At Our Whit's End

We went to Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was great! There was a whole level just for kids. Isn't that great? They even have a restaurant called Whit's End. The food was awesome. I had an apple, apple juice, and nachos, and let’s be honest, everyone loves nachos. By the way, Whit's End is famous for its ice cream. (I got an ice cream sundae).

Besides the restaurant, there was a bunch of other fun stuff such as a Kids Radio show where you are the star. My family and I did a mystery called the broken clown lamp. They also had a slide that was really fun and very swirly. The place was great for hide-and-go-seek. We had a lot of fun, and we stayed for hours. Bye!

- The Daughter

Hi Dr. Dorito here, and I'm blogging about Whits End in Focus on the Family head quarters. If you haven't heard of Adventures in Odyssey you can listen to it at http://www.whitsend.org/. Whits End is a restaurant known for its ice cream. It's not just a restaurant, it's also a play place. It's not a McDonald’s play place though. It has a old plane you can explore, a Narnia wardrobe that you can go in, a recording studio where you can make your own episode. It has a puppet theater and a three story slide. Whits End is very family friendly though the adults may be a little bored downstairs. This place is very fun, but if you want to spend more than 4 hours there it might get boring (unless you like hide-and-go-seek.) This is DD signing off.

-the son

An Apple a Hotel Keeps the Doctor Away

So many things change when you don’t have a home, including punishments and rewards for the children. As a family, we spent part of the evening coming up with new rewards and punishments for grades and behaviors. Our old consequence of not being able to play with friends just didn’t seem to provide the appropriate incentive anymore…imagine that.

It was decided that for a “C” in homeschool, you would lose your turn for a restaurant pick and have no screen time for 1 day; a “D” is lose the restaurant pick and 2 days no screen time; an “F” is lose your pick and 3 days no screen time. Nose picks, burps, farts, other gas expulsions not specified, and other general rudeness, like cutting in front of someone, result in 25 jumping jacks, right there and then, even in a public place. Yes, even the Dad and myself may find ourselves doing jumping jacks in the middle of a zoo or restaurant.

As a family, we also talked about food consumption, how the trip is not a week-long vacation that we can splurge all week and get back to normal afterwards. Nor can we live on french fries and chips all year, so we came up with guidelines for meals. We decided breakfast is unlimited fruit, yogurt, and eggs, but we may eat only 2 grains (only one of which can be a desert.  ie doughnut, pastry.) The other guidelines are: one soda per day and one order of fries/onion rings/chips/cookie per day, in order to encourage more healthy eating.

To counter all the punishments, we needed a new reward for a 100% on a quiz or test. Together, we decided that the recipient earns a meal free of restrictions. I’m not a big fan of using food as a reward like that, but our options are pretty limited on the trip. If you have suggestions for other rewards or punishments, please share them with us! We’d love to hear them.

-The Mom (the mean one when it comes to making them eat healthy)

04/30/2010 - Day 3 CO - Haunted By A Moose

Today reminded us of the Chevy Chase movie Vacation when they finally reach Wally World, and the big moose says, “Sorry folks, park’s closed” in that goofy, mechanical moose voice. The Son wants to play mini-golf in every state, including the ones that may happen to be cold and have snow! The first mini-golf was closed, but, fortunately, Adventure Golf was open, and the lady was very friendly. She even gave us a $1 discount per person - maybe because we actually braved the cold. Levi chose the Old West themed course, appropriate for CO. While we were golfing, the Rockies towering in the background, I was wearing gloves, and we even saw snow flurries!!

After a nice warm lunch, we tackled the Daughter’s goal – going to a zoo/aquarium/or some animal place in every state. We visited Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, recommended to us on our travel community: http://HelpUs.BestPlacesInTheUSA.com. The zoo is actually built on the side of the mountain, which made it very unique! They even had a ski lift to ride up and admire the view. Unfortunately, it closed early because of the snow flurries, and we weren’t able to ride it. (picture the Wally World moose telling us it was closed) We headed to the pony rides, and they had just closed, too! (more moose voice) It was very disappointing, but the Daughter was able to shake the disappointment, and we had fun anyway.

We fed crackers to the giraffes and discovered that their tongues are quite long and gross!! The elephants were awesome because the trainer came over and talked to us for probably 15 minutes about them. The snow leopards were our favorite, though. The Daughter went to the window to peer in, and one leopard, who was lying in the corner, got up and ran by the window, smacking it. The Daughter jumped about 10 feet! After that performance, we stood around watching the leopard for quite some time as it would run by and smack the window in front of us. After several passes, the leopard lost interest in us but started fighting with the other leopard.  We all thought it was one of the best zoos we had ever been to.

On the way home…did I just call the hotel “home?!” On the way back to our stuff, we stopped by Seven Falls, apparently named for the, you guessed it, 7 waterfalls. Fitting with the day, it was closed for renovation until the end of May. “Sorry Folks, Park’s Closed…”

-The Mom (aka Mrs. Griswold)

Note from The Dad:  First, I have to say the "Vacation" metaphor breaks down on several levels.  We are in a minivan, not a station wagon.  Mrs. Griswold does the driving so I can work.  I would never fall for Christie Brinkley because I personally believe her and Billy Joel are soul mates.  Let's not even get into the Cousin Eddie thing. Second, we need to stop bringing it up because I can't get the song out of my head now.  Make it stop!  Watching the video does help, as it seems to help me purge most of the 80's out of my memory...except my shirts with big collars...those are coming back.

04/30/2010 - Day 3 CO - Snow, Golf, and Giraffes

We think the kids would like blogging...if it wasn't part of their schoolwork:

"The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was great! There was a ton of animals such as tigers, bears, eagles, penguins, giraffes, and gorillas. My favorite thing was feeding the giraffes. Did you know that giraffes have really long purple tongues? When we fed the giraffes, I fed a baby giraffe, and I saw an even smaller baby giraffe than the one I was feeding!

One of the things that looked fun was the ski lift, but we didn't know that it closed at 3:00 so we couldn't ride it because we were saving it for last. My favorite animals were the elephants and the snow leopard. I liked the elephants because we saw them when they were learning how to do tricks, and I liked the snow leopards. They were being very active. When we came up to the cage, one was sitting in the corner, and it jumped out at me and ran into the window! It kept jumping at us, but when we got out the camera, it was a different story. Then the other snow leopard woke up from his nap, and the snow leopards started to playfully fight!

This blog is much longer than my normal blog, but since we’re on the trip, I think my blogs will keep getting longer." 

-the daughter

"Hi everybody! DD here. It’s my first rating of a mini golf course. I had a lot of new experiences. It's my first experience golfing in the snow. I also have never done so good, yet so bad. I got a hole-in-one on a hard shot. It was one where if you get it in the hole, it goes down a tube and out to the real hole. So you face the trouble of it skipping over the hole, even if you get it in on the first shot. I was a little upset because I just got a “4” on the last hole, so I decided to go crazy. I did a bank shot to get there safely, and surprisingly, it went in.

But enough about my amazing shot. Except for my hole-in-one, I didn't do so well. Dad won with a 45. Mom came in second with a 49. Me with a 67 and my sister with a 69. My favorite hole had a bridge over water with no rails at all. It was really tricky because it could roll into the water, but surprisingly my whole family made it with no water balls.

Now onto the ratings: Adventure Miniature Golf Course had three 18 hole courses that are moderately hard. It was a fun course that took skill but still had fun tricks and loops. The customer service was excellent. Over all, I would rate this course a ten clubs out of ten. This is DD signing off."

- the son 

04/29/2010 - Day 2 CO

We woke to snow in Fort Collins…and then what they call muddy rain!  (Where DOES the dirt in the rain come from?  Do we want to know?)  After packing up our very lives into suitcases, we checked out and walked around Old Town, looking for a lunch spot.  Old Town is a quaint downtown district in Fort Collins, which has well-preserved historical buildings. Very Nice.

We stumbled upon Spicy Pickle for lunch and chose the counter seats facing the street to further enjoy the charming downtown.  The food held true to its name:  Chloe, upon taking her first bite of pickle said, “Whoa!  That’s spicy!” 

The rest of the day, we spent traveling to Colorado Springs and getting settled in there.  We did stop at the Colorado Visitor’s Center where Levi made himself comfy sitting in a corner reading a book about notorious criminals in Colorado’s history.  

Colorado Springs held another pleasant surprise as Hotwire.com (not a sponsor) got us our second excellent 3 star hotel for $49.  We went from a Hilton in Fort Collins to a Hyatt in Colorado Springs.  Wonderful hotels for the price.  The Hyatt Suites are excellent just for the amount of room they provide.  

We moved to a 1 bedroom Suite at a Hyatt with a kitchen for one night (for a $10 extra fee) only to find out there was only one bathroom, and you have to walk through the bedroom to get to that one bathroom...on the same night we let the kids have unlimited refills on soda.

Yeah, Grand Central Station... we should have just given them the bedroom.

Could have been worse - at least we didn't spend the ten bucks washing our car before it started raining dirt...

- Mike & Sheri    

04/28/2010 - Day 1 CO

Our first day started off with a bang…almost literally with the noise coming from our van.  We knew we couldn’t take it to the mountains as originally planned.    After much frustration in trying to get it into a repair shop, we were able to find a place that could fit in their schedule at 2pm; however, snow was predicted for the mountains the next couple days.  In order to not let it ruin our chance to see the mountains,  we rented a car.   

After a long, trying morning, we were finally off to the mountains.  It was sooooo worth it!  Rocky Mountain National Park was absolutely beautiful!  Much to our surprise, we hiked around part of Bear Lake on 4 feet of compressed snow!  We were hiking on so much snow that many of the trail signs were almost covered.  Our favorite was the handicapped accessible sign that was practically buried.  It was a little cold, especially when the wind blew, but we had so much fun that we were glad we went.  “Incredible” is all I can say about Rocky Mountain National Park.

In and around the park, we saw numerous mule deer.  Then, nearly at the visitor’s center on our way out of the park, we finally saw it – an elk!  There were a few grazing right beside the road.  The Dad rolled down his window to get a picture, and the Daughter rolled hers UP so that the elk couldn’t stick its head in the window!  (Can you tell she’s seen a few America’s Funniest Videos?)  The elk really was THAT close.

Dinner was a wonderful home-cooked meal at our friend’s house.  We had a nice time, eating, chatting, and even sitting on a couch, of all things.   Our kids introduced theirs to a game called “dark tag” which is basically hide-and-go-seek combined with tag, in the dark…I’m not sure our friends appreciate that one!  All in all, it was quite a first day. 

- The Mom

You can follow us around on the map at http://BestPlacesInTheUSA.com/USA/_trip.aspx and we'll soon have a bunch of pictures to share!

                                                  

Leavin' in a Minivan...Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again

We’ve been looking forward to this trip for so long, that I was a little surprised by how difficult it was to leave.

These last 4 weeks, since we got an offer on the house, were a frenzy of activity. We were so busy going through the motions of getting ready to leave that we barely had time to think, let alone cry. Well, I made up for that…

I cried as I walked to a friend’s house for one last morning exercise. I rang the doorbell, tears streaming down, nose running, and asked for a Kleenex…nice greeting, huh? I cried when the hubby and I stood together gazing out our patio door one last time. I cried when we walked out after the closing, with the realization that we had no home to go to – only our van.

The most embarrassing, though, was crying in the bank as we waited in the teller line. The assistant branch manager, who I met just last week when we rented a safe deposit box, even gave me a hug!

Of course, I cried when we picked up our kids from a good friend’s house, and we said our final goodbyes.

Sadly, the day we departed, I found out a relative of a family friend will be going on the waiting list. It sure brought a sense of urgency to our mission of promoting organ donation…Colorado here we come!

- The Mom

Do Florida Homes Require Alligator Inspections?

Every time we've sold our house and left for a trip around the United States, we've written a poem three days before we left...so we're up to...one poem.  Enjoy.

Just 3 little days,
Then it's time to go.
Our living space will shrink,
While our gas expense will grow.

The house is all empty.
Our belongings are few.
Not a termite is stirring,
(We paid $45 for a review.)

The daughter has the knock knock jokes.
The son will tell the groaners.
Yet serious moments there will be,
As we register all the organ donors.

We look forward to your support.
Though we can handle some rejection.
Just know if you don't hear from us
We're just looking for an internet connection...

-the dad

(See the Countdown on our Trip Page)

Lego My Secret Handshake

A few last minute opinions from the kids about the trip and life in a slowly emptying home:

 

"I think the trip will be really weird because I will be leaving my friends, and I won't be able to make new friends because I'll never see them again. I'll have to wait a whole year to make friends! I'll probably forget all my secret hand-shakes with my friends. I do think that the trip is going to be really fun! Bye." 

-the daughter 

"Hi Dr. Dorito here, and I'm talking about life right now. It's really weird to be sleeping on the floor, because my old bed was a loft bed. I also have no dresser. My socks and underwear are in shoes boxes, and my pants are lying on the floor (not that that is any different than normal). They don't take up much space because most of my clothes are in my suitcase.

I'm also a big Lego fan, so I own about seven Lego sets. My mom sent them to my Grandma’s though, so instead of my room being a wreck, my Grandma’s basement is a wreck. Now I only have a few things to play with. This is Dr. Dorito signing off."

-the son

365 Day Trip Preparation – Chapter 8 Keeping Track of Stuff

I should have been a Boy Scout. At least, I’m hoping that I’m that prepared! We have 4 places that we are storing things. To keep everything straight, I’ve created a spreadsheet which has 4 columns. I’ve numbered each box or container, so column one lists the box number. Around box 23, I started describing the box, realizing that it would be easier to locate box 57 – a red Rubbermaid, than just box 57 in a sea of Rubbermaids.  

The 2nd column lists where the container is stored, and the 3rd column lists generally what is inside, for example “kitchen.” The last column gives a more detailed listing of what is inside: “cooling racks, muffin tins, cookie sheets.”

I’m hoping that if we need anything on the trip, we’ll be able to easily locate it. I just wonder what will be so important that we need to call the "stuff keepers" and ask them to locate a box for us? Find box 48 – a clear container and send us the winter hats and gloves?? Find box 62 – a green Rubbermaid and FedEx us the toilet plunger?? Find box 21 – uh, no idea which one it is! Ship us the instruction manual for the camcorder!

I guess if I were truly a Boy Scout, I’d have thought of all these things in advance and brought them on the trip…

Be prepared!
-The Mom

(Since she can't earn a real Boy Scott badge because...well, she's a girl, I have granted the Mom an honorary badge of love for her 18 years of undying dedication, beauty, and love in a mutually serving relationship with me, her husband.  Now I need to get one more Rubbermade ready...one for her to throw up in when she reads that last sentence.)