Fall Break 2017

It just so happens that the kid's fall break fell a month after my sister moved to a new city, Columbus. We decided that it would be the perfect place to get away to for a few days. We were excited to get to see Aunt Andrea and Uncle Chris. I think it is going to be pretty cool having my big sister closer so that she can see the kids more often. After the kids got out of school we began our journey toward Columbus. A few weeks before the trip I discovered that Ed Sheeran was going to be performing the same night that we were arriving. Thankfully Grandma and Grandpa decided to head up to Columbus for a visit, so they got to watch the kids while we headed downtown for the concert.

Date night with the wife. 

The whole crew. We were on the back row, but at least we were there!

We were sitting almost even with the stage. We missed seeing some of the stuff on the screens,but we got a birds eye view of how he was using his looper pedal. He literally was a one man band. Since I had only recently become a big fan of his, I only knew a little over half of the songs that he played, but the show was amazing! 

Jennifer and I said that we would definitely like to go see him again the next time that he is performing close to us.

The next day it was raining so we decided to head over to Chuck E Cheese for a little indoor fun.The kids had a blast playing all of the games and we finally decided to cash in our tickets that we had been saving up. Brinley picked out a playdoh toy. Landon picked this out after looking for about 10 minutes at all the options. It looked like a little toy battle arena. They were both so excited to get back to Aunt Andrea's so that they could start playing with them.

Well it turns out that the toy Landon had picked out was actually just a board! The box did not contain any of the action figures that it had shown on the front of the box. He was devastated. So me and the little man got back in the car and headed back to Chuck E Cheese to see if they could help us out. They let us exchange it for a new prize! Landon was so happy!

Then we headed over to check out one of the public libraries. Landon was so tired that he fell asleep in the car. Brinley enjoyed the kid area.

A Columbus ice cream place called Jeni's was next on the list of places to explore. They had some very odd flavor combinations, but we all found something that we liked. Landon picked out the purple one which was wildberry lavender flavored and I thought tasted like perfume, but he said he loved it! The two that I picked were sweet potato eclair and salted peanut butter with chocolate flakes. We would all highly recommend Jeni's to anyone visiting the area.

The kids both approved! 

The next day we headed out early for one of the kid's highlights of the trip which was a visit to COSI, the Center of Science and Industry.

Aunt Andrea and Landon learning about how much energy, or pedaling, it takes to light up some light bulbs. 

Landon was in love with this huge train track. It baffled us because at home he rarely wants to play with his train table.

We spotted Thomas while we were in the train area.

What in the world do you think Aunt Andrea and Landon could be lifting up in the air?

Brinley was helping them too! You can see that in the background they are in fact lifting up a car! Science is amazing because without the use of a lever there is no way that they could ever lift up any car.

Aunt Andrea was the only one brave enough to take a ride on the tight rope unicycle.

The kids exploring the inside of a space capsule.

Landon really enjoyed the water table even though this picture may not show it. I think he was sad because that other kid got in front of him and put his ball on it. 

Landon even dabbled in the painting area to create a masterpiece.

Brinley absolutely loved the farmers market vegetable and fruit stand area. She got so engulfed in trying to put all the right produce into their correct bins. The only problem was that as soon as she would get everything in order some other kids would mess something up. It was a vicious cycle that Brinley was trying to correct. It was funny seeing her trying to run around and pick up everything. It almost is how her mother and I feel at home with trying to clean the house. Every time we get things in order the kids come behind us and mess everything up.

We were just walking down the hallway and spotted this worker with his tarantula. Jennifer practically ran down the hallway with the kids. The rest of us stuck around to touch the little guy. It was actually terrifying, but I saw small kids doing it so I did too!

We found these little pulley chairs. We both sat down in one and tried pulling ourselves up. Jennifer was getting all the way up and I was struggling. I know that I am bigger, but it didn't make sense because I know that I am stronger than her. Then I tried out her chair and realized that it was really easy. Turns out that each chair was different in that it had more pulleys and this one had 3, which made it the easiest. I was sitting in the hardest one that only had 1.

We also wondered upon this room where they had a production studio complete with a green screen. We sent grandpa up there and kept changing the backdrop. We would ask him questions to see if he could guess what was going on behind him. We just thought we were giving good clues, but turns out that when we went around we discovered that he could see what was going on the whole time on the monitor.

This little drum was attached to the bar that Brinley is holding onto. The bar took your pulse and then the drum would beat and the heart would light up in correspondence with your heart beat. I thought it was pretty awesome.

This place is huge and even though we had about 5 hours to explore it still wasn't enough time. We are already planning a return visit and possibly a season pass. The kids could have played in this place for days! I would definitely recommend it if you are ever in the area.

After COSI we headed over to Dave and Buster's for all the big kids to have a little fun. I had never been in one before and I was actually pretty excited about it. It is just a big person Chuck E Cheese. Grandma stayed out in the car with the kids because they fell asleep on the way there. Here everyone was playing a game of trivia.

Jennifer playing her first game of red solo cup, aka beer pong. I even tried my hand at it and actually set the high score. The kids woke up and came in just about the same time we had used up all of our credits. They wanted to play some games but I told them that they would have to wait until our next time.

We all grabbed a bite to eat before packing up everything and making the 3 hour drive back home. The kids really enjoyed their fall break spending time with family up in Columbus. I have a feeling that we will be going back to visit sometime soon. Thanks for reading and God bless!

Disneyland Paris

I know this might seem a little weird, but for me one of the most anticipated parts of our journey in Paris was going to be the trip out of the city to Disneyland Paris. When planning our trip I didn't know if we were gonna be able to make it to Disneyland. However, I made a deal with Jennifer that if we went and did the Harry Potter Experience for her then we had to go to Disneyland for me, since I enjoy it more than she does. She agreed and I started looking into tickets and trying to figure out how to explore as much of the parks as possible. We waited until the last day of our vacation to go to Disneyland. Our morning started off early with about an hour train ride out to the parks. It was really easy to find the right train because we just kept following the Mickey ears!

We made it! I was like a little kid walking into the park. They couldn't have opened the gates early enough for us either. I had devised a plan for us to try and get to see as much as possible in both of the parks. We started in the main park, Disneyland before moving over to Walt Disney Studios.

When I was initially trying to plan our day at Disneyland I had thought that we wouldn't ride any of the rides that they have at Disney World. However, after doing some research I discovered that some of the same named rides were in fact different than the ones in Florida. That meant that we needed to try and ride all of the new rides as well as the classic ones. 

It's A Small World is one that we actually rode twice just so that we could see everything that was going on inside. We liked the different iconic monuments that we spotted from around the world. We saw Big Ben and the Tower Bridge, as well as the Colosseum and leaning Tower of Pisa. The American area showed the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty as well as a little football and baseball player.

We enjoyed the different roller coasters, Buzz Lightyear shooting game and Jennifer even agreed to ride the Green Army men Parachute Drop - which she didn't like.

My favorite ride was Hyperspace Mountain. We thought it was going to be like Space Mountain, but it was so much better. It had a Star Wars theme and it went upside down a couple of times. The ride was like you were in a space ship and you were dodging the shooting laser beams of enemies throughout the galaxy. I was inspired so much that I had to eat a Jedi burger for lunch. Later in the day I rode this again while Jennifer took a little break.

We enjoyed seeing all of the decorations around the park. They had a big Buzz statue. They also had a Wall-E and Eve  as well as few guys from the movie Cars. Jennifer and I even posed at the tea party and I sat in the Mad Hatter's spot and she took Alice's chair. We wanted to see as much of the park so we didn't wait in line to meet any characters. However, while walking around we spotted Goofy and Pinocchio.

A trip to Disney wouldn't be complete without some treats and a ride on the famous Dumbo the Flying Elephant. We decided on getting a candy apple and another nutella crepe. Apparently we discovered when we got there that they were actually celebrating their 25th anniversary, hence the 25 on our candy apple. 

The middle of the day called for a little break and we decided to watch the stage show. This proved to be very interesting because they spoke in French part of the time and we had no idea what in the world they were saying. There were lots of well known characters in the show and then there was Max, which is Goofy's son. We enjoyed the show and afterwards the characters all walked by the crowd and gave kids high fives. 

We also enjoyed a ride on the carousel and some ice cream to help with the heat of the day. We were just like a couple of kids running around having fun. The castle was designed like Sleeping Beauty's, which is just like the one in California.

Our best picture of the castle.

My beautiful wife with the castle inscription in the background says "Blanche Neige et les Sept Nains" which is French for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Me trying my hand at trying to pull the sword from the stone. Unfortunately, I was not able to remove the stone. This picture took about 15 minutes to get because little kids kept running up in front of me. I would patiently wait my turn and then another kid would run in front of me. Thankfully one of the parents finally made their kids wait for me to take my picture which took about 15 seconds. 

We were like a couple of little kids running around Disneyland and even took a ride on Lancelot's Carousel.

We even got some celebratory pins that the guest relations cast member wrote 10 year anniversary on them.

Our best picture with the two of us and the castle in the background. We both wore our marathon shirts for the day. Maybe one day we will make a return trip and complete the Disneyland Paris half marathon.

I wouldn't have wanted to discover Disneyland Paris with anyone other that my love, Jennifer. The top left corner was a picture of us trying to reenact the picture that was on the window behind us of Sleeping Beauty and her prince. The inside of the castle told the story of Sleeping Beauty which was pretty neat.

The next few pictures were taken during the daytime parade. It was actually a good parade with all kinds of characters. The only thing that was really frustrating was that right before the parade started they made every single person stand up including the children in the front row. I thought this was completely unnecessary and it made us then have to see the parade in between a couple rows of people. I didn't have much of a problem seeing it, but Jennifer couldn't see as well over everyone's heads.

This was unique because at Disney World Belle is always accompanied with the beast and here he is back in human form.

Olaf riding Sven near the end the parade.

They had a pretty awesome light show and fireworks display to end the night. Here are some pictures from both of those.

We stayed for the fireworks show and then took our time taking pictures and looking for a souvenir. I was trying to squeeze every last second out of the experience that I could. Talking Mickey even stood at the exit and said goodbye to everyone as they left, which was really awesome. He also said goodbye in a couple of different languages.

One last picture of us with the castle before we left the park.

We had no idea when we spent all the extra time just taking our time looking around that it was really going to come back and bite us in the tail. We finally found our way back to the train and it was completely packed! That meant that we were going to be standing for about the next hour train ride, which was not ideal since we were both tired and would have liked to sit down. After finally making it back to the city we got off and headed towards our connection train. We arrived just a train was arriving at the station. How lucky right? Then a security guard came over to tell us that the trains were closed and that no more would be running. Seriously? Apparently the trains stop at 1 am and don't open again until around 5 in the morning. We headed up to the street to try and figure out exactly where we were and how far away from our hotel we were. On the map it didn't seem like that far and we were too worried about trying to figure out how to speak well enough to a cab to get us back to the hotel. So, we decided to make the walk back to the hotel. I was on hyper alert and making sure to keep an eye on all of our surroundings and any suspicious activity. About halfway on our walk back it started to storm! Thankfully Jennifer had a couple of small umbrellas in her bag so only the lower half of our bodies were getting saturated. About 30 minutes later I finally navigated us back to our hotel. It was a short 4 hour nap before we had to get up and pack all of our stuff up so that we could get out to the airport in time for our flight back home.

Disneyland Paris, although not quite what I thought it was going to be, was a lot of fun. We got to ride a few new rides and a couple of the classics too. I knew that I needed to finish this blog because my mind is about to be changed with new Disney memories. Jennifer and I are headed out west to Disneyland California for a race next week. This will be our 3rd Disney set of parks that we will have been to in 2017. We are excited for our adventure and will tell you all about it once we return back home! Thanks for reading and God bless!