Family Fun Day - a Winter fun list update

This Saturday, we had a family fun day, and knocked several items off of our winter fun list!

First we decided to head out for lunch, and since eat at a new restaurant was on our list, we chose Achatz Burgers. Jason was feeling a bit under the weather and decided against eating anything at the time. I chose a double cheeseburger with lettuce, ketchup and mayo and shared shared cheese fries with Jackson, who also ate a mini burger. Ethan had a single cheeseburger with lettuce and ketchup as well as a small order of cheese fries, and Alex chose a Koegel hot dog and chili cheese fries. We considered dessert - they had shakes, malts, footbeer or Vernor's floats, their "famous" pie and brownies, both of which had an option to be a la mode! - but were all very full from lunch.

Waiting for their food :)

After lunch, we headed off to the bowling alley for a quick game. Jackson fell asleep on the way there, and slept for the entire time we were there, almost an hour! Next time, I'm hoping he'll be awake and get a chance to try a hand at it. Jason won with 110, E came in second with 88, Alex was in third with 84, and I had a score of 83. The best part? We all had a good game, with some laughs, and no yelling or arguing!

We have been wanting to check out SkyZone for a while now, and decided to go ahead and mark it off the list too. The boys had a ton of fun jumping, even Jackson. Jason didn't want to jump, so he stayed off to the side and snapped some pictures on his phone - still waiting for him to send them to me ;) One of us had to go in with Jackson, and they split the main court areas in to two, one for bigger kids, and one for smaller kids (if I had to guess, it was 5 and under). The girl at the counter told me that we would "split up" with the older boys on one side, and Jack and I on the other. I paid for the 4 of us and bought our skysocks. She made it seem like - by saying I would be with Jackson on the side with the smaller children and parents - that I would be able to jump with him... Yeah, not so much. Actually NOT AT ALL! I was trying to show him how to jump (in a separate square from me) and having fun, when one of teenage girls that work there employees came over to our side, and told me to stay off the trampolines, and stay on the borders. I proceeded to tell her that I had paid to jump and I also had to stay with my TWO YEAR OLD and the other teenage girl her fellow employee at the desk had told me I was to go on that side with him and did not tell me when I paid $10 for 30 minutes that I couldn't actually jump with him. I was seriously ticked off. If I couldn't jump on that side with him, why had I paid good money? That was bad enough. I wasn't the only parent told that by her/others, and the two other parents I spoke with briefly also felt the same way about it, why pay if not allowed to jump with them? What was the big deal? I understand the whole safety aspect of it, but seriously, we were all adults and the parents of these toddlers and preschoolers. We know how to be careful and safe. It wasn't as if it was a older sibling just playing all willy-nilly. It just seems ridiculous. Also a dad was sitting on the border by the wall in the court watching his young daughter bounce on the square in front of him, and essentially got reprimanded for that. If these are the rules, why not just post them somewhere? Oh well. Not worth $40+ to Jason and I for 30 minutes. If we go back, it will be just Jason or I taking Ethan and Alex, as they did have fun. When Jackson gets a bit older, he may go back, but for now, not happening. He would have just as much fun jumping on a mattress at home for free. With his brothers. Or mom ;) My review: Great fun for older kids, still fun for little ones, but not worth the cost, in my opinion. Also the cost is somewhat high in comparison to the amount of time. If you pay for a longer time, the value is better ($10 for 30 mins, $14 for 60, etc). I'm not saying the concept is bad, but post the rules somewhere at least.

Since it was time to go home and feed our children some dinner, and Jason was finally feeling 100%, we opted for a movie night and pizza. The older boys each picked out a movie to watch and we made it into a double feature. We have Amazon Prime, as well as Redbox Instant right now, so we searched on each for something good to watch.

Alex picked out Free Birds. We all really enjoyed it, and laughing filled the living room. Ethan picked Ender's Game. Alex wasn't sure he wanted to watch it, but decided to sit through it anyway, and ended up enjoying it. I liked it but the end caught me off guard a bit with its twist. I had never heard of the book series that it was based on, but it perked my interest, and I think E might enjoy reading them, as well as Alex. We filled up on pizza so opted out of popcorn.

Other items we crossed off our bucket list this week:
Play Twister - this one didn't go quite as planned, but we made into our own version with Jackson playing along too, and turned it into a learning experience, while still having fun.

We decided to remove the following from our list: Make homemade Valentines; Make cupcakes for Valentine's Day; Melty Bead Ornaments; and finally Watch Frosty the Snowman - we are all just sick of seeing snow right now, so poor Frosty loses out ;)

At the suggestion of a friend and coworker of Jason's, we added Detroit Historical Museum. Ethan and I have been there, for a field trip, way back in 4th grade. It was pretty neat then, and I have heard they added some new exhibits. Also adding in a movie that we ALL want to see, and since it's been a while since we've gone to the theater - other than the movie "festival" that the theater did back several months ago with free, newer movies for the kids and $1 for adults, and then it was just the boys and I - I thought it would be a neat one to go check out: The Lego Movie!

With less than a month left of it being officially the Winter season, we are doing pretty good on our list, having done 19 already, and started 2 (swim lessons and winter reading club). We still have 19 items left, not including our Saint studies and books to read. While we finished our Ohio book, the Michigan book we picked out has been less fun and more of a textbook style book. Not the ideal read-aloud book for a family setting. Our series book #1, Anne of Green Gables, didn't really seem to catch the boys' interest too much, and we haven't picked it back up since day 1 of reading it, only making it to chapter 3. While I am considering changing the series, I'd like to at least finish the first book before giving up on it entirely.

Sorry for such a late update. However, as you may know from my most recent Facebook update, I managed to break my laptop's screen. When I went to get up to help Jackson with something, I sat it on the small stack of towels next to the recliner - which had was reclined at the time - thinking it was safer there than on the stack of library books on the end table. Unbeknownst to me, it slid as I closed the recliner, and while I felt the recliner bump it, I didn't think anything of it because it barely touched it and didn't smash it as it closes slowly with a handle. Honestly, I though a toy was stuck under there. I took care of my very unhappy 2 year old (who, by the way, is dealing with a bit of a cold and it had just started that day with a low-grade fever) and then proceeded to pick up the laptop, realizing at then that it was in fact the computer and NOT a toy that I'd bumped. I noticed a small nick/dent on the outside top, but figured it couldn't be that bad. Um, yeah, I'd share a pic but it's just depressing me. It's got a visible smashed/cracked area under the screen, with it splintered out and the whole screen is distorted. The actual glass isn't broken, thank goodness, but whatever is inside the screen is destroyed :( Since it is almost the same price to repair it as it is to just replace it, we are opting to replace it. However, I feel the need to hold off on replacing it for the time being. It can still be used, and is hooked up to our desktop dinosaur's monitor and works just fine. The desktop PC is rarely, if ever used, so we just shut it off and unplugged it and now the laptop truly replaced it. It's not ideal, as I like to write in the living room, but workable.

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