October was a rough month, weather-wise. The central Texans are kind of all done with summer by this point, but the temperature insists on being in the 90s, day in and day out. Add to that the lack of rain and those of us that garden just feel sad. Often fall is kind of a second spring in our part of Texas, but with so little rain and so much heat, that wasn’t really happening.
Outside of the weather, and middle school homework, we had a pretty fun month. Though Maya is in symphonic band in school and plays the oboe, she and her classmates all sat in the bleachers and performed at a middle school homecoming football game recently. I wasn’t really a going-to-the-football-game person in high school. I wouldn’t be now, if I didn’t have a band kid. But I’ll admit, it was fun to sit and watch the kids play football, and fight songs.
Then, after getting home late that night, we got up early to head to the airport and fly to Orlando for a long weekend. Maya and Ian had a four-day-weekend in mid-October at school, a Friday and Monday off. We responsibly scheduled flights so that they wouldn’t miss any additional days, but then our flights were rescheduled to absolutely terrible travel times, and so we made the decision to leave on Thursday instead. And we were flying in and out of Tampa rather than Orlando and renting a car to mitigate costs.
Arriving on Thursday let us have a relaxing afternoon at the hotel. We stayed at the Stella Nova hotel, which is a Universal resort. The plan for this quick trip was to spend on day at Disney and two days at the new Universal park, Epic Universe. We felt it would be a hassle to transfer luggage and whatnot between hotels, so we just parked it at the Universal hotel for the whole trip.
The property was pretty – the hotel had kind of a space-age look to it. The iridescent tilework on the outside of the building was beautiful in the sunshine. We lucked out and were given a room on the top floor, with a view of the park. There was a big, pretty pool that was largely empty on a Thursday afternoon in October. We all got suited up and hoped the stormy weather would hold off long enough for us to get a good swim in.
After a relaxing in the pool for a while, we went over to CityWalk to have dinner at The Toothsome Chocolate Emporium. We enjoyed this so much during our last trip to Universal, that we decided to visit again. It was so, so crowded, and the service was a little slow, but our food was good. Maya had some kind of mocktail that featured pop rocks, and so we were all getting pelted with bits of pop rocks candy as it exploded from the top of her drink. Sean and the kids all had GIANT crazy milkshakes too. I have no idea where they found room for that. I was so full from my dinner.
We started to head back to the hotel and were presented with an absolute downpour. I had brought a couple sets of rain ponchos for the four of us, figuring that one could be drying out in the hotel room as we were wearing the other during our park day. As it happens, ours got a workout before we even set foot in a park. Even with the ponchos though, our shoes were very squishy by the time we made it back to the hotel. And poor Sean wore flip-flops, so he was a slip sliding mess (though he was the only one who had dry shoes to wear the next day).
We spent the first full day in Orlando visiting Walt Disney World. The idea was to park-hop and catch some of the new attractions that we hadn’t experienced yet, while working in a few favorites and some fun dining as well. This post can be found here.
Our main reason for visiting though was to check out Universal’s newest park, Epic Universe. This park is amazing. We spent two days there, lingering over details and meals and enjoying fun attractions. This post can be found here.
On our final day in Orlando, Maya and Ian managed to get one last swim in at the hotel pool before we had to pack up and leave. After checking out, we headed over to Disney Springs to shop a little and have some lunch. We had a lovely, but ridiculously portioned, lunch at Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’. The chicken was outstanding and the baked Mac n cheese was really solid as well, but any one entree could easily feed two people, And of course, we had to leave the leftovers because we were flying home later that day.
The virtual queue at Gideon’s Bakehouse was prohibitively long, so instead, we tried out the cookie bar at the Summer House on the Lake restaurant. The cookies were really good, to be sure, but the ambiance at Gideon’s can’t be beat.
And then we drove to Tampa airport. Getting there, returning our car, and getting checked in were all uneventful. Maya was behind on her ELA homework, so she sat in the airport writing a paper for school. Later on, she finished yet another paper while in the airplane flying home.
That very next weekend on Friday, Ian had his final fall carnival at Davis. They hold Boofest every year in the fall as a fundraiser, and the kids enjoy the games and snacks and hanging out with their friends. Since several older siblings attend, Maya even found a friend to hang out with. Ian started the carnival dressed in his costume, but it was so damned hot, he eventually gave up and took it off. Maya, for her part, hadn’t chosen a costume yet.
The next day, Ian performed again at the farmers market in his guitar teacher’s neighborhood. Sean tells me it was a good performance and they seemed to have fun.
The next weekend, Maya attended district band auditions for oboe. Out of the competing oboes in Austin ISD, she placed well enough to advance to regionals, so she was pretty excited about that, though she lamented that she’d have to continue worrying about it till regional auditions were over.
Halloween week, while very busy, ultimately went pretty well. I gutted pumpkins and Sean helped the kids carve them. Maya chose to make Toothless, from How to Train Your Dragon. Ian made Groot from the Marvel universe.
I bought some fancier carving tools this year, so our artists could try doing some sculpting. I’m thinking the candles we stick in the jack-o-lanterns aren’t bright enough, because unless we cut all the way through the pumpkin flesh, light didn’t make it through (the places where the skin and partial flesh are carved away are supposed to be translucent). They both turned out really well, but shortly after Halloween, some creature ate Groot’s face.
Ian dressed as a zombie. Last year he was a zombie pirate. Given how he had me apply his makeup, I think this year, he may have been going for zombie clown? I’m not sure. Between temporary tattoos that looked like stitched wounds and bite marks and crazy makeup, Ian looked right ghoulish and seemed very pleased with his appearance. He was especially fond of the bloody plastic ax he carried around as part of his costume.
Maya, after much deliberation, decided to be a bird. We found blue wings and a pretty blue mask that came with a feathered headband. In thinking it through, she decided to wear her orange feathered shirt that we made as part of her rufous hummingbird costume a while back. She decided that with blue wings and an orange and white middle, she was an eastern bluebird.
Thankfully, the weather cooled off by the end of the month, finally. Both kids wound up going with friends trick or treating. This is the first year we haven’t had to accompany one or more kids as they wandered through the neighborhood trick or treating. It was odd. Maya went with a friend from school who actually lives very close to us. They had a couple more kids come over as well, so it was a four-pack of creatures roaming the streets. I asked Maya if she wanted me to stay. In her self-aware way, she explained that if I stayed, she would just hang out with me, but if I wasn’t there, she’d stick with her friends. And so I went home, and by all accounts, she had a nice time.
During the month, we also got school photos for each of the kids. I was sad that the green was already gone from Ian’s hair – that would have made for a fun school photo.
We nearly didn’t get Maya’s photo at all. I noticed that they were doing picture retakes at the end of October, and it had me wondering how you’d know you wanted your picture retaken if you hadn’t seen the original. I asked Maya about it – nope, she didn’t know anything about them handing out school photos. We eventually pestered her into talking to the right teacher and finally she managed to come home with the envelop with the code we needed to download her digital image.
In real time, the government shut down is causing all kinds of trouble. Federal workers aren’t getting paid. Food assistance isn’t being funded. Flights are being canceled. It’s a mess, and just in time for Thanksgiving.
