Monday, September 28, 2009

Go-carts, meatballs, and colds

I stayed home today from work to nurse a cold. Hence, why I'm finally catching up on this blog. I feel bad for neglecting lately, but life has been keeping me uberbusy. As you can probably imagine, I have been putting in many hours at work and all my spare time is spent on home projects and quality time with the kids. We did manage to fit in a family fun day this past weekend to have a preview of N's 9th birthday. His birthday is actually tomorrow (9/29), but we wanted to be able to spend the whole day celebrating him, without work hindering any of it.

We went to a place called Bullwinkle's (named for the cartoon moose) down in Wilsonville, about 40 minutes from where we live. They have all kinds of things to do there such as go-carts, bumper boats, miniature golf, arcade games, and more. In other words, it is a kids' dreamland. Grandma J tagged along for the fun and pitched in for the cost, a bonus for us. As a quick sidebar...upon her arrival she whips out some pictures of her doing the unthinkable...skydiving! My MIL is turning 70 years old next month and she wanted to do something completely crazy. I think she succeeded. DH and I both dropped our jaws in awe and shock. I was actually proud of her for doing something so wild and out of character. Good for her. She wanted to cross it off of her bucket list (it's on mine still) and she said it was the rush of her life...but I digress.

So we arrive at Bullwinkle's and with a little help from some coupons, we managed to afford the kids a handful of activities. The kids were just a little under the height requirement, so DH and I drove the kids around in the go-carts. Ooooh did they have fun on that! N and I raced around and passed lots of people, much to his delight. We were quite the little speed demons. N got to fulfill a longtime wish of climbing the rockwall. He struggled at first with his fears, but eventually made it almost to the top. K strapped into the harness jumpy thing (no idea what you call it). This was K's second time trying this thing out (first time was over the summer). At one point, Grandma J got into a conversation with the 18 year old attendant about skydiving and impressed the you-know-what out of him. He kept repeating..."you actually willingly fell fell out of a plane." She would say, "no I jumped out of the plane." He would reply, "No, it was a tandam jump. The instructor jumped, you fell...willingly." This went back and forth for a few minutes and we just kept laughing at his incredulity. Grandma J enjoyed the moment though, I'm sure.

Anyhow, we went inside to enjoy some pizza for lunch. Afterwards, the kids played various video games and climbed on the indoor play structure to get rid of some excess energy. We then left to go to the theater, which was located just a block or two away. The kids have been waiting all summer to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The movie was so worth the wait! It was hilarious. The kids filled up on popcorn and treats. Grandma J gave N his presents and that was the icing on the cake for him. It was getting late and so we called it a day.

K was quite the trooper since she was still battling a cold. She insisted on coming along and didn't let her it stop her all day long. We stayed home on Sunday to help get her healthy again and realized both N and I caught her cold. What a doozy of a cold it has been too! I ended up staying home from work today (Monday) with both kids. I suppose it's been a blessing in disguise as it's forced me to slow down. Too tired to download all pictures from the camera tonight, but will work on it tomorrow I can. I have to muster the strength to run to Target to get N's other birthday present and bake his cake before he gets out of school. We have a little craft project that we've been saving and will do that after they get home from school. I hope my health returns enough to do all this stuff, for N's sake. Here's hoping!

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