One of my absolute favorite children’s books is From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. If you’re not familiar with the book, an essential part of the story involves two children who spend the night in a museum. The characters in the story are a sister and her younger brother, who were about the same age difference apart as my brother and myself, so the story greatly resonated with me. As I read this book I would fantasize about what it would be like to live in a museum – I was sure I could have a LOT of fun.
Well, the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago is seeking to make this a dream come true for people like-minded as myself. If only I was free to do this – I’d certainly be willing to try. They are seeking someone to move-in to a special residence they’ve constructed and live at the Museum for a month – all the while capturing their experiences via blogging, videocasting, and social media means.
Oh my. I’m exhausted! In my last post I wrote that it was Jihad’s birthday. Well, Friday, July 9th was mine. Between Friday night and Saturday night we packed in enough fun for both of us.
FRIDAY
Friday evening, we went to dinner at Kyoto Japanese Restaurant. We went there last year for Jihad’s birthday so it was a great place to go again. Who can not love the fact that you get fire in your face during dinner? I didn’t get any great pictures, but we had fun.
SATURDAY
On Saturday we were busy just about all day. We had a birthday party for Jihad at Chuck E. Cheese followed by a Nashville Rollergirls roller derby game. It was the Music City All-Stars vs. the Tallahassee Rollergirls.
The Party
We’ve never hosted a party at Chuck E. Cheese before. While I expected the chaos, it was certainly a lot to bear – almost overwhelming! We had about 20 kids total and about 15 adults. It was crazy! But we had so much fun.
The cake we had for him was a Star Wars cake from Publix – a marble cake with buttercream frosting – good stuff. It had Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker on top battling it out.
We think the kids enjoyed themselves. We were there for more than 3 hours, and I’d not expected that. The schedule at Chuck E. Cheese is well-planned – we had a party hostess assigned to assist us all. Time passed very quickly. Here is a video of Jihad in the TicketBlaster. He won the largest prize there is to get in there too – a red ticket that gave him 200 free tickets.
After all was said and done, we packed it up and headed over to Municipal Auditorium for the roller derby game.
Roller Derby
This was our 2nd time attending a roller derby game. We went last year and enjoyed it a lot! So, we’ve been looking for an opportunity to go back. The Nashville Rollergirl teams are just cool. There is even a Nashville Junior Roller Derby. You have to be at least 10 years old to join, so if they’re still around when Kaleya comes of age – we’ll have to see if she has any interest.
Prior to sitting down, we ran into one of the players, Jersey Jackhammer.
Then, we sat down, and watched a great game. NRG won the game 159 to 70. I’m still learning how the game is played, but I have the basics down. Well enough to know when we were doing good and when we were not doing good enough. Here is a clip of a round or “jam” as it’s called. We see Rambo Sambo taking the “lead jammer” position. Then, she circles back around to catch up and ultimately break through the pack to score points for her team.
The kids seemed to enjoy themselves. They asked questions about how the game was played and even Kaleya joined in with applause when she heard everyone else doing it because of a good score. It was a great game – during one bout, Rambo Sambo scored 28 pts. Another player that was fierce was Lady Fury. All the players were great though.
After the game we went down to the speedway to see if we could meet the players; and meet we did! Many of them were still on the floor and we liked how well they interacted with the crowd. We got a whole series of pictures of Kaleya w/ the players and one of the Jeerleaders:
Kaleya with Union-Jack-U-Up
Kaleya and Union-Jack-U-Up
Kaleya and Dramatic Pyrony
Kaleya and Showstopper
Kaleya and Rambo Sambo
Kaleya and Lady Fury
Kaleya and Anita PBR
Kaleya and Maulin Monroe
As we were leaving the auditorium, the entertaining band, Halfbrass, was outside performing impromptu. Kids were dancing, some of the Jeerleaders were dancing, and the crowd was singing. See the video below.
A great birthday weekend so far! We plan to go back to their next game on August 7th. All in all, a great day and now I must go to bed! However, before I go, here are some things to know
While browsing at a bookstore today, I saw this cute Vera Bradley All-In-One Wristlet that I fell in love with. Kalonji got it for me as an early bday present. How sweet of him. It is perfect for me too. My DB wristlet, which is now about 3 years old, has had it. I can be touch on my wristlets.
It’s official. July 1 was my first day back as a full-time employee at work now that I’ve completed my degree. I re-joined our team (Knowledge Management) as the Associate Director for Research. These are big shoes to fill so I’ll have to work diligently to make sure I do my absolute best!
In other news, last weekend we took Kaleya to a “bring your friend” day at a dojo and while she was a little timid at first, she warmed up to it. You go girl!
at karate class in June. big brother accompanied her on the mat to help with her nervousness.
This post is to collect the posts I’ve done for our family vacation:
Day 1 & 2 – travel to Florida & detour through campus of the University of Florida, visit to Heritage Village, St. Petersburg Pier & climbing in a Kapok tree
Day 3 – Science Center of Pinellas, International Plaza
Saturday was our last full day in Florida. My mom was off work so she was able to venture out with us. We had hot dogs for lunch, which Miles was kind enough to make (he totally rocks!) and then we went out to play miniature golf on the beach @ Smuggler’s Cove Adventure Golf.
Their golf course was 18 holes and unfortunately, we went out at the hottest point of the day. The course was neat though – themed with decor of palms, pirate ships, cave taverns, etc. As well as beautiful views of the ocean and intercoastal water.
They also had baby alligators that we were able to feed.
Miles & Jihad quickly got ahead of me so I didn’t get many pictures of them playing, but they did play the whole course! Kaleya decided at about hole 8 that she was too tired & hot to continue. I didn’t blame her! Before she quit she took this picture of me and I just love it!
Following the miniature golf, my mother found another free site for us to visit – the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary. The sanctuary is is the largest wild bird hospital in the United States and was just down the street from the miniature golf. A quick trip down Gulf Blvd and we were there. Let me tell you, birds were everywhere!
Even Kaleya got into the spirit and started taking pictures.
The Sanctuary is right on the shore, so even though we were not dressed for it, we decided to go play on the water — Miles was insistent on “touching” the Gulf of Mexico. We had such a great time on the water! The kids found more seashells and it was so beautiful out.
In this video clip Kaleya runs from an approaching wave.
After the beach we went back to my mom’s, had a big spaghetti dinner, then called it an evening. Sunday was spent on the road coming back home to Nashville. Utterly exhausted, but we had a great trip!
Now it’s Friday and again, we slept in before getting a late start out. I had a hard time deciding what we would do this day but eventually decided on the Florida Aquarium. Despite the high admission price it was well worth it. In addition to the aquarium exhibits, they had an outside water play area that the kids played in.
The Aquarium offers scuba lessons which they call “Swimming with the Fishes” – that was interesting to watch b/c they have a tank where you can look at people learning to scuba.
Here is the “No Bone Zone” where you can touch some of the specimens.
Then, the kids went to the water play area for awhile to cool off.
Now, Kaleya was playing with the water squirt machines spraying other kids. I predicted that if she got sprayed she would not like it. Sure enough, she got sprayed and I hear her over there crying so went to see what was wrong. After she calmed down though she went right back over to get in the mix again.
After the aquarium we then headed to Honeymoon Island Beach. I wanted to go to a beach that was not filled with tourists and Honeymoon Island certainly was not. The shore was rocky, but overall the kids enjoyed it – they actively searched and found many seashells and began a small collection.
Day 3 of the vacation started off as leisurely as Day 2. After sleeping in, the kids’ daily walk around the lake with my stepfather, my solo trip to a nearby cemetery for some genealogy work, and lunch, we went down to St. Petersburg to visit the Science Center of Pinellas. I figured I couldn’t subject the kids to more “history” stuff so a Science Center seemed like a good idea.
The Science Center is an older establishment, having been founded in 1959, but they had some interesting things to see. It was actually the first science education center in the United States. We began in their marine room where they had a tank with a few specimens of marine life.
One of the more interesting things in the tank was a horseshoe crab, I’m not sure I’d ever seen one before.
They also had owls.
They had a cabinet with skeletons in it, so of course we had to open it
One of the lovely treasures inside was a skeleton of the horseshoe crab!
and check out the Snowflake Moray Eel
Following the marine room we toured the rest of the inside of the center and saw alligators, a scorpion, a gecko, the wingspan of an albatross (did you know it was almost 15 feet?) and more. We even saw a tarantula and the shed exoskeleton of a tarantula.
Outside of the center they had a wetlands area, a Native American village replica (which had been recently burned down by vandals), and a sidewalk tile exhibit that represented the United States and the years each state entered the union. The boys particularly enjoyed the wetlands; they saw a snake, several lizards, a big spider and a big cricket. yucky.
Of course Kelli had to stand next to her Florida.
After the Science Center we tried to go back home, but Kelli got turned around and we ended up in Tampa. So, we went to the International Plaza so she could visit a particular store. At the mall we waited for her at the children’s play area – it was themed like a Looney Tunes baseball field.
One of the ladies next to me @ the play area started talking to me and she ended up forwarding me a text ad from Bath & Body Works to get $10 in free merchandise w/ a purchase of $10 dollars or more. That resulted in me spending $35 dollars there, but I got $40 worth of free stuff. Can’t beat that! The boys even got a new shower gel, the Oak scent from their mens collection. That was a great social marketing ploy if I can say so myself. I am a little disappointed that their Twitter account has not been updated since April 8th.
And finally, more swimming this night. We’d picked up an inner tube for Kaleya, so she had a great time being a bit more adventurous in the water.
Over the past week, we’ve been vacationing in Florida having a grand time! Kalonji had to work so it was me, my sister, and the kids. We went to go visit my mother in the Tampa Bay area.
Day 1: Tuesday, June 1
To drive from Nashville to my mother is a 12-hour drive, so pretty much the whole day was spent in the car. Lots of conversation, snacks and bathroom stops characterized our day.
We arrived at my mom’s home at about 10pm. However, we did stop at the University of Florida where Kelli did her undergrad so she could have a nostalgic drive-through of the campus. One of the things that was interesting was a wall of graffiti they have and allow the students to paint.
We arrived at my mom’s house at about 10pm. So, after some catching up chit-chat, it was off to bed we go.
Day 2: June 3, 2010
Sleeping in of course — we didn’t head out for the day until around noon. My stepfather Ron does not go to work until later in the day, so each morning during our vacation he took the kids to accompany him on his daily walk around a nearby lake. Miles took the following picture on their first day out.
After freshening up, we went to Heritage Village, a nearby living history museum where they have multiple historic buildings and they demonstrate how life was lived back “in the day.” There were 28 buildings on the site, but we arrived late so several were closed off and we saw about half of them. What we did see was very interesting though. One of the buildings on campus was the Union Academy, a hand-me down school for black children. It was active around 1915 and the building used to be in Tarpon Springs, Florida and was one of the first “negro” schools in the county.
After Heritage Village we headed down to the St. Petersburg Pier, a local spot for viewing the water and a beautiful view of downtown St. Petersburg, Clearwater, & Tampa. At the top of the pier the kids looked through the binoculars to look at the view.
Even Kaleya got in on the fun
On our way out, the kids fed dead fish to the outside pelicans.
When we were leaving the Pier, we passed an interesting looking tree, a Kapok tree, so we got out to let the kids climb it.
Then it was time to call it a day so we headed back to my mother’s house for the evening. Now, the great thing about Florida is that the pools in her complex are open year-round, so at about 9pm we went swimming and of course the kids loved that!
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