Cross checks and confirmation

Did a nice weekend with a trip to see the Florida Everblades (ECHL) on Saturday as they won their series to be the Eastern Conference Champions and head to the Kelly Cup championship game.  Both kids are loving watching the game and being on the lookout for Swampy (the 'Blades mascot).

On Sunday morning, Cody had his Confirmation at Grace Church.  He had been taking classes each week and have a weekend getaway to prepare himself with several others.  We are pretty happy with his dedication to go through with this for when he was ready.

Cody had his last band concert at school this week and is preparing for a trip to DisneyWorld to particpate in the Disney Music Studios class.  The kids will spend a couple of hours in the music studio and then will get a day in the Magic Kingdom.  Patrick will be one of the supervisors for the kids so hoping for a fun and calm day.

Photos galore

Going to be a text light post.  Work and tax deadlines paying their tolls but lots of pictures from the great visite from Uncle Chris, Aunt Jackie, cousins Beau and Logan.  Short visit but nothing but fun and thankfulness of the visit.

Over and out!

Where have we gone???

Holy cow, where have we been?  Sometimes we ask ourselves that over and over.  Might be more like, where haven't we been.  :)  It certainly has been a busy couple of months but that doesn't always mean it is bad. 

The snowbird season has kicked in big time in our area.  Seeing the normal increase of out of state license plates around town.  That of course has caused the trips to and from work to be longer than normal.  Unfortunately that means Jenny fights a lot of traffic to come home.  Anyways, some of the things we have been doing:

Cody got the opportunity to participate in the Solo Ensemble for the Lee County District.  He practiced doing a solo trumpet performance (well, he had a volunteer playing piano as an accompaniment).  He was judged on his performance and skill based on his age/skill set.  He was only 1 of 5 band members that chose to participate (out of the 60+ in band total) but we felt it would be good for him.  Despite being nervous, he did great and earned a Superior rating.  The judge was very happy and impressed by his skill set.

The following weekend, both kids got to participate in the Fort Myers Edison Parade for Grace Church.  Cody got to help carry the banner for the church.  Amberlyn was asked to just wave and smile and provide energy.  Thankfully she is full of that.  :)

Both kids have been helping around the house and around.  Last weekend Cody had a science project to work on so he helped do some chores around the house (inclusive of doing some building) before tackling his science project. 

He needed to do a scale model of a plant cell.  Instead of doing a normal model, of course, his head went to the Lego option.  He took the model photo from doing research and plowed ahead.  One more step of labeling the parts and he'll be good to go.

Meanwhile, Amberlyn helped by going up to see Grandpa Chester and celebrating his 87th birthday.  We did some flea market shopping and Amberlyn has a good eye to help him find those small items he is always looking to add to his "war chest" of trinkets.

So all in all, we're staying busy.  Hopefully things give us a break at some point!

Building up to the holidays and beyond

You see what I did there at the end of the post.

Lots have been going on in the Wedge household.  We have been flying here and there and everywhere leading up to the holiday season.  Feels like that all the time occasionally.  That is the price though with a family. 

Anyways, one of the things we wanted to do for both the kids is give them a little bit of an early Christmas present by surprising them by going to Legoland outside of Orlando.  The new park just opened up around October and both kids have been very aware this is there.  Cody particularly has been aware of this since February or so.  It is Legos, what do you expect. 

So, we had decided this would be a perfect Christmas gift for them to take them to Legoland for the day and let them soak up the madness.  We got some of the one day passes and decided to surprise them the day before we went.  I hope they were amazed.  We certainly know they were thrilled.  Thankfully no tests or quizes that last day of school to distract them because we know there would be zero focus.  :)

One of the bonus things about going right before the holiday is that crowds were very...very...light.  It might have looked a bit busy but really, it wasn't bad at all.  We had nice weather (mid-70's) throughout the day.  Sunny with a nice breeze and lots of shady places to hide out.  With so much to take in, we knew we wouldn't be able to take it all in so we decided to do what we could (knowing full well we'd be coming back in the future).

We were able to hit all the roller coasters up.  While Cody wasn't exactly thrilled with those rides, he did manage to at least take one round on every coaster.  That old anxiety got the best of him.  Amberly however was a roller coaster nut.  With there being almost zero time wait for rides (yes, we got off and were able to immediately get back on some rides), she was pushing for a coaster at every turn.

They had everything from boat rides, to laser target rides, to hanging coasters (think Iron Dragon at Cedar Point), to a double carousel and of course, tons of Legos.  The Lego City area was dedicated to scale replicas of cities all over the United States.  From NY City, to San Fransciso to Florida and Vegas.  Lots of Florida places (obviously) and a neat space display.  They used over 300 million Legos to build it.  We walked through the basics of it but no way could we absorb everything.  More for next time.  The Cypress Gardens area was still availble for some cool nature walks and neat with all the Christmas themes going around.  It was a big win.

Then it was recovering enough to get the Christmas plans put in place.  Cody had a Christmas costume party at church where we convinced him to dress up like Charlie Brown (from the special).  He took 1st place with the costume.

Since they were getting the Legoland for their "big" present, we still had some misc. things to get around for them for some Christmas morning fun.  Lots of presents and gifts from up north (not the pole but close enough in OH) and they tore into them as quick as they could. 

So, a week off of school for them to recover and play to their hearts content (hopefully around some chores) and then back to the school grind.  Be tough for them to focus again but we can only hope!

Now...did you get the building joke?  You see what I did there was.....