August 22

Ahhh…what a fun day! Well…after the night was over anyway. That storm you saw moving in yesterday made it here and woke me up at 3:00 in the morning with truly the loudest thunder I have ever heard. It actually took me a while to register that it was thunder because it was so loud and sharp and close. It sounded at first like someone out in the hallway banging on a metal vent cover or something. Every time I started to drift off another thunder attack blasted me awake again. That went on for about 40 minutes.

Then, at 3:45, a loud emergency alarm with an announcement came on over a speaker and was repeated over and over. The recording said an emergency had been identified in the building and that we needed to evacuate immediately without using the elevators. It was pretty terrifying, but luckily I was already awake. I quickly got dressed, went into Aaron’s room because I knew he would be totally scared, got him dressed and he wouldn’t leave my side because he was crying and so confused. I packed up my laptop, my hard drive, a towel, my camera, Aaron’s baby Simba and blanket, along with something for him to play with should we be outside for a long time. I grabbed my purse and all three of us were out the door and headed for the stairs. This is a tower with 15 floors worth of people all using the same stairwell…luckily we were only on the third. As we walked to the stairs, I reviewed what I had packed in my mind, having NO idea what was going on, and realized I should have brought some water, and better yet…our room key. Luckily Chris had one of those :) The wicked storm was still going on, lots of wind and heavy rain, and we all waited in the parking structure, which is the three bottom floors of the tower.

Aaron was confused and scared, but I used a little tip I learned from the Imagination Movers, who learned it from Mr. Rogers. When kids are looking at scary situations on the news or in front of them, Mr. Rogers would say to look for the helpers, that there are always people trying to help others in those kinds of situations. So I told Aaron to look for the helpers and he had fun pointing out the security guards and especially the fire fighters who arrived in all their gear. This instantly brightened his mood. After only about 15 minutes from when we left the room, we got the all clear to go back to our rooms. The security guard that we talked to said that there was not a fire, but that during the storm the water pressure in the building had changed dramatically and their sensors had gone off, possible due to a lightning strike. Water pressure?? Really?? If you’ve ever taken a shower at our house, you know we can’t really get worked up about water pressure, but seriously, what is that about? What’s the emergency? There has to be more to it, would love to know.

Once we got back upstairs, having gotten a shot of adrenaline and been awake just long enough NOT to be able to fall right back to sleep, I got Aaron back in bed (he thought that since he was going to bed for a second time he should get milk a second time) but he had a hard time falling asleep too. He had been so shaken up that I wanted to stay with him for a while and snuggle, but after about 20 I figured that was doing more to keep him up than get him to sleep, so I told him Daddy was scared too and I needed to check on him, which Aaron bought. Chris and I were up for another 20 minutes or so until we could fall asleep again.

We all slept until 9! That set our morning a little later than we had planned, but we still had a fun day planned. After a lovely relaxed breakfast, we did some sitting around with Phineas and Ferb, packed up some sandwiches and headed across the street to the beach for a few hours.

We got cleaned up for the fun evening we had planned…a trip to Medieval Times! I had been to the one in California years ago, but Chris and Aaron had never been, and we knew that Aaron would just go absolutely NUTS for it. He LOVES knights and castles and has been studying up on them this summer. He was so darn excited about going to this show that since Saturday when we got a brochure he has been carrying it around and showing it to random people saying, “Look where we’re going!” He was a little overwhelmed and shy at the beginning, all the loud stuff and pageantry and dark rooms and such, but he quickly warmed up.

Yellow crowns…because we are sitting in the yellow knight’s section! We were coached to cheer for the yellow night and to booooooo for the evil green knight!

Chris bought Aaron a cool wooden sword…the boy was thrilled.

Yellow section has yellow lights. Oh well. At least we weren’t in red.

There’s our knight!

Jousting!

Part of the story is that the green knight kidnaps the prince of the kingdom and tries to force the king to name him champion of the ring. At that point, Aaron said, “I hate the green knight. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but I really hate him.” Later on, when it seemed like the green knight was going to win, Aaron got very upset and said, “WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE!” Luckily, good triumphed over evil and he couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved it. After the show the knights came out and Aaron was first in line to meet the yellow knight, get his autograph on his sword, and take a picture with him. Does that boy look starstruck, or WHAT?

finally, on our way out, Chris bought Aaron the yellow knight’s shield. Now THIS boy is in heaven. He held them until bedtime.