Asheboro

I love to travel. It doesn't have to be any big deal or to anywhere fancy. I just love any opportunity to explore a new place. Apparently, my love for adventuring has passed on to my children, and the other night one of them was lamenting at dinner that, "It's been over a year since we left the state!" How criminal. I reminded this child that while it was within North Carolina, we did travel to Asheboro over spring break. This child loved that trip, but that wasn't good enough.

So here is a little about the trip that doesn't count.

North Carolina has a really nice zoo. All of the billboards even advertise it as the world's largest zoo. And our passes to the local aquarium get us into the zoo for free. However, we had never carved out time to take the kids there. I wasn't able to take off a lot of time over spring break, but I was able to take a few days, which sounded like the perfect opportunity to explore the zoo.

In addition to having an aquarium pass, we have a museum pass that we planned to use to get into a nearby science museum. I had an easy, inexpensive little mini-break all planned out. But then the weather refused to cooperate. I hate when that happens. And the stress of trying to figure out another plan may have led to me having a little breakdown while sitting in our minivan in the Harris Teeter parking lot on the way out of town. I may have mentioned something about needing a vacation to plan a vacation. But it was a gorgeous day, and the driver of our vehicle (mercifully, not me) made an executive decision to head directly to the zoo. It was a good decision. The forecast was for torrential rain the next afternoon, and we opted to see half the zoo on Day 1 and the other half on Day 2.

We live about 3.5 hours from the zoo, and we stopped halfway for lunch at Arby's. Miraculously, this was our only stop (at least that I can recall six months later) and we made it to the zoo by early afternoon. When we arrived at the zoo, we were presented with the dilemma of going in through the entrance in the North American exhibit or the entrance in the African exhibit. We opted for North America, which was closest.

Many people had shared with me how large the zoo was, but it hadn't quite registered until I got there. Many parts of it look more like a nature preserve than a zoo, and it is filled with spacious outdoor areas where animals can actually roam. Five of us absolutely loved it, and the usual suspect spent the entire afternoon whining about how much walking was involved. We all did our best to ignore Usual Suspect since there was way too much fun to be had. And despite the zoo being so large, the exhibits were structured to allow us to get very close to some of the animals.

 

 

This guy kinda snuck up and was suddenly RIGHT THERE.

And Mike's highlight of the day was when a brown bear turned and I ended up with a picture of the brown bear's bum. Good stuff to an eight-year-old boy!

After checking out the animal exhibits on the North American side, we took the zoo tram back to the entrance. Thank goodness for the zoo tram. I think we would have all been feeling like the Usual Suspect if we had tried to make the mile-plus walk back to the entrance at that point. Once we were back near the entrance, the kids explored the playground and other hands -on areas. One of the kids' favorite spots was a man made creek and waterfall that they were allowed to play in. It was a fun and wet way to end that days' zoo adventure.

 

After walking around all afternoon, we were starving. We checked in at our hotel and then went looking for food. There were a lot of chain restaurants near our hotel, but we bravely checked Yelp for other recommendations. We ended up at a little Mexican restaurant that, quite frankly, looked rather sketchy on the outside, but was nicely decorated inside and had very friendly staff. The food was amazing, and the kids ate everything, including five baskets of chips. Whew.

We were greeted by highly overcast skies on the morning of Day 2, and we made sure to arrive at the African entrance of the zoo as soon as it opened. As spacious as the North American side had been, the African side took space to a whole new level. Many of the animals were in a safari area that was large enough you could take a bus tour of it. There was a walking path all along one side of it, and with the animals being spread out over so many acres, I was nervous about not being able to see them clearly. That was clearly not an issue for this ostrich who decided to come over and say hello. 

And the highlight of the day, if not the entire trip, for Mike was getting to watch the elephants use the bathroom. Not pretty, but definitely impressive.

It started raining on us around the time we were finishing our tour of the African side, so we quickly made it back to the tram station. We ended up having to wait a really long time for a tram, but thankfully we were under a cover and stayed dry. And the heavy rains didn't arrive until right after we boarded a tram.

We went back to our hotel to dry off then decided to head out to explore. Asheboro is pretty small, but they had a mall. After the kids spent over three hours in the tiny mall in Jacksonville, NC back in December, I had no doubts they we would find something to do there. The Asheboro mall wasn't large either, but it included a video arcade. That happened to have free play of classic video games like Ms. Pacman and Galaga they day we were there. And that, of course, was the highlight of Leon's trip. 

We ended the day with a simple dinner at the hotel - the kids had Lunchables and the grown ups ate Chinese take out from the mall. The kids and I then went swimming. And that night we slept - the really satisfied, deep sleep that comes after two days of walking in the fresh air. Our little vacation may not have counted as an official vacation to the kids, but it was very enjoyable and a great way to explore another part of North Carolina.

 

January

Around the first of the year, I set an intention to slow down. The universe got a nice little chuckle out of that and said, "Um, no." Home life went at its usual pace, and admittedly, there's only so much room to slow down when people still need to eat daily and occasionally get clean and wear clean clothes. But everything else sped up. A lot. Despite the madness, we still had a lot of fun, and everyone managed to stay relatively healthy. Phew.

So here's a little from our January:

Our passes to the The Children's Museum of Wilmington were expiring, so we squeezed in one last visit.

The black light reduced Mike to nothing but a pair of socks.

We made it to the 100th day of kindergarten! Where substantially more effort MAY have been invested in "family projects" for her older siblings, youngest child was reduced to wearing a last minute outfit made from a hand-me-down shirt from her brothers and leftover puffy paints from her sister's 9th birthday. Thankfully, someone didn't seem to mind.

We saw ice! Outside! And not melting in a drink. The kids deemed this photo-worthy and checked on the frozen drip at the end of the down spout every time they went outside for 48 hours.

Someone had a birthday. She insisted on making her own cupcakes. I was only allowed to turn on the mixer, use the oven, and fill her piping bag with icing.

For Natalia's birthday, in lieu of having a party, she asked to go to Raleigh to go to Marbles Kids Museum and stay in a hotel with a pool. I spent about 13 second debating before realizing that going out of town with 6 people was substantially easier (and possibly cheaper) than hosting a birthday party for a six-year-old.

So January may not have gone as planned (actually, I never had a plan - maybe that was the problem), but at least when it came to my family, I enjoyed the ride. However your year is going, I hope you are enjoying it too!

Kings Island

My kids just finished their sixth week of school and have already received interim report cards. But, given that everyone else is going back to school now, it seems like a good time for a How I Spent My Summer Vacation post. (Okay, and honestly, with four kids now in school, it's taken me this long to get organized enough to write a post.)

This summer we headed to Ohio to see family. Our vacation included time in both northern and southern parts of the state. While in Cincinnati, we spent a day at King's Island, a great amusement part with a fantastic kids' area. While we were there, Mike said, "Mom, you have to write about this!" So this post is for Mike.

Aside from a couple of relatively short days spent in the Magic Kingdom when we went to my cousin's wedding in Orlando five years ago, my kids have never been to an amusement park. And although that was Disney, they were so little that Ree is the only one who remembers it. So this was a whole new adventure.

Our kids work better with preparation, so before we went, we showed the kids the website (more than once, of course, at their request, as they tried to memorize all of the rides and map out the best course for the day). And we mentioned waiting in lines, especially to Nati, who has no patience. Then we crossed our fingers, coated ourselves in sunscreen, grabbed three grandparents to help, and off we went.

We went on a Thursday when the park was pretty empty and the temperatures stayed around 80 degrees. We couldn't have asked for better conditions. We arrived right as it opened. We were able to walk right in, and we soon took the obligatory pic in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We headed toward Planet Snoopy, the kids' area, which has won numerous awards. We had no real basis for comparison, but to us, it was fantastic. I figured we'd spend the morning there and then check out the rest of the park in the afternoon, but there ended up being so much to do that except for a lunch break, we ended up staying there until we left at 7pm.

I have relatively few pics of the rides, mostly because I am a big kid and I gleefully road all of them with the kids. We were also grateful to have grandparents along to help since many of the rides required an adult to sit with each child and it would've been really difficult if Jeff and I had to take one kid at a time on the ride while the other stayed with the other three kids. 

Waiting in line, brothers gotta hug.

 

Shhh! I think the girls might secretly like each other. 

 

Natalia found and hugged every character she could find. This was a country Charlie Brown. 

 

Mike and Gran riding in the front seat of the roller coaster followed closely by Grandpa Jim and Ree.

The rides were great, but I have to admit I was completely gleeful to discover there was a petting zoo. It was a fun and relaxing break to just hang out with the animals for a little while. 

 

And Natalia did not like waiting in line. But she didn't torture us too much. I would call that a successful day!

Myrtle Beach

It seems like once the boys hit kindergarten last year, our lives got completely crazy. One of the things that went out the window was blogging on any kind of regular basis, so forgive me for jumping around in time with my posts now. Back in March, as we were packing up to leave our hotel in Myrtle Beach, Mike declared, "Mom! You have to write about this on Nutty Mommy!" Except I didn't. So now, just because Mike asked, I am. But I guess I should back up and start at the beginning.

Last winter it dawned on me that we had never taken the kids on a true vacation. We've traveled out of town to visit family, and we've traveled to weddings, and we've traveled to family weddings, but we've never been anywhere just for fun. With the kids getting four long breaks a year from school, their schedule lends itself well to traveling outside of peak seasons, and the kids are finally big enough that traveling for fun actually seemed like a possibility.

Not wanting to get crazy and spend too much money or venture too far from home the first time we tried this crazy vacation thing, we opted to spend a few days in Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach is less than 90 miles away, and several friends recommended a hotel with an indoor water park. It's not nearly as fancy as a Great Wolf Lodge, but again, when you've never done anything like this before, anything is new and exciting.

The kids were excited, but they also took the trip very seriously. We left in the late morning with plans of stopping at Broadway at the Beach, a giant outdoor mall, for lunch. Leon cracked me up - he was very focused on making sure he had a perfect outfit for this excursion, and he elected to wear a button down shirt and cargo pants. Jeff decided he was dressed perfectly for the occasion, if he was a little old man. The other kids were only slightly less serious in planning their attire.

Because the drive was fairly short, Natalia wasn't completely horrible on the car ride, and we had a great time at Broadway at the Beach, walking around, playing on the playground, and eating lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. The kids even managed to eat all of their food and were very proud of themselves for not having leftovers. After lunch we headed to our hotel, and we pretty much just stayed there for the next two days.

We got a one bedroom suite which worked out great. The bedroom had two queen sized beds, and we gave one to the girls and one to the boys. The kids had their own TV in there, so they were happy to hang out in "their" room. Jeff and I opted for the murphy bed in the living room, which also meant we had access to the kitchen and balcony at night. There was a Food Lion just down the street, and we made daily trips there to pick up stuff for meals so that we only had to eat out once a day. I think we ended up making 5 trips to the hotel's water park over the 2.5 days we were there. The hotel was on the beach, and we even snuck in the first beach trip of the year. We spent one morning checking out more of Myrtle Beach, but other than that, we just relaxed and played. Overall, it was a pretty amazing first vacation. Good enough, in fact, that Natalia has declared that when she grows up she is going to live in Myrtle Beach. (And be a hair dresser.)