FCY Luau

It was Maddie's last night of summer break, and what better way to end it than with a luau!  FCY had a "luau" themed service tonight, so as you could imagine there were Hawaiian shirts, leis, and all kinds of tropical fun to close out the summer.  Maddie had a great time - she invited her friend (also Maddie!), and the two of them joined some of Maddie's taekwondo friends for a fun evening together.  There was a great service as always, and there were games too, and then it was time for a party!  

The message tonight had a scripture that mentioned Lillies, and I'm sure you know the one.  It's just funny that this was a controversial trivia question some time ago, one that Camille missed and wound up losing the game over.  Only... she didn't get it wrong so exactly... I believe she said "Lillies," which is the right answer, and someone said "No, the answer is flowers." The missed answer resulted in a loss of the game, and a reminder to all of us about our online KidPak games:  "It's not fair, it's KidPak!"  The point of this is that Maddie spotted the scripture, and immediately took a photo of it, sending it to Camille (and the group chat) as a joke!

As you might suspect, this caused quite a bit of funny conversation, a lot of teasing, and defiance too!  Maddie is quite mischievous!  I can't remember how long ago the original KidPak game was, but this was a funny recall.

Moving on, her last day of summer break was a nice and easy one, with some relaxing at the house, including some LEGO Star Wars, where she did quite a bit on the second Death Star.  Speaking of which, we finished out that story of the Y-Wing pilot tonight, the one who helped destroy that very Death Star.  I'll have to let her know I read further and discovered this same pilot survived.  We'll watch the movie again soon enough, as it has been our tradition after reading these books to watch the movies they're associated with.  Looking forward to that, actually!

We had an interesting conversation today about the use of "..." in texts, and apparently it is a sarcastic thing, or a "uh-oh, there's more coming that you may not like."  Therefore, if you see that from this point on, let's just say there's more.  It's not trouble, but there's more.  But in all our texts today, it was a funny conversation:

Okay, so tonight we were watching more Olympics, and while the men's team weren't doing as well as they could, we did enjoy watching some swimming medals - especially one from another legend in the pool, Katie Ledecky.  The French star has been great to watch as well, and great for the French people to cheer for.  But we also saw some water polo action, and the replay of the US Women's Rugby team and their remarkable come-from-behind victory.  Wow, that was a stunner!

We went to bed early tonight though, because guess what?  Summer break is over.  Maddie's senior year starts tomorrow, and it starts with a senior sunrise!

Gymnastics Watch Party

This was quite a night.  The end of the "Redemption Tour" for our US Olympics Girls team, you can see Buc-ee, Stevacado, and Ajax cheering on the Americans as they did their various routines in front of the entire world.  No pressure!  But wow, this wasn't a nail biter in the slightest.  The girls did so well, and of course at the end they were up there for the National Anthem in triumph.  It was epic!

Speaking of epic, we had a really violent wind and storm system sweep downward from the north.  It was huge.  We sat there looking out the doorway out the back porch, and our poor trees out there... they're so ginormous some of them, and yet they were blown to and fro as if they were just pieces of seaweed caught in massive shifting currents.  The scale of it all was immense, and somewhat scary.  Always glad when those storms pass by.  Lots of people lost power tonight, and driving afterwards, you could see debris and large braches littered all over the ground.  People's yards in our neighborhood are covered in leaves that got knocked down.

This is Gold Nine.  You don't know about Gold Nine, unless you're a geek.  And now we in our household know who Gold Nine is, one of the heroes of the Battle of Endor.  We read about her in our short story tonight, not so much about her exploits in battle but rather about her playing sabacc with Lando Calrissian, Wedge Antilles, and Wes Janson.  Reading the story, we didn't know who she was or if she'd survive the battle, but in fact she does, and that's good.  She has a son back on some other planet, and that would be nice to go see him again.

Anyway, that's our short story for the night.  We've got a ways to go before we finish these up, but you can tell we're approaching the end of the trilogy.  Some of these stories have been good - like the one we're reading now - and others have been meh.  But it's been fun reading.

Tonight we read, and then we said a quick prayer.  Time to get acclimated to going to bed early - school is approaching fast.

Nostalgia

It's the last week of Summer Break, and we were definitely chilling here.  I suppose chilling even more, given that we played a few more levels of "Tropical Freeze."  This thematic thing continued, our Donkey Kong adventures now taking us to Donkey Kong Island, which is officially frozen over.  We really did well with the "frozen in summer" theme, certainly even last week on vacation with our Christmas in July break, complete with snow tubing.  It was a quiet day today though.  We're getting back on track with certain good habits, including the treadmill, which I'm on about 40 minutes a day.  Today's path had me running in Maui with an Olympic champion.  I miss Maui!

We were running down a beach that I remember walking down 24 years ago, the quiet side of Maui where the waves lap up peacefully on the shoreline, rowers glide by in their boats, and Lana'i and Molokini further off across the waters.  The view of Mauna Kahālāwai, the West Maui Mountains, will always stay with me, so seeing this right away brought a surge of nostalgia.

Okay, there she is, Nostalgia!  Yeah, I was feeling it during the workout this morning.  Anyway, speaking of the ocean, this picture just came from Tahiti at the Olympics, and it's so awesome:

A Brazilian surfer celebrating his accomplishment, and the photo is timed just right with him in the air.  One of the greatest surfing pictures of all time!  Oh, and speaking of great, the US Men's Gymnastics program had a great team event, super fun to watch.  We were pretty tense beforehand, particularly for the guy from our home state of Georgia.  But we were there cheering for him and the others, and how great it was to see them come away with a medal.  

Another iconic sport matchup was watching two tennis legends go up against each other, Nadal and Djokovic.  Nana and Ba-Ba would watch tennis all the time, particularly these two tennis stars.  This might have been the last time they play each other, so all eyes were on this match, and although it started out pretty one-sided, Nadal made a little bit of a game of it later on.  Too little too late, but it was tennis history, and yes, again a bit of nostalgia.

Okay, stoppit!  Anyway, it was a quiet day today.  Maddie didn't go to taekwondo tonight, as it was a testing night and she was just not really feeling that with all the other events going on.  That's okay - it's not a race to get to the next belt, but rather a journey.  So instead of heading over to taekwondo, I was actually doing some grocery shopping, which took a good bit of time since it's been a while since we refilled the pantry.  Plus, there's school upcoming, so lots of lunches to pack!

We closed out the day today with reading and prayers.  It was a good day, a quiet day.  Summer Break is wrapping up, and school is on the way.

Let the Games Begin

 

We had a great service this morning at KidPak.  You can see me wearing my new Forward sweatshirt, which borrows heavily from the Atlanta '96 games logo.  We're in the midst of a game onstage here, an animated Olympic race that Josh created in 2012 during our "Go the Distance" series.  Which was cool.  Let the Games Begin!

It was a relaxing morning, comparatively speaking to others.  The altar service was very strong in the second service.  We made some changes and actually did two different messages between the first one and the second one.  It all worked out.  It was a great morning, and of course it took up a good bit of our day.  We're in a new season at KidPak, one where we're revisiting some series that we've done before, and that will be fun, but the new writing will be easier on me.  On top of that, the calendar doesn't make room for a return to our big Grinch production.  One one hand, it seems there's always something stopping these plays from returning ("Holly" was stopped by the pandemic), just when there's so much positive reception.  On the other hand, a quieter Christmas season might be really appreciated.  I'm sure there'll be something else popping up to keep us busy, but not that busy, with all the play practices and costuming and music and writing and line memorization and lighting and stage direction and choreography and ... well, you get the idea.

So we got home and the rest of the day was super chill.  I say super chill when I bring up "Tropical Freeze," which still features Maddie and I marching forward from island to island, on our way to Donkey Kong Island.  It's a pretty amazing platforming game, super creative.  

And yeah, we were watching the Olympic Games too.  That'll be our habit the next few weeks, including the Paralympic Games, which we can enjoy watching now thanks to our streaming service.  But today we were watching gymnastics and swimming and fencing too!

Yes, the All-American final for fencing was pretty cool.  We watched the matches that led up to this too, and one of the great things about these events is learning about the sports themselves.  That said, I'm determined to watch a rugby game and a handball game too - I have no idea what those rules are, pretty much.  I mean, I get the general idea, but watching obscure sports is a tradition every four years.

We closed out our day quietly, with reading and with prayer.  It was a good Sunday though, the last before the school year starts.  Senior Sunrise is coming soon, and you'll see that on these pages soon enough.  Until then, it's time for some sleep!

Slow News Day

Slow news day!  We were at Team Edge practice this morning, and I was off to the races with the next KidPak service, plus doing quite a bit of clean-up and maintenance.  Maddie is feeling her feet now on her flips, getting further and more confident, so that's good.  It seems as if there's a good bit of gymnastics to learn for the newer routines.

And speaking of gymnastics, we were watching a good bit of the Olympics throughout the day.  Okay, a lot of the games.  Yesterday's less-than-stellar - and in some cases awful - Opening Ceremonies won't stop us from watching some of our favorite events, and those obscure ones too.  Throughout the day we watched a judo final, and then about a half hour of surfing.  We saw some cycling through Paris, and then a beach volleyball match.  One of Maddie's favorite sports is the synchronized diving, where we saw the Chinese win gold and a couple Americans win silver.  I even watched a bit of a shooting final with these rifles that looked like something from a James Bond movie.  The taekwondo events must start a little later, because we didn't get to see any of those yet.  But prime time tonight was fun to watch, and a sign of things to come the next few weeks - we're big into the the Games, cheering on Americans or anyone else with that small town story of grit and determination.  There's a guy from North Georgia on the gymnastics team with such a moving backstory - we're certainly routing for him.

It was raining a lot today, and apparently it rained quite a bit in Pigeon Forge after we left.  We saw quite a few images of Dollywood with water racing through the middle of it, plus the usual pictures of the rivers raging through town.  They closed the road through Smoky Mountain National Park, so yeah, we got out of there just in time.  The rain here wasn't quite as destructive, but there was a lot of it today.  That's not too bad of a thing.

That squirrel is testing our patience.  We're okay with them being there, but when they start the acrobatics, it becomes a nuisance.  This one is trying out for the US Gymnastics team, leaping and flipping over to bird feeders, and of course eating everything in them and knocking them down.  It might be time to add another sticker to the squirrel trap.

We did do some Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze today, slowly inching towards Donkey Kong Island, which is frozen over.  You can see the beginnings of the freezing on the island we're at now, with things all frozen over.  These levels are occasionally super challenging and frustrating, but we put the game down when we reach that moment of frustration, and then we come back to it later.  The artwork and creativity in these games is just beautiful though, and we're enjoying it a lot.  It's a love/hate thing some times!

Tomorrow we get up early for church, so after watching the Games a good bit, we went upstairs to read some more.  We finished another Ewok story, and then we said our prayers.  Time for a good night's rest!

All Over

That ended quickly - our small vacation is all over.  We woke up and had ourselves a nice breakfast downstairs, eating omelettes and gluten-free options out on the courtyard area there, and soon enough it was time to get packing.  We had the Christmas music playing the entire time on the television set, with the lights on and feeling festive - but now it was the 26th, almost like the day after Christmas, where everything is all over, and it was time to head home.  Mom expertly packed all our stuff, as Maddie and I lugged it down to the car.  The weather is cooler, and overcast, and we had a easy ride home.  

Our journey was pretty uneventful.  We only stopped once, in fact, back in Cherokee at the McDonald's there.  Maddie got a happy meal and we moved on.  I saw a turkey over the mountain pass in the national park, and we all saw a few elk in the traditional spot, but the big sighting was in Cherokee itself.  It was wild - traffic slowed down to a crawl up ahead, and we had no idea why.  That's when we looked up, and right there on the sheer mountainside along the road were a dozen or more massive elk, feasting on the kudzu.  Some were close enough to touch, and in such an odd location outside the park.  One bad slip, and they'd be in a slowly passing car! 

We got home safely, although that last stretch of the road is quite the motor speedway.  But we did get home, and we even had time to go to taekwondo tonight.  Maddie enjoyed that while I was busy getting a few things done for KidPak on Sunday.  She had a good night, and it's always a surprise when we start the day out in Pigeon Forge and still make time for taekwondo practice.  

Afterwards, we got home just in time to see the Opening Ceremonies of the 2024 Olympic Games.  So... it was weird.  I mean, the idea of the water parade was different.  But then the implementation didn't work.  It kind of felt like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with the occasional stops to promote some new thing on Broadway.  Like... "go see 'Wicked' in theaters!"  Or, now playing:  'Minions!'"  Which just didn't seem as "Olympic."  The flow was all over the place.

Along with Minions (now playing in theaters) there were other pre-recorded things no one else could see but those of us watching on television, like the Assassin's Creed guy/girl carrying the torch through all these pre-recorded places.  What was it like for someone waiting in that stadium at the end, just watching a big television in the rain?  Or that person along the river watching boats go by?  And then the live stuff was intercut rather harshly with the parade of athletes making their way up the river... one cut from the Louvre to the athletes from a "C" country was so harsh we were wondering if there was an editing problem.  Performers were lined up randomly on the river's edge for pretty much only the cameras, and the energy level was pretty low.  And, of course, it was pouring rain.  That didn't help.

Fortunately, the bits at the end came to the rescue, with Celine Dion on the Eiffel Tower (if that was real!), and that other operatic singer performing classic French anthems.  And the cauldron is really impressive.  However, there were plenty of awful things to see too, a sign of this shifting world.  Apparently, inclusion means avoiding common ground to go for the confrontational.  Art is subjective, but it just used to be better.  And you'd think it would be, coming from France.  But instead of beauty, we instead got a good bit of shock-art.  Which is old school.  Shock art like Duchamp's "Fountain" or anything by Serrano is what it was:  a visual statement rather than a thing of beauty.   It's choosing low-hanging fruit over something with much more flavor and nutrition.  Or ... it's like putting in a fart sound effect in a movie when you can't think of anything more creative to do for laughs.  Is art dead?  

All in all, it was just weird, and we couldn't wait for it to be all over.  How much of it did the athletes get to see, anyway?  Hopefully not much.  And hopefully we can return to an actual stadium in four years and not try this again.  

Anyway, we went to bed after reading tonight "From a Certain Point of View," another short story with an Ewok, this one being Logray.  I have all these action figures, because I'm such a geek.  I know Logray, Wicket, Teebo and Chief Chirpa.  I put on my geek pants one leg at a time.  Anyway, it's a decent story.  We didn't read that much tonight though, as we were all kind of tired.  We were struggling to get to that cauldron's lighting tonight - it was three and a half hours.  Someone noted that it didn't take Frodo as long to get to Mt. Doom.  

Sorry.  Complaining again.  The point is, we were tired at the end.  It was a long day, as you might suspect - we started out at the Inn at Christmas Place.  The day is all over, and now, it's time for prayers and a good night's rest!

Christmas in July

We had another pleasant day here at Pigeon Forge, starting this out with a good breakfast of course.  The weather started out rainy today, but we still had some nice outdoor seating under a balcony that allowed us to enjoy the sound of quiet rainfall while we ate a pretty big breakfast. 

After that, we went over to the Disney Store at the outlet mall, which was not on our checklist of places to go to, but Maddie has informed us that high school seniors are now getting kids' backpacks to carry around, a sort of tribute to the years they've been in school, as well as just a fun thing to do.  So Maddie picked up a Spider-man backpack and a Spider-man lunchbox too.  

When we were done, we went over to the Titanic again, as you can see here, but we didn't go to the museum this time.  We actually went to go get some ice cream!

They have this new ice cream shop there with all sorts of other candy items too.  Some of the candies and ice cream are themed to the movie or the actual boat itself.  Mom and I shared a sundae while Maddie had a milkshake concoction that was pretty tasty!

When we were done with that, we went down the street to a new indoor mini-golf location (it's both indoors and outdoors, but we chose the indoor course due to the rain).  We were on the mermaid path, and that was all underwater, mostly.  And it was actually a lot of fun, with plenty of visuals and challenges.  Actually, the challenges were fairly difficult at points, but Mom nailed this one hole versus the Kraken, something we saw many others fail miserable at, including Maddie and I.  Mom persevered, and probably because of that one hole alone, she won the day!

No-Eyed Willy!

Flotsam, Jetsam!  Now I got her, boys!  The boss is on a roll!

Mom defeats the Kraken!

Maddie meets a mermaid!  This was a nice meet, as the mermaid was literally about to leave for a break - a helper came with a wheelchair to assist her elsewhere.

Mom agreed to play the part of mermaid the rest of the day...!

Maddie dons a deep sea diving suit.

Poseidon rose up and sort of pushed back the walls of the course so we could aim better...

Mom celebrates Shark Week with another great shot!

Maddie celebrates Shark Week too...

Keep away from this guy - he likes shiny things!

Here are some pics with Joey in them, one of me too...  I think Joey had a good time too!

So yeah, we had a good time there.  Afterwards, we dropped by the Christmas Place to look around a bit, sitting for a spell and looking at a few ornaments.

And after that, we went back to the hotel because we had an appointment with destiny!  It was time... to make Christmas cookies!  We got down to the Holly Room a little early, so we relaxed there for a bit, and even listened in on the clock again.

And then it was time to make cookies!  We signed up early - about two weeks ago - and they had the materials and cookies ready for us in one of the rooms.  We got busy right away!

This wasn't quite as extensive as the gingerbread house night, but we did spend a good bit of time decorating our cookies, both the gingerbread men and the Christmas trees too.  Here's Mom's:

And here's mine:

And here's Maddie's:

And because I love the faces, here's a close-up of Maddie's:

And here's the one Mom did again:

And here's the one I did:

It was fun!  We got back to the room, and the next thing Maddie and I did was head down to the pool.  We spent about an hour swimming, and a little bit of time in the jacuzzi too.  We returned, got showered, and got n a few rounds of a new game called "The Christmas Express." 

You can get board games from the front desk, so we picked this one up and played it twice - Maddie won once, and I won the second time with a come-from-behind victory.  We actually enjoyed this one a good bit.
 

This is the view from our room's balcony.  You can see Maddie over at the overlook area, one of our favorite little nooks with rocking chairs and a nice view.  We spent some time there, rocking and hanging out before getting ready to see Santa.

Ah, here we are in the Holly room again, adn oops:  we got there early.  No worries.  We just sat and talked and hung out until the big moment that you-know-who arrived...

Look at the kids turn to see as he first enters the room!

This is a nice night.  Santa sings for about 45 minutes or so, different requests and a few standards like "Christmas in Dixie."  

Afterwards, we got milk and cookies from Mrs. Claus!  We went out to the fire pit to relax, and the weather was just perfect tonight.

It was a nice night.  We got back in the room, and Mom made us all some hot chocolate because we borrowed another movie from the front desk:  "The Polar Express."  That was the movie we watched tonight, one of our favorites!  We picked it because the corner of our hallway has a Polar Express display that we pass by each time we leave the room.  Also, why not?  Anyway, it was nice watching that a little early in the room, the Christmas tree glowing and it being the 25th.  It was a nice night.  Just five months to go!

We closed out the day with reading and prayers... and to all a good night!