Day 1,546 - There's Nothing Like a Birthday at SDC

Some people are Disneyland people.

Some people are Six Flags people.

Some people are Sea World people.

There's probably even a few Worlds of Fun people out there.

As for Ellie and Ethan, it seems that they are Silver Dollar City people.

That became very evident several months back when we made the suggestion of going to Silver Dollar City for Ellie's birthday. The overjoyed response of both kids made it very clear that is what we were going to do. Therefore, for Ellie's birthday a couple of weeks ago, we headed to Branson for a three day, two night vacation that would include two full days at Silver Dollar City courtesy of our fancy new season passes.

Basically from the time we arrived at our condo on Sunday, both kids were anxiously awaiting their entry into Silver Dollar City. After a full day of swimming and belly full of pizza, it was finally time for Ellie and Ethan to head to bed for the night with the promise of a trip to SDC awaiting them the next morning. Before we knew it, the next morning had arrived and it was time to make our way to the park.

Once we arrived at Silver Dollar City with my parents in tow, the first thing we did was seek out some craftsmen to watch. While both the woodcarver and the glass blowers were off for the day on Monday, we at least got the chance to enjoy watching a blacksmith create his wares. Before too long, the kids got antsy just watching craftsmen create things and Ellie, in particular, was ready to ride a ride. Her ride of choice? Mystic River Falls.

Since our trip to SDC last year, Ellie has mentioned Mystic River Falls and her desire to ride it again on multiple occasions. In fact, it's not farfetched to call it her favorite amusement park ride of all time. What was exciting about this trip though was the fact that Ethan was now tall enough to take part in the action. Therefore, after taking in a few more sights, our family split off from my parents and got in line for Mystic River Falls. For the record, the lines for this ride normally are about 40 minutes in length. Somehow though, we got in the shortest line ever and were on the ride within 10 minutes!

Once our wild river rapids ride was over (and we checked poor Ethan for a concussion), we decided it was time to eat a quick lunch of some tasty BBQ before continuing on our journey through the park. It's evident that we all have our favorite things about Silver Dollar City. For example, Ellie loves Mystic River Falls and Ethan adores Grandfather's Mansion (a twisty-turny funhouse). As for me though, I think my favorite part of this trip to SDC was Nik Wallenda's Zirkus.

The Zirkus, which took place in the Silver Dollar City Opera House, consisted of a variety of different acts to enjoy. There were trained poodles, various contortionists, tightrope walkers, and a very enthusiastic clown. While I was certainly enjoying myself, that was not the case for Ethan. In fact, the little man was so tired that he fell fast asleep on my shoulder for nearly the entire performance. No worries though as he did wake up just in time to tell "Blippi" (the circus clown) how much he enjoyed seeing him.

After we made our way out of the Zirkus, Ellie and I made our way to the legendary Fire in the Hole roller coaster which is celebrating its final year of operation at Silver Dollar City. While I wasn't sure how Ellie would handle a roller coaster, I was happy to see that she loved it. In fact, the second we got off, she was already asking to ride again. Sadly though, it wasn't a great time to do so. Instead, we went to go meet up with Bethany, Ethan, and my parents near the RiverBlast ride where my dad and Ethan had actually gotten drenched in what is known as the world's largest water fight. The pride that both guys showed as they got off the ride soaking wet was well worth it though. I honestly wish I had a picture of it!

Before we knew it, the time had come for us to leave the park for the day and head back to our rental house for the night. Never fear though as the next day would come soon enough. After an enormous breakfast with my parents, the four of us said our goodbyes to them and headed back to Silver Dollar City for one more day of fun.

PANCAKE!!!

As soon as we arrived, we made our way to the American Plunge where two straight trips down the log-flume ride left us soaking wet. Since we were already drenched, we figured there was no time like the present to take a ride on Mystic River Falls. Following our further drenching on Mystic River Falls, we decided to take a family trip on Fire in the Hole before making our way to Marvel Cave.

Now, you may be thinking that Marvel Cave is yet another ride at Silver Dollar City. However, if you're thinking that, you'd be mistaken. The park was actually constructed adjoining a massive cave which happens to give tours each day and Bethany and I were bound and determined to take the kids down into a cave. After a quick snack and bathroom break, we took our place in the line and patiently awaited our cave tour. Finally, the time had come and we began our journey down hundreds of stairs to the caverns below.

Not long after we entered the cave, our guide asked the group of 40 if anyone was celebrating a birthday. Low and behold, this day marked Ellie's actual birthday and as such, he led the crowd in a rousing chant of "Happy Birthday, Ellie!". With that, we descended deeper and deeper into the cave. Along the way, we actually reached an area where our guide turned out all of the lights in the cave and lit a single candle for light. While Ethan wasn't fazed by that at all, Ellie found herself clinging a little tightly to my legs and that point. It also didn't help that she was cold. Once the lights were turned back on, we proceeded to head even deeper into the cave, going through some tight areas in the process. Eventually, we reached the other end of the cave and proceeded to climb up multiple flights of stairs until we finally reached the train car that would take us the rest of the way to the surface.

After disembarking from the train, Ethan and I made a quick run to the bathrooms as the little man had needed to go potty for at least half of our time underground. Following that, we headed to the kids' area of Silver Dollar City and spent some time riding various ride with the kids there. Finally, the time had really come for us to consider heading home as we knew that we had a three to four hour car ride ahead of us. However, we let the kids talk us into one more ride on Fire in the Hole before leaving the park. That being said, it really wasn't a hard sell.

Not long after we got in the car, Ellie was already talking about coming back to Silver Dollar City again. In fact, she's brought it up at least once a week since then. She and Ethan have even tried to convince me that we need to drive to Branson some day while Bethany's at work. Even though I love SDC, I'm not convinced that we should do that...yet.

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Day 1,541 - A Day at the Movies

Independence Day means many things to many different people. To the founding fathers of our country, it meant a permanent avoidance of tea-related taxes. To the manufacturers of explosive elements, it means cash/money accompanied by minor losses of limbs. To my children, it means the opportunity to be up late at night as well as a chance to gaze upon said explosive elements as they combust high above our heads...hopefully. As for me, it means a late night with lots of pretty sights to behold. However, it also means that due to everyone being tired, the next day might be slightly interesting. Therefore, that makes it important to plan ahead and come up with nice, calming activities to keep my little friends occupied on said day.

Bandit is my spirt animal.

The morning really wasn't too bad. For one thing, both kids seemed to sleep a little later than normal. For another, today was Ellie's seven-year exam at the doctor. In case you're wondering, she is now in the 97th percentile for height with much more growth ahead. In fact, the doctor broke it to me in gentle terms that Ellie is going to be very tall. Outside of that, Ellie's exam was relatively uneventful. I even was able to keep both kids from opening the emergency exit inexplicably placed in our exam room so I consider that a win.

Following Ellie's exam, we had one brief stop on our way home: Dollar General. Now, I don't usually shop at Dollar General. However, on this occasion, there was something in particular that I needed to pick up. That item was three boxes of theater candy. You see, I had planned ahead and decided that today would be a great day to take Ellie and Ethan to a $3 Summer movie at AMC. The movie of choice? Kung-Fu Panda! So, after picking out our candy, we headed home to hang out for about an hour before eating an early lunch and piling in the Traverse to head to AMC.

Once we arrived at AMC, we headed inside and purchased our tickets first thing. Then, after a quick bathroom break, we headed to our theater to find our seats. While Ellie has been in a movie theater once before with Bethany, Ethan has not. Therefore, everything was new and exciting to him. Once the trailers began playing, Ethan began asking over and over if he was watching the movie. Eventually he understood that he was watching advertisements. That didn't stop him from being really excited about the advertisement for a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Finally, after much anticipation, Kung-Fu Panda began.

Ellie, for her part, remained fairly quiet during the showing, choosing to just watch the movie and enjoy her treat of Milk Duds. Ethan though was plagued by extreme curiosity and slight confusion about the movie's characters prompting him to ask a multitude of questions in between bites of Reese's Pieces. That was no big deal though as I was more than happy to help him understand. Before we knew it, our movie experience had ended and it was time to go home.

CANDY!!!

Honestly, this was the perfect situation to take a kid to their first movie. First of all, the fact that between candy and tickets, our outing only cost about $15 was pretty cool. Secondly, since Kung-Fu Panda is an older film, no one was unhappy about Ethan's relative lack of volume control that he exhibited when asking his many questions.

Now, I find myself wondering what Ethan's first brand new movie in the theater will be. Guess I'll just have to wait and see on that one. After all, he's probably much too young to enjoy the new Mission: Impossible with me even if he does have a remarkably similar name to Tom Cruise's protagonist.

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Don't worry; we didn't take any photos during the actual movie.

Day 1,540 - SLEEPOVER!!!

Another blog post, another exciting first for our kids...and us. What was the occasion this time? It was us playing host to Ellie's and Ethan's first sleepover last Friday!

Now, I don't know if it's normal for parents to be excited about hosting a sleepover or not. However, we were very excited for this one. The biggest reason for our excitement was that our guests were the kids of our friends, the Lindholts.

Their lives have certainly changed quite a bit since we traveled to Texas to hang out with them last August. For one thing, Allen has been deployed as a chaplain with the U.S. Army overseas. For another, Kayla and the kids have spent quite a bit of the summer traveling to see family which definitely can wear people out. In fact, when we asked Kayla if the kids could come over for a sleepover, her excitement at having a night to herself was palpable. Honestly, we were just excited to have the kids over; we never even considered that Kayla would be excited about that too.

The two youngest Lindholts, Lydia and Miles, are actually the same age as Ellie and Ethan which makes it really fun for them to play together. Also along for the ride was their older brother, Jackson. Truth be told, I was actually super excited that Jackson wanted to come as well. We had a great time playing video games and hanging out last year in Texas so I was stoked for that to happen again.

When the kids arrived at our house last Friday, Ellie and Lydia immediately headed to our guest room where they closed the door and sat on the bed talking about whatever six-year-old girls talk about. Whatever it is, they were having a great time doing so. As for the boys, they set up shop in the living room, playing with cars, action figures, dinosaurs, and basically anything else they could get their hands on.

While all of this was going on, Jackson joined me in the family room for some video game fun. It honestly took Jackson a while to warm up to my selection of video games. For one thing, my system of choice is a PlayStation 3 that I purchased in 2010. In other words, basically an antique in terms of a video game system. We went through several various games before I finally joked about getting out the PS2 and making him play that. To my surprise though, Jackson was actually intrigued. Therefore, I wandered downstairs and dug out the system and games. After searching through the lot, Jackson decided he was interested in playing Star Wars Battlefront II. Now, you have a pretty good idea of how the two of us spent the rest of that afternoon and the next morning.

While all of this was going on, Bethany was whipping up a batch of homemade pizza dough for dinner. Once it was ready, we had the kids all gather in the kitchen where they were allowed to make whatever dream pizza they could think of with the variety of toppings we had on hand. After dinner, we took the kids down to the subbasement for a movie night on the projector. The movie of choice was Over the Hedge. Unfortunately, it got a little late and we weren't able to finish the movie that evening as our house full of kids really needed to go to bed.

If I'm being honest, bedtime was probably the most difficult part of our sleepover. For one thing, there was plenty of excitement in the air and no one really wanted to stop playing for something like sleep. The main reason for that was that Lydia and Miles both found themselves struggling with sleeping in a new environment. Bethany honestly had to take shifts comforting both kids and encouraging them that everything was going to be alright. Lucky for us, she's a champ at doing stuff like that and before too long, our entire house was fast asleep.

The next morning, once everyone was awake, it was time to make pancakes for our house full of children. After that, everyone congregated back in the subbasement to finish Over the Hedge. A highlight of that experience had to be Lydia snuggling up next to me. Apparently, she's really been having a rough time with her dad being deployed so I was happy that I could help her in that small way. Once the movie ended, it was time to head outside for a little playtime before Kayla made her return to the house around noon.

Altogether, I'd consider the kids' first sleepover to be a success. Not only did Ellie and Ethan do a great job coexisting with their friends, but I got the opportunity to play many a long-forgotten video game with Jackson. Who doesn't love getting to play video games?

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