Spring Break

We spent most of Spring Break week down in North Carolina at the Outer Banks. We had a great time sharing a beach house with Ben's family. The kids enjoyed riding bikes, drawing with sidewalk chalk, going on picnics, playing UNO, watching movies, being with their aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa Burton, and of course playing at the beach. It was a great trip.


For the last few days of Spring Break we headed up to Williamsburg, VA and played Friday and Saturday at Busch-Gardens. Maddie was so excited to be tall enough this year to ride Apollo's Chariot, which is an awesome roller coaster that you can see as you drive up to the park and she has asked us each year since she was four if she was tall enough to ride it.

Andrew has told me a few times that he can't wait until his birthday, because I told him you have to be six to be tall enough to ride the Loch Ness Monster, which is the ride he can't wait to ride. Andrew also enjoyed making many new friends at the park. This, however, drove me crazy. He would climb under the barrier bars in the lines and find kids his size and say, "Hi! My name is Andrew. What's your name?" Then he'd want to know where they lived. One of the little girls he met lived in North Carolina. Andrew said, "Oh. I live in Virginia. Do you want to come to my state for a play date?" The strangest thing I heard him say was to a family that was walking fairly close to where we were walking. He ran up to this family, standing uncomfortably close to a girl that was probably eight or nine, and took the girls arm, which startled her. Andrew then said, "I can't WAIT for my parents to get abducted by aliens. Then I will get in my space ship and fly to outerspace and save them!" Then he walked nonchalantly back to me. The family kind of looked him, looked at each other, looked at me, smiled and kept walking.

Zack had a lot of fun at Busch Gardens. He loved riding the rides also, and was very sad when we left to come home. He and Mylie loved the kiddie rides, the log flume ride, and riding with their dad on a few things. As a huge Dora the Explorer fan, he was very excited when his Dad handed him his own map to look at.



One of Maddie's favorite rides at Busch-Gardens is called Escape from Pompei. She and Andrew are both tall enough to ride it with out an adult. We usually pass this ride on our way out of the park. Zack and Mylie are still to short to ride it, so as we were nearing the ride (which never has much of a line) we told Maddie and Andrew it was ok for them to quickly go ride it and that we would be waiting for them. They were excited and hurried off. Ben and I sat down on a bench to wait and Zack and Mylie were in their stroller. After about fifteen minutes we started to worry about why the kids had not exited the ride. Ben went to the ride exit to see what was going on. Still no sign of our kids. On Escape from Pompei they take a picture of the boat as it goes down the big drop. Ben asked the kid working at the picture stand to scroll through the pictures for the past twenty minutes of the ride's operation. Our kids were not on any of these pictures. Ben had security called and I started pushing the stroller in the direction our kids had been headed to get on the ride.

Well, I don't get very far when I see the kids heading my direction. They are walking toward me with one of our friends who is the primary president in our ward. Apparently, Andrew told Maddie that Ben and I had actually told them they could go ride the Big, Bad Wolf which was at the entire opposite end of the park from where we all were. Andrew had been grounded from that ride earlier in the day when he decided to ignore one of our rules. I don't know what made Maddie believe him. Anyway, I was very relieved to see them. The deeper they got into the park, the more frightened they became. Andrew decided to say "a prayer in his heart." I think being found by your home ward primary president nearly three hours from your home in the middle of a gigantic theme park is a pretty incredible answer to a five year old's prayer. Thank you, Chris, for wandering the park to return them to us. Maddie and Andrew knew the rule to find a park employee with a name tag on to ask for help if they get lost, which is what they were about to do before they saw our friend.

All in all it was a great week. Yesterday Andrew had his first t-ball practice. He was so excited! He has a couple of friends on the team, so I'm relieved to have some of my friends to visit with during practices and games. When we received the team roster, I told him that there was another Andrew on the team and asked him if he wanted his team to call him another name to make it less confusing. He said that his team could call him David, Benjamin, or Burton because he has four names and only one of them is Andrew. I was thinking more along the lines of them calling him Drew. But, then I suggested they call him Slugger. He told me no, because that wasn't a "tough" name. It was, as he put it, a "wormy" name. I guess he was just envisioning a slug.