Chuck-e-Cheese, St. Augustine, & Helicopter Rides

We had a coupon for some free tokens at chuck-e-cheese for St. Patrick's day, so we decided to go and have lunch there. There were only a few kids there, so the noise was at a very manageable level :) When Chucky himself came out to dance with the kids and give out free tickets, there was only James and one or two other older kids. James didn't want to do the dance, but he agreed to do the "spin around" part. Afterwards, an employee came up and gave me 5 tokens for their "golden ticket" for James since he was the only one who participated. Score!

 He was a little scared of Chucky, so I had to be with him to get a picture.

Rett had fun walking around with us and trying to climb and get into everything. I lost track of him for just a few seconds and I found him climbing up the ramp of the ski ball games! Later he took a dive off of the seat and bit his tongue and there was blood everywhere. After that he just wanted to snuggle with Grandma.

James found a bag of glitter that was in his science experiment kit that he got for his birthday. (I think it was supposed to be for making a tornado in a 2 liter bottle so that you could see the water better). At nap time he decided to break into it and spread it all over his body, around his room, and on his bed. He wasn't wearing any clothes at the time, so it got alllll over him. I asked him why and he said because he "wanted to make me happy". He cried and put up a fuss when we got the vacuum out to clean it up because he wanted to keep his "sparkles". He also go upset when he had to take a bath and wash them off. So funny!

Anthony took a few days off of work to use up the rest of his vacation days for the year before he renews his contract in April. He wanted to do a lot of fishing, but I demanded that one of the days be spent as a family going to St. Augustine. We have never taken the boys and I knew they would have so much fun looking around at everything they have there.

On the drive there, James put a bowl on elephant's head and demanded I take a picture and send it to Grandma. He was laughing and cracking himself up about it. Later he would laugh and say, "remember when I put a bowl on elephant's head? Silly!"

We went to the Castillo de San Marcos fort first and James was very excited to explore the "castle". He especially loved the drawbridges.

There is a little place you can climb before you go into the main part of the fort, so James and Anthony checked it out. It was too narrow and steep for the stroller so I stayed behind with Rett.

 Rett wasn't too happy about having to stay in the stroller most of the time. It was just too crowded to let him get down most of the time.

 James loved the second, bigger drawbridge but the sun was in his eyes when I asked him to turn around for a picture, so this was the best I got:

 You can't take a stroller up the steps to the top of the fort, so we left it and let Rett run around with James. James had to go up to each and every cannon they had and pretend to fire it, so we definitely saw every corner. This was one of the little towers and Rett could not take his eyes off of the ceiling, as you can see.

While James was "firing" this cannon, Rett ran up and tried to sit on it.

While Anthony took James off exploring, they found a large wasps nest in a part of the fort. James insisted on taking a picture of it!

After exploring the fort, we walked around the historic district and ended up at Flagler college. We threw pennies in all of the fountains we came across and made sure to make a wish. James wished for "frogs" (the fountain shot water out of frogs' mouths), Anthony wished that we would have a good day and have fun, and I wished for hamburgers (I was a little hungry). The inside of the college is so beautiful and historic. It used to be a fancy hotel. Can you imagine going to school here?

The next day Anthony went fishing in the morning and in the evening we went to a carnival that was in town for the weekend. We walked around first to see which rides James was willing to ride. He didn't want to ride most of them, so we only got a few tickets. First up was this giant slide! James was too little to ride by himself (which he wanted to do by the way!) so he rode with Anthony. They both loved it!

Next was a semi-truck/train ride. He was the only one riding it, but he was focused the entire time on making sure he was steering correctly. He was also singing "All aboard the choo-choo train" as it went around.

Rett just chilled in the stroller and watched James do the rides. He was pretty sleepy, so he didn't protest staying put this time.

The last ride was this spinning dump truck ride. He was excited to drive the truck and at the end of it he had a long conversation with the ride operator about the mirrors on the truck. He was pointing to them and talking to her and she seemed kind of confused. I'm sure he was informing her that the pretend mirrors were not sufficient for safe driving :)

After we finished the rides James initially said he wanted to ride, he insisted that he wanted to ride more of them and that he wasn't scared of the bigger ones anymore. We were ready to go home by then and we didn't want to buy anymore tickets, so we told him that we needed to go home to get some sleep so that we could come back the next morning to have even more fun at the city expo! As we were walking back to the car, we were getting some funny looks and laughs, so we looked at Rett and found him lounging back like this:

Saturday morning we went to the city expo where all the local businesses set up booths and you can walk around collecting business cards, coupons, and free stuff. A lot of them have fun things for the kids and we ended up with a lot of balloons, candy, coloring books, and small toys. James spun a wheel at the booth for a local martial arts studio and he won two free private lessons! They had signs for helicopter rides, so we decided to check it out since James insisted that he wasn't scared anymore of the tall or scary rides. It wasn't that expensive and they didn't have an age minimum, so James and Anthony got to go!

Here they are, taking off!

Anthony got some good pictures while they were in the air. They both had such a blast!

James was so excited when he got off the helicopter, he ran straight across the field towards me spinning his "propeller arm"

He was telling me all about how they flew up in the air, then went sideways, and then flew straight down.

After the helicopter ride, we had to head home so that Anthony could get ready for a priesthood leadership meeting. We were walking quickly down the sidewalk to get to the car and a boy stopped us to give James a large bunch of balloons (I think they were taking down their booth and getting rid of their decorations). As we were tying them onto James arm, Anthony told James, "Oh no! Are these balloons going to make you fly up into the air??" James immediately reached over to grab onto Anthony's pants and looked a little worried. Then he thought about it for a second and grinned and said, "No way! I won't fly away because of gravity!" I love our little smarty pants!

That night everyone was pretty tired out. James feel asleep almost immediately after we put him to bed and Rett was extra snuggly. He climbed onto the couch and leaned over on me to watch what I was doing on the ipad. He didn't move a muscle for at least 10 minutes!

It was a busy, but very fun long weekend for us!