A weekend to recover

This is a perfectly good example of a weekend that you need a couple of extra days to recover from.

Wow!

Sydney did not have a birthday day.  She had a birthday weekend.  It all began on Saturday, the day before her official birthday.  To give you an idea of how busy it was, we began with playing hooky from a Tae Kwon Do tournament.  Yes, I imagine we were probably the only ones on the team not to participate in this latest event.  That was alright though as we had permission from Master Adrian. 

Regardless, we were not there.

We were at home.  Lynley had us in the salt mines scrubbing and cleaning our way out of unimmaculateness and into her realm of acceptability.  You see not only would we have have guests over to her shrine of domestic perfection to celebrate Sydney's birthday but we would also be hosting her parents, Mimi and Papa, for the week in "cabana 1 (the guest house)".  This also meant that there would be groceries to shop for and a significant amount of last minute birthday shopping for Didders (Sydney).  Thankfully DeeDee agreed to entertain the kiddos at her house as I worked on the snappy end of Lynley's whip.

Believe it or not, by late morning we had finished our work and I was back in the good graces of the household dominatrix.  We picked up the kiddos and headed to the airport.

Airport, Panera Bread for lunch, and back home we came.  It was just in time as it would not be long before Sydney's best friends Jillian 1 and Jylian 2 arrive for a night prepubescent jollification.  For those of you counting along that is 5 kiddos and 2 old farts that were now under our care.

The plan for the rest of the weekend was swimming, jewelry making, dinner, movie watching, sleeping, breakfast, water park, present opening, dinner number two and cake.  Not an insurmountable task but also not something that a rational person would elect upon themselves.

The good news is that everything went off in a rather hitchless fashion.  All of the kiddos had a wonderful time and I am pretty sure it was Sydney's best birthday ever.  The kiddos all had a great time at the water park which was a great thing but, if I am being perfectly honest, I can tell you that I was almost entirely underwhelmed by Six Flags Hurricane Harbor.  I was extremely disappointed by the quality of the park and lack of training with the staff.  From food service to the the life guards, I was disappointed.  It was as if this was the first day the water park had ever been opened (not this year, in all of history) and nobody had any experience in running a water park.

After spending time at places like NRH20 and Great Wolf Lodge I guess I have been spoiled.  Yes, those places may have adequate service and mediocre food but they were 5 star establishments compared to Hurricane Harbor.  And the quality of the rides, I was thoroughly disappointed.  The kids, Lynley and I all preferred NRH20 or Great Wolf Lodge hands down.  In fact, I would gladly play five times the ticket price at one of those places than go back to Hurricane Harbor.

Yuk.

But, the important part is that ultimately the kids had fun. Well that, and thanks to our supervision (no one else's for sure) they all survived.

By 4:00 we were all on our way home.  A pretty good time must have been had as we lost two of the kiddos to sleep on the way home.  That was followed by packing and rides home.  We then topped the evening off with a family birthday party at home complete with Sydney's favorite home made spaghetti.

We went to bed early.  Go figure.

Now I need a day or two to recharge my purpose batteries.