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the week has passed

By Tara Zandra | August 8, 2014

This was just one of those weeks where I wasn’t feeling it. Didn’t feel like doing lessons, or cooking, or crocheting or watching TV. Just kind of wished I was napping, but I hate naps. Guess I was bored? Whatever, at least it is done. I’ll talk about something from last month instead.

I don’t have nieces or nephews and while it is certainly a possibility in the future, my kids will never have cousins their age. As someone who grew up with something like 16 cousins plus second cousins that I saw regularly, it makes me sad for my kids. But as life doesn’t always give you want you think you want, sometimes you gotta improvise. I have a friend who has 3 girls whose ages are compatible with my kids and as it so happens, I really like her kids and all the kids really like each other and in fact, the younger kids are besties. Surrogate nieces it is!

In July I decided I wanted to take all 5 kids out for a day of fun. For the record the ages are 15, 13, 9, 9, and 6 and they’ve known each other for 8 years.

Off to Downtown Disney!

Everything we were doing was a surprise so when we walked up to Rainforest Café for lunch, I loved listening to their exclamations. It was a first visit for the 3 younger ones and the older ones had each only done it once or twice in their memories so it was just perfect. We had 20-minutes to wait and they eagerly explored the shop. The older 2 went off on their own and I followed the younger set who were completely entranced by the giant aquariums.

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Eventually we got seated upstairs and it was just wonderful! The waitress was attentive, the food was pretty good, it was fun when the storm went off and the kids basically loved being there. It made me really, really happy to be there with all of them and see them enjoying each others company.

Our next stop was Build-a-Bear! Now that was pretty darn fun. Again, not something the kids had done in ages or they didn’t remember and just one of those places kids always want to go and we say “sure, soon.” I’ve probably said that to Daisy for the last 5 years. “Soon” finally came. All three younger kids picked the exact same tie-dye bear, Tabitha chose a very soft bunny, and the 13 year old chose a bulldog. They did the stuffing and heart ceremony and then I set them loose to find the right outfits. That took some time, but eventually all the animals were looking spiffy.

After forcing them to pose for the obligatory pictures with their boxes, we hit Haagen Daaz for some cooling down. Eventually we made our way to World of Disney for window shopping and then the tram to get back to the car. All in all, it was a very successful day.

My last pic is what was staring at me the whole time I ate lunch at Rainforest Café.

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Topics: Life, The Kiddies |

One Response to “the week has passed”

  1. Mel Says:
    August 18th, 2014 at 11:21 pm

    I absolutely LOVE the Rainforest Cafe. I’m such a dork about it. There used to be one in Denver a long time ago but it closed while Bren was a toddler. Then we would go to the one near Seattle when we lived there, at least twice that I recall. And when we lived in CA I remember forcing Tom to go there a couple times. He really doesn’t like it much. LOL Anyway, I get sad too that my girly doesn’t have cousins to grow up with. She does have cousins but the two nearest her age have always lived across the country, or in Europe. She’s only spent time with them three times. And she has two cousins on Tom’s side but they are in their 20’s and live in another state and not likely to ever visit here since his sister and mom do not get along. I grew up with cousins, and they were like siblings in a way. So yeah, it’s sad. She also isn’t growing up with aunts or uncles, and I had a lot of those too. It’s really just us three, and Tom’s mother.

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