Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Friday, September 20, 2024

Homecoming 2024 - Paige's Freshman Year and Connor's Senior Year

 

Homecoming this year was quite a bit different than previous years. Connor had planned to go, and we'd gotten him a new suit to wear, and Andrea spent quite a while ironing it and trying it on with him, and took him to get the pants altered. However, in the end, none of his friends were planning to go to the dance, so instead he went to a party with friends to play poker together. 

Paige was another story, she had an entire event planned this year. Paige and Andrea picked out a bunch of dresses and shoes, and Paige decided on a dark blue dress that looked amazing on her. Paige invited a bunch of girls over to do get ready together before the dance, and to spend the night afterwards. Seven accepted the invite and after they got ready we took them all over to TPC for pictures and for dinner. 

The girls looked stunning in their dresses and they all enjoyed taking lots of pics and making Tik Tok videos before they eventually got around to sitting down for their reservation.
















Connor and Millie Mae Homecoming Pics

 

While we were waiting for the girls to get ready for Homecoming, I took a few pics of Connor with Millie Mae to test out the lighting. The pics ended up being great and were definitely keepers.




Thursday, September 12, 2024

Paige's Ear Piercing - 2024

 

Over the weekend, Paige and Andrea were out to lunch and doing some returns, when they decided it would be a good day to get Paige's ears pierced. We'd gone last year before summer camp and realized Paige couldn't swim for a while afterwards and that it wasn't an ideal time for it. 

It wasn't planned, but it turned out to be a perfect day for piercing since there weren't any plans for the day and since Paige isn't going to be swimming any time in the near future. I drove up, brought my camera, and took a few pics of Paige during the process and Andrea took some videos. Paige was super brave, didn't make a peep, and didn't make a fuss at all. Her left ear bled for a while afterwards, but we got it to stop bleeding before heading home.













Paige Tennis Tournament - Level 7 in ML

 


On Saturday, Paige volunteered to help the young players in a tennis tournament and then in the afternoon she participated against other 14 year olds. The competition wasn't super strong and Paige won all of her matches handily until she got to the final match against another consistent and experienced player.




The format is not our favorite as it was only one short set, no-ad scoring, to 4 games. Paige led in the final championship match 3-1 and was up 40-0 at one point. She lost the next 4 match points to lose the game, but still had a chance to win with the set score at 3-2. She was up 40-15 in that match, but then lost the next 3 match points to lose the game. In the final deciding game at 3-3, she ended up losing, and came in 2nd place overall for the tournament. It was a tough loss, and Paige was definitely disappointed to lose the match when it seemed like she had it well in hand. Crazy that she had 7 match/championship points and not one of them went her way. 

We were not disappointed in her, but definitely disappointed for her, as she was by far the best player there and could have won it.









Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Disney Cruise on the Wish for Labor Day - Bahamas and Castaway Cay


For Labor Day 2024 weekend, we boarded the Disney Wish in Port Canaveral for a short cruise over the holiday weekend. This was our 17th cruise with Disney, but only our second time on the Wish. 

Boarding was the fastest process ever, and without much hassle we got on the boat and grabbed some lunch. The Wish has a number of options, aside from the buffet, and our favorite was the Mexican spot "Donald's Cantina". The restaurant is similar to Chipotle and afterwards we stopped by the "Inside Out" themed ice cream shop for Andrea's favorite strawberry shortcake ice cream with sprinkles.


Paige enjoyed the soft serve ice cream and although the first day they only had chocolate and vanilla, they eventually also had mango and blueberry flavors available.



After unpacking and watching some US Open tennis on the TV's in the room, we went to dinner in the Marvel themed restaurant. 




Once we finished with dinner, we participated in some Disney trivia and then went to the show "Seas the Adventure" which featured Goofy and friends.


In the morning of August 31st, we ate breakfast and then tried out the Wish's interactive game "Disney Uncharted Adventure". It was a neat concept that allowed us to create our own characters on the Disney Cruise app on our phones and then we used our phones to interact with the screens in the game. We all joined a team together, but unfortunately Andrea's phone would not cooperate so only three of us were able to play at a time.








For dinner we decided to skip the formal meal since nothing on the menu looked that great, and we went to see "The Little Mermaid" in the theater in the evening. We watched some US Open tennis in our rooms before bed.

Sunday, September 1st, 2024, we slept in a bit and then had some food before getting off the boat. The last few times we've been in Castaway Cay, we thought that the food was only OK and since we've enjoyed the "Chipotle" style food on the boat so much, we decided to get that one more time.







Castaway Cay was pleasant as usual, but since we got off the boat late, it was hard to find a decent place for our stuff. We got a spot near the obstacle course over the water and had a little time to use it before it got shut down for "low tide". I think it was actually shut down because huge grown men were using the monkey bars against the warnings of the lifeguards. I had been waiting my turn, but a guy that went just before me was getting lectured and warned not to use the equipment, so it didn't seem appropriate.

We were impressed with Paige for making it all the way across, even with Connor's heckling during her attempt.



Andrea and I waded out fairly far in the low tide to a nice peaceful area to hang out, and we enjoyed the cool water on the hot day, before leaving to start our Stingray Adventure.


We did a short orientation, put on our life vests and snorkels, and then waded out in the water to little floating platforms where we were able to interact with the stingrays.



The stingrays had been trained and conditioned to swim up the left side of the platforms to get the food that we held for them. We were given shrimp and some weird cubes of gelatinous goo, and then were instructed to hold them in the water and release when the rays swam up. The rays were free to approach or not, and many of them seemed happy to just swim around through our legs to freak us out. The rays had their stingers, although they were supposedly trimmed so as not to be quite so dangerous, but we still avoided the tails as much as possible.



After feeding them for a while, we swam out in the confined area to see all the rays we could. Many of them were hard to see and it was neat to watch them bury themselves in the sand. "Panda" was the largest of the rays and we're pretty sure we saw her as there was an enormous dark ray near the edge of the enclosure.







After finishing up with the stingrays, we boarded the boat, washed up, and went to dinner. Andrea actually decided to eat the pizza one last time as it was her favorite food aboard. The rest of us had filet mignon at the 1923 restaurant. We had a quick dinner since we wanted the soft serve ice cream for dessert instead of the fancy stuff being served in 1923. 



Once we finished with dinner, we stood in a few lines to get pics with Pluto, Mickey, and Captain Minnie.






The last show of the cruise was Aladdin and it was cute with updated jokes and references by Genie.


Our cruise together was so much fun and on Monday morning we drove home and got ready to go back to work and school. We had some memorable family times on the vacation and we're thankful that Andrea plans our fun getaways for us.