More Spring Break Fun

Today, my mom visited us. We had a long day of shopping and walking in downtown New Bern. We started out at the GoodWill, looking for costume pieces for two tap numbers for Skylar's dance recital. In one number, she has to be a "nerd", so she tried on lots of frumpy, ill-fitting dresses. One even had shoulder pads and made her look like a football player. We had some major drama (and a glimpse at the way-too-soon teenage years) as she refused to leave the dressing room. We finally settled on a dress, then headed downtown to the Cow Cafe. The kids love the Cow Cafe, as do I. It costs pretty much the same as eating at McDonald's, but the food is way yummier and there are no fries to tempt you into being naughty. And there's an awesome little barnyard play area with ride-on cows and ride-on tractors. And there's homemade ice cream in dozens of flavors (Skylar's favorite: orange pineapple). And there's an electric train that runs around one of the rooms. And there are souvenirs. Need I go on? It's just a really neat place to eat & let the kids play. After lunch, we walked around downtown, wandering over to the Tryon Palace gift shop. We walked through some of the gardens and exclaimed over all the flowers in bloom. We ended up going into Snapdragon, this really cool toy store, on our way back to the car. The kids could spend hours in Snapdragon. There is a Thomas train table which Bart left only long enough to ask me if he could buy a new Thomas. There is even a little princess room tucked away with all the cutesy, pink girl stuff you could ever imagine. Drake was pooped, and slept through most of the store, only waking up long enough to grab at a few of the displays on the way out.

Yesterday, we went to the Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores with some friends of ours, the Weekes. That's Kaleb in the green shirt above, and Skylar is holding Gwen, who's in pink. The kids all really enjoyed themselves, and were extremely tired by the time we were done. The highlight of the visit was seeing divers enter the shark tank, and visiting the otters. When we first strolled by the otters, they were both sleeping, but when we came back a little later, one of them was up and moving about. The otter became rather interested in his audience, and we all thought we were in for a show as he perched on a ledge nearby. We were all disappointed, yet sadly entertained, as he turned his back on us and proceeded to hop up and down while peeing. The grand finale was a spectacular pile of poo delivered to the childrens' shrieks of "EEW! He just pooed!" Sorry to say, I did not take any pictures of that, but isn't nature exciting?We had a nice picnic lunch outside under an umbrella, then took a short nature walk. We viewed tiny little crabs and a great blue heron out in the marsh. On the way off the island, I took Skylar, Bart, and Drake to the public beach in Atlantic Beach to walk by the water for a few minutes. We didn't stay long. It was cold on the beach and the wind whipping hard enough to knock Drake down occasionally. We did stay long enough collect some nice shells and for Drake to get sand all over his face and in his eyes. He was totally exhausted and had a meltdown when I finally had to separate him from the sand and buckle him back into the car. I think he stayed awake a total of three minutes and woke back up as we were getting back to New Bern.

Tuesday evening, while I was at my cake class, Bart finally took the training wheels off his bike and rode it successfully. He had tried last summer, but didn't feel ready yet. Well, this time he was ready. He's quite good at it, and can go really, really fast. But he has an annoying and painful habit of running into people (yesterday, he ran into me three times, Skylar twice, and Drake once). He rides virtually without any fear. Tonight, he was showing off his riding skills for my mom when George commandeered his bike and took off around the cul-de-sac on it. One of our neighbors seemed a little startled to see a large man on a little bike riding by his house, and I could hardly blame him.

While Bart was learning how to ride "like a big boy" on Tuesday evening, I was at my last cake class for the session. I created a ten-inch double layer cake with roses on top. It was quite tricky. The roses are harder to make than they look, and icing gets everywhere. I attempted to make a nice, peach-colored icing for my roses, but it ended up turning out Halloween orange. With the green stems and words added to the orange roses, it really did look like a Halloween cake. Apparently, mixing icing colors is something I need more practice at. I made a rainbow cake during my second class and decided to pipe the words "Young Women" on it and take it to the Young Women activity the following Wednesday. The girls really seemed to like it, and it was nice not having the entire cake lying around at home, just begging to be eaten.