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 ... Invisalign, colder, Wreck-it Ralph, cruise "research," sunny but cool day, updates coming soon...

President's Day

This morning we slept in a little - a little - but were soon up for our daily chores, which include the treadmill (where I'm in the midst of 22 hours of study of the book of Revelation - yes, some "heavy Revy").  We're keeping those birds well fed out there with lots of seeds, and that back porch is just packed with birds of a feather, all swooping in for a quick eat.  I think they now there's another cold snap coming this way soon.  I also fed the sea monkeys, who are still swimming around.  Again, this is all from that one egg pouch about two years ago, so things are going just swimmingly in there.  We have one big sea monkey, and right now about six tiny ones that will hopefully grow to be big ones themselves.  

We did have an appointment late this morning at the chiropractor.  That was a fun visit.  We sat talking with Doc Williams a good bit about some of our past history there, particularly some fun stories he had to share about the old building he was at, and some new clients too - just some fun stories.  We had a good laugh as we all got our adjustments.  Afterwards, we were on our way over to Texas Roadhouse, as Mom had a gift card ready for our visit there.  It was a really nice meal!  We sat literally in the same booth as we did last time, and had a great meal with the rolls, the steak, and all the other items as well.  It was delicious, and the atmosphere was nice.  The service was really good there.

The temperature is on the chilly side outside.  We went home and got a few chores done, writing a few things and Maddie has gotten her room largely clean.  We'll see how long that lasts!  She and I were playing LEGO Pirates again for some reason - we were just feeling the nostalgia, I think!  But it was fun!  We had a good time playing a few levels of that, and I suspect we'll be revisiting that a good bit now as we  sail forward to get 100%.  I suspect those five "Pirates" movies are next too, if only because of the upcoming cruise we'll be going on.  Got to be well-versed in our Pirates mythology!  

Along those lines, we did see "Tangled" tonight, just because that's one of the main restaurants on the upcoming cruise.  It's a "Tangled" theme, and we're really looking forward to it.  But before we watched that movie, we did have some taekwondo to do.  Maddie was working on her form a good bit tonight, as there is a testing upcoming.  Not too many of those left before her new belt at the end of the year.  In the meantime, there's a competition coming up in March, one that we're looking into hotels for.

Maddie's started a new puzzle, a "Lion King" themed one, a version of the Disney story painted by Thomas Kinkade.  We've done a few of these puzzles in the past, most recently a "Mulan" theme.  This painting, oddly enough, is actually hanging inside the office of the chiropractor we saw today!

We closed the day out with reading about the evil elves that are wanting to make their way into the Discworld, and of course Esme and Nanny's plans to stop them.  We'll see how that goes as we continue the story, but it's been good to read.  Also it's been fun to see the wizards arrive from Ankh-Morpork.  We'll see how they fit into this story, but I suspect they'll be needed when the elves really make their play.  I don't actually remember the end of this story, even though I read it some time ago - so it'll be fun to find out what happens next!

Okay, time for bed.  And prayers.  It's been a good day off, a Presidents Day where we did a few things - but we're certainly well-rested and ready for sleep.  Goodnight!

Combo Attack!

 

Look!  It's a Combo Attack!  It's a fast-food combo attack, at least.  We had a fun skit today, one with a lot of food puns in it.  I was at a loss as what to do this series with skits, and then the month itself sort of presented things - Groundhog Day and the Super Bowl.  And rather than dive into Valentine's Day this weekend, we embraced all these food costumes that we had and did an odd thing:  tell the story of the Good Samaritan... with food!

It was a really fun morning at KidPak, and we were all pretty tired afterwards.  The reason for this was a very loud storm that came to visit at about 4:30 to 5:30am or so.  We all were up with nature's alarm clock there - it was an impressive storm.  We saw one tree covering a road in our neighborhood, blocking those who lived there from going anywhere until it was cut away.

We got home, and the rest of the day was rest.  Maddie finished the Valentine's Day puzzle already - Mom and I were working on it here and there, but Maddie was working on that one pretty hard this weekend, and it looks nice:

I was so happy to hear that "the Beast" was back on the Daytona 500 track again this year.  What a thrill to see some of that at the race.  Maddie and I were on this track a few years ago, and it would be great to go back to see a race on it.  But for now, seeing the parade of racers led by "the Beast" is pretty cool.

Air Force One did a low fly-over right there over the track, and then later on, the Presidential Limo did two laps with all the racers behind him as Air Force jets flew over head and patriotic music swelled.  Pretty awesome stuff!

In the spirit of things, we watched the movie "Cars" again.  I love this movie, and sure enough, this might lead to a small "Cars-a-thon," although that might just be for me.  Those are some of my favorite characters, the ones from Radiator Springs.  We were briefly wondering what "the Beast" would look like if it were turned into a "Cars" character.  I looked it up and couldn't find any examples, but I did find someone who made every President into a "Cars" character, including the current President.

The whole Presidential series is pretty cool, actually!  Anyway, it was a good day today.  We closed it out with prayer and with some reading.  Get to sleep in a bit tomorrow!

Cooking Brains

Mom's cooking brains!  Okay, not really - this is a hung of macaroni pasta that she's preparing today for lunch.  Mom spent a good deal of the day cooking - it's her "cooking day" as she likes to say, where she's making the broth for a chicken soup, preparing meat for tacos and spaghetti, getting the pasta made for a nice snack meal at lunch, amongst many other entries.  

Maddie completed the LEGO hedgehogs for Mom, and they look pretty good together!  Mom said she'd like to have them with he Valentine's Day decorations from this point on, so we'll pack them up after this and bring them out from year to year.  

Look at all this stuff!  This is our Valentine's Day stuff - candy, gifts, cards and decorations.  We've been munching on those conversation hearts relentlessly.  Maddie's already been enjoying the Spider-man coffee, and we're enjoying the other Valentine's Day themed coffee as well.

It was a nice day today, starting out with a walk on the treadmill while still studying the book of Revelation.  Having completed the 8-hour series on VHS, I'm not on the 14-hour series, so yeah, that's quite a deep dive into the book of Revelation.  Related, perhaps, is the news that our current Pope is ailing.  He's been leading the Catholic Church since 2015.  Of course, we're not a part of the Catholic Church.  But the process of choosing a new Pope for that church is somewhat fascinating, and in fact Mom and I just watched a movie with that theme to it.  And here we are, weeks later, and there might be a process with that.  

I think I've been alive during four or five Popes total?  John Paul II was a monumental figure for so many years, and that's the guy I think of.  Benedict was an older conservative guy that followed, and now we have the South American one, who seems to have rankled conservatives.  Much is made of this church, and certainly the money and power behind it.  And the criminal cover-ups.  Of course, where there is humanity there is failure and sin.  We were Catholics, Mom and I, and we know Catholics who are very good people that believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  That being said, we know there is still good within that empire.  There's also a comfort in the services, the tradition and the candles and the stately buildings with such history.  Sometimes at Christmas I miss the visuals and echoing choirs, but I don't miss the predictable oaths and chants and repetition so much.  

Anyway, having spent so much time in Revelation, it is presented as a strong possibility that a future Pope would play a part in the end times, and that's interesting each time a new one is elected.  And again, the process of the election itself is interesting too. Maddie said it sounds a little "culty" when I described it, but I get the need for secrecy in the process at least.  Anyway, the current Pope seems to be prepping others for his passing, so here we are speculating.  It'll be interesting.

Maddie did have her Team Edge practice today, and that went well with everyone working on forms and pairing off with weapons and so forth.  Mom and I have reservations for a quick trip up to Pigeon Forge soon, using our Dollywood season passes again for the "I Will Always Love You" festival.  We were doing a bit of research on those themed shows and the food there for that festival, although Maddie will probably want the street tacos they serve there.  She loves those.

We've been working on this new Valentine's hedgehog puzzle today, and also I've continued my Psalms work, getting another one of the 150 Psalms to music.  It's a slow process - it's a lot of Psalms.  But I've got a good many of them set to music now, and it's a fun hobby, and also a great way of helping me memorize some of these.  Every time lines from a Psalm come up in a sermon or a message or a book, I'm sort of remembering the way they are sung now, which is fun.

We had our Valentine's Day Factor meals tonight, and that was really good, along with some cheesecake too.  Tonight's movie was "The Greatest Showman," which we hadn't seen in a while.  And now we're singing all those songs all over again!  Great movie though.  We watched it because we're going to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in a week, so happy to have that back on tour.  I can't wait to see the circus again.  Something so nostalgic about it.  I can't wait to get a program.  I remember going to see this same circus at Madison Square Garden growing up, and I got all the programs back then, and I still have them.  Tonight I was flipping through the old books, seeing pictures of all the performers as they did marvelous things.

Oh, another thing we saw tonight:  the hockey game.  We watched the USA vs. Canada ice hockey game tonight, and it was a thriller.  Tensions were super high, but USA came out on top at the end, this despite the crowd actually booing our national anthem.  I expect when the Canadian anthem is played in Boston next week we'll hear a similar booing.  At least we silenced those boos a bit tonight by winning the game.  

And that was it for the day.  Maddie's been working on cleaning up her room, and we did our usual reading tonight where Esme is doing her best to keep everyone away from the Dancers, the stones up there in Lacre that you're supposed to stay away from.  Nevertheless, I suspect those evil elves are coming, and we'll see what comes next as we continue reading.  

We said our prayers after this, and soon it was time for some rest.  Tomorrow is church, and it'll be another great day.

Valentine's Day at the Aquarium

For Valentine's Day this year, we decided to do something a little different, especially because Maddie had the day off of school.  We decided to head to the Georgia Aquarium!

This morning we gave each other a few things for Valentine's Day - I got this bouquet from a florist (versus a grocery store).  It was a nice arrangement!

And here you can see the full array of items we got each other for Valentine's Day.  It was almost like Christmas!  I love the tablecloth with hearts on it, by the way.  

Mom got me one of those cat clocks that you can see in "Back to the Future," the kind that has eyes that go back and forth.  

Meanwhile, Maddie got a few Spider-man items, like this t-shirt, some Spider-man themed coffee, and that Funko Pop Spider-man holding a camera, a gift from Mary Jane.

Maddie got Mom some flowers too, plus a card!  I got Mom hedgehog-themed items:  a card, a hedgehog LEGO set, a microwavable plus hedgehog, and a hedgehog Valentine's puzzle.

Oh, and speaking of which, we finished our Valentine's Day puzzle that we started about a week ago.  We've now finished this one about three times, but we like it.  I got Mom a few other things:  Crunchie bars and a Laurel and Hardy collection on DVD.

We did have to register a time to arrive at the aquarium, so we were off later this morning to head down to Atlanta.  It wasn't too crowded on the way down, but oy!  The $25 fee for parking at the Georgia Aquarium is pretty hefty.  We have a season pass this year, which implies multiple visits, and I think they'll get their money back just getting us to park there.  On top of that, the food is pretty pricy too - it was $54 for a cheeseburger, chicken tenders, fries for three of us and three drinks.  And unlike the other recent aquarium visits, this place was absolutely packed.  It was bonkers.  It was so crowded there, and yet despite that, we still had ourselves a great time.  It wasn't as pleasant and relaxing as other aquarium visits because of the crowds, but it was still an enjoyable day.  We managed to find openings at the right time to move forward and see everything we wanted to see, and we did get our reservations for the two shows there, "Destination:  Dolphin" and the sea lion presentation.  And one thing that really helped take our feet off the gas pedal was knowing we had season tickets and that we could come back to see whatever we didn't see this time.

So, all that said, let's see some pictures!

Here's our first visit, the gators and one in particular, an albino gator.  These are specially bred, and cannot live in the wild.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I mean, this thing has no camouflage, obviously, but more importantly, it cannot bask in the sun as other gators do.  So it's an odd thing to breed a gator specifically for captivity like this.  Its appearance is striking though, and oddly appropriate for Valentine's Day with white and pink coloring.  Maddie wore her Alligator Loki shirt today, but I'm not sure if any of the gators noticed.

From here we went on to the electric eel tank, where Maddie and I were playing a practical joke on each other.  I started it, having her put her hand on a place where I told her a sign instructed people to place their hands in order to feel "a small electric jolt."  After a moment or two, I gave her a jump scare, and of course she jumped, and of course, from that point on, each time we passed that tank, Maddie had to return the favor!

So this is a shot of Mom on the other side of a tank.  Maddie and I were inside these little pop-up windows inside a larger tank, looking out at Mom who was with all the parents.  I was with the kids - and Maddie - climbing around having fun in there.  

Ah, and here's the jellyfish tank, always a nice calming tank, almost like a screensaver designed to get you to relax!

This eel seems to want us to move on, nothing to see here.  What?  I didn't do anything!  Nothing wrong here, everything's completely normal.  Nice to see you, okay bye!

Mom and Maddie at the big reef tank.  This place was swarming with fish - and people.  But we found a nice spot to sit and watch the colorful fish for a while.

Look at this little guy.  Such an odd posture to spend most of your life in.  He's like a puppet coming out from the ground, waiting for a few other puppets to also rise so they can start singing together.  I think this needs to happen.  Maybe later on we can get that to happen.

Then it was time for the big show!  I'm talking about the main tank, the one that this aquarium is known for.  To begin with, you go through the glass tunnel and look all around you at fish and sharks and turtles, riding on a small conveyer belt to the next area.  Always awesome looking upwards.

And then it was time to go to the big tank area, and that's basically a movie theater with a huge window so you can watch countless schools of fish and other sea creatures gracefully gliding by.  It's one of the most relaxing things, at least for me.  The place was again pretty packed, but we found a seat and just sat there watching for a while.  At one point we were able to scoot right up to the glass as a spot presented itself.  It was a nice few minutes watching the whale sharks and other fish drift about, along with this massive - and I mean massive - manta ray.

A sea turtle decided to swim down and stop right there in front of Maddie, which was pretty cool.  She got out her camera to take a few pictures of that!

I forgot to mention that about half of these pictures are from Maddie's phone camera and there are half from my phone camera too.  Next time we'll bring an actual camera, I think.  But I'm glad we didn't this time, as there were just so many people.  Again, it was still a great visit.  I love this shot that Maddie took below, where the ginormous whale shark is seen driving by in the back, illuminated from above.

This just gives you an idea of the size of the tank.  And you can see the crowds as well.  Multiply that by a lot, and you'll get the idea of how many people were in that room alone.

But still, we had lots of places where we could sit and just enjoy what we came here to see, all the wonders of God's creation.  So much wonder too!

Ah, the ol' "touch a sturgeon" thing.  This tank is deeper than the one in Chattanooga, and therefore you'd have to reach half your arm in the cold water there to actually make contact.  I told Maddie that she might as well just jump in, but she strangely wasn't up for that.

This is a tradition for me.  I see a bust like this, and we have to give it arms!  Maddie joined in the fun too.  We had a little time just before the dolphin show, so we got some food from the cafeteria there, which was a very lengthy experience.  The food was delivered quickly, but the line was immense.  Mom got us a table, and we were able to sit down, but some families were sitting on the floor - that's how many people were there today.  The food was so-so, particularly considering how much it costs, so we'll probably have a different game plan next time.  But we did get something to eat, and were ready for the final parts of the day after that.

Next it was time for the dolphin show, "Destination Dolphin."  We opted to not sit in the splash zone this time.  Mom was with us, and honestly, we got so amazingly wet last time that it was really not an option.  I mean, we were soaked the last time we were in this room!

As for the show, it was different of course, more of a documentary than a weird musical adventure.  But it was fun!  It started out really slow for the first 10-15 minutes, but soon enough there were five dolphins out there doing all sorts of spectacular leaps, and of course we got to see the front rows just get hammered with tsunamis of water!

After this, we went over to the new shark tank, a new exhibit that none of us have seen before.  It is basically a large aquarium tank with view points all around, so you can see all these people on the other side as you look in - a surreal sort of thing with some photographs, because it looks like a shark is just swimming by this family that's standing there watching him go by. 

As for the exhibit itself, the collection of sharks was really cool.  The hammerheads were impressive, and there were some really large sharks in that tank!  We spent a few minutes in there, gawking at all the sharks.  Might be a good place to come back to during Shark Week!

Right next door is the Sea Lion show, which seems rather cruel if you think about it.  Cruel for the sea lions, right?  Anyway, we got in line there, and Maddie played a video game while we waited a few moments, one where she steered a sea lion along through a tight passage, avoiding orcas and landmines.  Okay, I don't think there were any land mines.  

We got in early and therefore got some decent seats for the show, avoiding the splash zone, although that one is not as soaked as the dolphin show.  Not intentionally so, anyway.  I love this little stage area they have.

The show itself was fun, with two sea lions entertaining all of us, and of course we're learning a lot about sea lions along the way too.  We enjoyed it - this was the first time we'd seen this show.

And so, we went through the super crowded gift shop, looked around for a bit, and fond ourselves outside.  It's cool out there, but sunny and not rainy like yesterday (or tomorrow).  In fact, Maddie posed for a few shots outside in the park.

We had a great day together!  We got home after dealing with a little bit of traffic, although not as much as some days.  But we were a little tired, and sort of took a quick nap at the house.  The phone rang, and we spoke with Uncle George a little bit, and then got on with the next part of our evening together.

I had surprised Mom with her favorite strawberry shortcake, and I gave it to her on the couch while setting up a towel, a bowl and some scented soap.  For Valentine's Day, I washed her feet right there at the couch as she got to eat some of her favorite dessert.  And as I did, I read Proverbs 31:10-31, which describes Mom so very well.

Tonight's Valentine's Day movie?  "Ella Enchanted"!  This was a surprise pick, one I just brought up and everyone was all on board with.  We hadn't seen it in quite some time, so this was a nice place to revisit, and a fun movie!

We read tonight, and we prayed, to close things out.  We ate way too many sweets - those conversation hearts are so addictive!  In fact, here's a little song about them as we close out a really nice Valentine's Day.