Day 2 in Orlando - Sea World

Can I just say how much I love Anheuser-Busch?  Yes, my husband drinks their beer, but that's not the reason.  The reason?  They are AWESOME supporters of our military!  Military and their families can get into any of their parks for free once a year.  We chose to go to Sea World on our trip to Florida because of this and because the kids are such a great age for this park.  There's so much for them to see and do!

The very first thing we did was get into line to feed the dolphins.  As long as I can remember, I have LOVED dolphins.  They are beautiful, smart creatures that always look happy.  I wish I could work as a trainer at Sea World just to work with the dolphins (of course, working with the other animals would be awesome too!!!).  I knew the kids would love this activity, but really?  This was for Mommy!  LOL

We paid $7 per person (other than Aiden and Colten since they were young enough to enter for free) to have a tray of fish.  A try is basically the little paper trays you see in the picture with about 4-5 fish in it.  Kind of expensive, but completely worth it!

We took turns since I was taking pictures and Daddy was the only one who could help them.  Austin was up first.  I think he was a little apprehensive about something.  It was either the yucky fish, or all those teeth in that dolphins mouth!  ;-)  He did enjoy it....I promise! 

 Then, it was Colten's turn. You can kind of see his smile in this one.  He loved it!

 Then it was Mommy's turn.  Since most everyone else was done, the dolphins were kind of just hanging out and there was a trainer that had the attention of a lot of them down from us.  I had all these fish and NO dolphin to feed them to!  Trying to get the attention of a dolphin was a little hard, so I pulled the fish back up out of the water and just about got my hand taken off by a bird!  Brian wasn't taking pictures yet, so you don't get the delight of seeing that!  LOL

Finally, a dolphin swam over and realized that he (she?) was in luck!  More goodies!  I fed him the fish, then grabbed Aiden so he could see the dolphins closer.  That's when Brian started taking pictures.  This dolphin just stayed there and let me touch it for a long time.  Then another dolphin came up and this picture was taken.  Reminded us of Abby and Koa.  So sweet!

 After the dolphins, we met up with our friends from the day before and went to the Dolphin and Whale show.

Here's Austin making a funny face while we wait for the start of the show.

 And here's Mommy, Aiden and Colten.  Yay!  A picture of me!

 We loved this show.  It was great to see all the tricks and at a coupe of points in the show, near the end, they let some macaws loose in the seating area and they soar right above your head.  I mean, almost to where you can touch them!  Aiden thought that was THE. BEST. THING on Earth.  He went NUTS!

Here's a picture I liked from that show.  I love the dolphin that looked way more excited than the others and just had to show off!

Here's Daddy and a tired Aiden walking to some other attraction.  :-)

And yes, this picture is blurry, but I had to include it because I just love how it completely shows Colten's personality!

 We spent a little more money to fed the sharks.  I knew as soon as I heard the camera click that this was an awesome shot!

Happy with Daddy!!!

 So sweet!

During our first trip to Disney as a family of 3, Austin sat on Brian's shoulders just like this.  So glad we have 2 more boys Brian can do this with!

The sting ray area was another hit with the kids.  It was a giant pool that had sting rays just swimming in circles.  You could reach in and touch them as they went by.  The kids really liked all this hands on stuff!

On our way to the alligators, we stopped by the underground Dolphin viewing area.  It was fun to see them play and chase each other at this angle!

 I forgot to mention that Aiden started a fascination with sharks when we fed them.  He would point at them and say "shark shark shark!"  It sounded more like "arh arh arh" but we figured it out pretty quickly what he was trying to say.  After feeding them, we went to a shop and he got this rubber shark.  He LOVED this thing!

Here he is cuddling with his new shark while waiting for the Shamu Show.  Whoever said sharks weren't cute never saw this picture!

 After the Shamu show, we went over to their area where there are some kid rides.  Colten BEGGED to go on the roller coaster.  Yay!  A kid that might take after his parents' love of roller coasters!  He rode this one TWICE and would have ridden more, but we there were more things he wanted to do too, so we moved on.  Even his older brother wouldn't ride this!  Of course, Colten begged to go on ALL the roller coasters we saw, so he was pretty sad when he couldn't go on anymore since he was too young/small.  He had fun on this one!  He laughed through the whole thing.

 Here's Austin and Johnathon before a ride they did end up on.  They also went on this HUGE rope ladder playground.  Very cool!

 By the end of the night, the kids had been worn down and the Bigs needed a ride, so the Daddys put them up on their shoulders.  :-) 

 Again, we loved Sea World!  It was a top notch park that had things for all ages!  We didn't realize until dinner that they give FREE meals for those under 3.  We could have been getting Colten and Aiden their own meals instead of them sharing!  By the time we go again, we probably won't have a kid that young, but it's nice to know just in case!

Sneak Peek at Sea World

The first thing we did when getting to Sea World was get in line to feed the dolphins.  It was an awesome experience and was something I am so glad I got on "film."  I hope the kids look back on this and think it was really cool even when they are teenagers!

 

The shows were fantastic and I have a ton of pictures from those as well as other things we did!  It was a GREAT day with great weather and some pretty great kids who were just great!  :-)  See a theme here?

Tomorrow, we go to Animal Kingdom.  I know it will be equally great!

We Are Here!

The boys have been WIRED. Seriously, it has been almost unbearable, but I think tomorrow will be better.

We got to the resort right around 4pm, got checked in and went to our room. Walk in and get hit in the face with a stale, stagnant smell that was not good. Brian and I discussed it and both of us were getting headaches, so we called to the front desk and got moved to a different building. MUCH better!

The move set us back on dinnertime, but we got the kids fed, got a few breakfast items for a couple of mornings and headed back to our room. The boys climbed into our HUGE whirlpool tub and "swam" for a while. Then it was time for a surprise from Daddy and Mommy! New Disney pajamas. An unnoticed clue to what tomorrow holds. ;-)

It took a while to get them settled and to sleep, but after rearranging a kid and allowing for separate sleeping room (at least until they fell asleep), they were finally down for the count.

Tomorrow we gave an "owners breakfast" and then we are off to our first park - Disney's Hollywood Studios. We are Westgate timeshare owners, so that's why we are going to the breakfast...plus, it's free! :-D Can't beat that!

The Boys

I think Brian has been thinking about these kinds of nights for a year.  Laying on the couch with his boys and some pizza and a movie playing.  Well, 2 of his 3 boys.  Aiden is still too messy to eat on the couch, even with the towels I put down.  

Aiden got to sit in his chair and watch the movie.  The boys all ate really well though...especially Austin who had FIVE pieces of pizza.  Sure, not the healthiest, but sometimes it's fun to have a pizza and movie night.  Even more fun when it's on a school night.  :-)  Homework went fast and Kung Fu Panda 2 had just come on, so it was perfect.

The boys still got to bed on time and it was a fun night for everyone!  Yep, I think Brian is glad to be back with his boys and looks forward to many more nights like this!  And Mom is happy to see it all as well.  REALLY HAPPY!

Homework Time

Tonight we went over to Aunt Paula's house to bring her dinner and hang with the cousins.  We left for her house as soon as Austin came home, so he had to do his homework there after dinner.  Do you know how much better it is to have someone else be available for homework time?  Brian's been helping him the majority of the time for homework while I deal with the Littles and get dinner started.  Tonight was no different other than the fact that dinner was already done.  :-)

Sidenote:  It looks like we still have Austin on a sippy cup, but that's Colten's for the car.  ;-)  Austin was using the Gatorade bottle.  Didn't want anyone to wonder if he had ever learned to use a real cup!  LOL

Proud

I haven't blogged about it, but Austin was diagnosed with ADHD at the end of the last school year. Brian and I have known that this was a possibility for a while, but was hoping we would be able to help him cope with it without going to medication. This just wasn't in the cards.

Kindergarten is supposed to be a fun year. Kids are supposed to like Kindergarten. Not our son. It was too hard, too boring, not fun, and any other reason he could throw at us. His teacher wasn't having any behavior issues with him, but had said that he was awfully slow at getting his work done. He was always one of the last to get done. I later found out that if you didn't get done with your work, it was set aside and you'd try to get it done during a free time. Undone work accumulated all week and was done while the other kids did "fun centers" on Friday afternoon. This would probably be the reason why it was hard, boring and not fun. He was constantly working to keep up and didn't have a chance to have any free time. I'm sure there were times when he finally caught up and got to have fun, but I'm not sure how many times he had to work vs. have free time with his classmates.

Without going into a long story (because I know this will be long enough...I tend to ramble), his neurologist nurse practitioner noticed some signs just sitting in the exam room with him and asked me if we struggled with focusing, impulsiveness, etc. I had already seen the poster they had on the wall and said that we could probably check all of them but one or two. Our plan was to make sure that he wasn't having focal seizures by doing another EEG and then talk about medications.

Now, Brian and I know about the medications associated with ADHD. We weren't thrilled with the side effects and were apprehensive about them. The biggest reason is that they are usually stimulants, which increases Austin's chance of having more seizures. However, we were becoming more open-minded about them as the school year progressed and our son grew more and more unhappy with school. At our follow up appt after the EEG (which had the same results as the EEG he had last September), he was tested for ADHD using the Quotient test. The results broke my heart. Out of 15 minutes, he was only attentive for 30 seconds, two different times. He was either impulsive or distracted for most of the test and the last 4 minutes of the test had completely given up and was disengaged. The neurologist (the doctor this time) said there was no wonder he didn't like school...Austin couldn't focus long enough to do much of anything and was constantly trying to keep up and was still not successful despite his hard work. I wanted to cry. I had let it go the whole year, hoping it would get better. Why didn't I do something about it before?

After a month on one medicine, we switched him because of extreme stomach aches that he got from the meds. He had 2 seizures at the end of that month as well, which were attributed to him out-growing his seizure medicine (since he IS a growing boy!). The next medicine seemed to work pretty well, with no stomach problems. Until about 3 or 3:30. Then, our little world fell apart as the medicine started to leave his system. I've been told that they feel very weird and their body is apparently going through quite a bit as the medicine wears off. He was moody, sensitive and would snap at the littlest thing. It was the worst time of the day for us. There was no way we were going to get through homework time with him like this at that time of the day! He didn't even get home until after 3:40 most days! The doctor switched things again and we are now trying a patch called Daytrana. We are hopeful that this one will work.

SO, all that back story to finally get to the proud moment! :-) Yesterday, I had a conference scheduled with Austin's first grade teacher. She decided that instead of trying to talk to every parent at length at open house, she would schedule these meetings to talk about their child and see what she can do to help them this year. WONDERFUL!

I get there and I am schedule 30 minutes...we filled that 30 minutes and I walked out of there grinning from ear to ear! Basically, although it's only the 3rd day of school, Austin seems to be doing the complete opposite of last year! Mrs. Hume had no clue he was ADHD because he seemed so focused. He's been getting his work done and has even been one of the first kids done in some instances and with GREAT work to boot! Nice penmanship and great work. She said that he is one of the best behaved kids she has and is very caring and friendly towards the other students. With everything he is dealing with, he is doing GREAT! I could have seriously burst at the seams, I was just so ecstatic! She assured me that she would keep an eye on him as we switched his medicine and that she wasn't a teacher to let things go very long at all before getting with the parents if there was an issue. If he's having issues with the amount of homework (since it's a bad time for him right now), just to let her know and we'd try to work something out. I think I could have hugged her...she completely made my day with just this 30 minute block of time!

So, after that meeting, I had a GREAT feeling about this year. I am confidant that this year is going to turn his attitude towards school around! He's even saying how much he likes school. And really, right now, that's all that matters! The rest will fall into place!

{For those who don't agree with ADHD children getting medication to help them, please keep those thoughts to yourself. There is such a stigma associated with these meds and even the diagnoses itself. People think that parents who can't handle their children automatically try to get this fake diagnoses and medicate them into submission. I can tell you that there are probably parents out there that do that...but they are few and far between. The majority of us are just trying to do what's best for our children. Until you walk in our shoes or our children's shoes, you can't know what it's like to have to balance the knowledge of these drugs' side effects with the benefits that they clearly bring to our kids. In the end, if my son's self esteem is better and he's happier because he can finally feel in control of himself, then I am happy.}