James had his last basketball game of the season and it was a nailbiter!! The coaches of the other teams in his age group complained to the youth sports director that they thought the refereeing of the previous games was biased in favor of our team and that was why we won every game....(sounds a bit like sore losing to me, but one of the referees was our assistant coach so I could see why they might think that) so the director himself was the referee. He definitely called a lot more fouls on our team and made more calls against us, like not counting a shot that absolutely should have counted. It felt like he was trying to make sure that the other team couldn't say we were favored, so it went extreme the other way. Unfortunately it made all the players on James's team really nervous and they played the worst they ever have all season!!! They were behind for the first three quarters of the game, but finally pulled ahead towards the end and won. That made it an undefeated season for them!
Rett was happy with his noise cancelling headphones. He hates the timeout buzzer!
We had snacks and awards after the game and talked about how stressful it was. One of the parents even left the gym, it was too stressful for her watch.
Our library created a Harry Potter escape room and we signed up for a Saturday afternoon time slot. It was amazing!! We had 1 hour to try to find multiple keys and combinations to discover the location of the resurrection stone. James was laser focused on finding clues, we was looking in and at everything so critically. I was just blown away by the level of detail they put into the decorations and the clues. So fun!
This was a book of monsters that they created and it was locked with a letter combination lock.
A lawn ornament flamingo turned into Fawkes the phoenix. It was behind a desk that had clues and lock boxes inside the desk drawers on and on top of the desk.
This large trunk had a locked chain and one of our first keys we found opened it. Inside was a smaller box with at least 8 different locks, so we knew we had more keys to find.
The mirror of erised was on the wall. If you pressed it in the exact right spot, it popped open and a key was taped to the wall behind it.
James discovered a bowl of water beads and he instantly said "there is probably a key in here!" He and Rett took turns putting their hands in to try to find it. James said, "I know there is one in here, because I saw a stack of paper towels on another shelf so I know you are supposed to put your hand in here!" Smarty pants!
Opening the chest:
Checking out all the different locks:
At the potions table we saw the key in this small cabinet but could not for the life of us figure out how to get to it. Rett found a long metal hook in a drawer and they finally gave us a hint to look at the cabinet from the top. There were small votive candle holders glued to the top and one of them had no bottom so there was a hole directly into the cabinet. So sneaky!
We were running out of time, so they gave us a few quick clues to get us to the end and then we made it to the other side of the auditorium through a small secret door where we were welcomed into Hogwarts. The sorting hat was there and sorted us all into our houses!
There were also fun photo props:
A patient of Anthony's is part of the local sea turtle tracking team that combs the beaches for sea turtle nests, tracks them, and helps baby sea turtles when they get lost on their way to the ocean. She invited us to come to her house to watch her release a washed back baby sea turtle and it was amazing!!! He was so freakin' cute! It is on my bucket list to go to the beach after a hurricane and to rescue a baby sea turtle.
On our last few days of freedom the boys and I finally did our Sunrail trip to the Orlando Science Center! I planned it all summer and a bunch of other school friends wanted to come, but they kept backing out and rescheduling. Finally I told everyone that I was going on a certain day and they could come or not. It ended up being just us, but that was ok. I find trips like these much easier when we can go at our own pace and not worry about what everyone else wants to do.
We drove 45 minutes to the closest Sunrail station so that we could take a 40 minute ride into downtown Orlando. It was hard to tell which one the boys loved more: the train ride or the science center.
We walked two blocks from the train station to the science center and got there right as it opened. We explored everything but ended up bouncing around, a few minutes here, a few minutes somewhere else. It was just too exciting to stay put in one place for long! I didn't get many pictures inside since we moved around so much. This is them at the fossil dig area:
Rett tried out the meteorologist/weather station. He mostly just wanted to make goofy faces on TV.
The tornado maker!
The middle of the science center has a Florida wildlife swamp aquarium with fish, turtles, and small alligators. I couldn't believe this alligator was cuddling with a turtle!
They had a teenage mutant ninja turtle exhibit with ninja costumes you could try on. I think the boys would have liked it a lot more if they knew what teenage mutant ninja turtles was, but I don't think they have ever seen an episode!
We made our way back to the train station after about 6 hours, and got home 2 hours after that. It was a fun filled end to summer vacation!
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