Arrrrrgh! & Ahoy!

Mikie finished The Magic Tree House book #4 Pirates Past Noon back in May; however, due to our numerous travels and uncooperative weather the "field trip" for this one was postponed until we returned from Disney (I finally fixed that post so you have my permission to go back and look at it now :) .

Now, the field trip to Medieval Times was still my favorite teaching opportunity, but this one was a very close second. In the Baltimore Harbor, only a few hours from our house, we set sail on a pirate adventure cruise where the boys followed a map to find the buried treasure. Mikie with his pirate book

The "crew"

My pirates on a very hot afternoon.

Long John Silvers would be so proud!

Video of "ALL HANDS ON DECK:"

Mikie checks the map and our research guide book for the hidden "X"

My child intently telling one of the pirates which page he can find the map on in his book.

Let the cannon fight commence.

Video of cannon fight:

Zachary is copying Daddy trying to look for the treasure.

There it is! (see the x marks the spot?)

Time to pull the treasure up from the water.

Using the keys that we got back from the pirate thief during the water cannon battle. Each child got to dig a handful of treasure out of the chest.

Zachary was quite happy with the rings from his handful of treasure.

There was one more treasure to find: Pirate Pete's Grog (cherry coke)

Time for some fun and games: limbo!

We all had a great time and got to see all the parts of the ship listed in our book. When we got home, Mikie wanted to have his own treasure hunt around the house.

Book #5 Night Of The Ninjas Our field trip after Mikie completed this book was so much of a bust that I didn't even take any pictures of it. I looked on line and found a martial arts competition that was in the Annapolis/Baltimore area so I assumed it would be well organized and highly competitive so Mikie could see a lot of the weapons that are used. I was very wrong! We were in the area the night before for a retirement ceremony anyway, so we just spent the night with Michael's Aunt and Uncle and got up the next morning to drive to the competition. When we arrived at 10:00 am, according to the schedule they were suppose to be 30 minutes into the program with the weapons portion coming up. Well..........they were running late....very late....as in almost 2 hours late! So we walked to a nearby waterfront park and killed some time looking at ducks on the water until we headed back inside and watched about 10 minutes of the performances. We did get to see a competitor practicing in the hallway we were watching from (because I was NOT going to pay $20 a person to watch 15 minutes of this thing before having to leave for lunch and nap time). When the high school aged boy took a break from twirling and tossing his weapons, we asked for his autograph and then left. I wish I would have gotten his picture too. Oh well, it was my least favorite MTH book anyway!

I fixed it now....Disneyland Part 2

Ok I FIXED IT! You have permission to read it now. Only....don't look at all the spelling mistakes. I think the reason it got all messed up last time was when I was spell checking it so I'm just leaving all my errors on here.

Disneyland Part 2

The very first time I went to Disneyland was when I was 10 years old. I don't remember many of the rides or attractions, but I do remember having breakfast and meeting Daisy Duck and Minnie Mouse. I knew that we would see some of the characters in the park, but wanted to give my boys the same fun memories I had during breakfast. So, we started our second day at Disney in Goofy's Kitchen where once again, when I look back at our trip, this will be the one moment that I remember the most.

Mikie meets Chip n' Dale:

Dale was so funny. He came over to Zachary and placed a napkin in his lap (which he didn't like) and then handed him his fork (which Zach took with an unsure glance).

Mikie informs Chip that we still haven't found Donald Duck or Daisy to have them sign our book in this video:

The boys and Baloo (Jungle Book)

Meeting Wendy from Peter Pan will always be my favorite Disneyland memory with Mikie. She was so facinated by what Mikie was writing on the tablecloth. Can you guess what it may have been? Yes..NUMBERS! She told him that he needed to come to Neverland and teach the lost boys how to write their numbers. At first he didn't want to talk with her, but then he started spelling words and interacting with her too. It was so fun to listen to her talk.
Here's the video of Wendy talking with Mikie:



I'm not sure who has taught Mikie how to "bump" fists, but now that is what he prefers to do instead of giving high fives. Here he is bumping Goofy's hand.

In this video, Mikie learns that Goofy is missing two things:

We were getting ready to leave Goofy's Kitchen and Zach insisted that he needed to take some of the cereal with us. Well, Michael decides the best place to carry it is in his pocket. Zachary thought this was a great idea because he could reach in and take as much as he wanted whenever Daddy was holding him (which if you remember from the last post was almost constantly since he was sick). So for the rest of the trip it was filled with gold fish crackers & cereal and became known as 'Daddy's snack pocket.'This video is out of order, but it isn't easy to move them down for some reason so I'm leaving it here. If you listen really closely you can hear Zachary's name for Boagie which comes out like "Bodeek". He's telling us who all is going to get a cupcake:

This is another one of my memories from when I was at Disneyland as a ten year old: Floating through the big whale on a boat.

If you enlarge this picture you'll see that Zachary is not at all happy to be riding on Dumbo. Actually, he wanted to ride this ride and likes elephants very much, but was screaming mad that he couldn't ride it with Daddy and was forced to be on it with Mommy instead.

But, we had to let Mikie have some Daddy time:

Just look at the way Zachary is admiring his Daddy:

I was so excited to get this picture especially after reading about knights and castles in the Magic Tree House books and watching The Sword In The Stone:

It's a small world after all: (and an unhappy one for Zach)

Not too long into our day, the boys both crashed for an early afternoon nap. Wouldn't you know this is the only picture I have of us in front of the castle and they are asleep!

Again, while they were napping we pushed them over to Disney's California Adventure and waited for them to awaken so we could watch the Playhouse Disney Live On Stage:

You remember Mikie telling Chip that we couldn't find Donald or Daisy? Well, we looked for them again in toon town and on main street at the Magic Kingdom to no avail. But as luck would have it, just as we were exiting the Playhouse Disney show we found Donald Duck:On our way out of the park, we stopped by the train themed gift shop and I snapped this cute picture:We told the boys they could each pick a toy as a souvineer. I was expecting them to choose a Disney character stuffed animal, toy train, ball, or light up spinning figure but quickly realized my expectations were too low. My boys are fascinated with anything that runs on rails so we walked out of there with a $70 Disney monorail system complete with miniature characters (the size of Barbie shoes) which can ride inside of it. I know my Kirby vacuum is going to ingest one of those tiny characters someday soon.

Back to the Magic Kingdom and straight to the Hundred Acre Woods where we found Pooh and Tigger:

Then it was time for a little exploring on Tom Sawyer's island.

Teamwork: A rare occurance that I had to document!

Mikie loved traversing all the narrow passageways and cave entrances.

Arrrrrgh....Pirates Gold! (perfect since he just finished reading his Pirate Book)

See, Boagie is on this trip:

Ok...you simply MUST enlarge this picture and check out the expressions on their faces. (I know...they're clones!!!)

Boagie was craving BBQ so we headed to the Celebration Roundup for dinner and a show where we saw Woody (from Toy Story)

Did you notice that one of our children was missing from the above picture? Well, evidentally all that spulunking really lowers one's blood sugar level because Mikie refused to have his picture taken....until......

Shhhh....someone's coming.....

Surprise! Even that didn't get him to cooperate or smile.

So, we took another picture without him:

Once we had some good ole' chicken legs, cornbread, beans, ribs, and corn on the cob everyone was in brighter sprits and a little messier:

Finally a smile (although now it's stained with sauce!):

And who wouldn't smile at the cupcake cones for dessert:

Now that his belly is full he cooperates for this picture:

Our final adventure for the evening was taking Mikie on Splash Mountain.

Another quick stop in a gift shop for a ball and 2 elephants and we were off to bed.

The next morning it was time to pack up and head to the airport; however, Mikie was a little disappointed that we still hadn't seen Daisy Duck (as she was the only one who didn't sign our scarpbook) so I made a call and found out that she was indeed appearing at another character breakfast and there was still seating available. So, after a hurried departure from our hotel room we found:

Daisy Duck!
And Goofy again!

And the crazy mischievious Stich:

who tried to drink Mikie's water

and signed the book on his head!

Zachary was trying to tell Stich to go away and was pointing over there, but Stich has a mind of his own and just started copying Zachary's pointing.

Lilo comes to say Aloha.

Then it was time for us to say Aloha to Disneyland.

With two and a half days of fun and memories packed into 576 pictures, we boarded the bus which took us back to the airport and said goodbye to Boagie. Thanks so much, Mom, for going with us, helping with the boys, being our photographer, and taking care of me when I was sick. I'm so glad you get to share these experiences with us and you always make things A LOT easier and a lot more fun too. The boys love having their Boagie and Bodeek on our trips. We love you, Mom!!!!