Too Much Fun?

When I was in fourth grade we had an assignment to write a story called, "Fortunately, Unfortunately." As you might imagine, the plot went back and forth between fortunate events and unfortunate events. I think my mom kept the book in my "special school papers" folder and I loved to reread it whenever I had the chance. Although that folder and the story are now probably long lost, I sometimes find myself thinking about the events of my life in like manner:

Fortunately, I have great friends who encourage and inspire me. Two of my friends, Juliana and Amy, have daughters the same age as Aubree and we all try to do "preschool" with our girls. They usually do a much better job, but I do what I can to keep up. The theme for April was "Birds" and Juliana arranged a field trip to the local Wildlife refuge. We had our own private tour guide. Our guide prepared a perfect presentation talking about the birds around us and then gave each kid a pair of binoculars and took us on a 1/4 mile bird-hunting adventure. In addition to seeing a great variety of birds (including Ospreys in their nest!), we also saw four large alligators (which made me slightly nervous since we were traipsing through their territory with a bunch of little people).
Unfortunately, somehow in the process of loading up the kids to go home, I lost my camera. :(
Fortunately, Mark's parents came to visit a couple days later and we used his Mom's camera to take pictures of the many, many activities in which we participated over the course of the following week.
Unfortunately, my kids never let me take good pictures of them in their fancy Easter clothes. It's a running theme. The picture on the left is the best we got from our photo shoot Easter morning. This was Bryce's first Easter; doesn't he look handsome in his suit?!
Fortunately, we were able to go to the beach, the zoo, and on numerous Wildlife Drives with Grandma and Grandpa. Bryce spent the majority of his time at the beach fast asleep in my arms. Aubree played in the sand with her friend and with Grandpa. Grandpa's primary job was to fetch bucket after bucket of water for the girls to dump sand in, or dump on each other, or stick their feet in. When Bryce woke up, we joined in the sand playing and built a great sand cake. The wildlife drives were somewhat disappointing - we didn't see any alligators (except for a piece of one being eaten by vultures), but did see a ton of neat birds and an armadillo. The zoo was fantastic! I loved seeing Bryce get so excited when he saw the animals and the Brevard Zoo has some great exhibits where you can get very, very close to the animals. Aubree remembered quite a bit from when we had a membership the year she was one. I think we'll enjoy our membership this year.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the kids at those fun events (edit: I swiped a beach picture from my friend's blog - thanks, Amy! That's the sand "cake." Notice Bryce eating the sand...yum!).
Fortunately, I had a meeting get rescheduled that allowed us to go on another super bird-related field trip with Juliana and Amy - and Grandma & Grandpa got to come too! We made an hour trek to Orlando to visit the Audubon Society's Birds of Prey facility. They host a kid's program once a month and this time our little ones were the only participants. Again, it turned out to be a really amazing experience. The theme was "eggs" and the kids all got to hold models of different bird eggs and learn about the different parts of the eggs and how the babies grow. Did you know that the baby birds eat the yolk and drink the egg white as they grow? I didn't. The kids got to go on a little egg hunt, they read stories, colored, and even got out hula hoops and pretended to be little birds breaking out of their shells. The highlight, however, was when the leader brought out birds for the kids to see. Basically she asked, "what do you want to see." The kids asked to see an owl, so she brought out an owl. Then they asked for a Bald Eagle, so she brought one out! That was Aubree's favorite part of the trip. She still talks about "Trouble" (the eagle's name, because he was a lot of trouble to take care of when they first got him). After the program we had time to look around the facility and see hawks, ospreys, owls, vultures, more eagles, falcons...all kinds of amazing birds. The kids even pretended to be baby birds in a scale model of a bald eagle's nest. Thanks for organizing the trip, Juliana!
Unfortunately, all those fun things meant we spent a lot of time away from the house and resulted in lots of missed naps for Bryce. Overall he was a trooper, but by the end of the week I could tell both he and Aubree were suffering from Too-Much-Fun-And-Not-Enough-Sleep Syndrome.
Fortunately, the kids were able to handle one more long day so we could attend Family Day at Kennedy Space Center (one of the main reasons Grandma & Grandpa Winters came down). On Family Day, each KSC employee can take a carload of people on to the normally restricted grounds. This is only the second such day since 9/11, so it's a fairly big deal. We arrived early and made our first stop at the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) where Space Shuttle Discovery is currently housed. This was the first time I was able to see the Shuttle close-up (Mark deals with the shuttles every day at work - he's even been in the crew compartment several times), and it was really interesting to see all the tiles, engines, etc. The picture on the left is a view from the back of the shuttle. The engines are currently all pulled out. The most surprising thing was to see how delicate the tiles are; they are extremely light and you can easily break one by pushing against it with your fingernail! After seeing the shuttle, we walked through the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), which is the largest one story building in the world. The flag you see on the right is the size of a football field! I'd been in the VAB previously, but this time we were able to see a little bit of the Ares 1-X project, which is the next-phase in space exploration and Mark has been doing a lot of work with it. Finally, we hopped in the car to drive out to see the launch pads. There was a lot of very slow traffic, but it was worth it because there were shuttles at both pads. On the left is a picture of Space Shuttle Atlantis which is getting ready to be launched in a couple weeks for a mission to the Hubble Telescope. Atlantis is the shuttle Mark works with the most.
Unfortunately, Mark had church responsibilities in the afternoon so we had to leave the Space Center early and didn't get to see anything else or go to the Astronaut Hall of Fame or the Visitor's Center.
Fortunately, having grandparents around means more people with whom the kids can play. I can't even guess how many hours Grandpa spent reading books to Aubree. Every morning when Aubree woke up she would sneak into the living room where Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping. If they were awake, she would ask them to read her a story or play with her. If they were still sleeping, she would curl up on the couch or the rocking chair and watch intently to see the moment they would open their eyes. She was very sad when they left.
Unfortunately, Bryce showed no such enthusiasm for the "strangers" in his home. The first afternoon they arrived, I left Bryce with them for 15 minutes to take a meal to some friends who just had a baby. Mistake! When I returned Bryce was quite upset and knew that he'd been left behind. It was downhill from there. He decided that when Grandma was near, that meant he might be kept away from Mom, so he'd immediately start crying and beeline to my side.
Fortunately, shortly before she left, Grandma found my camera!!! Hurray! She found it under the seat in my car. I promise I'd looked there at least 2 times previously, but she has a very special gift for finding lost things.

Thanks for visiting, Grandma and Grandpa Winters! Sorry I don't have any pictures with you in them...but next time I'll have my own camera, so watch out!