We went to TG Farms in Newcastle today to check out their pumpkin patch. They had some mazes and farm animals and whatnot. Nice place. It took a very long time for Cora to find the perfect pumpkin. Photos.
Oh yes. Yes we did. We were at Disneyland over Cora’s third birthday. She was in heaven. It really was a wonderful trip, and we spent three days at the parks. That was just about right. There are nearly one billion photos of our trip now uploaded, so click this at your own risk!
This was a girl who was NOT going to smile. (I didn’t care, but the woman taking her picture sure was determined…) If you click the link there are a couple of other photos from our visit to the “Professional Portrait Studio.”
Cora tells one knock-knock joke. A lot.
Cora: Knock knock
Me: Who’s there?
Cora: A chicken.
Me: A chicken who?
Cora: A chicken and a baseball.
Oh.
We went to see The Wiggles recently. Cora was a little freaked out when they first rode out in their Big Red Car, but was mesmerized thereafter. I thought it was cool that they had the same (or most of the same) backup dancers from the TV show, including my favorite guy, Ben, and Taylor’s favorite, Katerina.
Yup, no life here. None at all.
But one little boy got to go up on stage and hug Dorothy the dinosaur. After that, Cora would whisper to me periodically that she wanted to go hug Dorothy, and it was so pitiful.
I would offer $10 to anyone with a decent green dinosaur costume to come hug my daughter, but this is the Internet.
A couple of months ago we went down to Dallas for one night, presumably to go to the stellar Dallas World Aquarium, but, let’s be honest here, we wanted to go to IKEA.
The kids were mostly happy on the car ride down, but when we got to the aquarium, there was a line that wrapped AROUND THE BLOCK. I kid you not, there were HUNDREDS of people waiting to get in. Oh yeah, did I mention that it was the Friday of spring break? Doh! Sorry, kids, there was no way we were waiting that long to get in, I don’t care how many cute penguins were in there. If it makes you feel any better, kids, penguins stink. So, Plan B was to…oh yeah, there was no Plan B. So we found a theater and went to see Curious George, which made them mostly happy.
The saving grace was the hotel. If you’re going to Dallas with kids, may I recommend the Embassy Suites by the Galleria? It’s cheaper than the other Embassy Suites in the area (especially the one right by, sigh, IKEA) and was wonderfully kid-friendly. When we got there, it was happy hour, which we didn’t think would really apply to us (although at that point, locking the kids in the room and heading to the bar probably would have helped all parties involved), it actually had stuff for kids: nachos, popcorn, cokes, etc., and all these kids were just kind of hanging out with their parents, so that was cool. Then we had dinner at their little restaurant that was a) not expensive and b) actually pretty tasty. But the main reason we stayed at that hotel was for the indoor pool, and the kids were so happy getting to splash around for an hour. Then, back to the room to watch TV and go to bed. Back up in the morning for a decent breakfast buffet and more swimming. This really made their trip.
Because then? We went to IKEA and the Frisco mall. And it was raining. Pouring. And we thought we lost one of our DVDs, so we spent half an hour going back to the room and digging around. And Jack deleted all of our photos. And that made him cry. And the mall was a zoo. And there was a two-hour wait at Cheesecake Factory, so we did NOT get any avocado eggrolls and instead we just drove through Sonic on our way out of town. And IKEA…well, at least we got our cheap Scandinavian coffee table! Because really, we all know why we were there.
