Destin, Florida...Memorial Weekend...w00t!

So the Georgia Psychological Association was holding its annual conference this past weekend. Sounds boring, right? Well, they always choose to host it out of state, either somewhere like Hilton Head, SC. this year it as at the Sandestin Resort in Destin, Florida! 2400 acres of beach and bay-filled, tram transporting, free rental fun! (And it was all tax-deductible too!)

It all started out not very well though. Poor Luke had a bad virus (Kelly had it too but not quite as bad) that knocked him out the first part of the trip. In fact, after we got there Thursday and I got back from the afternoon portion of the conference, he got sick while we were on the beach that evening and was basically out of commission that night, all day Friday, and into Saturday. (Both he and Kelly actually had it before we left, but it just got real bad there.) It was killing us all to see the trip get wasted away. Thankfully for Connor we had Josh along with us - a 14 year old neighbor of ours who has watched the boys before. We brought him along to help us with the boys. It was a Godsend. He and Connor went out bikeriding and stuff on Friday while I was at the conference and Kelly was nursing Luke. By Saturday evening he had perked up, so we tried to cram as much in as we could before we left Monday morning:

• Saturday afternoon after my conference was over, we went shopping and got the boys some boogie boards (Josh already had one) and airbrushed shirts for them all (you gotta get 'em when in Florida don't you? I thought it was the law...). Connor also got his hipster beach boy looking shark tooth necklace too...LOL
  
• Saturday evening, we all went on a boat ride in the gulf dolphin watching. It was great! Though I didn't include any pictures in my Flickr slideshow (hard to catch 'em above water), I got some great video of them! The boys all had a blast (except Mitch, who was a little skiddish on the boat with the waves). Connor, Luke, and Josh all got to take turns piloting the ship. Pretty cool!
  
• When we got back, Kelly and I got to go out for dinner. Just had a nice stroll at the Village (a huge outdoor shopping/dining/barhopping/event watching place built like a wharf as part of the resort), and had a light late dinner and some nice company with one another without the kids.
  
• Sunday we went parasailing! We had to go in pairs, so Josh and Connor went together first, followed by me and Luke. I heard the guy tell us the rope was 600 feet long and raised you 350-400 in the air above the gulf! You could have the choice of getting dipped or not, so of course Josh and Connor got dipped - basically they slow the boat to a crawl as they are reeling you in and at about 30 yards from the boat you splash down into the gulf. They pick speed back up raising you back into the air and then winch you the rest of the way back in. Luke had gotten a little phobic about salt water due to throwing up on Thursday night while playing in the gulf, so we opted for NOT dipped. I took the opportunity, since we were not going to get wet (you take off from the back of the boat and they winch you right back to the boat if you wish), to take the new camcorder up with me! It was awesome to get a birdseye view of the gulf from 400 feet up! It was amazing how serene and quiet it was up there!
  
• Sunday evening Kelly and I got to go out AGAIN - woo-hoo! - this time we went out to dinner at a restaurant on the beach side that looked over the gulf. We ended up getting to eat outside at the very end of a small pier that literally hung out over the beach with a completely unobstructed up close view of the gulf. It was beautiful and the food was great. Afterwards, we didn't want to go back to the condo, so we trammed it back to the Village to just wander around some more, only to find out they were having a huge fireworks display right after we got there. It was the best display I have seen since we lived in Chicago! Just laid on a sea wall looking over the water of the inlet from the bay watching the fireworks and reflection on the water!
  
• Monday morning I took the boys back over to the beach for one last hour of beach play, which is where I got a ton of the pics you see in the Flickr slideshow. I also got some great video of the boys boogie boarding and Mitch trying to belly surf...LOL

In the end, it was a fantastic working vacation that I don't think any of us will soon forget!

I'd post a sample pic here like I usually do, but Blogger ain't letting me tonight for some reason... just check out the Flickr badge in the sidebar or click on the Flickr links in this entry...Also, I have some great video that I will post here as soon as I can get it encoded on the PC and hosted somehow.... it's pretty neat!

Connor's 10th Birthday... Weird Science...

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So Connor had his 10th birthday party on Saturday. And in typical Connor fashion, he didn't want your typical birthday party... not even a typical theme party for a 10 year old. He decided he wanted a SCIENCE PARTY!

So Kelly, in her way, worked feverishly for weeks developing the whole thing. I was just the flunky that helped run the thing when we had it. She got cheap little child sized lab coats off EBay, made a couple of coats for the two of us, and then went to work on coming up with the "experiments" for the party. On the day of the party, we had a main lab table set up and 5 tables for the kids. Of course Kelly was the lab instructor and the kids had to partner up with a lab partner for the day. Over the course of the day, she walked these kids through experiments demonstrating engineering, physics, biology, and chemistry. Some of the things she kids did were:

• Build towers out of marshmallows and toothpicks
• Make instant snow
• Make lava lamps
• Make slime
• Construct baking soda bombs
• Demonstrate motion vs. at-rest motion with eggs
• Demonstrate a Coca-Cola/Mentos geyser
• She had also done cultures of spit, the thumbsticks of my 360 controller and the TV remote, and toes... but we didn't have time to get to those...LOL

My (and I think the kids') favorites were the Coke/Mentos geyser and the instant snow... one small ziploc bag of that stuff will make 8 gallons of snow!

On the cake, it had scientific notation all over it but was left kinda left plain on top, so we put a couple of test tubes up there, and a glass that looked like a beaker. We filled it with water and green food coloring, then filled it up with dry ice... so it did that whole "boiling cauldron", with smoke just billowing out over the top and sides of the cake. Unfortunately the pictures don't show it that well, but it was a big hit!

And Connor's favorite present from the whole day? A college-lab-quality microscope from mom and dad.... like I said.. not your typical little 10 year old...LOL

Anyway, enjoy the pictures on my Flickr account. Just click on the Flickr badge thing on my side bar to the right....