Hersheypark Exhausted

We went to Hersheypark yesterday.  Back when the kids were little, we used to have season passes to Hersheypark.  The best thing about that was that you could go to HP for a couple of hours, ride a few rides, and come home.  Unfortunately, you don’t have that luxury when you go once a summer.

We actually started out our day the night before, since Hersheypark let’s you “preview” the park for free the night before you plan to use your tickets.  By the way, I got discount tickets through the Boy Scout website.  Here’s the link, if you’re interested, it’s the cheapest price I found, and the Boy Scouts make $5 on each ticket sold.

Although Jack has recently started liking roller coasters (and he rode every one at HP several times that he was permitted to ride), he’s still not tall enough for SkyRush, Great Bear, Fahrenheit, etc.  So much of the day, Maddie and Ben rode those coasters while Jack and I did the tamer rides (although we rode that dang Wild Mouse five times, ugh, and I’m not calling that sucker tame).  Here are some shots of Jack having fun with me:

Every now and then I got a glimpse or two of Maddie and Ben on the bigger coasters:

(third car from the front)

We often met up though and did things all together, mostly because Maddie needed a break.  Ben would have ridden the coasters all day!  He’s a maniac!

Our evening ended with a crazy thunderstorm that seemed to blow in out of nowhere!  We were all the way at the end of the park where all three kids, minus me who needed a doggone break from the action, were getting themselves on the Wild Cat.  I was enjoying sitting quietly on a bench at the time.  Since it was about 9:15 p.m., things had really slowed down, and the kids were basically riding the Wild Cat over and over and over again (including Jack).  Anyway, they finally joined me on the bench, disappointed that they had been shooed off the ride because the person in charge said a storm was coming.  I checked the radar on my phone, and sure enough, it looked like a doozy was on its way (however, at that point, the night seemed calm and lovely).

We started to walk toward the exit.  By the time we got to The Claw, the wind started to roar.  By the time we got to Milton Hershey’s fountain, it started to pour and thunder and lightning like crazy!  The last photo above is us taking shelter in a shop.  Jack HATES thunderstorms and was really freaking out (the reason he’s clutching the store’s stuffed animal).  After about 10 minutes, I looked outside and decided it would be okay to keep going.  Unfortunately, my judgment was poor, probably clouded by my aching feet and thoughts of my soft, cushy bed waiting for me at home.  We ran the rest of the way to the tram in pouring rain and occasional thunder and lightning.  Luckily we were parked near the tram stop, and our story does not end with an untimely electrocution.

All told, we spent about 13 hours at Hersheypark.  We truly had a fabulous day.  And I’m so glad I don’t have to do it all again until next year.

Welcome, Joey!

I am exhausted!  Do you see my new header up there?  Normally I can whip those together in about 15 minutes, but Sarah at Clover Lane took down her tutorial on how to make one and I had to remember how to do it all by myself.  Then I decided to challenge myself and also downloaded the free yellow dotted background, and then on top of everything else, when I went to find my new background, my computer wouldn’t let me into most of my photo files.  I had to eventually go out of the program, copy the new header, paste it into one of the files my stupid computer was allowing me to see, and then apply it to my blog.  An hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back.  You people had better tell me how much you like my new header the next time you see me. 

Anyway, after the Great Fish Massacre back in March we went shopping for new fish (over Easter break).  Jack picked out three new, identical fish (because the bossy salesperson at That Fish Place was very picky about how her 99 cent fish spent their days and seriously wouldn’t let us buy what we wanted…she said these fish needed buddies and that since we had just cleaned out and refilled our tank, the fish poop pH needed to build up again, and…I don’t know…a whole bunch of other stuff that basically boiled down to us never going to That Fish Place again.) (And I realize that just makes me sound like a bad fish parent who doesn’t care about the well being of my 99 cent fish, but WHATEVS).

So Jack got the three identical fish whom he named Larry, Moe, and Curly.  And then he promptly forgot about them.  They just weren’t special in his heart the way Mr. Fishy Wishy, Deb, Christopher and  friends were, mainly because they are all tiny and look alike. 

This week, though, I told him we could go to Wal-Mart and get a sucker fish so the algae doesn’t start creeping up on our tank again.  I was hoping that we wouldn’t pick out a new fish with a disease like that troublemaking hussy, Sierra, introduced to our tank back in March.

So we went, Jack picked out a very nice fish which we brought home and added to our tank with Larry, Moe, and Curly.  On our drive home, I asked Jack what he was going to name him.  He said he didn’t know, but that he was “making” him be a boy.  I suggested “Abbott” or “Costello” in keeping with the old time comedian theme. 

He thought about it for a second, then yelled out, “Joey!”

“Oh, okay,”  I told him.  “Joey’s a nice name too.”

“Mom!  It’s perfect!  Because Joey is a comedian on Full House and also that show’s from a really long  time ago, just like Larry, Moe, and Curly!”  Which made me feel super old, because I don’t think Full House is from that long ago, and because my parents probably didn’t think Larry, Moe and Curly were from so long ago either.

Anyway, Joey is installed in our tank and is doing just fine.  Larry Moe and Curly all seem to stay to themselves though, and don’t really seem to have welcomed their new friend with open…fins.  They mostly swim around the top of the tank while Joey hangs around at the bottom.  I can’t help but think this is the Bossy That Fish Place Salesperson’s fault.  If I had been allowed to purchase different (though compatible) fish they would have all learned a lesson in tolerance and friend-making and I can’t help but think the atmosphere in the tank would have been kinder and more welcoming to our Pal Joey.

Keep your fishy chin up, Joey!  We love you!

Trees

When I was a kid, we had a maple tree in our backyard that was perfect for climbing.  I still remember my route up, which was always the same…swing myself up from the bottom branch (which was a slight stretch to reach), then up about 4 more good thick branches until I got to my perch spot.  I climbed up there a lot:  during hide and seek, to eat a Kool Pop unbothered by my bratty brother Dave,  just to sit and think because of course there was not much to do all summer and sometimes I had to just hang out by myself.  I tried to show my kids my tree a few years ago, with plans of even hoisting myself up and finding my route, but I found that even though I had grown, so had the tree.  My bottom branch was waaay too high for me.

So now I’m going to Pull a Taradactyl and show you some theme pictures.  Can you guess the theme?

That’s me up there, however I’m in the silver maple in our yard, which was also good for climbing, but was a lot more open foliage-wise, so it wasn’t as great a place to climb and hide out.  Look at the lower branch sticking out on the left side of the picture…the next two pictures involve that branch.

The next photo shows my bratty brother Dave and me sitting on that lowest branch.

A photographer came out to our house and did a long, torturous photo shoot.  As you can see, even though I had been instructed to look up, I snuck a look back, just as the photographer snapped this picture.  I remember how disappointed mom was when she saw the proof.  She really laid it on thick that I had spoiled the photo, and I felt pretty badly about that, because my bratty brother Dave had spent most of this photo shoot crying (probably because he was dressed in a 3 piece denim leisure suit in July), and had finally started cooperating. 

I think that I have now experienced my mother’s frustration firsthand…many times over (see Christmas card fail posts).

Above is a picture of Maddie and Ben on the very same tree branch.  My mom thought it would be cute to get a photo of them together there, and you can see they cooperated about as well and my bratty brother Dave and I had.  I remember being worried that they would fall out of the tree (they are only 3 and 4 here), so my tense manner probably didn’t help.

The next few pictures take place at my in-laws’ house.  They have several good climbing trees!

You can see in the last two photos, that the kids (and that is cousin Nick with Ben in the photo on the left) have graduated from the smaller apple trees to climbing the larger maple tree in their yard.  And I have become a tense mother yet again.

Recently, the boys realized that two of the trees in our yard have finally become climbable.  Ben has climbed particularly high into our ornamental pear tree, scaring the bejeebers out of me.

Can you see Ben?

He doesn’t look that high, but trust me…he is.

Look, Jack even likes to climb broken trees!

Jack has been sitting with me, bugging me while I wrote this blogpost.  I asked him for a good wrap-up sentence for this post, and here are his offerings:

“Trees, trees, trees, trees, trees.”

“Trees prevent air.”

“I mean, trees give air.”

“Trees are nice.”

And there you have it.

Camp and a Sidestory

A few weekends ago, Dave took Jack and a fellow Cub Scout to a enjoy a few days of 8 year old type fun.  You know what I mean…boating, archery, rock wall climbing, snake spotting, farting/burping contests, sleeping on rocks, and performing crazed rickshaw tricks.

Snake! In the lake they were just swimming in!  This is why Dads go to camp and moms stay home.  This and the sleeping on rocks thing.  Also I’m not so interested in burping or farting.

The highlight of the day (for me, as an innocent, snorting-with-glee person who stayed home and felt a teeny bit guilty about it) involved this thing:

Except that Dave was sitting in the rickshaw, and Jack was pulling it.  Down a hill.  Really fast.  And then Jack tripped, the rickshaw’s arms went down and poked into the ground, and Dave flew out of the rickshaw, and over Jack’s head, landing safely in a pile of steaming manure.  I added the manure part in my imagination, but the story almost doesn’t need it.  Is that not an awesome visual?  I almost would have risked snakes and poor sleep conditions to have witnessed those very awesome 3 seconds of time.

Neither father nor son received any injury of any sort.  Maybe some slightly bruised egos, but that’s it.

Kreider and Jack had a great time.

Meanwhile, back at the Wolfe den (those wolf puns never get old), Maddie and I went to one of Ben’s ball games.  The next day we were lazy, and lots of screens were involved, until it was time to go shopping.  Ben was going to stay home alone for a short while, because I didn’t think he’d be interested in the sort of shopping we had planned, which involved female undergarments.  Ahem.  But when he found out, he begged to come with us, because he wanted to include a little side trip to Gamestop while we were at the mall.  I warned him, people.  I warned him about what we would be doing, but the siren call of Gamestop clouded his judgement, I do believe.

Anywho, we got the undergarment shopping out of the way first, and I plopped him in a chair near the dressing rooms in the Women’s Foundations department of Boscov’s, handed him my phone, then he immediately ducked his head down and did not look around, for fear his eyes would freeze, or for fear that someone would see him, more like.

It probably took 20-25 minutes all told to search for, try on, search again, and try on again the bras, and then make our purchases.  When we left, the relief palpable on his anguished little face, he asked how hard it was to try on bras.  “Seriously!  You took forever!  When we get to the car, I’m going to take my shirt off and on and show you how fast changing can happen!”   And then he asked for a soft pretzel to help ease his pain.  I wanted to say, “Dude.  Someday you probably will be removing someone’s bra.   Talk to me then about how easy it is.”  But I didn’t, partly because I didn’t want to mentally go there and partly because his psyche had already taken a beating.

Then we went to Gamestop and had supper at Wendy’s and dessert at DQ, where Ben got a butterscotch dipped ice cream cone to ease his pain. And all was right with the world again.

Summer Lovin’

Oh, how a year changes everything.

Here’s how I felt about the last day of school last year.  (Hint---I wrote angst-filled poetry!)

And here it is in 2011.  And 2010 (I wrote poetry again…Whaaat?!). And finally…2009.

In 2010, my writing is pretty upbeat, but generally, the last day of school made me want to curl up in a fetal position.  But not this year.  Oh no, this year I AM ON VACATION PEOPLE!

I haven’t posted any pictures of my class for privacy sake, but since my blog is private I’m going to post one photo of my fifth graders:

I seriously loved this class.  I seriously hated to see them go. We had our graduation ceremony on the last day of school, and it was such a proud, bittersweet moment for me. 

On the other hand…I can sleep in now (yesterday I slept in ‘til 5:45 a.m. and today I made it to 6 a.m.), I have no lessons to plan or Reading Response Notebooks to read and correct and I get to spend quality time with the guinea pig,who’s experienced a major personality overhaul in my absence (I’m not kidding).

The good news is the teacher I replaced during her maternity leave has extended her leave through Christmas, so I’ll be back next fall!  The bad news is, none of those kids pictured up there flunked out so I’ll be getting a new class of students who will have to work pretty hard to meet my current expectations.

Ben graduated from 5th grade too!  I couldn’t go, but Dave took some pictures for me:

                                                      It’s almost like I’m really there!

                                                 

                       Ben and Mr. B.                                                                                       Jake, Ben, and Ethan (who did not plan their coordinating outfits).

Yesterday I started off my vacation by doing 5 loads of laundry, cleaning the kitchen, taking the kids to the library (and picking up Dan Brown’s new novel for myself), and changing the furniture around in Jack’s room.  Dave and I also joined the staff of my elementary school for a night out, which really topped my day quite nicely.  I never thought I’d be happy to do laundry, tote the kids places, and clean things up…but I am. 

When the kids were tiny, I remembered saying to Dave, “I never get a vacation!   I don’t even get weekends off!”  And that’s how it felt, those crazed little buggers sucking every waking minute from me, the laundry always needing to be done, the toys strewn about no matter how much I tried to keep things picked up (I didn’t actually try too hard), even my showers and sleep interrupted by someone always needing me.    Although the last five months have been a challenge to navigate, I’m ready for this new part of my life.  I appreciate my summer and weekends like I never have before.  I’m pinning a whole new category of things on Pinterest and I’m looking forward to meeting my new fifth graders in August.

Of course until then, I am going to savor every minute of this summer.