Birthday Party Preparation.
Jadeyn has been completely set on having and Angry Bird's Racer themed birthday party, and so the planning began! Here we are putting together all the little gift bags to pass out to his friends after the party. frisbee, shooter, tattoos, rubix cube and some bird food (sour worms)! So fun!
Birthday Party Cake
We love making Jadeyn's cake every year and this one was spectacular. We had so much fun picking out the toppers to go on it. We had to make sure that they were good and sturdy racers that Jadeyn would love afterwards. The cake was two layers with a fondant road winding around it for the racers to drive on. The icing was a bit tricky because it kept coming out as pink! We just couldn't make a pink cake!!! So, needless to say, there is a lot of dye in that red icing! It turned out awesome, and Jadeyn was very proud!
Airborne Gymnastics
Jadeyn was so excited to invite all of his buddies to play at Airborne. They had the gym all to themselves for a whole hour and ran to their hearts delight! They were all agreed that their favorite part about it was the free time to play in the block pit and the trampolines! Those little monkeys had a ball!
Opening Presents
Its no secret that Jadeyn loves Legos, Star Wars and Robots (both Transformer and Hero Factory), so he was extatic that every single one of his presents fell under those categories! It was a little bit chaotic when we got to the party room since all the boys and Chloe were all wound up from the gym, so the angry bird pig balloons were a hit...literally. They quickly became battle balloons and they raced around pummeling each other! Once we got them settled down they sweetly sang happy birthday to Jadeyn while he blew out his candles, and it was time to chow down! Cake and Ice cream! Yum! The present opening took about 4 minutes! All the boys huddled around Jadeyn so tightly that he stood up on a chair just so he could see what was going on. They each pushed their present at him saying Jadeyn, open mine! He quickly went through them, loving every one and repeating over and over: thank you so much, thank you so much, thank you very very much!
The Clan
Jadeyn was so happy that he had so many of his friends come to his party. All in all, there were 11 kids there: Jadeyn, Austin, Chloe, Finn, Eli, Gibson, Tyler, Francisco, Aidan, Jackson, Han-Gi,
Our goal is to pack as much adventure, good times and memories into one week as we can. Celebrate Jadeyn's 6th birthday!
OUTCOME: SUCCESS!!! 2 amusement parks and 2 water parks in 6 days!
Favorite memory: Running with the Dolphins:
Favorite Memory: Our last stop on Monday was to see the underwater
viewing area of the dolphins. We found that late in the evening there
are very few people in that area. We had the place to ourselves all
except for one young woman who was obviously infatuated with the
dolphins. She was tossing her hat to them and they would try to catch
it through the glass. She showed us how to get their attention and once
Jadeyn caught the eye of one specific dolphin, he had a playmate! He
would blow bubbles for him, stand up on his tail and chatter at him!
This sweet dolphin was so anxious to play. Jadeyn started running the
length of the glass (about 40 feet) and the dolphin swam right along
with him! He followed Jadeyn back and forth across the glass of the
tank; back and forth only pausing to come up for air. When Jadeyn
paused, the dolphin would wait for him, balanced on his tail and would
squeak and bob his head. Sometimes he would blow huge bubbles for us!
It was such a special experience to see his intelligent eyes make
contact and wait expectantly! It was such a special and intimate
interaction. One we will never forget!
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Our vacation begins!!! For a Spring Break week, the airport and
flight went really well. I read to Jadeyn one of my favorite books as a
kid: The Cricket in Times Square and we worked on his book report on
The Mouse and the Motorcycle. And then of course he played on the
Kindle! Highlight of the flight: they let us pick out any snack and
however many snacks we wanted on the plane! Wow! And another highlight
was listening to Jadeyn sing Take me out the the Ballgame to himself
while playing. The water in Orlando still tastes dreadful to us!
DisneyWorld was terrible but tolerable, SeaWorld isn't even tolerable!
Jadeyn's comment: its not bad in the middle, but the end tastes awful!
We arrived at a decent time so we checked into our hotel and high-tailed
it right to SeaWorld to pack in as much as we could in a few hours.
The newest ride at SeaWorld is the Antarctica ride. Its trackless and
controlled completely by radio frequency. We watch a cute video about a
newborn penguin named puck and then we start the ride to follow him on
his journey. It was quite well done, but the end was awesome. Our ride
ends as huge doors open and suddenly we are hit with a blast of frigid
air (30 degrees) and we get to see the real penguins. Their habitat is
sweet: snow makers, ice bergs, water, everything they could want. There
are four different kinds of penguins in there as well. We told Jadeyn
that he could spend his money that he had saved on whatever he wanted
and he chose a nice little king penguin stuffed animal and named him
Puck!
We bought one of those three foot long pixie sticks in
memory of Jadeyn's very first trip to SeaWorld when we had him try one
for the first time. Oh the faces he made that time!! It was such a
beautiful night and so wonderful to be in the nice warm air of Florida!
Today was the coolest day we will be having since it was only 72!
Blue Horizons! Dolphin Show! This was the show that we took Jadeyn to when he was tiny and it was the first time that we had ever seen him sit still for longer than 10 minutes! It was just as fun and amazing this time!
Monday, March 30, 2014
First full day at SeaWorld! My favorite part was of course petting the manta rays!!! The first time we took Jadeyn there when he was tiny, he loved them so much and got soaked!! The second time when he was 3, he was timid and wouldn't touch them! This time he loved them again. We fed them two helpings of shrimp and I got soaked this time! Didn't mind at all, but Kevin shure thought it was funny! There were a few rays that were almost completely white. amazing.
We watched the sea lion pirate show and were fully entertained (unlike the Sesame Street Elmo show which none of us were too excited about that one!) In the pirate show there were two sea lions, an otter and a massive walrus! But the best part of the show was watching a mime wander through the crowd before the show even started interacting and making fun of people!
The sea lions were entertaining to watch in their exhibit. There was one huge sea lion sunning himslef peacefully on a rock and then a big bully would swim up to him and jump up on the rock and they both barked and barked in a big show down and both totally missing the fish that people were throwing! The seals would catch the fish, toss it, catch it again over and over until they finally ate it!
Manta Ray ride! Sweet coaster where you lay flat face down and it has one amazingly cool first turn! We had BBQ chicken and ribs for lunch and boy oh boy did Jadeyn ever love it and make a huge mess all over his face! Tastey!
At dinner we had fish and chips and a salad and a bird stole a big chunk of ham and a lettuce leak right off of my salad while Kevin and Jadeyn were eating! I totally thought they were teasing me, but it really did!
Rope area! We remembered following Jadeyn all over the rope play area the last time and worrying about him making it through everything. Not a problem this time! We could hardly keep up with him! what a work out! When the park closed, we topped off the night with two frostys from Wendys!
Tuesday, March 31, 2014
SeaWorld Aquatica!! Finally we get to experience this awesome water park and the weather cooperated. Last time we were here we hit the water park at 52 degrees because we just couldn't handle not going. It was so cold that day that we hadn't wanted to get out of the water because the water was warmer! Well, the day did not disappoint! 80+ degrees, no clouds, still warm water and perfect!
We didn't set the alarm this morning because we figured that it wouldn't warm up enough for the water park until later in the day. We slept in until almost 8! What?! We had breakfast (tasty) abd made it to the park by 9:05 and found so few people in that there were no lines! The water was awesome! Our favorite part had to be the lazy river. Its one of those lazy rivers where they provide life jackets for everyone so we can all just float along and enjoy it! We raced by catching the jets along the edge of the river and shot past each other. Jadeyn was able to go on every ride that he wanted to: even the "toilet bowl ones!" He is such a fun little guy! He loved the splash zone for the kids too. He even went on the huge "alpine" style slide where we race each other. There is a pretty vertical drop of about 30 feet and you are on your belly! Wow! The sandy beach was sweet and then, my favorite: the wave pool! Life jackets are so sweet and needed when trying to keep track of a five year old. We had chicken fingers and chips for lunch. By the end we were nice and a little toasted! Oh, the highlight of Aquatica are the Commorson Dolphins! They look like baby killer whales and they swim upside down! Wednesday April 2, 2014
Last day at sea world! It has been so much fun but has gone by so fast
too. We started off today by racing to see the newborn dolphin that was
born on Monday. They close the whole nursery off for 48 hours after a
birth to give the little one time to adjust. We got to watch him swim
side by side with his mama so o by with the other five youngsters in the
nursery. Jadeyn is getting braver at asking questions of the workers
once he found out that they give him an information card on various
animals. He really liked that and started coming up with all sorts of
questions.
We rode the Antarctica ride probably 6 times in total! It ended up being our final ride of SeaWorld and it was a pretty funny one this time. We had a bit of a wait in the first little room and that should have been our first clue. The ride started and 2 minutes into it, everything stopped. Music, motion, everything. Big garage doors in front and behind us shut. Humm.. It was about 12 minutes before anything happened and we moved into the next room in our cart. Again, music stopped and we were trapped behind doors. All in all, it was about 30 minutes before we were able to get off and see the penguins! They seemed way excited to see people and were jumping and diving in and out of the water!
Next we went to the Manta rays again for me. I just love
them. This time though I got bit twice pretty hard and had some red
fingers to prove it! We had to do the Antarctica ride again for Jadeyn.
This time the penguins were pretty relaxed all except for one little
guy who was giving himself an extra vigorous bath, flipping and flopping
all over the water! We did the Arctic ride again and found that we had
really lucked out Monday with how active the animals were. Today the
polar bear and walrus were sleeping and there was only one Beluga whale!
Crazy. They were all over the place on Monday! However, when we went to
Up close and personal with the orcas, all seven were out!
Jadeyn
refused to go on Journey to Atlantis today! He loved it on Monday, but
today he claimed that the e vol mermaids freaked him out and he kept
thinking about them.
Lunchtime at the shark reef restaurant!
Eating right next to the massive shark aquarium! Like last time, the
food wasn't the best, but it was so much fun. Kevin ordered Godzilla
Rolls that were shrimp sushi (eew) but thankfully they were cooked! J
and Kevin couldn't believe it when they had me try the seaweed/rice and
crispy part and liked it. Kevin about fell out of his seat!
We
decided to try the oyster pearl dive and Jadeyn and I both picked an
oyster. Jadeyn was certain that his would be a rare blue pearl, but we
both got beautiful perfect white pearls. So we tried one more time to
see if we could get a special one for him but got another white. When we
get back home we are going to make mine into earrings.
Sad to say goodbye to SeaWorld, but guaranteed, we will be back!
