Our Adventurous Independence Day 2018

July 4, 2018:  The Rich Family is ready to conquer
The Adventure Park at Virginia Aquarium.

Our Independence Day celebrations are usually pretty mellow.  Don't get me wrong--we decorate and get decked out in our patriotic clothes and accessories.  We just usually enjoy a lazy day, maybe a trip to the pool, grilling out hamburgers and hot dogs and watching A Capitol Fourth at night. 

July 4, 2016:  We like to get our red, white and blue on!

July 4, 2014:  We won in the family division
for the Independence Day parade on base
in Sasebo, Japan.  

This year Matt decided he wanted us to go see live fireworks.  He pretty much says that every year but other than watching the fireworks at Huis Ten Bosch from the roof of our parking garage in Japan, the last time we saw live Independence Day fireworks is when we went to Mt. Vernon in 2011.

July 4, 2011: Nothing like spending Independence Day at the
home of our first president, George Washington.

Mt. Vernon had "daytime fireworks" over the Potomac,
which is nice when you have toddlers.  No late night,
past-their-bedtime meltdowns.

We are members of Nauticus, the maritime museum on the Norfolk waterfront that is home to the USS Wisconsin.  They advertised a fireworks viewing party for members on the Promenade deck of the Decker Half Moone Center, which is an event center/cruise ship terminal attached to Nauticus.   From the deck, you can easily see the City of Norfolk's fireworks, which are launched from a barge in the harbor.

With our night planned, I went to work on our daytime plans.  The kids received a 10-climb ticket pack to The Adventure Park at Virginia Aquarium (Adventure Park) from Santa for Christmas.  We've been to Adventure Park three times before and have always had a great time.  It's full of elements to climb in the trees with zip lines and other fun things.  There are fifteen different courses rated from purple (easiest) to double black (hardest), like ski trails would be rated.  It's not crazy-expensive, but it's also not priced to do every week.  At first it seems like a lot of money for three hours, but by the end of the third hour, we're all ready to be done.  We've never done Adventure Park in the summer when it is very hot and crowded (just like Disney) but I took a chance on a holiday and booked us for 9:00 am, the first time slot, so we could climb before it became oppressively hot.  As it turns out, it wasn't too crowded, and it wasn't too hot.  It was still quite humid so there was a lot of sweating involved, and after Leah and Matt got stuck on a black course behind two rescues so that it took them an hour to get through the course and Aaron and I were waiting for them for a good 30 minutes after our time expired, we were all pretty hangry when it was time to leave.  Luckily, there was a Chick-fil-a nearby so by 3:00 pm, after we had eaten, returned home and showered, we were all back to normal.

"Woo hoo!  Zip lining is awesome!" says Leah.

"I agree.  Zip lining is awesome!" says Aaron.

"Adventure Park is awesome!" says Julie.

The weather was perfect.  After days of Black Flag heat conditions, the temperature topped out only to about 86.  Our cats, Ladybird and Shadow took full advantage.

Shadow, our prim and proper cat.

Ladybird likes to let it all hang out.

Matt grilled hamburgers for an
all-American dinner.

The doors for the Nauticus event opened at 8:00 pm with the fireworks beginning at 9:30 pm.  We got there at 8:10 pm, by the time we parked at the parking garage and walked across the street and people were already a couple rows deep.  (It was BYOC--bring your own chair.)  There were refreshments for sale and the time went fairly quickly.  The view for the fireworks was very good, but you don't get the music like you would if you were watching it on TV or if we were down at the park where the city was hosting the event.

Private Event--no commoners allowed!

View of the Decker Half Moone Center.

Waiting for sunset.

View of the fireworks from the Promenade Deck.

The fireworks weren't too shabby.

By 10:00 pm it was all over and there was a mass exodus from not only the Nauticus viewing party but from all the people at the neighboring park, the waterfront restaurants, etc.  We sat in our car in the parking garage for quite some time before we could work our way out, just like after a concert.  Luckily, the best thing I can say about our tiny, cheaply-made military housing is that we are located 20 minutes from everywhere so once we did get onto the interstate, it didn't take long for us to get home.  The kids did really well for such a long day, especially Aaron.  He's not built for staying up late.  We got home about 11:00 pm and after quickly changing into pajamas and brushing teeth, Aaron was literally falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.  I'm not sure if he knew I kissed him goodnight.

Aaron and Dan, his big capybara lovey, slept in the next day.

We had a lazy day the next day and watched the Capitol Fourth that we DVR'd during our lunchtime.  We even ended up ordering Papa John's for dinner.  Nothing says 'Murica like pizza and explosions, right? 

Thinking Thursday

Often I've envisioned the kids doing some schoolwork over the summer to stay sharp such as Summer Bridge workbooks, keyboarding exercises or developing my own "Mommy School" lessons.  This usually lasts a couple weeks at best.  This year I decided to try a different approach.  I know Leah and Aaron read for a minimum of an hour a day, often more, so I decided not to stress about it.  I developed what I like to call, "Thinking Thursday."  Each Thursday, I will have something mind-provoking for them to do.  It may be writing or math, but it could also be a trip to a museum, an art project or a science experiment.  I'm kind of making it up on the fly.  I'm trying not to make it seem too much like work otherwise the kids will whine about how it's summer vacation and they shouldn't have to learn.  The other night at dinner, for some reason, Aaron asked about how to find the area of a circle (Area = pi x (radius x radius)).  Since the answer had radius squared, we started talking about square numbers and square roots of numbers,  We had just expanded into cubed numbers until Leah realized we were having a discussion about learning things and then she put a stop to that.  Hey, I have no idea why Aaron wanted to know how to calculate the area of a circle but since he asked and Leah was the one who answered him, they kind of brought the topic upon themselves.

So, dinnertime math notwithstanding, we've reached our third Thursday of summer break.  (The last day of school here wasn't until June 15.)  I gave them the first week of school off because, well, it was the first week of summer vacation.  The second week, Aaron had a head cold all week and while he pushed through with our various other activities, last Thursday he took a sick day.  So while Aaron was literally sitting around in his underwear all day reading or watching television, I assigned Leah a writing project.

Leah loves stories.  She loves to read them, listen to someone tell her a story, and she loves to make up stories.  I think she could be a very good writer one day.  So using The Storymatic, I tasked her with coming up with at least three paragraphs (either a short story or the beginning of a longer story) based upon the cards we drew:  filmmaker and emergency room waiting room.  This is the story she wrote.

Inspiration by Leah Rich 

Gary hit pause on his cam-recorder.  He sighed and looked at his footage so far.  "No, no this will never do!"  He looked at his half-completed film.  He sighed again and pressed delete.  He looked at his notebook.  It had all his main ideas.  He ripped another page out, crumpled it, and threw it into the recycle bin.  He looked around, trying to find an idea.  Nothing.  "Man!" said Gary.  "Every time a new movie comes out, the harder it gets to find a good idea!"  "Or," he said, "one that hasn't been taken." 

Suddenly, he heard a crinkling noise.  "Now what?" asked Gary.  Then, he found the source of his crinkling.  It was his toy poodle, Fifi!  She had gotten into the chocolate!  "Oh no!" exclaimed Gary.  Everyone knows that chocolate is bad for dogs, especially toy poodles like Fifi.  It could kill her!  He quickly threw her in the back seat of his car and hurriedly drove to the vet. 

He told the lady at the desk about Fifi.  She said that Dr. Keith could see Fifi right away.  "Good," said Gary.  He sat down in a chair in the waiting room.  Then, he saw two cats cleaning each other.  "Huh?" he thought.  "Normally, those two cats fight a lot.  That's it!" he thought.  "A movie about how you can bond during hardships!"  Not waiting another second, he pulled out his notebook and began to write.

I thought the story was a good beginning, and there is a lot of places she could take this but Leah decided it was a short story and was happy where it ended.  I told her I thought she was a good writer and I thought she could become an exceptional writer if she practiced and told her I would be assigning her more writing assignments this summer.

Thinking Thursday is not only sitting at a desk-type stuff though and today was a good example of that.  Today was multiplication water balloons.  After our dinnertime math discussion the other day, I decided that today we'd have a review of our multiplication tables (through 12).  For every wrong answer the kids would get pegged with a water balloon.  If they could answer them all correctly, they could throw a water balloon at me and Matt.  I was feeling confident, however, because I announced this activity, with the stakes, at the beginning of the week.  Leah and Aaron have had days to refresh their memories since theoretically they should have memorized these all in third grade.  I never heard them once discussing this so I never feared.

Aaron missed a couple, those tricky 9s and 12s.

Leah only missed one and corrected herself
quickly afterwards, but Matt nailed her even
as she tried to run away.

We let the kids play with the extra water balloons.

A good time was had by all.

Collaborative Art

Earlier this school year, Leah had to write a haiku (or maybe she just had to write a poem and chose a haiku).  I really liked it so I pinned it to our bulletin board where it's been ever since.  

This week, Aaron brought home a big folder of art work he's done this school year in art class, which he has every Tuesday.  Some of the pieces are pretty good including an awesome forced perspective city scene.  One piece, however, is reminiscent of a Japanese woodblock print and I think it complements Leah's haiku.  I asked them if they would be okay with me publishing them both together on my blog and they liked that idea.

Haiku by Leah Rich, 2018

Artwork by Aaron Rich, 2018

Happy New Year 2018!

I believe I've mentioned in a previous post that New Year's Eve (NYE) is not a favorite of mine.  There's too much pressure for it to be such a good time.  Having kids has been a convenient escape from having to worry about NYE festivities.  However, the kids are now able to stay up to midnight--they've always been the early to bed, early to rise type--so the dynamic has changed.  Last year was the first year both of them have stayed up until midnight.  Since we weren't sure Aaron would make it, we kind of winged it last year with some board games and our usual Matt-made lo mein for dinner.  Knowing that we would be going the distance this year I took the initiative and did an Internet search to help me gather ideas for our family-friendly fiesta.  One of the best ideas I found was on modernparentsmessykids.com for an hour-by-hour countdown activity.

It's made with a poster board, empty paper towel tubes and tissue paper, all of which I already had here at the house.  I was pleased with how well it turned out and I was careful to make an even number of countdown spaces so they each, alternating turns, had the same number of activities to discover.   It was kind of like our own ball dropping where we counted by hours instead of seconds.

Leah and Aaron would take turns, on the
 half-hour, opening up the corresponding
tissue paper-covered compartment.

Each compartment had a piece of paper
with that hour's activity written on it.
Some activities took the full hour and
some only lasted a few minutes.

11:30 am - Watch Happy New Year, Charlie Brown.
(It's OK, not a classic, though.)

12:30 pm - Mentos Geyser.  Since the temperature
was in the single-digits, this was one of those
activities that only lasted a few minutes. 

"Thar she blows!"

1:30 pm - Play Exploding Kittens.  The kids
used some of their Christmas money and
bought Imploding Kittens, an expansion pack.

Imploding Kittens comes with a human-sized
"cone of shame," which the kids think is hilarious.

2:30 pm - Create a bucket list of
things to do/places to visit in 2018.

3:30 pm - Enjoy a sweet treat.

4:30 pm - Go to church.  (I skipped 5:30 pm
because I knew we'd be at Mass.)

6:30 pm - Eat dinner.  Matt made spaghetti
this year instead of his usual lo mein.

We totally embrace the Japanese tradition of
eating long noodles on NYE to represent
a long life.

7:30 pm - Reflections & Resolutions.

We all filled out a year-in-review...

...and some of us wrote resolutions.

Aaron didn't think he should bother with writing
resolutions because they always get broken.

Some resolutions were less than serious.

8:30 pm - Photo booth time!

"Tell me the truth--do these glasses
make me look fat?"

9:30 pm - Watch Ghostbusters II.  I chose
this movie because it takes place around
New Year's.  Sadly, it's nowhere near as
good of a movie as Ghostbusters (or
Ghostbusters 2016, for that matter).

10:30 pm - Glow Stick Fire Knife Dance.
We paused the movie for this annual tradition.

Leah and Aaron have been performing their glow stick
dance every NYE since 2010 (when we went to Maui that
summer and they saw a real fire knife dance at a luau).

11:30 pm (or upon completion of the movie) - Get ready to
make some noise and ring in the new year!

Don't forget the sparkling cider.

12:05 am - Clean up!

It did take some effort and planning ahead for our NYE festivities but it was worth it.  The kids loved the countdown board and it did make the day go by fast.  I would definitely do it again, but I may have to start planning earlier this year to be able to put new activities in the mix. 

Happy 2018!