The Day After Hersheypark, We Went to a Place Known Only as…Chocolate World

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Stimey

Maybe I’ll start this post with what some members of Team Stimey (Okay, fine. Me.) chanted on our way from the car to the building that houses Chocolate World.

“Chocolate World! Chocolate World! We’re going to Chocolate World!”

Repeat.

It’s too bad no one was excited.

Chocolate World! Chocolate World! We’re going to Chocolate World!

I just learned about Chocolate World within the last few months. It immediately went to the top of my “must visit” list. Because…Chocolate. World.

Chocolate World! Chocolate World! We’re going to Chocolate World!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect there. I knew the basics because I’d talked to a friend who had been there before, but all I really knew was that there was chocolate—like, free samples of chocolate.

Where to find that chocolate, however, was not immediately apparent.

We walked into the building and I didn’t even know what to do. All I could see was people. There was no chocolate. There was no obvious place to go. There was just a mass of people and big signs with pictures and dollar amounts next to them.

That’s when I stopped chanting. My eyes widened and I may have turned around and around in tiny circles until Alex assessed the situation and determined that we had to stand in the long line and decide how much money we wanted to give the people at the front desk based on the icons that represented Chocolate World’s various attractions.

This was the most coherent sign in the whole place.

I ended up leaving Alex to decide what we should do and took my kids over to an empty queue that claimed to be a free attraction. Kids could pretend to be assembly line workers, then you had the option of buying a box of Hershey’s Kisses that theoretically came off the assembly line.

Foreshadowing: Quinn is not wearing his hat.

Only in America will you find small children standing in line to pretend to work on a factory assembly line.

I was all, “We are just doing the assembly line. I am NOT buying you any Hershey’s Kisses.”

Guess how many boxes of Hershey’s Kisses I bought? (That’s rhetorical. We all know that I bought three.)

After our short but expensive excursion to the pretend factory floor, I forced all my children to sit down against a wall as we waited for Alex. I don’t remember what I did to annoy Alex when he showed back up. Maybe I rolled my eyes at one of the attractions he’d chosen for us or I complained about having to corral the munchkins by myself.

He promptly put me in my place with a disbelieving look and the response of, “Yeah, I just stood in the longest line for the worst ride ever.”

He was right. I immediately readjusted my attitude.

Chocolate World has one truly free attraction, which is a little ride that takes you through how Hershey’s chocolate is made. Said ride ends with free chocolate. Said ride, however, starts with a long line in a packed hallway. Eventually we made it to the ride and were able to break loose from the masses of humanity.

Don’t they all look happy and relaxed?

Fortunately, the ride calmed everyone down and we followed it up with the 4D movie they have, which calmed everyone down even more. There is nothing like an hour in a couple of dark rooms to chill out my family. Phew.

I’m not saying the movie is going to win any Oscars, but it made my kids laugh and that is all I ask.

We exited the theater through the gift shop (of course), where we found the world’s biggest Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Peanut butter cups are Quinn’s favorites. I don’t think even he could manage to eat two half-pound versions of them though.

Sadly, we will never know if he could consume a pound of peanut butter cups, as we left the package in the store.

Sadly, we will never know if he could consume a pound of peanut butter cups, as even we decided not to buy them.

From there, we took another trip through the free ride and then headed to the chocolate tasting experience. It probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that we tasted chocolates there. It also probably doesn’t surprise you to hear that all five of us had fun tasting chocolate. Chocolate World was starting to look like a great choice for my family.

We just had one more activity before we headed back to the hotel. We were going to do the make-your-own-chocolate-bar activity where you decide what you want in a chocolate bar, watch the Hershey’s machines actually make it, decorate the wrapper yourself, then go home with your very own candy bar.

This particular activity is the main reason we went to Chocolate World. Sam has a teacher who really loves chocolate and he wanted to make a chocolate bar for her. (She also gave us discount coupons for Hersheypark that saved us a ton of money, so it seemed like an excellent trade to buy her a candy bar.) Everybody was excited to make their candy bar. All three of my kids had been talking about it all weekend.

There was one snag. (There is always a snag.) I knew this was coming and I had talked to Quinn about it ahead of time. He’d seemed okay with it in theory, but when it came down to go-time, he freaked out completely.

That snag? Because there was actual food being produced in front of us, we all had to wear aprons and hairnets.

Happily Sam and Jack were more than happy to wear their hairnets. I was more than happy to take their photograph in said hairnets.

The screaming. Oh, God, the screaming. I still hear it in my dreams.

Quinn could not handle the hairnet. He tried. He tried so hard. He completely lost it. It was rough. I managed to help him calm down enough to watch his chocolate bar get made (he didn’t have to wear the hairnet when making his recipe or designing his package) and we skipped out on the last part of the production process, choosing instead to play Minecraft on the iPad and let Alex, Sam, and Jack pick up our chocolate bars.

Then we were done. We’d pushed everyone far enough. We had a bag full of chocolate. We had just enough time to squeeze in a quick swim at the hotel before our late checkout. It was time to leave the land of chocolate.

We wandered back to the car, Jack telling random people on the way, “You can make your own chocolate bar in there!”

So. Chocolate World. I would call it a success. My kids really enjoyed being there. You know, with the exception of Quinn and the hair nets. We won’t be visiting any other food production facilities in the next several years, that is for sure.

This brings us to the conclusion of Team Stimey’s Memorial Day visit to the Land of Chocolate and Screaming. Although if I’m going to be honest, most of our outings involve chocolate and screaming, so perhaps I should say that this is the end of our visit to the Land of Chocolate and Screaming in Pennsylvania.

I guess if there were one thing I wanted to impart about our weekend, which was both fantastic and extremely challenging, is that I love going on adventures with my family. It is never smooth sailing, but it is always rewarding.

My family exasperates me like nothing else, but those moments when they make me laugh (and there are a lot of them), those moments when they laugh (and there are a lot of them), those moments when they overcome things that are difficult for them, those moments when we experience something new together, those moments when we get to be ourselves with each other—those moments are what make my life worthwhile.

So, yes, our trip to the Land of Chocolate and Screaming in Pennsylvania (a.k.a. Hersheypark and Chocolate World), were not perfect. But I wouldn’t trade those two day for anything in the world.

Spectacularly Good or Spectacularly Bad? Welcome to Hersheypark.

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Stimey

Remember back the night before my family headed into Hersheypark and I was all:

“This will be my kids’ first time at an amusement park. I imagine that is will go spectacularly.

Spectacularly good or spectacularly bad, that remains to be seen.”

Well. Done and done.

Also, you should note that I managed to spell “it” wrong in the second sentence of that quote that I copy and pasted from its original post. That seems about right.

So. Here’s the backstory: I didn’t want to throw any birthday parties this year, so I talked Jack and Quinn into foregoing theirs and going to Hersheypark and Chocolate World instead.

In my defense, it sounded like a great plan.

Our itinerary was to drive up Friday night, go to Hersheypark on Saturday, go to Chocolate World on Sunday, and then drive home that evening, full of joy and happy memories. Friday went just as planned, complete with a heated pool to swim in at the hotel.

Jack choked on bacon at breakfast on Saturday, but that isn’t even the worst thing that happened that morning.

Here’s how it all went to hell, like, two minutes after our arrival at Hersheypark:

We drove into the parking lot, got out of the car, walked about 20 feet, and then Quinn turfed it. It was like slow fucking motion. I saw him go down on his knee, then his shoulder, then it looked like he was going to stop there, but he didn’t and then he tipped down onto his nose and his forehead.

I jumped to the ground next to him and hugged him as he started screaming, “We have to go home! We have to go home! We have to go home!” It took a good several minutes before he’d even let me look at his face. When he finally did, this is what I saw:

I don’t know that I have to tell you that I took this photo much, MUCH later. Even then, several hours after the fall, it’s somewhat of a miracle that he was willing to smile for me.

It was brutal. I had to pick Quinn up and carry him the rest of the looooooong way into the park. It was either that or turn around and take the 30-second walk back to the car and call it a day.

Side note: Quinn is ridiculously heavy. He’s loud too.

I don’t know if you’ve been to Hersheypark, but I swear to God that the entrance was, like, three miles away from the parking lot. We did stop at one point to measure ourselves according to Hershey’s height standards.

Sam was a Jolly Rancher. Jack was a Twizzler. Quinn was…reluctant to be measured. (a.k.a. a Hershey bar)

We had decided to get disability passes for Jack for his autism and Quinn for his SPD and body regulation issues. Standing in long lines is especially tough on Quinn and Jack gets dysregulated in line situations. I won’t go into all the reasons I felt my kids needed the disability pass, but I knew that we did need them—for Quinn more than anyone else.

Our visit to the Hospitality Office to get those passes was a source of stress for me. I was worried that they would turn us down and then my kids wouldn’t be able to handle the park. I was worried that they wouldn’t be nice. I was worried that they were going to try to make Jack and Quinn wear wristbands around the park and I knew that would be worse than not having a pass at all.

Here’s something though: If you are standing in the ADA compliance line and one parent is holding a sobbing 8-year-old while the other parent is clutching the hand of a 10-year-old so he doesn’t take off in excitement and then that parent bursts into stress tears because she has been worrying for weeks about how her kids would be able to handle an amusement park and it turns out that it doesn’t look like any of them are going to be able to handle it all that damn well because they are 15 feet into the park and it’s already Hersheygeddon, well, the staff there will be really nice to you.

The woman there took one look at me and my entourage, accepted my paperwork, said, “Do you think they’ll need cards instead of wristbands?” and then told me we could stand in a quieter spot while she got all of our paperwork ready.

Thank you, Hersheypark.

(In truth, we didn’t actually use the passes all that much. Quinn didn’t go on many rides and we stood in line for most of them. Despite it being Memorial Day weekend, it was really cold, so the lines weren’t too long. I do have to say though, that when we did need those passes, we were so grateful for them. I do know that our day was much easier because of them.)

We headed out from the Hospitality office and Quinn and I took a little break while Sam, Jack, and Alex ran off to play on a ride. I finally convinced Quinn to try the carousel. I got my first inkling that things might turn out okay when I saw him trying to suppress the tiniest of smiles on the ride.

This was not that smile.

Jack and Sam, on the other hand, couldn’t have been happier.

The dude in the Hershey bar suit was probably less happy when my kids pretended to eat his arms. I bet that happens to him a lot.

So, they liked the characters, but what about the rides? I bet Sam and Jack hated the rides, didn’t they?

They totally did.

We went on a series of rides after that. Two of us on this one, three on that, and things started to look up. After riding the bumper cars, even Quinn busted out a smile. We worked our way through some of the kiddie rides on the way to the Minetown section of the park, which I think Jack imagined was just like Minecraft. (It wasn’t.)

By the time we got over to the little speedway where kids can pretend to drive cars (Jack, by the way, is the slowest damn driver ever. I know. I was in his car and witnessed the backup behind us), all three kids were having a good time.

When you ask Quinn if he had a good time at Hersheypark, he will tell you no and then he will tell you about how he fell on his face in the parking lot. He will claim to have hated everything and to have not had fun at all. But, trust me, he didn’t hate everything. I give you this photograph as proof:

Not only is he happy, but you can barely even see his facial scarring.

You might also notice that he is wearing two jackets in that photo. That is because he was cold in just his jacket, so he stole my sweatshirt leaving me in short sleeves. By the time I got desperate enough to pay $50 for a sweatshirt that read “KISSES” across the front, there were no sweatshirt shops anywhere to be seen. It sucked.

If I had to describe motherhood in a sentence, it might be this: “No matter how cold it is, you will always give your coat to your child.” If I had to describe motherhood by Stimey, I would add, “and complain vociferously the whole time.”

After Jack’s Sunday driver training, we were walking to the log ride and Jack saw a roller coaster where people’s legs were dangling from the seats and he insisted he wanted to go on it. I should mention here that Jack had never been on a roller coaster at this point. Because I am me, I didn’t even bother to check the track layout before I agreed and got into line with him. I just figured, well, Jack is fearless, so what’s the worst that could happen?

You guys, this roller coaster had loops. It had corkscrews. It had a corkscrewing loop. Oh, it was quite the roller coaster. I think it surprised Jack a lot. I’ll say this for the kid though; he didn’t want to go back on that particular roller coaster, but he was game to go on any other ride or coaster for the rest of the day. Jack and his bravery astound me every single day. He is one of a kind, that kid.

We collected Alex, Sam, and Quinn from the nearby arcade and Sam, Jack, and I went on the log ride while Alex and Quinn headed back to the skee-ball lanes—Quinn because he wasn’t interested in scary rides and Alex because he wasn’t interested in watery rides. (Did I mention that it was really cold?)

The advantage of the cold day was that there was no line for the log ride, allowing the three of us to go on it twice in record time. Sam loved it. This pleased me because where Jack is fearless, Sam can be fearful. I was hoping to get him on a roller coaster at the park, so I was happy that Sam liked the thrill of going down the hill.

I was also happy that I was able to position my children to block me from getting too wet.

It’s actually too bad that Quinn started the day off in such a rough way. I think that he would have been way more willing to try some of the rides if his fall hadn’t convinced him that Hershey was out to kill him. His hair kept getting stuck to his wounds and hurting him, so it wasn’t like he could forget about it either.

Now, I know this may surprise you, but I am a little bit rigid in the ways that I do things and in my mind, when you go to an amusement park, you ride rides and that is what is fun and you don’t do the arcade games because they are a waste of money because they are rigged so no one wins.

I needed Alex to remind me that those arcade games aren’t just fun if you win. I needed to learn that there are ways other than mine to have fun at an amusement park. He and Quinn did a lot of arcade and boardwalk-style games while the rest of us went on rides. I am so grateful that Alex was flexible enough to see what Quinn needed and that the two of them had such a fun day together.

Quinn won these flowers and Alex won the ability to somehow make Quinn carry the family backpack. That achievement will probably never be repeated.

We headed out of the park shortly after I put Sam on the roller coaster I wanted him to try. I can tell you that he did not care for it and he is very angry at me for putting him on it when there was a tamer one somewhere in the park that no matter how hard we looked, we could not find. I thought it was a blast. He thought I was purposely trying to kill him.

On our way out, we passed a team of candy bars just hanging out by themselves. We caught sight of them from a distance and Jack shrieked and started running to them. The candy bars heard him and they all started waving. Jack leapt over a bench to dive into a hug with the Kit Kat. It was completely enchanting at the same time that it was totally absurd.

Then the candy bars’ handlers had to physically pull him off of said Kit Kat.

From there, all that was left was finding our car. (Me: “Do you remember where we parked? Other than near the bloodstain?”)

Remember when I said that our day at Hersheypark would be either spectacularly good or spectacularly bad? Without question, we had both. All of us had some tough moments, but we got through it and I think we all learned something about ourselves and each other that day. Next time we go to an amusement park (you know, in ten or twelve years, once the memories fade), I’ll use those lessons to make our trip even better.

So, that was our day. I’ll save our day at Chocolate World for tomorrow because I think if I tried to add any more to this post, my blog would implode. For White Knuckle Parenting this week, I did write specifically about the lessons I learned at the amusement park. Definitely check it out.

The 5th Avenue bar strikes me a little bit as a Poochie the Rockin’ Dog character: all attitude, no substance.

Team Stimey’s Egg-cellent Adventure

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Stimey

Warning: Lots of egg puns ahead. Sorry.

This year, like every year, I had come to terms with the fact that Team Stimey was doomed to another year of celebrating Easter only with our regular family backyard Easter egg hunt on Sunday. (Jack found a 19th egg on Tuesday; where do you think that came from?) Then, on Friday, I got great news from my friend MCM Mama*, who introduced me to the lovely folks from Honest Tea, who had all-day passes to the White House Easter Egg Roll for my whole family.

I was so excited. I love big DC events. I mean, I knew it was likely to be a Team Stimey freakout fest, but with us, what isn’t?

Sure enough, on the way there, Jack was all, “I think I’m going to be sick,” and so we opened a lot of windows and then Quinn was all, “I am freezing!” so we rolled up most of the windows and then I suggested that we pull over, and Alex, who was driving us in the morning rush hour traffic, was all, “SERENITY NOW!”

Naturally, we walked almost entirely around the perimeter of the White House grounds in an effort to find the right entrance. During this long walk, both Alex and Quinn became increasingly disgruntled.

This was at the beginning of said walk before that smile disappeared from Quinn’s face entirely. I, however, kept that giddy grin the whole stupid time.

By the time we actually got past security, Quinn was not happy…until he met the most fun squirrel in the history of fun squirrels.

Quinn got within a couple of inches of this guy. Me: “Oh good. It’s rabid.”

He chattered happily about that squirrel right until we walked into the crowds and the chaos and the many characters wandering around. Me on the other hand? I was delighted. Especially when Smokey the Bear AND Woodsy Owl walked by together—it was like the holy grail of good samaritan animal costume characters.

I forced Jack to stand with me because it seemed more legitimate to pose with them if I had a kid with me.

I called, “Give a hoot!” after them as they departed. I don’t think anyone heard me. That’s probably for the best.

We decided to start with the egg roll, because, well the name of the event is the Easter Egg Roll and also because all of my kids were too old for the Easter Egg Hunt. There were dozens of reporters there with their cameras trained on the egg roll course. I was already imagining the local evening news with its footage of cute toddlers in Easter dresses rolling their eggs along with wooden spoons, followed by a shot of Quinn rolling on the grass and screaming as the anchor fake sympathized, “Aw, this little boy didn’t have much fun!”

I haven’t seen any such footage. Please don’t tell me if it exists.

Sam rocked his egg roll race against all those toddlers in their cute Easter clothes.

Sam, however, rocked his egg roll race against all those toddlers in their cute Easter clothes.

From there, it was over to the Eggtivity Zone where there were several different obstacle courses. Quinn had entirely checked out by this point and was playing Angry Birds on my iPhone, but Sam and Jack went through the obstacle courses several times.

Some properly and according to the rules…

…and some not.

Mid-obstacle race, the president and his family and the Easter Bunny showed up to greet Team Stimey…and the other folks in attendance. I guess.

Someday I am actually going to get a close up photo of that man.

Team Obama headed down to the egg roll area and Team Stimey headed off on an ultimately unsuccessful trek to find the people from Honest Tea to find some juice and say thank you. In a happy cowinkidink, we ended up penned in by hastily erected fences as the Obamas were headed off to various places on the lawn—the president to the tennis and basketball courts and the first lady to the healthy food section.

We might have gotten all up in Michelle’s face. Algernon took this opportunity to get reacquainted with Mrs. Obama.

Take note of the concerned looking lady in the mirrored sunglasses.

There is nothing I won’t do for you people.

That was pretty cool, right? Well. It got even cooler just after that. The people right next to us had some sort of photos from their school that they were forcing on Mrs. Obama and they told her where they went to school. She started to move on when Jack piped up with, “I go to ****** Elementary School!”

She stopped, turned around and came back asking, “Are you doing good there? Are you getting good grades?” Jack told her yes and then she told him, “Keep up the good work, babe,” and then she touched both Sam and Jack on their heads and I may or may not have started jumping up and down.

Jack and Sam, pre-conversation.

I don’t know why it is so exciting that she talked to my kids, but it was. Also, I love that Jack totally dragged her attention back. That kid has some sort of magnetic charisma. It is close to impossible to walk away from his awesome little face when he is is telling you something. Even the FLOTUS wasn’t immune.

Jack and the FLOTUS’ magic touch.

After that, it was just a matter of killing time and making jokes about unjust imprisonment as we waited for the president to finish playing sports so security could remove the fence between us and the exit.

Sam killed time by being his normal charming self. Algernon is going to need a bath.

Quinn killed time by collapsing to the ground again. I’m making a collection of these photos. (Luray Caverns? Check! The White House? Check!)

Jack killed time by learning—and then by using that magnifying glass and the sun to try to set some lady on fire.

Soon enough though the president headed back to the White House and we were free from our egg-citing adventure.

This photo is a *little* closer.

We headed out and collected our souvenir Easter eggs, which were passed out along with Peeps, M&Ms, and goldfish crackers. This was Quinn’s favorite part of the egg-venture.

You can see Alex and Quinn up there on the left. I felt I should point out that they were there as they didn’t figure prominently in this post.

From there, Alex headed back to work (sad) and the rest of us headed home to collapse on the couch (happy). I know that we’ll probably never go back to the egg roll now that we’ve done it once, but I am so happy that we got to experience it. Thank you so much, Honest Tea!

* MCM Mama just ran five half marathons in five different states in five days. She is a rock star. You should totally read her series of posts about those races.

Disclosure: Honest Tea provided my family with tickets to the Easter egg roll, which, although free, we would not have been able to obtain otherwise. A super nice rep for the company also dropped off loads of egg-cellent tea and juice from their line on my porch last weekend.

*****

I wrote an egg-ceptional column at White Knuckle Parenting about why I wanted to go to the egg roll even though I knew it would most likely be a nightmare: Surviving the White House Easter Egg Roll. Check it out!

Look Out, New York! It’s Team Stimey!

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Stimey

Team Stimey is in New York this weekend because Phish is playing here and I think Alex finally felt guilty for leaving us every New Year’s to see shows, so this time he made us come with him.

We drove up yesterday—and thanks for that two hours spent getting to the Lincoln Tunnel, New Jersey—and abandoned our kids with a stranger half an hour after arriving. I think it worked out because all of our valuables, including the three children, were still in our hotel room when we got back, and Sam had asked the babysitter for her phone number.

(“You should ask girls your own age for their phone numbers,” is what he says she told him. This is good advice I should have given him two weeks ago.)

Some friends of ours last night at the show asked us what we were going to do with the kids today and we were all, “EVERYTHING.” It turns out that EVERYTHING turns quickly into JUST THE ZOO after you stand in line at the Empire State Building to find out that snow has made it so there is no visibility on the observation deck, so why don’t you just come back tomorrow, m’kay?

Also, it may seem strange that we considered riding an elevator and going to the zoo to be EVERYTHING, but if you consider we ended the day with Quinn standing in the middle of the children’s zoo flapping his hands (water flying off of his soaked gloves) screaming, “I want to go home!” then, yeah, two destinations is EVERYTHING.

Also part of that EVERYTHING were cab rides and long walks through the city streets and life as SUPER TOURISTS. If you are in New York this weekend and you see five people being the motherfucking dorkiest five people on the planet, look closer. It’s probably us.

What? Us? Tourists?

It would be untrue to say that our first tourist site was the Empire State Building though. Because before that, there was this:

Of course this photograph of a cat asking for money is better than all of New York City put together.

Then Quinn spilled chocolate milk at a restaurant for the second time in three days, but at least this time he spilled it on himself instead of me and it was at a diner with bare tables instead of a lovely adult Italian restaurant with white tablecloths.

We made the kiddos walk to the Empire State Building, stopping along the way to take delightful photos that we’ll be sharing with family for years to come to show them how lovely and wonderful we are on vacation.

Or not.

Quinn: “Imma stand waaaay over here.”
Sam: “Brrrr.”
Jack: “Bunny ears for Sam!!”
Alex: “I don’t think I’m in this picture, so I’ll check my phone and drink whatever is in this brown paper bag.”
Stimey: “I’m going to take a picture of this sign instead of the interesting building itself.”

That brown-bag beverage was actually orange juice that Sam wanted to take with him after breakfast. Alex carried it ten blocks, into the Empire State Building, and through the security line before Sam decided he might not want it. It might even be in the souvenir photo that gets taken of all visitors. We didn’t buy that photo, mostly because Quinn was freaking out about the fact that, “WAIT JUST A GODDAMN MINUTE. HOW MANY FLOORS UP?” and we were all, “Huh, maybe we should have asked the kids if they were afraid of heights before we embarked on this journey, but it is MILES too late now.”

Some families put together social stories to prepare their kids for things like this. We are more of a Surprise/Immersion Therapy sort of family. Although I’m starting to rethink that.

Anywho, after we went up the escalators and went through security and got our souvenir photo taken and then it started to snow, we bailed and went to the zoo. There my kids behaved like animals.

Oh, wait. Those ARE the animals.

Do you ever just kind of wish you could be a sea lion? ‘Cause I do.

The zoo was perfect for us. It was small and had good animals, including those fabulous sea lions above. If I had one complaint, it would be that the polar bears, snow monkeys, and snow leopard were way less excited about the snow than I would have expected. In fact, all of those animals were curled up hiding from said snow.

Puh. Lease. If you are going to have “polar” or “snow” in your name, the least you could do is some frolicking for us.

My kids were super delighted though, because they are HUGE Madagascar fans, so seeing that the Central Park Zoo really exists and features some of the things from the movie/TV show blew their little minds.

We even got to this clock right on the hour when it played music and moved. Good karma, right there.*

* If you have any comments about bad karma and our timing at the Empire State Building, you can just keep them to yourself, thankyouverymuch.

Then we went to the children’s zoo and there was the hand flapping (we kept telling the kiddos that if they stopped picking up snow, their hands wouldn’t be as cold, but they wouldn’t listen), so we scrapped our subway plan and went with the cab plan and then dropped by the CVS right next to our hotel to buy the munchkins the ice cream they wanted.

I know. Children are inexplicable. It was freezing, THEY were freezing, and all they wanted was ice cream.

Then I think they did stuff in the hotel room, but I was napping, so I don’t know what it was. Go ask Alex.

The kiddos are all asleep in their beds now and because Alex doesn’t get home until late, I get to choose which bed I want. (I will choose the one full of just Jack instead of the one full of Sam and Quinn.) Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get to post some photo of the spectacular view from the top of the Empire State Building (also hopefully with a calmer Quinn—I social storied the shit out of him this afternoon).

Wish us luck!

And to All a Good Night…

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Stimey

Christmas Eve can be touch or go. You know, you have kids who are really jacked up and looking forward to Christmas and Christmas Eve promises excitement, but it’s not quite the main event, so there is disappointment built in, not to mention two or three or…six hours of yelling things like “IF YOU DON’T GO TO SLEEP RIGHT NOW, YOU WILL KILL SANTA WITH YOUR BAD BEHAVIOR! SANTA WILL NEVER COME NOW! ARE YOU HAPPY? ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY?”

Although that last little bit usually only happens in parents’ heads.

This year for Team Stimey though, shit came together and we had such a fantastic day.

We started by heading out to IHOP because we drove past there last week and Jack was all, “I wanna go to IHOOOOOPPPP!” and I figured that it would kill some Christmas Eve morning time, so why don’t we go then?

They put us in a back corner. It was a good decision on their part.

My kids were in enormously good form what with Sam asking the waitress for her phone number, Quinn having many questions about menu items, and Jack, well, Jack was pretty chill actually. I’m not even going to discuss Alex’s behavior. We spent longer eating breakfast than we have in a long time. Usually restaurant meals are a pretty quick affair for us, on the assumption that shorter means less chance of a freakout, but everybody was happy to just sit and eat today. It was great.

I mean, we even started breakfast with hot chocolate that came topped with whipped cream and chocolate chips, so it’s not like we even made an effort to keep them from getting hepped up on sugar or anything. Quinn doesn’t like whipped cream, so his hot chocolate was plain, but the waitress brought him chocolate chips anyway.

This is when the waitress cemented her giant tip.

After IHOP, it was off to the dry cleaner, as you do on Christmas Eve.

We spent the next couple of hours at home teetering dangerously on Too Much Togetherness when a goddamn Christmas miracle happened. It started to snow.

It took him a surprisingly long time to catch a snowflake in his mouth.

It turns out that my children are unable to walk into my backyard without Nerf battlegear, so they suited up and headed out.

Our own version of Bad Piggies.

They were so happy that even Alex and I went out with them and ran around.

And all was right with the world.

It didn’t snow a lot and it didn’t stick to the ground, but it got Team Stimey out of the house and happy. You can see falling snow in the above photos is you squint reeeallly hard, but it’s easier to see on a dark canvas.

This is why we only have dark-furred dogs.

We futzed around for a while, watched a movie together, played some video games, and had our traditional steak and spinach Christmas Eve dinner.

Everyone gets to open a gift on Christmas Eve and Jack had been asking all day to do so. Team Stimey Junior even had a bonus Christmas Eve gift because my mom sent them one.

Look at them working together to unwrap that gift. They are so motherfucking civilized.

The gift was Just Dance for the Wii. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jack dance to Gangnam Style, by the way. I wish I’d gotten THAT on film.

Sam had a gift for Alex and I too and he was super insistent that we open it on Christmas Eve, so we decided that was okay. The gift was cool, but the best part was the stack of cards that came with it. Seriously, a stack. Some of those cards contained alliteration, like this: “Marvelous mom manages maidenhood majestically moving minds.”

Then, oh my God, then he had Alex and I follow him to the computer where he presented us with the Power Point presentation he had created about us. I have literally never gotten a better gift. Here are two of the slides. Judge for yourself.

“Mom has loved mice, gerbils, and guinea pigs forever practically. Rodents Rock!”

“Dad has loved the band Phish for a long time. #1 band baby!”

I have no idea where he got all those photos or when he put this thing together, but even Alex almost started crying because it was so damn sweet.

We had a few other traditions to get to, but Quinn had to squeeze in some letter writing first.

Quinn has been planning this note for a looong time.

“To: Santa, Does Rudolf’s nose really flash? Pleas wrigt yes or no under with the pen. from Quinn.”

What do you think, internets? Does Rudolph’s nose really flash?

The last hour or so of Christmas Eve before bedtime is very busy in Stimeyland. We have to mix oatmeal and glitter to make the reindeer dust.

Reindeer dust, to attract and feed reindeer.

The glitter attracts the reindeer and the oatmeal gives them something to snack on while Santa fills stockings.

There was a lot of complaining about cold feet on the porch. So they all went to get shoes while I stood on the cold lawn waiting.

You can use edible sprinkles instead of glitter, but it doesn’t photograph as well.

I let Quinn choose how many cookies to leave out for Santa, a task he took VERY seriously.

Evidently cookie placement is VERY important.

Evidently cookie placement is crucial.

Then it was off to the living room for the annual reading of The Night Before Christmas.

Jack had little smart ass comments for each line, Quinn scoured each page looking for pictures of cats, and Sam pretended to play the flute. Alex gamely carried on with the story.

We put the kiddos to bed and I gave the gerbils their Christmas seed cube and then we began to wait for them to fall asleep.

Merry Christmas, Gerbils of Power!

I’m sitting here waiting for Quinn to fall asleep. That poor kid. He wants to fall asleep so desperately, but he can’t. He’s pretty sad about it.

So. I just wrote THAT ^^^^ and then Quinn came out of his room SOBBING. He was afraid he would never fall asleep and Santa wouldn’t come and oh dear lord, I have never seen anyone quite so sad in my life. It took me an HOUR to get him to sleep. Please, Quinn, don’t wake up again.

Now I’m off to be Santa, if I can wrest my elves away from the Transformers show they’re watching on TV.

This photo is only here because I didn’t post one of our tree yet and my mom always wants to see one. Guess who decorated it?

I hope you had a really merry Christmas Eve and that your kids fall asleep quickly!

Let’s Not Have a Party—Let’s Have a Melee!

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Stimey

Imagine you got really lazy about planning your oldest son’s 11th birthday party and two weeks before the date, you realized that you had to GET ON THAT, STAT?! I imagine that being the smart person that you are, you would probably decide to invite a class of 26 students into your home in mid-October—a day that could be gorgeous or could be rainy—and you would plan activities like dodgeball, because WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THAT?

Well, YOU might not do that, but clearly *I* would.

I bought a bunch of small rubber balls and Alex picked the dog up and put her away so she wouldn’t steal all the Oreos and that’s what we did.

The dog was all, “But I WANT Oreos!”

I would like to report that only one head injury was sustained.

That didn’t happen during dodgeball though. The head injury happened during the full-fledged melee that occurred when said class (about 15, plus my three, came) discovered our cache of Nerf weapons and assorted short swords. It was honestly like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was kind of like that scene at the very beginning of Fellowship of the Rings that explains about the Rings of Power and how that one ring ruled them all, except instead of Sauron and that king who didn’t want to throw the ring away, you had Sam and a bunch of his little cohorts fighting over nothing.

It was AWESOME.

I actually took this photo much later in the day, shortly after the kids found the costume chest.

After the head injury (he’s okay), I wanted to calm the party guests down, so I put down a little line of cones, divided them into two teams and started up a few rounds of dodgeball. As you do.

No one got hurt or terribly upset during that whole thing, so I decided to move them on to Red Rover. Remember Red Rover? It wasn’t until kids started wringing their hands, loudly ranking their peers in order of weakness, and a couple of them got clotheslined that I remembered that I totally hated that game when I was a kid.

Regardless, it’s been passed on to a new generation that wasn’t aware of it before. Yay, me!

Fortunately, before I was able to introduce something else brilliant, like throwing knives, the pizza arrived and everyone chilled out and ate some food. Yet, as Red Rover follows dodgeball, cake follows pizza and the chill diminished. It has never happened to me before that I wasn’t able to clear a path to the table for the birthday kid to blow out his candles, but this time I was swarmed, so we had an impromptu standing ceremony.

Sure, we can do it here.

I think that the cake bottleneck happened partly because several kids were watching Mr. Free-fall From Space on the computer between our kitchen and dining room. Don’t forget that this was a party made up of Sam’s overachieving buddies from school. (It seems rude to call children that aren’t mine “nerdlingers.”)

Don’t get any Xtreme Stuntz ideas, nerdlinger Jack.

I’m not kidding when I say the chill diminished. One girl was actually walking around saying, “Buzz, buzz! I’m buzzing! Buzz, buzz!” It looked a little bit like a spontaneous water fight was going to break out, so I quickly organized the troublemakers into teams for kickball. Not all the kids wanted to play, so Alex had to fill in at second base at one point. Dude. That guy can NOT catch a kickball.

It was embarrassing, really.

(I’m just trying to get you your loveable oaf credibility back, sweetie.)

Things were going pretty well. Sam was super happy, Quinn had run away to sneak time with his DSi…

I SEE YOU, QUINN.

…and Jack had departed to his sensory happy place…

Happy, happy, sand, sand, hammer, hammer, rock…

…when Alex interrupted the kickball game practically mid-pitch to shriek, “HE’S GETTING READY TO JUMP! HE’S GETTING READY TO JUMP!” and 15 scientists-in-training went thundering into the house to watch a guy sit in a capsule for the next 15 minutes. Parents started arriving and I was all, “I swear we haven’t been making them watch this for the full two hours,” but I don’t know how convincing I was considering some of the kids really didn’t want to leave before the dude exited his capsule.

Alex is the HEAD nerdlinger.

Oh, and I sent each kid home with his or her very own megaphone. Because I like to SHARE.

I’m the head jerk.

No matter how hastily tossed together, this party was a blast. Sam has such a good group of kids in his class. And the party was perfectly him. We all had such a great time. Happy birthday, Sam! Thanks for making life so fun!

Glitter cat makes everything awesome.

But Sam makes it awesomer.

What the Hell, Let’s Celebrate a Birthday!

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Stimey

Today (Yesterday? What day is it where and when you are?) was Sam’s birthday. He’s an outlier. The rest of us have birthdays in April through June, so Sam is like a little island of cake right before pie season.

He is eleven. ELEVEN.

Wait. How old are you, Sam?

How many? Eleven many!

“How could you have an 11-year-old?” I can hear you saying, “what with your über-young appearance and all,” but yes, he is eleven. I think that puts him solidly in tweendom. I expect the snarky attitude to commence any day now.

Except…huh. He’s had that for a while now. What’s next? Surliness? Irritation? Embarrassment by his mother? Who knows? That is the joy of the oldest child. You have no idea what’s coming next. Is it moodiness? SURPRISE! It’s irrationality!

Personally, I’m hoping for undying, emotive love for his mother.

(Prepare to be disappointed, Stimey.)

Regardless of what is to come, birthdays in Stimeyland are a happy occasion—and not just for the birthday boy.

I have NO idea what he’s so damn happy about, but GOOD FOR HIM.

Sam’s birthday morning went pretty much like this: Slept through hockey practice, tried to stay in bed as long as possible, annoyed birthday child by checking email before brushing teeth and therefore putting off gift unwrapping by several minutes. Then Sam opened 8 billion pages worth of reading material and I steam cleaned the carpets in preparation for his birthday party tomorrow. As you do.

*-|-* <—That’s me looking at my dog with squinty, mean eyes. She makes our house smell bad.

I had baked a birthday cake for Sam last night, but I saved the icing so Sam could help me today.

Sam is extremely conservative in his icing usage.

I think we can all agree that it turned out to be tasteful and subtle. Also gooey.

It says “SAM RULES.” At least he doesn’t have self-esteem issues.

Sam had a soccer game today, so we didn’t have any big outings planned, although I think given a choice, what they ended up doing was probably at the very top of their list. This is what they ended up doing:

There’s Jack, playing video games.

And then Quinn…playing video games.

I bet Sam is reading. No…video games.

I bet Alex is doing something responsible. Huh. Nope.

I took a nap.

It was a quiet, lovely afternoon. Sam was very happy. It was lovely.

And the cake was not only beautifully decorated, but delicious.

Sam is a phenomenal kid. He is smart, kind, sensitive, playful, and intellectually curious. He possesses the opposite forces for all of those wonderful traits as well, which makes him utterly unique. It is a joy to watch him mature. Happy birthday to my beautiful boy. Even if you’re an outlier.

Hell, especially if you’re an outlier.

Stimeyland

Get your quirk on.

Category Archives: Alex

The Day After Hersheypark, We Went to a Place Known Only as…Chocolate World

Spectacularly Good or Spectacularly Bad? Welcome to Hersheypark.

Team Stimey’s Egg-cellent Adventure

Look Out, New York! It’s Team Stimey!

And to All a Good Night…

Let’s Not Have a Party—Let’s Have a Melee!

What the Hell, Let’s Celebrate a Birthday!

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