The day after the 4th we decided it’d be a good day for an “off beach” day. We always spend some time at Old Town every year and tried to figure out when it’d be less crowded…we figured it’d probably be like Disney crowds haha Never visit Magic Kingdom on a Saturday or Monday 😉 We figured most people were probably back at work on the 5th and that it’d be a good day to take a break from beaching it up!
A Rusty Jr Moment 😉
Vacations often mean special treat type breakfasts!
Britt’s treat restriction was still on and she handled it pretty well!
Little sunscreen pro!
Kye designed several golf holes for a golf course he’s planning 🙂
We decided to head out that morning and go by the fort. Most years we skip the fort but the years we have done it we’ve incorporated it as part of our Old Town visit. It’s hot and sweaty and a LONG walk from actual Old Town area. This year we decided to go first thing in the morning just to the fort. Not only was it WAY cooler and required minimal walking…it also wasn’t opened yet. No people, no crowds nothing! We planned to just walk around the outside and check out the free stuff like usual (we’ve actually NEVER been inside!) but the ticket booth wasn’t open yet and they just let us walk right in! Score!
Kye was SO PUMPED to be inside a REAL fort!
Kye is his Daddy’s child when it comes to tourist stuff. He wanted to read every sign. Zach was loving it…me and the girls notsomuch.
Hahah candid shot getting that hair right 😉
How Britt and I felt after about 10 minutes 😉
A tour guide let Kye walk through the steps to load, fire and clean a real cannon!
When it comes to touring places Zach (and Kye apparently) loves to read ALL the information about the place. We have a good system where I tell him just to let me know the highlights. I like to have a few tidbits of interesting facts then I’m GOOD. My interesting fact for the day about the fort??? The “moat” around the fort actually never held any water. It was an area to keep livestock when threatened with an attack in order to help protect them.
It was awesome to get a chance to walk through the fort! Zach said he and Kye may want to come back at some point and take their time to read everything…the girls and I can go get ice cream or something 😉
After the fort we headed over to our favorite playground! It’s a tradition we have and I love that it’s very shaded and there are a lot of things to do and especially that they have a carousel. How cool is that?!?! We’ve gone every year and it’s one of my favs!!! We usually pack lunch to eat there but one BIG change in having three kids vs having two is that I no longer like to pack up lunches if I can help it. I’d rather just leave a little earlier to get back home (or to the room) to eat there. Even if it means pushing nap a little later, it’s worth it not to load up all the food!
I know we hear constantly that Tess looks “just like me” but man can’t you really see it here?!?!
They have these SUPER tall swings. Like I can’t even describe how tall…
Zach is 6’6″ and Britt is OVER his head!!!
Bless. Tess and I were at the play set and she wanted to go swing. She ran ahead and I went to get my stuff to take it over there. She walked RIGHT in front of Britt on the swings and Zach couldn’t stop her and BAM Tess got kicked right in the face. Zach said he’s never been as scared in that moment as a parent. Of course I felt so bad! Not only did I not see it but I didn’t prevent it because I was lagging behind getting my bag! She was SO TOUGH and barely even cried. Her pupils looked ok and she acted fine…even with a big footprint on her face!
Other than the foot-to-face incident it was a fun time! I knew the day would come when Kye would be too cool for the playground but I didn’t expect it so soon. He was bored and it was all little kids and just not big kid enough for him. Bummer. I do feel bad for Kye in that he’s going to have a LONG TIME to suck it up and have fun doing stuff he doesn’t actually truly enjoy because his younger siblings do still enjoy it!
Also while at the playground watching the kids this mom was sitting near me with her two boys. I asked their ages, just being friendly, and she told me about how one of the boys was adopted. She got him at 18 months old because his mom is in jail and he was exposed to drugs and at 4 he’s totally healthy with no signs of any issues from the drug exposure. God moment 😉
One more carousel ride! This time the big kids asked to go by themselves “away from Mommy” ugh.
Lunch and playtime before naps!
During naps it was a good time for Zach and Kye to go out boogie boarding. With the girls it’s tough for them to get out there to ride waves. Typically Britt wants to go out with Daddy and it’s just a lot of kids for me to watch if Zach were to boogie board! It made the most sense to go during nap time 🙂 They had a BLAST but…
When they came back we had reason number two why I was super thankful we took family pics at the start of the trip haha Tess had a lovely footprint on her face and Kye now had a MASSIVE scrape on his nose/forehead. He was trying to body surf with Daddy and ate sand instead. He was tough about it though thankfully!
Post nap snuggles with Daddy 🙂
Annual cannon pics!
More sign reading haha
We walked around a bit but don’t do a lot of shopping or anything on St George Street. Typically we hunt for an ornament then call it quits once we find one. I thought it’d be fun for the kids to use some of their allowance to buy a prize of some sort but OH MY GOODNESS at the prices!!! We went into this junky jewelry shop and it was way way way overly priced. It was tough to even find anything the kids could afford!!!
Girl loves to dunk!
In the end Britt used her money to buy a necklace and bracelet set and Kye used his to buy a magic kit. We had to help him get it because he didn’t bring enough money but Zach has always LOVED this magic shop (and owns a few tricks himself haha) and we like to support them! They do great demonstrations of the tricks and Kye was really excited!
Our Old Town traditions: 1) cannon pics 2) Pizzalley’s 3) ICE-CREAM!!!
At this point Britt was still on treat restriction. I felt bad about her missing out on the ice cream. But we could cave in! We talked about it and decided we’d let her get JUST a cone. It was funny when we asked how much just a cone cost. They kept telling us the price for a scoop in the cone and we had to keep correcting them that we JUST wanted a cone. Britt was over the moon excited…but I’m sure it looked strange to people walking by. Poor deprived child only got a cone haha!
We also weren’t on our parenting A-game in that moment. We didn’t even realize that Kye ordered himself a MASSIVE waffle cone until we went to pay. He also took about a billion years to eat it all and it was a crazy mess. Next year, back to a kid cone for him 😉
The girls kept us (and all the passerbys) plenty entertained!
Once we got back and got the kids down for bed we worked on our home study stuff together! We read over each others and put the finishing touches on it all 🙂 And I WORKED OUT AGAIN. I mean crazy right?!? This time I didn’t head to the beach and instead stuck to running the stairs in the condo area 😉
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