Clowns in the Parade!

Earlier this fall we found out that Macy's was asking Girl Scouts for help with their parade this year. Macy's would donate $10 for each participant in their big parade on the day after Thanksgiving. They have been having this parade since 1941! I called in and found out that the whole family could be clowns. There were many costume choices, but this sounded like fun! So I signed up the whole family. We needed to be downtown in the Hyatt at 7th and Pine at 7:45 am. We were early and able to find parking close by. The Hyatt was crazy! We were directed toward our costume area in one of the ballrooms. Every costume was hanging up with each person's name on it, and a bag of accessories. There were tons of helpers to find your costume, help you get dressed, etc. We wore our own clothes underneath, and it wasn't too cold yesterday, upper 40's. Kyler's costume was a little bit small, and a few minutes later while I was still getting mine on, there was another little boy whose costume was too big. I called Kyler over and we switched costumes. The second one fit him much better. Each of our costumes came with a neck ruffle, gloves, wig, and a hat. Then you went across the hall to another room with makeup. The adults all got white faces from a big guy who looked like a biker. I asked him what his day job was and he said he's in concrete! He's done this for 6 years. Doesn't tell all his friends why he can't stay out late Thanksgiving night having another beer, because he needs to get downtown and put makeup on! Then over to a lady who used an airbrush to spray on a red mouth, then a lady who did eyes, and last the lady who does cheek circles. A few minutes later and you're done. Then we had a lot of waiting. We went outside to wait for our float, number 41. It was fun watching all the other costumes come out. People on Segways, Ronald McDonald, bands warming up, Dogs and toy soldiers, Star 101.5. It was exciting! A few minutes after 9am, the lady who was holding the flag for our group (a Macy employee volunteer, who has done this for many years), said "Look, there's the stars". The red stars start off the parade with the Macy's sign. They were done, and we hadn't even started moving yet! We got rolling about 9:27am. The clowns got to pass out taffy to people on the side of the parade. They had 2 big wagons filled with tons of candy. Also, all the clowns got balloons, 5 each. The only problem was that it was kind of windy and at times they would get tangled up. Ilea soon had 10 balloons because she couldn't untangle from another person, so they just cut thiers off. They stayed tangled together the whole time. Sometimes the wind would blow the balloons into people too, and they were wet from the sprinkle of rain. But they looked great! It was such fun! We taped the parade at home, of course, and found all four of us on TV. Kipp was the easiest to spot because he carred a big Pansy (it wasn't an iris, like his Facebook says...). It took about 1/2 an hour to walk the parade route. It was fun, and everyone was excited. Then we walked down and around the long way back to the hotel to get rid of all our costumes. Again, it was very easy... find your hanger with your jacket on it, and hang up the costume, put the extra's in the bag, and you're out of there! We left by about 10:15 am. It was a fun morning! I've been meaning to go to this parade for a few years now, and then we were in it! Kyler wants to be presents next year, and Kipp wants to be stars. Fun day!

More Changes for Ilea!

Ilea has been getting tired of her long hair. She has a hard time brushing the back, and hates when it gets knots in it. So on Tues we went and got it cut shorter! I love it! It's cute, and swings around her face. She loves being able to brush it easier. Cute!

Ilea's pants

Poor Ilea. She's a smart girl, but sometimes I wonder about her common sense! A few days ago she came down dressed to get breakfast. I saw her pants unbuttoned, and asked her why she didn't button them? She said, "I'm having problems getting it done!" I looked closer and the zipper wouldn't even come together at all! The leg bottoms were above her ankles, and I don't even know how she walked! I laughed, and looked at the tag. Sure enough, they were Kyler's pants! Somehow they got in her laundry, and we didn't notice. They are size 7! She's wearing size 12slim now.... I don't know how she even got them on!

Ilea will do ANYTHING for ice cream!

We were at Southcenter Mall today, now called Westfield Mall, I guess. We haven't been there for a long time. It has been remodeled recently, and so we were looking around. It was about 11am. We saw a Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream stand. We all got tastes. Kyler wanted to know if we could have ice cream. We said no, and kept walking. Pretty soon I saw a Claire's Earrings. I told Ilea that if she ever got her ears pierced that we would go for ice cream after at Ben & Jerry's. She said YES! I couldn't beleive it! She has firmly refused when it's been brought up before! So in we went, and she picked out the clear crystal earrings. They did both sides at once, and she didn't even cry or scream or anything! We left and marched straight over to Ben & Jerry's as promised, where she got Chocolate Therapy. They look great, and we have a new thing to buy for presents now!

Great Wolf Lodge

We had an extra day off of school on Monday, the day before Veteran's Day. In Aug we decided to go to Great Wolf Lodge with our friends, who had found a great rate. We didn't tell the kids where we were going. We packed for them, and they didn't even know we were going overnight anywhere!

The Lodge was great. Totally worth it, but you need to book early. We booked through Expedia, and got a much better rate than through the hotel. It was $179 for 2 queen beds, and you get 2 days of the water park. We went the Natsuharas. Marian invited another friend, who only booked 3 weeks ago, and paid $259 for the same room, through GWL. We got there about 1pm on Sun. We left after church, but we could have gotten there earlier if it was another day. We took a break about 6pm and went to Centrailia (next exit down the freeway) for dinner. They have lots of food/snacks at GWL, but pricey. We brought lots of snacks for ourselves also. We forgot water, which we really could have used. Bring some bottles, since it's hot in the waterpark, and you really get tired. They have tons of towels for the waterpark area. We looked around the rest of the hotel when we got back from dinner. There is an arcade, gift shop, Starbucks, pizza, ice cream, and other food places. There is also a place with electronics games and TV's for $5 a day. They have dances there at the night.

They have something called Magic Quest, which looks fun. It's $10 for the game, which allows you to play for 4 days, and $15 for a wand, which you only have to buy once. There are 10 different quests, and 3 adventures. You go around the hotel following clues and looking for stations. I think we're going to go back down in a few months with the kids and just do that. Not spend the night or do the water park. We'll bring a book, and let the kids go at it. The guy said it takes about 4 - 6 hours to do all the quests. They add new ones on every year, and you don't ever need a new wand, only the $10. So you could also stop by if you were going down to Portland for a few days. Stop and play for a couple of hours on the way down, and hit it again on the way back.

Our room was fine, typical hotel room.

Mon we got a notice under our door to check out early by 9;30am and get $15 off your room. So we did that, and parked our stuff at a table in the waterpark. We had snacks and clothes with us. The rest went in the car. We stayed until about 4pm. There are family restroom/showers in the waterpark, so you can easily change and get ready to go home. We snacked during the day, and ate an early dinner on the way home. We were all exhausted. It's big enough to be fun, but you can let your kids go OK. Mari (who is 5) went off by herself for a while to the toddler pool, but I wouldn't let kids in the wave pool unless they are a strong swimmer, it gets kind of crazy. There were lots of lifeguards. There is a large shallow water toddler pool, with warm water, squiring toys, small slides, etc. There are 2 hot tubs. There is a huge tree house fort thing, like Wild Waves, with a bucket that dumps, and 2 water slides. They are OK, but not great. They are the sitting up kind, with open tops, no innertube. There are many life vests for smaller children available. There is a huge wave pool, with single and double inner tubes. Spent tons of time there. There is a larger deeper pool, 3.5 ft to 4ft, with some floating toys, basketball, lily pads to walk on, etc. Then there are 2 giant waterslide tubes for single or double innertubes, and the best ride ever invented the Howling Tornado. It's for 4 people. The best is with 4 adults, so you have some weight. It's awesome! Scared Kyler to death the first time, but he got over it the next day. You must be 48 inches. The other tubes are 42 inches to ride w/adult, 48 for solo. We went on the big one maybe 10 -12 times, and loved it every time. Lines were not bad, better by far than Wild Waves. It was a great deal for the price. I could see going every 18mo-2 yrs or so. Maybe every year. Don't need 2 nights. You're totally wiped out by 2 days. You can stay as long as you like the second day. The first day was open to 9:30 pm, so we could have had a quick dinner and gone back if we wanted to. We were in our room watching TV by 9pm because we were so tired. The night we got home, Kipp and I were sore, and exhausted. We left around 4, had dinner in Lacey, and still made it home by 5:45.

There is also a story time with a disney-like tree in the lobby for kids, with talking animals, etc. Gift shop, starbucks, pizza, other foods, ice cream/chocolate, an arcade, an internet room for $5 w/wii, PS, internet, tv, dances at night, etc. Plus the magic quest. It was amazing!

Ilea's 10!

Ilea turned 10 on Nov 6. She had the best day ever at school! It turns out that her teacher picked that day for an all day Read-in! They pushed the desks to the side, brought in sleeping bags, and read books all day long! It may have been torture for some of the kids, but it couldn't have been a better present for Ilea! I brought treats to school.

That afternoon was Girl Scouts. We are doing a section on family and friends, and geared it toward her birthday a bit. We had cake, and advertisements for a birthday. There were a few other fun things.

Fri we had her party. It was a detective slumber party. She had 4 friends over. They started with "Who Am I" game, where they had to guess the animal that was on their back by asking the other yes and no questions. Then we fingerprinted all the girls, a skill every detective needs to know. Then we played Lie Detector, a card game where you try to tell who is lying. It took a while! They are not very good at it, thank goodness! But it was fun to see them try. They had cake and ice cream, and then presents. They changed into pj's, and watched Nancy Drew. They went to bed about 10pm, and stopped talking around 11pm. Not too bad! They got waffles in the morning, and everyone had a good time.

Halloween

The kids had a great day, of course. Both kids had a party at school, but Ilea got really lucky. The night before she had a girl scout party. There was a jar of M&M's and they had to guess how many were in the jar. Ilea guessed around 500, and there were actually around 1000. I told her that's always the way it is. There are always way more than you think, so you should take your guess and double it. So the next day at her Halloween party in her class, there was a jar of candy corn. She thought around 300, so doubled it to 645. She was the closest one! The only one within 100 of the answer (584). So the theory worked, and with instant results!

The kids were the Sun and the Moon this year. Very easy costume, and they got lots of compliments on them. They looked much better together, than at their class parties, for instance. We tried to get Kyler to wear a pair of dark sunglasses, which looked really cute, but he said they hurt his head and he couldn't see anything. Picky, picky. After trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, we went over to a freind's house for a casual get together. It was a fun night. And the best part was it didn't rain in the evening (even though it was pouring most of the morning, scaring every parent)

Pumpkins

Not much to say. We got them at the store this year, and had fun carving them. They came out great! Kyler started his bat by himself, but dad ended up helping. Ilea did most of it herself this year. Mom made hers all by herself. We cooked the seeds, and lit our candles. Ilea's is on the left, Mom is the music note and clef, and Kyler's is the bat.

Falling Leaves

We have had an amazing October. Sept was hit and miss, but October has been fantastic. Warm days, beautiful leaves and colors. Usually the rain makes the leaves very heavy and a rain or wind storm will knock all the leaves off early, and make them very soggy. But this year they were all dry! Falling gently to the ground, crunchy, dry, and everywhere. Ilea got the rake out and she and Kyler played for a good hour in the leaves, burying each other and bursting out of the pile, jumping in, and just having a good time. Our neighbor said he really enjoyed seeing the kids playing like that, and it reminded him of growing up in St. Louis, where he also had tons of leaves. We've had many upper-60's deg days, which is wonderful for fall!