In Every Season Turn ....Turn....Turn

Matt probably asked me three different times today how I felt about getting up early, making breakfast for our new student, and packing lunches. He asked how I felt about Corbin being gone all day and how I would have to be there for him when the bus came. How do you feel about all this change. This new chapter of your life. "our life" I replied.

Yes Matt is right we are now parents of a student a child in school. We are responsible for Corbin in a completely new way. He is growing from infant to toddler to preschooler and now to student! 

So the big question. How do I feel? I think I still feel in shock. I texted my friend Rachelle and said how I hadn't cried yet today that I was in shock. It's true. I thought how am I going to respond to the bus coming up the road for my kid, and letting him climb on the bus and watching it go away. All of those things happened right before my eyes in such a flash I couldn't believe it was happening. 

No time for the warm loving embrace. Not that Corbin would have complied to such a mushy display.

Here we are....Corbin not able to quite smiling and me very anxious

Matt is still learning how to take photos. :)

Matt decides 2 minutes before the bus comes to give Corbin a pep talk about who is in charge of him and how he should be good. Luckily Corbin and I have been discussing this for a couple of weeks.

We went two weeks ago and meet his teacher (who was going out of town on vacation with her husband, who had won a trip from work). She is wonderful. I am very relaxed now that I have met her. At every question she would say "well, I'll be at the bus stop on bus duty, and I'll be in the lunch room on lunch duty." while the parent in me was relieved at the transition times for Corbin, the teacher in me was feeling sorry for this poor woman who would be with all the children all day and what seemed like little to no brakes from the children. She may get a little annoyed with my son after all day and no brakes.
But anyway we had taken his supplies to school and forgot his backpack there, no worries nothing to take in the first day except his lunch.
The mom in me worried that he would get his lunch taken on the bus or would forget it on the bus. Should I follow the school bus there to make sure he arrives safely and gets in class with his lunch? Did I mention I am anxious about this day?

The bus comes

and just like that Corbin is gone.

I am very thankful that he is not the boy who clings to his mother and cries to go to school. He was very confident to go and I am happy for that.

The other children in my home had a great day. This is Adaline with no boy to chase her around the house. I think she changed clothes five times before we left for the grocery.

Here she is shaking her shoulder and batting her eyes.

She says she is a pretty princess and I quite agree

I couldn't get enough of my pretty girl today. I made sure to give Addie some extra hugging time and held her on my lap for awhile.

I am not putting Addie in preschool this year. She will be at home with me another year.

3:15pm came soon enough. Well, that is the normal time for drop off. He didn't get home till about 3:45
It had thunder stormed and rained pretty hard around 3. Which may have been the reason for the delay. I came to meet him with the umbrella. (or sumbrella as Addie calls it)

 Corbin had a fabulous day! Which relieved me. Mrs. Mathes had called in the middle of the day to confirm that he was a bus rider home today. She said everything was going okay.
In Corbins planner home he had a note that he had been moved to yellow today and earned his way back to green. When I asked Corbin about this he said that he had yelled during class time. Eveyone has to learn the new rules. I'm glad he likes his school.
He wanted to eat his lunch after he got home. He said he wasn't fast enough to eat it during lunch. But maybe a small bowl of yogurt, a pb&j, celery sticks and pretzels were a bit too much to eat at school.

 I don't have any baby pics to compare my little man to on this computer. I'll have to dig up some to show how very much he has changed. My little guy is growing up so. I enjoy his happy heart and tenderness to new things. I love you Corbin

Rated the Number 1 Family Fun Place

This is what Pat Cook of Holiday World Claims. The Murphy Family put her words to the test and we agree. Matt and I have never taken the kids to any type of ride place continuing to claim that the kids were too young. Well, early this spring Corbin saw the commercials about Holiday World and asked with wide eyes if we could go. It is time, I thought. We decided sometime this summer we would go.

I don't know if I was expecting the prices to stay the same over 6-10 years but I about fell out of my chair reading the website about prices. Heavens! So... we put off Holiday World. Then the heavens opened and the clouds lifted when the youth group announced that they would be going as a youth outing for the group ticket price. I sweet talked out youth minister to letting us smooch off of them and getting four tickets that was a lot closer to our budget than the regular pricing.

Yea! I finally get to tell Corbin that we are going and he says, "What is Holiday World?" He had totally forgotten the commercial or ever wanting to go. Funny kid. I said trust me you will love it.

Rides are rated by height. Boy oh boy we had a new world to discover by taking kids. Addie rated in the 36" bracket and Corbin was in the 42" bracket. Each ride was listed on the map with the height and rules. Corbin was able to ride a ton(some of them required an adult partner, which I was happy to accommodate) Addie was very restricted, but once we got to the water park she was very happy.

Here is one of the rides they went on together

They were so excited to see new rides around every corner.

Adaline would have ridden anything you let her. She is quite the dare devil. Never afraid to ride by herself.

Somehow water is always the favorite no matter how small. There was a little section of kids things in the very corner. We spent over 2 hours here alone. There was this little roller coaster that they both just loved. We rode it 9 times in a row! Notice I said we.

Silly faces went with all laughter and pics

Remember these birds! The other ride across from this was my favorite. The Revolution/ Round House.  It was this round cage like a hamster cage where you stand along the outside wall and it starts spinning with so much force it holds you against the wall then tips on end. Corbin was able to ride and he went with me.
I try and not push my fears onto our kids so when I see a snake or other things I'm afraid of I try and not show that "at a safe distance" to my kids. I want them to see life the way God wants them to not inhibited by my fears. Ha but Matt told Corbin you don't want to ride that ride do you? With a warning glare I said yes, this will be so much fun. (don't worry he wanted to go, I didn't make him). He loved the ride and wanted to ride again.

After we got around half of the park we were at the water park. As I forgot my camera and all of these photos were with Matt's phone, we did not take photos inside of the water park. All of us had a blast. I hung with Addie at the places she could play and Matt took Corbin on every water slide and ride he could do. I think his favorite was the old fashion slide. You take a matt to the top of the slide and race down. Addie loved the tube slides that we could go on and the giant playhouse with all the water. They also had a wave pool and mini water slides that all ages could do. Holiday World is the best!

This pic is just after dinner. I am surprised they are still standing.

Dad doesn't do spinning rides

We stopped by the ity bitty rides before the park closed.

What a fun day! There was perfect timing. No rush, not too bad of lines to wait on, and and we pretty well rode everything we could ride. I don't know how anybody could ride everything in one day. The park closed early at 8:30p which worked out great for us old folks. I had tried to describe Holiday World to Corbin before we arrived and I had told him about the spider. They have taken the spider down. So the first thing he wanted to see was this large mechanical spider. ooops. He even said at the end of the day, we never found that spider mom. He had a great time none the less

We swung by and picked up Aiden at Grandma Murphy's. It was so sweet randomly throughout the day Corbin would say how he wished Aiden was there with us, or why didn't we bring him. Everyone was glad to be reunited by the end of the day. Aiden wouldn't let me put him down. My sweet baby.

Lorikeets are our favorite

We went to the zoo June 1st. The Mom's HATS group planned a day to go all together. We woke up to an overcast chilly morning and was worried we wouldn't be able to go, but it turned out to be the best day of the summer. Yes, we are in jackets. That's how cool it was that day. The animals were in rare form and showed us what fun it can be on such a cool day. We were happy that it didn't rain, but Corbin may have traded all that in to be able to get in the water. Obviously it was too cold to get in the splash area. (one of Corbin's favorite parts)

The giraffe was super fascinating to me today. I just couldn't get over their funny shape and how tall they are. I know ... I know they have always been tall. But really my head can fit under their belly easy.

There were lots of things the animals don't normally do when we have gone before that they were doing today. The giraffes were wading in the water.

The lions were practicing some mating poses and

roaring super loud. They even climbed down the ravine that separates us from them. (that made some of the moms super worried, but I think they would have chosen the zebras next door before us)

The zebras were running and jumping around. "Krackalackin, you like to run too?!"

Lizzy went with me to help insure that we made it out alive with all three of the children we took in.

hee hee. Matt tells this joke. One of those old men jokes that they retell thinking they are oh so funny. "Do you know why the gorilla has such large nostrils? Because he has such big fingers?" ha ha

There were some real gorillas there

And some really funny looking gorillas

I think you will start seeing more pink gorillas in the future.

They have built a new glacier bay, which houses the fun brown bears (3 playful boys), the polar bear and the seals. Well I heard that during the construction the large polar bear that had been at the zoo forever had passed away and they had gotten a young replacement. The young bear was pretty small I thought.

I think Addie was thinking how lucky she was that she was not made to take a nap today and that the bear got to take the nap for the both of them.

Surprisingly I got a great shot of each of the kids.

But by far our favorite part was the Lorikeet Landing. I love these shots of Corbin and the birds.

His face tells me that he is not quite sure if he should be freaked out by all the birds landing on him or thrilled that they actually want the nectar. The lady who told us how to behave in the bird cage said that  there had been over 4,000 students through there over the last month with field trips form school and that the birds may be hesitant to land. But I think they were all to ready to get a snack.

I was all too happy to shoot some pics of this fun event instead of getting pooped on. Liz did get some goo on her leg. One bird landed on Aidens head. He just stared at me wondering what was going on.

So I am not like a normal parent that thinks "oh, we will come back and do that next time." No, if there is fun to be had lets squeeze all of it in. They were going to have this seal show near the end of our scheduled time to leave, but I thought how cool. Let's see a show. We hadn't seen any presentations or talks all day. So we plan how we were going to do the birds and stuff and come back for the show. Well the show was not worth our planning and plotting. It only lasted 15minutes.  Oh well.

 Of course everyone has to have their picture with the golden lizard

In our family we always joke how the orangutan loves others of his kind. Whenever Rebekah comes to the zoo the monkey swings right up to her. And here as well the is a magnet to the kid with the red hair.

We had an awesome time at the zoo. So much fun with all of the kids. Here is proof Matt that we did bring all of the children home that we took in. Didn't take any pics of the group we were with. I guess we were too fascinated by all the fun animals we saw