Normal Days

We went to SeaWorld on Saturday with Josh and Natalie Dayton and their 3 kids, and Taber and Becca Rigg and their baby. Josh graduated from the MBA program with Daniel and works at Dell, and Taber is a first year MBA student doing his internship at Dell.

Some parts of SeaWorld were fun, but overall I feel like the experience was not worth the money. I loved the dolphin show, as always, and I also loved feeding a fish to a dolphin and getting to pet it, but that was about it. Part of the problem was it was just too crowded. I think everyone in Texas decided to go to SeaWorld on Saturday. We could not even get into the Shamu show, because every time we tried to go all the seats were filled up, even when we went a half hour early. We finally got into an evening Shamu show that is a different show than the normal one, but we didn't really see it, because both Daniel and I had to sit with two kids on our lap because it was so crowded.

It also was just hard to be there with four little kids. They got hungry and tired, and I felt like during the shows I was spending the whole time trying to get them to see what was going on and pointing out how excited they should be, but all they wanted to do was eat lunch. I remember that the water-skiing show was neat, but I was nursing Elizabeth while I was watching, and the kids kept going through my diaper bag trying to find more food, so it was a little stressful and I couldn't pay attention to the tricks very well.

The kids did love a little Shamu roller coaster that they have there, but we were only able to take them on it once because the lines were so long. We kept promising them that they would be able to do it again before we left, but every time we went back the lines were still too long, so they were bummed about that. Their other favorite thing to do was play in one of those little splash areas where water comes up out of the ground. They spent a lot of time there, but it was not even as neat as our community pool area, and we can go there for free.

For most of the day, it seemed like the kids were hot and tired, and not really sure why we were dragging them all around to different places where they couldn't really see what was going on.

I'm not trying to say that SeaWorld is horrible, because it really can be a lot better when it's not so crowded (last year it wasn't nearly as crowded and we enjoyed it more). I do have to remember, though, that big activities that cost a lot of money don't always create the memories that you tell yourself they will.

I think sometimes I tend to try to force the good memories - I talk about it a lot with my kids afterwards, like, "Wasn't that fun to see that?", and "Wasn't that amazing when this happened?", and I ask them what their favorite part was and then talk a lot about it, so then they kind of think, "Oh, yeah, that was a really fun day", even if they didn't think so at the time.

I should start talking to them about good memories from just normal, stay-at-home days. Just last week I remember thinking at the end of a day that it had been very fun and fulfilling. It was last Thursday. Early in the morning Tristan and I drove over to the school to register him for kindergarten. It was kind of exciting because he got to see what his school looks like. In the short time that we were there he managed to get lost and locked out of the building (confirming my fears that he is not ready for school) but then he proved that maybe he is ready by bravely walking all the way around the whole school to get back to the one door that was open and then coming to find me without panicking the whole time.

Other things we did on Thursday: I watered the trees in our front yard, and then because the hose was out, I filled up the little swimming pool on our back porch and Tristan, Oliver, and Rachel all went swimming, along with several hundred little animal toys they brought down from the playroom.

Later on in the day I worked with Tristan and Oliver on writing their numbers. Tristan had been having a problem with writing all of the numbers backwards, so we've been doing practice "worksheets". Oliver loves tracing numbers that I write down, and then he draws them himself. When he does it, he holds the paper upside down and writes them that way, and then turns the paper right-side up at the end. It's a very odd system. To each his own, I guess.

After Daniel came home and we ate dinner, we all went out to the backyard to feed our pet spider, Reggie. He is a huge garden spider that has spun a web in the back corner of our yard where some plants hang down from the other side of the fence. He is a very pretty spider, as spiders go. In case some of you are wondering, I was not involved in the decision to keep him as a pet or to name him. All of that was done sometime in my absence, and since then everyone has become much too attached to do anything about it. I will admit that Reggie is probably the easiest pet anyone has ever had. The kids (and Daniel) had a lot of fun catching little grasshoppers in the backyard and then throwing them into Reggie's web. Although I did not participate in the catching of the grasshoppers, I did find it fascinating to see him jump on the grasshoppers and then roll them up in his web before biting them. I even got out the video camera and videotaped the whole thing.

Somehow during the spider feeding Rachel spotted the pool and decided it would be really fun to go swimming again, this time in her dress and shoes. Once she was in, I decided to let her stay in and play, and it kept her occupied the whole time I cleaned up the kitchen.

After we all came back inside, we got the kids all ready for bed and then I hooked up the video camera to the TV and we watched the Reggie movie. Then we rewound the whole tape and watched some of the other home videos that we have made. Rachel loves seeing herself on TV. She kept commenting on how blue her eyes are.

After home videos were done Daniel practiced some flag football with the boys. We had been thinking about signing Tristan up for a flag football league (he ended up deciding that he didn't want to play - attending a meeting with Daniel where the coach said the kids would all throw up at practice could have had something to do with that decision). Anyway, Daniel ran around with some socks in his shorts for flags, and Tristan and Oliver tried to pull the socks out, and Daniel gave them pointers on moves and stuff. Then they each took turns running around with socks in while the other tried to pull them out. A couple more sessions of that, and they'll both be solid in offense and defense for sock flag football. Except there was no football involved. That could probably complicate things.

After the kids were all in bed, Daniel and I worked on babybooks. Well, Daniel worked on his Yellowstone book, and I organized babybook stuff. I have one drawer that I have been sticking random keepsake things in for too long, thinking, "someday this will all get organized into the right spot." I've been too intimidated to start on it, but even just spending just one evening on it helped a lot.

Then we went to bed on time, which hasn't happened for too long.

Anyway, my natural inclination would be to remind my kids about last Saturday at SeaWorld and how fun it was, but really Thursday was a lot more fun for everyone, I think. I guess sometimes normal days are actually more enjoyable than the big days, they just don't usually get the credit.