Archive for November, 2009
Let me go on record saying that I knew, I knew, visiting Bus.ch Gardens newest attraction would be a mistake. Let’s see…Saturday night on the opening weekend for an as yet untested seasonal event. And yes, it was pretty much exactly like I envisioned it would be.
For some reason, my family descended en masse on Williams.burg for Thanksgiving weekend this year. They opted for shopping on Black Friday, which I absolutely will not do – no way, no how, not ever – so the plan was for all of us to meet up at Christmas Town on Saturday afternoon. I also want to go on record saying that was absolutely NOT my idea.
We got to the park early and headed in just in time to catch the live Sesame Street show. Not all of us went – some of the older kids (and adults) opted out so we were able to grab pretty decent seats close to the stage. The premise of the show was that Abby Cadaby, being a young fairy, had to be taught what Christmas was all about. There were lots of Christmas carols, much singing and dancing, and a pretty good message on the meaning of Christmas. It was entertaining enough for the adults but Ava was absolutely entranced. She insisted on sitting on my sister most of the show but I finally coaxed her onto my lap once the dancing (hers) was becoming perilously close to being out of control (from excitement – not misbehavior). She not only danced, she sang along, applauded when appropriate, whoo-hoo’d and responded when audience interaction was called for, and screamed “Merry Christmas” and “Bye-bye” to Big Bird once the show was over. All in all, it was a great way to start the evening.
Except that was the high point of the whole night. It pretty much went downhill from there. Well, except J and I did get to actually ride a roller coaster together for the first time since 2007. Too bad that experience was somewhat ruined by the horrific thoughts that I kept having about both of us dying in a freak roller coaster accident and leaving Ava without parents once again.
The crowds were massive, the lines for everything were long, and the flow of traffic was horrible. Only part of the park was open meaning there were many, many people (more than they projected/expected) packed into a smaller space and less than half of the rides were running so you had fewer attractions open for all those folks. Several of the much hyped features of the event, such as the live penguin exhibit, were laughable (seriously – it was a 2+ hour wait to see 2 penguins in an acrylic box) and we couldn’t get in to see any of the other shows at all. The waits were just too long to be able to do it with little kids. Heck, there were even hour long waits to buy food from any of the open restaurants so J waited 30 minutes to buy a $7 sausage from a cart because Ava had already munched through all the snacks we’d bought and was absolutely starving. And the worst part? The whole Sesame Street part of the amusement park was closed leaving virtually no kid rides open. That was disappointing and I’m still not sure what they were thinking to not open that relatively small but important part of the park.
Santa? Good thing she hates him anyway because that was a 3-4 hour wait. I hear he was pretty amazing. We didn’t wait to find out.
On top of everything else, it was freezing. Ava was pretty much toasty warm since, in Chinese bundling fashion, I had about 13 layers of clothes and a snowsuit on her – well, warm except her frozen little fingers because I forgot to grab her mittens from the car. Mad parenting skillz, I know. But since it was my fault and I wasn’t about to let her lose fingers to frostbite, I made her wear my gloves.
I should also mention that we had Ava in her stroller but had the Ergo with us, just in case. I get a little freaky about having her in a stroller in really busy places because people don’t pay attention and either run into it OR they have backpacks/bags/purses that they swing around without looking. Ava can also get a little panicky in crowds jostling her about so I like to be able to carry her if necessary and a carrier just makes it a little more secure and much more comfortable. Ergo, the Ergo. It’s easy to roll up and carry in the stroller, simple to adjust to a variety of sizes or ways to wear it, and it’s the most comfortable one for J to wear if needed. Because it was so crowded and getting so cold as the evening passed we ended up chucking everything except her into the stroller and J tossed her into the Ergo on his back.
Back to the gloves…
After a bit of convincing (which involved lots of me giving her the stink-eye every time she tried to remove them) she finally decided it might be okay to wear Mama’s gloves. She got into it pretty quickly – flapping her fingers about like Edward Scissorhands and gently whacking J about the head and ears with the mostly empty fingers of the too-big gloves while waggling them flirtatiously at every single person who passed by. This provided endless amusement to me, to my sister, not so much to J, and to everyone else around. I, of course, have no pictures or video of this because we were all way too busy laughing like hyenas at her while J merely tolerated both our idiocy and her abuse of him. It was made even funnier by her shouting “Giddy-Up, Horsey” to him every time he slowed down.
What can I say? We were hard up for entertainment by then.
The night ended soon thereafter. I was ever so grateful to get into a car with heat and away from the maddening crowds. While it was good to spend the time with my family I’m not sure any of us had a great time – mainly because we’re all fairly antisocial and there were simply way too many people crowded into the park for us (or me, at least) to really enjoy it.
We’ll go again next year – but not on a Saturday, nor on opening weekend. I’m hoping it was successful enough this year that they’re comfortable expanding it a bit and that they learned from the issues they encountered this time and will make it a little better next year.
And family, please come on a non-holiday weekend next time. I promise it’s way more fun with fewer people around. And you can actually find a parking space at the outlet malls.
Since my brother and his family hadn’t been to visit before they had a couple of requests. One was to see the jets that J works with and the other was to go to the beach to collect some shells. Too easy.
J worked it out that he was able to take the kids right up to one of his planes in the hanger. They were pretty stoked about this. Me? My fascination with super fast jets wore off about 12 years ago so I got potty duty since Ava, as usual, must visit every single bathroom in every new place we go. Besides, I wasn’t about to let her out of my control since we were around very, very expensive (and sharp – just ask J about the staples he had in his head) fighters.
We took a brief pit stop for everyone to visit the static displays before we headed for the beach…
which was pretty exciting for the kids since it was their first trip ever to any beach. And since the main goal was shell collecting we opted to take them to one of the nature preserves on the Chesapeake Bay. Shells are aplenty there whereas not so much at the bigger, more popular (read: well-known) beaches.
Despite the wind, the veryveryvery cold wind, it was an amazingly successful trip. Many shells were collected, along with about a million sponges and much seaweed that were washed ashore during the horrific Nor’easter. I was incredibly shocked, however, at how much erosion damage there was to the beach from the storm. At least 1/3 of the beach was gone for a good 1/2 mile down.
An upside to the strong tides was that there were lots more shells than usual, many of them more unusual than what’s normally found there. We also discovered washed-up crab pots, boots, plenty of driftwood, and tidal pools galore.
So the crab pot. It lent itself nicely as a prop for a few photos. Too bad the sky was darkening – it would have been lovely with puffy, white clouds.
We talked Daddy into a picture or two.
Except the sand in the face from the wind kicking up wasn’t so much fun.
Ava was Terribly Worried. So much so that she fretted over him like a little mother hen until she finally made him laugh. Then she knew all was well.
We had to nearly dynamite her to get up and move from this spot. She was totally fine with sitting there and playing with her shells indefinitely so we bribed her to move along.
And what did we bribe her with? A stick, people. We bribed her with a stick. Which was, apparently, the BEST TOY EVER.
After a few quick games of chase with her cousin…
we headed back.
The dark clouds continued to roll in and the weather was clearly deteriorating so we made a break for it as soon as the first raindrops started to fall. We bundled Ava up like a ninja…
and hiked back out…
only to discover it was a false alarm on the rain. Timely, though. We were well past lunch and Ava was reaching meltdown point. No lunch and no nap does not a happy Ava make.
I did have a kid moment for myself, though. Since there were lots and lots of big puddles I decided to jump right in the middle of one – not realizing it was about 5 inches deep until I found that I’d soaked myself to the knee. Ah well, it cracked the kids up and I had a blast so I hit every single one I could find all the way out. I was muddy, drenched, and freezing but it was Fun. Adults really should do stuff like that more often.
We finished up with a late lunch at McDon.ald’s where I discovered a new appreciation of being a parent to only one instead of three. Logistically, it’s just easier when you outnumber the kids, not to mention waaayyyyyyy cheaper.
Do y’all really need a list of what I’m most thankful for? It’s certainly not hard to guess. My family, my health, my job – I take none of these for granted – but Ava has been the cherry on top since Day 1 and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I am thankful for her every single day, from the time I go in to wake her up until I put her to bed, and especially on the nights that she still wants me to rock her to sleep. Sometimes the random nature of how we ended up parenting this particular child literally takes my breath away and makes me almost believe in things like God and Fate and Karma. I just hope I can remember that feeling even when she’s 16 and acting like most teenage girls do.
So, would you believe we don’t have even one picture from Thanksgiving? We cooked lots, J and I fought amongst ourselves a little (mainly battling over the oven), and for the first time in our house (and we’ve lived here for 7 years now) we had family here for Thanksgiving dinner. My brother and sister-in-law plus their three kids were coming down for a long weekend in and around our area so we had them over for dinner to break in our brand new (and huge) dining room table that can now seat 8-10 comfortably as compared to our previous table that I loved (a trestle table rescued from a church that I purchased from a little country auction in England for 50 or so quid) but was soooo not practical for seating more than 4 people.
We kept it simple and traditional and had way too much food (J needed leftovers, so he said), of course. A turkey AND a ham, green beans the way my mother makes them, Chuck’s Favorite Macaroni and Cheese (found on allrecipes.com), plenty of raw veggies, baked sweet potatoes, another side dish that I can’t even remember, and about a gazillion cookies that I made all by myself – ripping the packages open and placing them on the baking sheets was challenging but I managed to handle it even while J was overachieving and baking up homemade (for real) pumpkin pies.
It was nice. The food was good, if I do say so myself, and the conversation was too. The kids all behaved (no small feat for the two youngest – Ava and Mac) and a good time was had by all. Watching the kids together also made me a little sad that we don’t live closer to my family and that we don’t see them more often. It would be nice if Ava could have more of a relationship with her cousins than a few hours at weekend visits every few months.
But since it is what it is and we don’t live closer and probably never will – we enjoyed having them here and hope that the first time isn’t the last.
One thing that I’ve promised we would do is have family photos taken often – and at least once per year they would be done by a professional instead of us setting up a tripod in the living room. As far as I know there are only two professional family photos of my parents and all siblings in existence and both were awash in polyester and taken for the church directory (no need to mention that, as far as I know, that was the only time my dad ever stepped foot in the church).
We’d originally planned to do our pro photo shoot in January since that’s the month we became a family – it’s both the month J and I got married and became a family of two and Ava’s adoption month when we became a family of three – but we neglected to consider the need for annual family Christmas card photos which, obviously, need to be taken in the November timeframe in order for me to still not send them out in time for Christmas. Thank goodness our favorite local photographer, Anne Companion Photography, ran a mini studio session special (in her brand spanking new studio) just in time for us to get this taken care of.
Because after our experience the previous year – there was no freaking way that I was attempting THAT at home again. You can see some of those outtakes here.
We (at least, I) thought it would be easy. We dug up some kind-of matchy holiday-ish outfits and headed out. I also had plenty of mini M&Ms and other snacks to bribe Ava with in my purse. I’d scheduled a perfect time – late morning – so Ava would be fed and happy and not even close to naptime. I thought we’d covered all the bases and would be in and out of there in 30 minutes tops.
Heh.
She was clingy. Then she was obnoxious. Then she shattered one of the shatterproof ornaments that Anne was using as a prop. Then she whined. Then she tried to open the boxes wrapped up as presents. Then she dragged the prop rocking chair all over the place. Then she whined more. Then she whacked herself in the head about 10 times after watching J do it to himself trying to get the pouty child to smile – and we let her because it made her laugh and we got an absolutely beautiful photo from it.
Thank heavens that Anne has kids of her own because that means she gets it and doesn’t let it frustrate her a bit – and still manages to get lovely, lovely photos as well. Although I totally understand why she enjoys the newborn sessions that she does…much, much less chasing them around, for sure.
And one of my favorite photos from the shoot was a shot of Ava grabbing Daddy’s nose and me laughing at them. It was a great candid and as soon as I get off my tush, it will be framed and hung on the wall. (I’d post it but I didn’t buy the digital rights to it so I really can’t.)