 2 = 4

I got the idea to have them hold up pieces of paper with their grade on it from others, so we would be able to readily remember what grade they were starting in the future.  Unfortunately, I didn't make the grade big enough or dark enough, so all of their pictures look like they're holding blank sheets of paper.

So this is the only really good "first day of school" picture I have, without the crazy blank sheets!

Today is day 4 of school.  We have had 4 1/2 morning meltdowns over clothes and one meltdown over homework - 1 clothes meltdown and the homework meltdown came from Elias and 3 and 1/2 of the clothes meltdowns came from Bella.

Bella did this last year at the beginning of school for over a month.  At the time, I was so frustrated by it and felt at my wit's end because I thought it would last forever and I didn't understand what was causing it.  But around mid-October I realized that it was her release of the anxiety over starting school and being in a new environment, etc.  So, since I know that this year and it is her second year of school, I am hoping that it won't last nearly as long.  I know that I have handled it better this year than I did last year.

Now Elias' homework meltdowns were more of an on-going thing and were still happening well into Spring.  This year, he already LOVES his teacher and he said she makes learning fun, so I am hoping that it will be a little better this year. Of course, she'll be leaving in November for a maternity leave for the rest of the year, but the teacher who is taking her place is a man who has a temperament a lot like Josh's, so I hope that it will be an easy transition for Elias.

But, overall, the kids are adjusting to school much easier this year than they did last year and it feels like it will be a good year.

I have one 1/2 day of work under my belt - at a school where I have never subbed before.  It was a good day and it sort of got me over my "first day of (teaching) school" anxieties.  Yesterday, before I went to work, I took a quiet walk around my neighborhood, weeded my landscaping (which I secretly enjoy), and then took my time getting ready. Even though I did dishes and a couple loads of laundry too, it was a restful morning.

Today, the world is my oyster - at least until 3:30!  I don't have any appointments - though I have lots of things to do here!  But I have turned on my Harry Connick, Jr. Pandora station and I am going to enjoy the little blessings of this day, even in the midst of my "to dos". I have so many blessings. 

Time keeps on ticking into the future

The kids have been back to school for 1 and 1/2 days now.  I have already been called in to sub! I said no.  Maybe not my best choice, but mentally I am just not ready to start working already when I feel like I have gotten so little done around here. I am already scheduled for 2 days next week.
Yesterday, my day was spent catching up on emails and bills and shopping for school supplies. I did get to have lunch with Josh, which was a little bonus to my day. Today, my day has been spent so far filling out my name, address, phone number, emergency contacts, etc., on about 20 different forms for the kids schools.  - Seriously, isn't this the information age, can't they use a scanner or a copier or something?
I have a load of laundry to put away, more clothes that need to go into the washer, a sink full of dishes that can't be loaded until the dishwasher is unloaded, and I am still in my pajamas.  I am not off to a good start so far! 
I had every intention on catching up on my blog - recording what we were up to this summer, which was a lot!  But it seems like I won't have as much down time as I thought.  Sports are starting and work calls are starting. (I thought I would have a couple weeks before I started getting called at least.  I am glad that work is available, but I hate having to say no already!)
So, I guess I better get off of here and get started.
Oh, and did I mention that I haven't been sleeping well? My "to do" list swarms around my brain at night and it is like a mosquito that won't go away until I get up and take some swats at it. So, I have been becoming a night owl, getting back up when everyone else is sleeping - but unlike owls, I don't sleep during the day either.
It has only been 2 days.  No pressure.  There is plenty of time, right?

I think I want to be almost Amish

I have been meaning to blog all summer, but we have been so busy and by the time the kids go to bed, I am just too tired to put even a few coherent spoken sentences together, let alone an entire blog post. 

I started a blog post about our vacation the week after we returned (before July 4th) and never finished it.  I keep thinking that I will have time tomorrow, but each day is just so full of living there is no time to write it all down. 

I have been fighting off a melancholy lately in the midst of our full days - from the state of our nation, our culture, our world, my aging parents, the uncertainties of life, my kid's futures, etc.  It is like a dark cloud is trying to cover over all the happiness of the here and now in my life. I hate that so much of the madness around me invades my heart and steals my joy.

My kids are growing, strong and healthy. They are at a great, fun age right now. They are still young enough to be influenced by us, but they are developing their own personalities and tastes so dynamically. Josh and I are doing well and, as usual, he brings me comfort and a listening ear. We are safe and secure and all our needs are met and blessings abound every day.

But there is always the "What ifs..." and the "What about these people who say this or think that..." or the "I don't know how I am going to handle it when or if this happens..."

I can read the verses in the Bible that tell me not to worry and I am good, for the next 10 minutes or so.  Why does melancholy stick so much easier than peace?  Why do I try to run from the cloud.  It will be there if I run or not.  I have to be willing to dance with the Lord in the rain, even if it isn't what I think I want to do.  And the rain will eventually fall on my life, no matter how I try to resist it. 

I have to continually remind myself that there is nothing new under the sun; that God isn't surprised about any of this; that he gives us the strength we need when we need it - over and over and over again. But sometimes I wish I could go live in the woods, with no television, no internet, no popular culture - maybe I should become Amish?

I read this blog post and I really liked what it had to say. I think I want to be almost Amish. I was raised in a community that had Amish, my mother is from Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.  I went to a church (on & off) growing up that was just one step away from being Mennonite and that is where I learned about salvation and was married.  Even my parents are "old school" in their values and beliefs, even to this day. Maybe I was raised "Almost Amish" in a way.

Here is the link, check it out. http://www.qideas.org/blog/almost-amish.aspx

Two of my favorite quotes from it are

"The Amish have a saying: 'A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.'" 

and

 "Half a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon entitled “Paul’s Letter to American Christians.” In it, King warns that moral advances are not keeping abreast with our technological advances: 'Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood.'"

 Maybe I need to allow myself the benefit of not trying to save the world - or at least not contemplating how it would be done. Maybe I shouldn't try to borrow tomorrow's trouble. Maybe I shouldn't...not trust God and ignore what my Bible really says. Honestly, if I look back through Biblical accounts, there are few accounts of God's people not being on the receiving end of injustice and isolation and strife. 

Why do I think I deserve better?