Chilling Out

We spent Monday relaxing at Grandmommy and Granddaddy's house. Mommy and Daddy opened up quite a few of the boys' toys and let them spend some time playing with everything. The grownups in turn napped and ran some errands. Later in the afternoon, the cousins came up for a while again to play videogames with Parker and Wesley. We wrapped up our time in Seffner after dinner and headed home. When we arrived back in Ocala, our first stop was Bruster's to get some ice cream, which we ate at home in front of a roaring fire in the fireplace. Then the boys were packed off to bed for "movie night" as they once again watched "Frosty the Snowman."

Tuesday morning we woke up late, unloaded the minivan full of suitcases and presents and then proceeded to start unpacking everything and putting it away. We cleaned out the boys' bedroom - going through all of their books and cds and their desk. Then we started in on the boys' toy room - sorting through all of their toys and making the tough decisions on what to give away in order to make room for all of the new stuff. In the afternoon we headed out for a late lunch at Tiajuana Flats to exchange a few items of clothing and pick up a few other things. One of those was a light for Mommy's kindle (her wonderful present from Daddy) and a wedge pillow. We discovered while home in Seffner (and borrowing Grandmommy's wedge pillow) that this is the perfect way to keep Mommy from snoring with all of her allergies. After one night at home without it (and lots of snoring) we were determined to find another one. Success came at Bed, Bath and Beyond! Our original plan had been to take the boys to a Gator basketball game this night - but when we went to purchase tickets in the morning the game had been cancelled because the opposing team couldn't get a flight out of snowed in Virginia. So we had a quiet night in at home and got our tickets situated for going to Sea World the next day.

However, our plan for Sea World got interrupted in the middle of the night when Daddy got sick. Everyone ended up sleeping in pretty late and Daddy still wasn't feeling well. So we just decided to stay in town, let Daddy rest at home and have Mommy take the boys to do some local things that they keep asking to do. We started off our afternoon with lunch at Five Guys, followed up by time at Chuck E Cheese. We had over 80 tokens left from previous excursions and it took us a couple of hours to get rid of them all between the games and the rides.

After the mouse, we spent some time shopping at K-Mart for Parker who needed some more jeans to wear to school. Mostly Mommy was stalling because the boys had guessed the next place we were going to (Fun Factory) and they happened to be in the same plaza! Finally we ended up at the Fun Factory where the boys played for the next ninety minutes. Parker was here once over the summer with the YMCA camp but it was all new to Wesley. It's a whole series of tunnels, climbing nets, ball pit and slides inside. They had a great time with only two little incidents (Parker - knee - zipline; Wesley - bleeding lip - accidentally whacked by brother). Finally it was time to head home. We had been checking in with Daddy throughout the day and we made one last stop at Publix to pick up some soup and Gatorade before heading home to take care of our beloved sick one.