2009 Vacation: Day 4.5

At the aquarium, the kids got a bunch of books. If you know Gabe, you know that his favorite type of book, oddly enough, is identification books. Trees, birds, North American mammals... and now after visiting the aquarium-- Atlantic Shell Identification book. Within a half an hour of getting home, he was outside identifying the shells we found the other day:



After defending my title as Lost Worlds champion (we have a new system, if you want to challenge the title holder, you pick two characters and give one to the title holder and use the other. If you win, you switch characters. If you win both- you're the new title holder), I walked down to the beach to watch the younger ones throw shells into the waves.


Max just loves running around in the sand. It was in the high 50s today, so he could actually run around in bare feet without freezing his toes off. He was in heaven.



But every time they go down to the shore, they end up playing their favorite game-- Get as Close to the Waves Without Getting Wet. They love this game.



This game terrifies Max, but he loves it.



Oh crap! That was a close one!



As we were getting the New Years feast together, Jen noticed that the clouds had parted just enough to show the blue moon. This was lucky because it's been completely overcast all day, and the clouds only broke for a minute, but the moon was in the exact right position that it had a beautiful reflection over the ocean. I got a great picture of it:



In my first attempt at getting the picture, I accidentally left the flash on. It was incredibly muggy and getting ready to rain again. I guess there was so much moisture in the air, that the humidity actually reflected back on the flash, giving me this weird picture:



Finally it was time for the feast! The feast included: Summer sausage with two kinds of cheese (swiss and cheddar) and wheat thins; chicken nuggets stuffed with cheese and pepperoni; jalapeno poppers; shrimp; honey barbecue chicken strips; chips and dip; and fried cheese sticks.



Jen even bought me some dairy free tofutti sour cream with some dried ranch mix. I mixed the two together for my own dairy-free ranch dip. It was delicious!



The kids weren't sure they liked shrimp before. But after tonight, they discovered that they loved it.



Everyone got a little bit of everything.



Did I forget the l'il smokies? Yeah we had those too.



Oh my! With so many choices, how do you decide what to put on your plate?



Some people were impatient to get their plates filled.



Even Jack pigged out on the feast!



Everyone settled around the coffee table to eat and discuss our resolutions. We reviewed how everyone did with last year's resolutions and then committed to our resolutions for 2010.



After the feast, we put Jack to bed and played a bunch of games. First we played Uno Attack, and Marney won after a very long, back and forth game (you know how Uno is). Then we played Scattergories-- Kiki and I won! We then played Apples to Apples Jr. and Kiki and I won that too! Finally we played In a Pickle and Jen beat all our butts at that.

At around 9:00 pm it was time for chocolate fondue. Jen loves me so much that she melted the chocolate with soy milk, and everyone reported that it was just as good as when it's made with real milk. We had bananas, strawberries, pretzels and marshmallows to dip in it. It was decadent.



Finally, at 10 pm it was time to get in the hot tub again.



Nothing like a late-night dip to finish off the night.



A problem arose that all the kids started getting light-headed and stomach aches while sitting in the hot tub. It's crazy how eating a ton of junk food and chocolate, and then soaking in a 103 degree hot tub will do that to you.

So now it's 11 pm and we're only an hour away from the new year. Amazingly, everyone's still awake.

2009 Vacation: Day 4

So we had a change of plans today because we woke up and it was raining really hard. We had planned to sled down the sand dunes, but obviously that wasn't in the cards. Instead, we decided to have a lazy morning and after lunch go to the North Carolina Aquarium. Because my hernia surgery was hurting, we decided that I would stay home with Jack and Connor. Before everyone woke up, Gabe and I played some Lost Worlds and I beat his butt twice in a row, making me the champion!



Then the kids went with Jen to the aquarium. Obviously, I wasn't there. So to do this update, I'm having the kids help me with this post to fill in all the juicy details of every little thing that they learned, did and experienced at the aquarium. Here's a picture of them in front of the wishing pond at the entrance to the aquarium:



Here they are throwing coins into the wishing well. I tried  to get them to tell me what their wishes were, but they all refused out of fear that they won't come true.



I was prepared to give you all detailed instructions on where the aquarium is. But guess what? I have a handy picture that shows you:



It turns out the aquarium was more dangerous than you would expect. A giant crab got out of its cage and attacked Gabe, Max and Marney. But it was the three kids I don't like, so it was okay.



This next picture is evidence that Kiki is destined to be killed by a coral snake (she clearly can't identify which one is a "friend of Jack" and which one will "kill a fella."):



Max's mouth says all you need to know about this giant cottonmouth rattlesnake: "Oooooooooooh."



Even though the giant crab killed Max earlier in the trip. It turned out to be okay, when a giant frog pooped out another one of him later:



How many Jones kids does it take to wrestle a large crocodile? Clearly more than five. Gabe is now known as Stumpy.



The otters were a big hit with the kids too:



And the turtles were beautiful:



They loved this shipwreck display a lot. Apparently there were two really cool puffer fish in this display that you can't see:



One of the cool things was that the aquarium had some hands-on displays, like in this shot where they got to pet sting rays. It turns out that their skin is rough like leather.



Even cooler was the tank where they got to pet sea urchins and star fish.



The star of the show was the giant sharks display:



They also watched a cool movie on crocodiles-- our prehistoric reptilian friends.



Like at Festival Harbor, they got to dig around in a fossil pit. As Gabe told me, "But this one was cooler, because it actually had bones in it."





Here they're trying to look through a telescope out at the sound, but apparently it was too foggy to see anything:



Here's a creepy shot of how very creepy and creepy the fog looked. Creepy.



But it wasn't all just water life. There was a Red Fox trail that had other displays as well. Here the kids got to look into a purple martin's nest. It actually had an egg in it!



They also got some cool greenscreen pictures taken of them that we actually have physical photos of. I'll try to take pictures (of the pictures) and post them up later.

And that's only half our day! We have our New Years Feast planned tonight with games and resolutions. I probably won't be able to update that until tomorrow, though.

Max: The Wright Brothers Memorial

I saw airplanes.  They went up.  I went up a big hill. Nothing. Good.

2009 Vacation: Day 3

This morning started fairly lazy. Coffee, breakfast and watching some tv while we waited for all the kids to wake up. I finished reading all the rules to Last Night on Earth, the zombie board game I got for my birthday, so we can play it tonight. Our plan was to go to two Wright Brothers attractions today- the Wright Brothers Memorial Museum, a national park- and then after lunch go to Jockey's Ridge, a state park with sand dunes and information on the Wright Brothers. The first one is more educational, and the second is more active and fun- you slide down the sand dunes on plastic sleds.

We got to the national park at 10:00 am, figuring we'd be there for about an hour, do the Junior Rangers program (more on that later). As we were driving, Jen pointed out that we hadn't gotten any pictures of Van Go, which we decorated with hippie/flower magnets just for our trip. So when we got to the Wright Brothers Museum, I took a shot so you all can appreciate it:



Even though Van Go looks to be a loving symbol of peace and happiness, the kids wanted to make sure I got a picture proving that it is really a murderous machine:



What they're pointing at is a bird that Jen hit while driving 75 on the interstate. It was fairly gross, so I didn't want to get a close up. But then I totally did. Try and figure out where it's head is:



Okay, first of all, entry to the Wright Brothers Museum was super cheap-- kids 15 and under are free, and adults are $4. And get this- admission is good for a week if you keep your receipt. But what's best is the Junior Ranger program. The Junior Ranger program is something they do at nearly all national parks. It's a program where they give your kid an activity book with a bunch of different questions and activities they need to complete. All the information needed to answer the questions is found in the different information found at the displays and plaques around the national park. It's kind of a hit or miss program. Some of them, like the one here or the Smokey the Bear museum, are really good and age appropriate. Some, however, are too tedious and not fun-- like at the White Sands National Park-- it took several hours and it was boring and busy work. But like I said, this one was good and had different activities for different age levels.

One of the requirements to complete for the Junior Rangers program was to watch one of their movies, and right when we got there, a movie on the history of the Wright Brothers was starting, so we all settled in to watch it:



When it was over, we sat down to try to answer some of the sections of the Junior Ranger sheets that we could. This was fairly easy for us because several months ago, in preparation for this vacation, I had done an eight week science unit on the Wright Brothers-- so they pretty much already knew this information, and the movie was just a review for us (but still cool).



Here I am helping out with some of the stuff for Connor and Mason:



After that, we walked through the different displays. The museum is set up with one main building with displays, two offset buildings with more displays, and then the Wright Brothers monument itself with markers showing the distance of the different flights. We started with the indoor stuff, like this recreation of the engine used on the 1903 flyer:



Here's a shot of us in front of a cool mural of the flyer. What was cool is that they also had replicas of the 1902 glider and 1903 flyer at the museum (the original flyer is at the Smithsonian). It is insane how rickety and unsafe these things look. But the engineering behind them, especially considering the lack of knowledge at the time, is pretty amazing.



There was a bunch of other stuff inside, although I will say that I was a little disappointed with some of the inside displays-- they weren't geared to kids, which is fine, but they weren't really accessible to the family. But my kids were still into it (Connor was disappointed when we had to leave, he wanted to read every single plaque on every single display).

So here's a shot of the Wright Brothers memorial, which is on top of Kill Devil Hill. What's interesting is that Kill Devil Hill- being a sand dune- has actually moved 450 between 1902 and when the memorial was built-- but when they did the memorial, they planted grasses on it so it would remain where it is. But the deal is, the Wrights would slide the glider down this hill to get speed, and then hopefully have enough speed at the bottom to take flight. Imagine lugging all that stuff up there for a short 15 second flight.



Jen thought it was enough work having to carry a screaming 25 pound baby up to the top:



The view from the top was great. Look carefully at the picture below. The first (closest) rock you see is the take off point for the first flights the Wright Brothers took in December of 1903. The four markers beyond that rock is landing point of each of the four flights they took. The fourth (see it in the distance?) was 852 feet and Orville flew for 59 seconds. Pretty cool.



Here's some cool shots of the kids at the top of the memorial.





Here are two closer up shots of Orville's head.





Finally we walked back in and checked in with the park ranger to see if all their answers were right to the Junior Ranger sheets.



I hurt myself with all the walking. We thought we were going to be at this place for 45 minutes or so, but we ended up being there over three hours. All the walking was too much on my surgery.



Here, the park ranger was going over their answers. This guy was a real stickler, checking every single answer (at some places they don't bother to check-- I'm looking at you White Sands, New Mexico). Fortunately they had them all correct. Phew.



Here they are swearing their Junior Ranger oath. Yay! They made it! They got cool embroidered patches to add to their collection of... Junior Ranger patches!



On the way back, I had to get a shot of the biggest conversation topic in my house for the past 24 hours. When Gabe and I went to pick up my prescription last night, we first saw Dirty Dick's Crab House. Oh. My. God. We thought this was hysterical. I think that they should pay for the rights to the AC/DC song and have a commercial that sings, "Dirty Dick's and the food's dirt cheap!" The kids can't stop laughing like idiots over this.



Finally, we also passed the Brew Thru. Apparently in North Carolina you can just drive up to these glorified carports, tell them to load beer and alcohol into your car and then you drive away with it. Awesome!



In any event, we didn't get home until 1:30 and had WAY too much fun at the Wright Brothers museum. My groin is hurting pretty bad, so we decided not to do the sand dunes this afternoon. Indeed, we decided that if the weather permits, they will go to the sand dunes tomorrow and I'll stay home with Connor, Max and Jack, who can't do the sand dunes anyways. If it's raining, then Jen and the oldest six will go to the North Carolina museum and I'll stay home with the babies. But between all the walking yesterday and today, I'm doing too much and worried I'm going to aggravate my surgery. So I'm staying home tomorrow, and we're all planning on staying home on the 1st, so maybe two days of taking it easy will get me back into fighting shape.

As for the rest of today- the kids are in the hot tub right now and we're going to play Last Night on Earth tonight. Other than that, we don't have anything planned, so I'm not sure if there will be another update today.