Day 1,322 - Looking Fly and Flying High

Uhhhh...

What to write? What to write?

This is one of those good writer's block blogs. Every so often, one of those pops up. Generally, it's due to me viewing the minutia of everyday life as being somewhat unexciting. However, there are definitely those memories that are worthwhile to consider. Case in point: Ethan's pure love for dressing up.

Now, I'm fully aware that dressing up can refer to one of two things. The first being to look good/classy/studly/fly/insert other words here as necessary. The second means to maybe put on a costume and play pretend. For the record, I'm actually referring to both of those things in this instance!

I'm going to tackle the idea of dressing up first. Wow, I should probably further clarify. I'm going to tackle the idea of looking good first. In our household, we really only dress up to head to church on Sunday. As a stay-at-home dad, my everyday attire largely consists of a pair of gym shorts and a red t-shirt (I have an inexplicable number of red t-shirts). However, on Sundays, I do my best to look presentable, so I bust out jeans and a shirt with buttons. Sometimes I even sport a pair of dress shoes!

For Ethan, Sundays is normally a time in which he does his best to match me. It's actually easier than you might think as we have several dress shirts that are remarkably similar. However, he doesn't stop there. Lately, Ethan has been in a mood to accessorize. What's his favorite accessory? Easy, his black bow-tie.

Now, the bow-tie is not new to our household. In fact, I'm pretty sure we've had it since Ethan was one year old. He's worn it intermittingly over the years but lately, he has come to believe that it goes with anything. Despite our best pleadings and reasoning, it's becoming a rarity for Ethan to go to church without his bow-tie on. It's not all bad though. He does look pretty cute in it even if it clashes horrendously with his brown cowboy boots.

Now, for the other kind of dressing up. The one that involves putting on a costume and playing pretend. This has long been one of Ethan's favorite things to do. In fact, as people might remember, it's not farfetched to see the little man practically living in his Chiefs helmet, jersey, and pants during football season. However, Pat Mahomes isn't the only superhero in Ethan's world. He also spends time each day doing his best Buzz Lightyear impersonation.

Ethan's Buzz costume actually was his Halloween costume this past year despite him not knowing who Buzz Lightyear was. This summer though, Ethan has become very acquainted with Buzz through watching the Toy Story tetralogy.  It's actually really fun to watch him "fly" around the house yelling "To Infinity and Beyond!" while attempting to protect the galaxy from the Evil Emperor Zurg. Buzz isn't the only fictional character Ethan embodies though. He also will throw on Bethany's blue rain coat and my old red bucket hat from time-to-time and pretend to be Paddington Bear. While his adventures don't seem quite as epic when he's dressed as Paddington, they're still pretty cute in their own way.

The photos may be a little old but they still get the point across.

Ethan's most recent costume of choice comes from his time at Vacation Bible School. When he puts on his brown vest (made out of an old shopping bag), his binoculars (made out of an old toliet paper tube), and his adventurer's hat, you know that he is ready to explore nature or hunt for treasures. Either can and has happened. Sadly, I haven't taught him to talk like the Crocodile Hunter during those times yet but there's still plenty of opportunities ahead.

I got in the spirit of dressing up as well. Who wears it better?

For me not really knowing what to write about, I'm happy to see that I somehow managed to successfully put words on a page. It's nice to know that me deciding to dress up like a writer does have its benefits.

#DaddyWrite

Day 1,311 - A Belated Post About Ellie's Sixth Birthday A.K.A. Tanganyika Tourism

I'm still rather shocked by this fact but my little girl is six years old! In fact, she turned six almost two weeks ago! Why do I know that she turned six almost two weeks ago? Well, number one, I have a rudimentary understanding of when her birthday falls. Number two and more importantly, we went away on a short, little family vacation to celebrate the momentous occasion! Where did we go, you may ask? One word, Wichita.

Now, I know on the surface, Wichita, KS hardly seems like a tourist destination for families. That's what I believed until I heard about Tanganyika Wildlife Park. Now, Tanganyika isn't like any other ordinary zoo. It features a multitude of different animals; many of which can actually be touched and/or fed. I'm not just talking about things like rabbits or guinea pigs though. We also got to touch kangaroos, lemurs, birds, goats in addition to getting to feed giraffes, hippos, and rhinos! I'm getting a little ahead of myself though.

We left after lunch on Sunday the 26th to start our journey to Wichita so that Ethan could have his traditional afternoon nap in the car. Once we finished our three-hour journey, we checked into the Drury Hotel in downtown Wichita where we would be spending the night. Spoiler alert: we were upgraded by the hotel staff which was a nice little surprise. We wasted little time in throwing on our swimsuits and heading down to the hotel pool to enjoy some swimming. After we'd all had our fill of time in the water, we changed back into our clothes and headed to the Drury Kickback for our dinner consisting of hot dogs, chicken, pasta, baked potatoes, vegetables, and salad. Before leaving the Kickback area, I made sure to sneak a couple of bags of freshly popped popcorn back upstairs for later.

Once we finished bathing the kids, we allowed them to curl up in their bed and watch TV for a while before it was time for actual sleep. We were lucky enough to stumble upon the movie, Night at the Museum for our viewing pleasure. Ellie and Ethan were especially stoked to be allowed to eat popcorn in their bed while watching the movie. Finally, Bethany and I decided it was time to bring an end to the night and we turned off the TV and put the kids to bed.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early and surprised Ellie with a "big bag of candy" per her birthday list before heading to breakfast. Following a nice breakfast, Bethany proceeded to lovingly pack a lunch bag full of sandwiches for Tanganyika. Finally, the time came for us to check out of the hotel and head to Tanganyika for the start of our fun day. 

The first thing that we did upon arriving at Tanganyika was to make our way to the giraffe feeding pavilion. Now, we knew that we each had five animal feedings to use at our discretion. Therefore, we definitely needed to be particular with how we used them. That being said, the opportunity to feed a giraffe was too much to resist. We each took turns standing on a platform as directed by the zookeeper where we held out our big leaf of lettuce for the giraffe to take. None of us had ever fed a giraffe before so it was obviously a super cool experience!

After the giraffes, we wandered around the park for a little bit taking in a bunch of different animals. Most notable would probably be the kangaroos. We actually got the opportunity to pet kangaroos as they were laying on the ground, chill as they could be. There was even one mama kangaroo with a joey partially sticking out of her pouch! Once we finished up with the kangaroos, we made our way to our next feeding encounter at Lemur Island.

At Lemur Island, we were ushered across a small bridge and directed to sit on a rock in the middle of the island. From there, a keeper offered all four of us a cranberry to hold in our hands. Then, the zookeeper convinced a lemur to hop up on my lap and encouraged it to walk across each of our laps until it got to Bethany on the other end. Then, she told us to open up our hands and feed the lemur the cranberry as it walked back across. It was amazing to see the kids' reactions to seeing the lemur so up close. My favorite reaction had to be Ethan's as he slightly closed his hand which led to the lemur using his paws to force Ethan's hands open in his quest to eat the cranberry.

We honestly saw so many animals during our time at Tanganyika that I probably can't do it all justice. For example, between the four of us, in addition to the aforementioned giraffe and lemur, we also fed a guinea pig, a tortoise, a pygmy hippo and a rhino. Don't talk to Ellie about the hippo though. That's a sore subject as she was unable to successfully throw a carrot into the hippo's mouth, but Ethan was. There were tears and everything! However, you don't really want to be shown up by your younger brother in anything, let alone feeding a hippo.

There is one additional animal encounter that I do need to share though and that is our experience feeding lorikeets. It really seems like a pretty lowkey experience. You walk through an aviary and offer a small cup of nectar (maybe?) to lorikeets. Unfortunately for Bethany, the birds weren't just interested in the nectar contained in her cup. They were also interested in her hair. By the time we were done, Bethany had one bird on her shoulder and another on top of her head. To top it all off, both birds were picking at her hair with their beaks trying to find anything they could. As Bethany is someone who really doesn't like her head touched, you can only imagine how not fun of an experience that was for her. In the end, one of the workers had to come into the aviary and push the birds off of poor Bethany with her walkie-talkie antenna.

After we finished up our time with the animals, the kids spent some time playing at the Tanganyika splash park before it was time to head home. All things told, we were in Wichita for less than 24 hours. That being said, it was a great 24 hours full of things I'll personally remember for a long time to come. The fact that the kids are still talking about their experiences there gives me hope that they feel the same way. 

#DaddyWrite

Day 1,310 - "It's a Small World After All"

Does anyone else remember the classic Disney ride/song, "It's a Small World"? I know that anyone reading this is currently shaking their fist at me in anger. For the two people who aren't, I proudly present the lyrics to "It's a Small World".

It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all

It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world

I'm going to assume that's probably enough of "It's a Small World" for most people BUT if it's not, I'll include a hyperlink for the entire song/ride!

I realize that me going on a semi-rant about "It's a Small World" seems fairly random. However, I trust that it will all make at least a modicum of sense at the end of this blog post.

This may not come as a big surprise, but my kids are definitely suffering from occasional boredom this summer. Despite plenty of time playing outside and exploring the neighborhood, they definitely find themselves asking the age-old question of "What do we do now?" . Therefore, today on a whim, we decided it was time to head downtown and take a ride on the streetcar.

I realize that riding on the streetcar may not sound like anything special. However, Ellie and Ethan absolutely love. They think it's awesome to see all of the new areas of the city that they don't normal frequent. They also love seeing new people and there's few places better to do so than on the streetcar.

Ride that streetcar!

On this day, I decided that we would park at the City Market and ride to Union Station. I also went ahead and informed the kids that as long as they were good and well-behaved, we would stop off for ice cream at Betty Rae's before heading for home. While the kids were informed about those parts of our journey, I (purposely) neglected to inform them that we would be stopping by the Kansas City Public Library just to explore something new along our route.

When the time came to hop off of the streetcar, we wandered a block west and made our way into the library where we were directed to the children's section by a very helpful security guard. As we hopped off the elevator and wandered into the children's area, the three of us were legitimately shocked to see my sister-in-law, Nicole, and her three boys there in the library. It was especially shocking when one takes into account that neither of us frequent the Kansas City Public Library! Ellie and Ethan were especially excited to get an unexpected hangout with their cousins.

Ethan and Edmund are hard at work...doing something.

After an hour or so at the library, it was time for us to hop back on the streetcar and continue on our way. Lucky for Ellie and Ethan, Aunt Nicole and their cousins had nothing else going on that morning so they joined us for the rest of our ride on the streetcar. It was especially fun getting to see the five kids all standing side-by-side and looking out the window at all of their surroundings.

L to R: Ellie, Edmund, Elias, Ethan, and Elbert

Finally, the time came for our friends to disembark the streetcar as we continued on back to the River Market. When we finally exited the streetcar, it was time for ice cream just as I had promised. For Ellie, the greatest reward in the world is getting to have a scoop of ice cream all to herself. Therefore, I was more than happy to oblige since it makes her feel so special. Ethan, for his part, desired to share a sundae with me. Therefore, he and I happily split a S'mores sundae while Ellie enjoyed her cup of Cookies and Cream.

Finally, we finished our ice cream and since our meter was running out of time, it was time to make our way home. A good time had been had by all and as you can see/read, we certainly did confirm that it really is a Small World after all. #DaddyWrite