Star of the Week

 Each week in Mrs. Chadd's class, one student is Star of the Week.  They bring in a poster with pictures of their lives, get to read a book to someone in the school (she chose to read to Mrs. Gonczarow's class), and get a book of notes from each of their classmates.  

Last week was Camden's turn.  I printed off various pictures from her blog.  We focused on family, pets, travel, and things she likes. 

The dinosaurs are the only 3-D items and one of them fell off during the week at school.  Camden taped it back on.

Change of Plans

Kevin went hunting in southern Indiana with Uncle Ric over the weekend.  Aunt Carole made plans with Camden and I to go to Gramma Pat's for a girls weekend.  We wanted to have lunch at a fru-fru herb garden/farm near Columbus and shop in historic Madison.

But Friday morning, we got a call that Grammy wasn't doing well.  We all switched gears and made plans to stay in Lafayette.  Gramma Pat had to be part of some family discussions about Grammy's health future.  In between visits to the nursing home, we managed to eat at a few new restaurants (and a Lafayette favorite Mexican), bake a yummy dessert, and just have time together.

Hopefully, there will be another girls weekend in the future.

Tis the Season

The spider webs are out.  It signifies the end of summer weather and for the last of the trips to Up the Creek for ice cream.

 

Whipker's Pumpkin Patch

A few weekends ago, we went to Gramma Pat's for the weekend.  We headed down Friday evening.  We got there around dinner, so we all went out to a yummy Mexican restaurant that Gramma had only heard was good.  Camden thought it was the best and kept asking to go back on Saturday.

We had gone down to help Gramma with her garage sale.  We got up bright and early (6am!) to get ready and begin pulling things out for the 8am sale.  As we were moving tables in the dark at 7am, people started arriving.  We didn't stop until the 2pm close.  Gramma was able to get rid of some stuff and put a little money in her pocket - success!

Despite being tired, Gramma was up for doing something with us before we headed home.  We decided to check out a local pumpkin patch.  There were a few games and some cute decorations.

We then caught the hay wagon to take us out to the pumpkin patch.

I had planned to only buy a small one to have "purpose" for this trip, but these were some of the best pumpkins we had ever seen.  They were all nice size, mostly free of blemishes, and with a variety of colors.

Gramma even found one for her porch!

Kevin found one he liked and then we let Camden select hers.  We really tried to persuade her to a "perfect" one, but she was insistent that she wanted to find the one she wanted to find.

She eventually settled on the nice orange one.  Kevin choose the green one.  We usually get 3 each year, but decided to wait on the last one in case we went to another patch.

Reading Program

Camden and some of her classmates chose vampire fangs as their reward for successfully earning top points for reading.

Little Traveler

Our main mode of transportation while at Disney was the internal bus system.  Camden was a pro by the end of the trip!

Same with flying.  Waiting to board...

All Things Mickey

Disney really sells Mickey!  We had fun with all the Mickey-shaped items.  It was mostly fun snack items, but his shape was EVERYWHERE!

We didn't get the Mickey shaped apples since they were $3 more and not included on our dining plan, but we got a couple of these humongous caramel apples that were so, so, so delicious!

Friday - EPCOT Reboot

We had to be up early to check our bags at our hotel as part of the resort check in system.  And, since we wanted to spend a good portion of the day at one more park, we wanted to have them hold our carry-ons as well.  We all were up and on a courtesy shuttle at 7:30am.  With such a late night, I wasn't sure how it would go, but, once again, we had a blast.

We elected to go back to Epcot since it was the closest park to our resort.  With only a 5-10 minute bus ride, we could stay there the longest and have a pretty full day and still be back to our resort by 3pm to catch our assigned Magical Express bus back to the airport.

Probably one of my favorite Character Meet experiences was Pluto.  We saw another person before Camden "play" with him, so I encouraged Camden to do the same.  They had quite the cute encounter.

We rode some of our favorite rides again and then made our way to the World Showcase to try to see a few more of the countries we didn't get to the first time and to use up the last of our food credits on some yummy snacks.

We had to kill about a half-hour before the Norway bakery opened (school bread snack for the travels ahead).  One of the gift stores was open with a small coloring activity that Camden did, while Kevin checked out the Norwegian toys and gifts.

Camden had a small helmet on but refused to leave it on for the picture.

We had an amazing lunch at the Mexico quick-service restaurant (fish tacos and cheese empanadas) and then took a boat across the lagoon to Germany to get some pretzels and caramel treats at the Karamelle-Kuche shop.  We used our last credits and headed back to our resort to begin our journey home.

Thursday - Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party (MNSSHP)

We planned to go directly from Downtown Disney over to Magic Kingdom for the Party.  This was a private event that we bought a special ticket for and the park is closed to all other guest.  It was just us and 20,000 other people!  The party didn't start until 7pm, but we could go in early at 4.

But because we had bought Rex, we decided to swing back by our hotel to drop him off, then head to MK.  It was probably about 6pm when we arrived.  Most of the general public were starting to leave, but the party goers - many in very elaborate costumes - were starting to arrive.  I wasn't sure it was going to be any less packed.  But shortly after 7, it was a wonderfully small population compared to normal.

The park is transformed into a Halloween themed place.

The characters are dressed in their costumes, there are special themed snacks, and there are designated spots throughout the park to stop and trick-or-treat for candy.  I had heard that most people were there for the characters and the candy and that ride lines were short.  We were there for the rides and could walk on to most without a wait.

As you can see, Camden is officially a ride junkie and Kevin even taught her to hold her hands up - which she does for the entire ride now.

It was so great to be able to visit the side of the Magic Kingdom we didn't get to on the other visits.  We got to repeat some of our favorites (like Space Mountain below), but also ride all the other rides that are musts.

We had also heard that while the lines are super long for candy, they go super fast.  That turned out to be fact.  I think we lucked out with the date of our visit and this isn't always true, but all three of us went through the line and the cast members gave handfuls at at time in our bad.  We brought home at least 5 pounds of candy (and most of it "the good stuff").

We didn't spend a ton of time stopping for pictures since those lines were longer than normal as well.  We did get a couple of fun ones in front of Space Mountain.

Finally, we watched a great fireworks show (it's different than the regular one each night) and the Boo to You Parade (also different).

The Headless Horseman clops down the street to signify the beginning of the parade.

Some of our favorite floats.

We closed the night by riding the Haunted Mansion ride just as the party ended at Midnight.  We didn't get out of the park and back to our room until after 1pm.  Such a fun party!!!