WWoB Office Update

We've been doing pretty good with the steady stream of new content here at WW0B, but as we enter the last few days of Summer Vacation some of the paperwork has backed up our systems. In other words, I've just been so busy trying to squeeze in as much fun as a I can! Last Sunday I had an awesome time at the Ke$ha concert at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, VA. We had super awesome 3rd row seats (Thanks to my friend Matt) and we just danced and screamed and had a real good time. Ke$ha put on a real fun show with tons of glitter being shot at the audience from various contraptions. The whole experience was just a huge super fun party. I had a blast!



The next day, we loaded up the Family Truckster and headed out to Knoebels Amusement Park in Elysburg, PA. They bill themselves as the Largest Free Admission Amusement Park in the Country. The park is just brimming with character. It's a collection of old traditional amusement park rides along side all of the new standards in theme park thrills. They have a few stand-out attractions like their Haunted Mansion which is constantly rated the best dark house ride in America. It's a really good ride! They also have two world class roller coasters which I was able to tuck under my belt of 2011 rides. The Phoenix is a great classic out-and-back woodie with ridiculous amounts of airtime. It's the first coaster to be taken apart at one park and put back together at another. The process has since become quite common in theme parks. Both my kids conquered this large coaster and they both loved it, although only Tanner would go with Daddy for a second ride.



Their other great coaster is a behemoth dark wood coaster called Twister, which is based on the design of the classic Mr. Twister at Elitch Gardens in Denver. It's a crazy good ride with twists, turns and unbelievable speed! Fantastic ride!





Then of course Tuesday we had the earthquake. Not really a big deal, except it kinda shook everybody up for the rest of the day. I think the oddity of having an earthquake that big on the East Coast just set the stage for the pandemonium that was to become Hurricane Irene. We're pretty far inland so I wasn't too worried about the storm.





It started to get dark and windy around 4:00pm, some steady by light rain followed. By 9 it was beating down pretty hard and the winds were fairly extreme. We were having Elias' birthday party which into the night morphed into a Hurricane Party! Elias had a good turn out for his party and our hurricane party was a success that went well into the night.



Otherwise, we're just getting into the swing of the new school year. We took Joey back to college on Sunday, Monday we spent the last day of Summer Vaca at Dutch Wonderland and Tuesday Elias started 3rd grade and Tanner began his 13 years of schooling with his first day of Kindergarten.

Camping With My Pal Yogi

Last week I took my family on our first camping trip. We spent three nights at the awesome Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp Resort in Quarryville, PA. The kids were beside themselves with excitement and we all had a really good time. Not only did we get to hang with our good bear friends Yogi and Boo Boo, we were also joined by some friends of ours who booked a visit at the same time as us. It was even more fun to have some other people to hang out with. We mostly stayed at the campground for the entire three days, minus a few hours for a grocery store run (and a hot pizza!) There are many activities at the park from arts and crafts to a pretty neat-o water park complete with slides and a huge water playground.

Now, my wife enjoys the great outdoors as much as the next person...but she needs her NOT PUBLIC restroom and some air conditioning. So, instead of completely roughing it, Yogi put us up in one of Jellystone's finer cabins:


This was our home for the week. In addition to our own bathroom w/shower and the nice cold air conditioning, we also had a kitchenette (which we hardly used,) a TV (which we only used to watch Yogi cartoons before bedtime,) and a few other comforts of home. We honestly didn't spend too much time inside, but it was nice to beat the heat every so often and also not have to walk the kids down to the bath houses to use the potty at three in the morning.

The kids took this opportunity to switch up their normal bunk positions from home and Tanner took the top bunk, while Elias slept on the ground level.

There's lots of cool things to do around the park. There's a pedal kart track for the kids which was pretty impressive. Tanner tore it up doing laps around the course...

....there is also volleyball, horseshoes, a playground and an arcade.

One night we hosted dinner at our campsite. Here we are with our friends enjoying various grilled meats and pasta salad.

We went on a wonderful nature walk through some paths that travel through the woods...

...the paths lead to a fishing hole in a secluded area. Jellystone really is as beautiful as it looks in all those cartoons.

One of the coolest attractions at the campground is their Jumping Pillow...

...it's basically a huge moon bounce without the walls. The best part is there are no age, height or weight restrictions. Anybody can join in the fun. It was super fun but also extremely tiring. Three minutes on this thing and grown-ups feel like they've just worked out for 45 minutes. Of course, kids can go for hours without taking a breath! I snapped this picture from across the road to illustrate how enormous this thing is...

Yogi and his crew have a lot of activities planned throughout the day. We played Candy Bar Bingo with jackpots of up to 52 candy bars. We didn't win! We also attended an ice cream social and a pool party. They had arts and crafts in the morning. The one day they were coloring Yogi Bear t-shirts with fabric markers. It looked really cool and I wanted the kids to do it but they were so excited about going to the water park I knew coloring a t-shirt wasn't going to hold their interested against having gallons of water dumped on them.

Another activity we attended was Sidewalk Chalk at the Basketball Court. I knew Tanner would really get into and he did drawing a whole city of buildings...and people with guns!?

Elias also got into the act with a portrait of our host...

The night we went over to our friend's site for dinner they treated us to some crazy good Grilled Cheese Pizza Sandwiches which were out of this world good!

Here's one more shot of us all playing cards one night...

South Family Camping Trip #1 was a success. The kids are already asking when we can go back. I'm hoping to take the boys tent camping sometime in the next month!

Trail of the Dutch Wonderland Trip Report

If you're keeping score, you're actually behind on two Dutch Wonderland trip reports. My kids are just loving the park so much that they ask to go every week, and since it's all paid for and it's one less day of the summer I have to fill with activities - I'm all for it. Plus, this park really brings out the best in my kids. They get along so well when we're at Dutch Wonderland and they just have a blast going on rides, exploring the park and playing.

We went two weeks ago for Duke The Dragon's Surprise Birthday Party. This is an annual event which is held in the water park, Duke's Lagoon. Duke came out for his regularly scheduled 2:30 pool side appearance and there was a big crowd waiting to shout "Surprise!" and sing Happy Birthday to him. They also had cake and ice cream for everyone who attended. In addition to that, they put out a huge spread of food - FREE! - to all guests. They had burgers, corn dogs, chicken, fish, shrimp, waffles, pasta salad, cole slaw, potato salad, beans, chips, juice and soda. It was crazy! We ate well and it was certainly a nice treat for the ol' wallet. We had a lot of fun that day, but I forgot to bring my camera - so who cares about a play by play, let's skip to the next visit.

I was planning on taking a week or two off from going to the park, but the kids were so excited to go again so we ended up there Friday of last week. The park was pretty crowded but we managed to get through the day without any really long wait times. Some of the rides had a 10 - 15 minute wait time instead of their usual 5 minute wait time. It was nice to have a full track of cars for the Bumper Cars. Since it was kinda hot out, the line for the Double Splash Flume was a bit longer than usual, but it moved briskly.

I did make a point to snap a photo of one of DW's newest rides, Kite Flight. The kids had shied away from this ride on our first couple of visits, but eventually got up the nerve to ride it and now it's one of their favorite rides in the park. As you can make out in the picture, you lay down on your tummy on this ride to sort of simulate the experience of hang gliding. Certainly not as convincing an effect as Disney's Soaring but it's still a pretty cool ride. It takes you soaring up and down around in a circle reaching a height of 17 feet. I rode it once and it made me kind of dizzy. I've sat out additional rides so far but the boys will ride it two or three times in a row. They flip for it!


Next we have me probably not setting a good example for my children, but I could do alot worse. One of the most popular rides in the park is Dragon's Lair which is a very slow, relaxing boat ride around a lagoon. A feature of the ride, added recently, is a huge mountain and a cave where Duke lives. Inside the cave, you ride past a giant egg with colors that match Duke...

...my kids ask every time why Duke the boy dragon has laid an egg. I tell them not to read into it so much, I don't think Duke's backstory has really been fleshed out all that much. Maybe the mom dragon is away...I don't know, but anyhow when you ride past the egg it's sitting in a nest. Somebody has tossed a plastic Easter egg into the nest with Duke's egg. (I'm pretty sure it's been there a while.) So I had the idea that we should try and start a new park tradition and see if other people will start throwing eggs into the nest. The kids loved the idea of course and we tried to make a mental note to dig up a plastic egg at home and bring it on our next visit. Then later we remembered there is a Chicken Laying a Prize Filled Egg machine at the monorail station. So, we had our egg supply right there in the park!

Mission accomplished! We added the yellow egg in front, you can also see the blue egg in the nest. The picture is a little blurry since you can only snap a shot from a moving boat. So, if you're a DW fan - get yourself an egg and add it too Duke's collection. I'm sure he would be most pleased!

Like every other parent, I had midway games. Rip-Offs! The only time I'm likely to drop a few bucks on one is when it's either kid oriented and they win a prize every time or when you can buy a bucket of balls (or rings) so that everybody can have a turn tossing a couple of rings/balls at the game. Elias really wants a full sized Minion from Despicable Me. They have them in a giant sized claw machine which I'm not spending a dime on, but they also had them in a game where you had to land a wiffle ball in a colored hole. So, I dropped five bucks for a basket of balls so both the kids could have turns and so I could toss one of two "skilled" balls at the game. First toss of the game, Elias lands a ball in a blue medium hole. The Minion is a large, but if we scored one more medium we could trade up for the large. Of course, we didn't win anything else with our remaining basket full of balls. Instead of getting the character from one of his favorite movies...

...he gets Shrek. Elias shares my complete indifference to the world of Shrek, and he was not quite as thrilled with his win. We'll try again another visit to trade up to the Minion.

In the back of the park they have two free floating boat rides that cruise around the waterway system along the farmlands at the rear of the property. One cool experience this last trip, on the Lady Gay River Boat the captain slowed the motor down and let Tanner take over in the driver's seat. He was really steering our boat and was really proud of himself when he was done!

Well Played Dutch Wonderland

And finally, are you ready for some big time Theme Park nerdiness? I love when they have little road signs on Antique Car rides. Guess what? Dutch Wonderland added some to their Sunoco Turnpike ride. They are so cool!

Loves it!

Both trips: nothing but a great time!

Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah

My kids aren't exactly daredevils. They are very cautious children. Even though they are both developing a roller coaster bug, neither of them are really looking for big thrills. So I was pretty surprised last week when they both showed interest in doing a zipline course for kids at Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City, MD.

Jolly Roger has installed ziplines for adults over their waterpark, but they've also added a nice little zipline obstacle course for children. Once suited up, the kids cross bridges of increasing difficultly until they come to the end of the course where they must zipline back to the starting point. Elias and Tanner both tore up the course. I was really impressed with both of them and also very proud of them for stepping outside their comfort zone. The best part is: they had a blast.

Here's Elias zipping back to home base:



And then Tanner (You can hear him scream with excitement)

Mother Nature is Dumb

This weekend the weather was a real jerk. The kids were excited to use our Dutch Wonderland season pass and hit up the park again over the weekend. I was game but the weather forecast called for rain Friday afternoon all through the weekend and into this week. It looked like a sure bet and we pretty much put plans on the back burner. Friday I was working in the yard trying to get stuff done before the rain. The sky was dark and around 4:00 it got even darker. I cleaned up the yard quickly trying to beat the rain, but still nothing. After dinner we played outside a little bit, thinking we were getting some last minute fun in before the rain - but still no rain.

Cut to Saturday afternoon and there is still no rain. Finally around 1:30 I said to the kids, "Let's make a run up to Dutch Wonderland. The weather probably kept everybody away today. By the time we get there the park will be empty." We got to the park around 3:15 only to find it packed! We had to park further away than we did last weekend. It turns out there was a Brownie/Girl Scout Camp-O-Ree that weekend - so there were plenty of people there who had already planned on making a weekend out it. The crowd thwarted the kids plan to ride the Kingdom Coaster another dozen times. With the 15 - 20 minute wait we ended up only riding it twice. The kids still had a blast, it really is a good coaster!


One of the things I'm going to like about having the passes is access to a carousel and a train all summer. Sometimes in the heat of the summer, I'm just craving a spin on a merry-go-round or a ride on a miniature train. Now we don't have to settle for a mall carousel or find a public park with a train...

I wish DW had a antique Grand Carousel, but their model will do just fine.

The sun never did come out Saturday but that didn't stop the boys from enjoying one of their favorites, Sky Fighter. They love this ride simply because it has guns on it and they always sit facing each other so they can blast one another.

Elias and the Knight of Dutch Wonderland, Sir Brandon

We got in a good three hours at the park and capped the afternoon off by introducing my little guys to the wonderful world of Waffle House. As an added bouns, they both fell asleep on the way home so I got to enjoy the rare sounds on silence! Just as we pulled into the driveway at home it started to rain...for about 5 minutes. Sunday was sunny and near 80 and would have been a great day to go, but it was SUPPOSED to be rainy all day! A pretty much wasted weekend thanks to dumb ol' Mother Nature!

Our First Trip As Royalty

Even though it's essentially a kiddie park, I'm gotta say that I'm pretty excited that we got season passes to Dutch Wonderland this year! As a huge amusement park fan, I've always wanted to be a season pass holder to anywhere. Growing up we didn't live close enough to a park to make it worth while and later on in life when I worked at Hersheypark and could go whenever I want - I was too fat to ride anything. The nice thing about Dutch Wonderland is most of the attractions are designed for families to enjoy together and as as a stay-at-home dad an amusement park full of rides for my kids is a great way to kill many long summer days of daddy duty! So this past weekend, the boys and I headed up to Lancaster, PA (about an hour drive for us) and spent the day at the park. It was nice to have the more relaxed approach to visiting and not worrying about getting everything done in one day. We took our time around the park and I pretty much let the kids dictate where we went and what we did. They had a blast!

Since there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of blogging about Dutch Wonderland out there, I thought I'd do some trip reports when we make it out to the park. This was the second weekend of the season and there was a good turn out at the park, but certainly far from crowded. The weather was absolutely beautiful and I simply enjoyed being outside and feeling the gentle warmth of the sun.

One of the things that I really like about Dutch Wonderland is that they can take a simple ride and elevate it slightly by it's presentation. Off-Road Rally is a pretty simple "off the shelf" kiddie truck ride, with a train of trucks that travel around a slightly off-oval track. I've seen this ride at other operations simply dumped on a gravel lot or grass. I've always liked the nice way DW has framed this ride with lush landscaping. (Elias and Tanner are in the green car.)

The highlight of the park for most older kids is the Kingdom Coaster. Opened in 1992, this family coaster delivers quite a ride for a park known for it's no-thrills. The ride is pretty much a full sized wooden roller coaster minus the first drop. There are alot of twists and turns in this 90 second ride as well as a decent amount of air-time.


This was the first year Tanner worked up the nerve to ride it and he was an instant fan! That's Elias hand (with the watch) going no-handed down the second, slightly bigger drop.

One of two new rides this year is Huck Finn's Leapin' Frogs. The kids dismissed this at first as just another round-and-round ride but then we noticed it was actually a variation of a dune buggy ride they LOVE at the beach. While traveling around-and-around the frogs hop up and down. This is achieved by a wheel traveling along a track inside the rides center mechanism. The track lifts the cars up and then drops them which creates a bouncing sensation. The kids swore this frog version was a bit more souped up than the dune buggies and perhaps they were right as the frog cars looked a bit heavier than the beach cars. Either way, Leapin' Frogs will be a must ride for Elias and Tanner on future visits.

Whenever we go to a park for the day, we always seem to miss the shows because we're too busy trying to squeeze so much else into our day. I made it a point to finally see some of Dutch Wonderland's entertainment offerings. We hit up a 4:00 performance of A Dragon's Tale, one of the two shows performed in the Aqua Stadium. High-Dive shows used to be a staple in most amusement parks so it's nice that Dutch Wonderland still has one since most have been retired at this point. A group of five divers act out a silly tale about a princess and an evil knight, to a prerecorded soundtrack. As you can imagine, I saw alot of theme park entertainment when I was younger and I've always marveled at the bottom-of-the-barrel low brow, corny humor these shows maintained. I'm happy to say that the Dutch Wonderland show is about as corny as they come. It has some really funny moments mixed with bad puns, slapstick and current pop culture references. It's not many kiddie parks that you'll find a group of medieval knights dancing to Beyonce's Put a Ring On It. High-Diving is a feat that seems to impress young and old and the show is incredibly entertaining for everyone. I'm looking forward to seeing the park's other high-dive show.

Along the back end of the park runs the Mill Stream which is home to several species of water foul. The ducks at the park are just as big of an attraction as all the rides and fancy other stuff. This little family of ducks we saw brought ooooh's and ahhh's from many families.

Did I mention my kids loved the Kingdom Coaster. I was going to keep track of how many times we rode it this summer, but I already lost count. I think we rode it 12 times and then the kids went an additional two more times. Three or four times around at once is about all I can handle. At the end of the day, the guy running the ride was just letting everybody stay on and didn't even stop the train in the station. The cars just whizzed by the empty platform and we rode again and again. Pretty cool.

Elias and Tanner in the second to last seat, riding without Daddy. This was the last ride of the day and ending to a great first visit as Season Pass holders at Dutch Wonderland.

Proud Parent of a Young Artist

Every once in a while, your kid brings home a piece of art work that he or she did at school that is a little bit above the rest. These are the projects that get hung on the refrigerator or somewhere else in the house. My son Tanner brought this picture and short story home from preschool the other day, and quite honestly...I couldn't be prouder of him!

Mad Monster Party

May I recommend Monster Puppets from Made By Me Junior? This is a wonderful arts & crafts kit that Santa Claus brought us (although I've also seen it at Wal-Mart for $10.) What I thought would be a one-time craft project turned out to be more than that. The kit comes with five basic hand puppets and then 75 pieces of different body parts likes eyes, mouths and hair. The really cool part is that the pieces are all backed with velcro so the kids can literally make hundreds of different puppets. They had a blast creating all different kinds of monsters. Elias even took to sketching some designs out before he made the puppets. You don't know how rare it is to spend an entire weekend evening at our house with the kids asking once to turn on the TV or the Wii.

I used to LOVE puppets when I was little. Let me just say that if YouTube had been around when I was their age, there would be 5,000 videos of my puppets online for you to enjoy. Here's the next best thing...my kids doing their own puppet video. (I don't like to brag, but I kind of directed it.)

And yes, there is an episode 1 too.

C is for Cookies (and Christmas)

We're not big bakers or chefs here at the WWoB offices, but every Christmas I like to do a little baking. This year we got a little ambitious and made cookies from scratch, something I've never done before. Tanner and I started early in the day (this was December 23) while Elias was still at school and got some of the baking underway. Both the kids really enjoy helping out in the kitchen, Elias is especially fond of cracking eggs and Tanner will do any job you ask him. I have yet to establish any sort of product that has become tradition for me to make for the holidays so most of what we made was all new to us.

Do you have any idea how far back in the cupboard this rolling pin was!? Tanner is rolling out the dough to make Gingerbread Mickeys and Donalds.


We've made these before, with antique cookie cutters I got for a gift one year. They look really neat, but I should try and find a good gingerbread recipe because the dough from the store bought package is kind of tasteless. But they sure look swell, don't they!? Tanner had a blast pressing out all the cookies.

We made these Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies from scratch with a recipe from an (unopened) cookbook I gave my wife for Christmas last year. The recipe mislead me in forming the candy cane shapes so the first batch came out shaped like boomerangs (or something more foul if you wanna go there). The cookies have white chocolate and crushed up candy canes on top. Tanner was in charge of unwrapping the candy and smashing it up with a crab mallet.

These Stop n' Go Cookie Pops turned out really cute and were a big hit with the kids over the holiday. Elias and Tanner both took their job very seriously of sorting out a huge bag of M&M's into the different colors we needed. They also took great care in placing all the candies on the cookies when they came out of the oven. I got this recipe from a Betty Crocker Cookie Cookbook that was sent to the WWoB offices as a promo. Well played, Betty!

Finally, we took some of the packaged sugar cookie dough and made cut-outs with a bag of cartoon cookie cutters that I didn't know we had. There were a lot of treasures buried in the cupboard back with the rolling pin. We also made some of our own shapes like letters, Pac-Man and the Pigeon. They turned out really cool but didn't last long enough to get a picture.

The cooking supplies are all put away now and we'll dig them out again a couple days before Christmas 2011.

Happy New Year, ya'll!

Ho Ho Ho, It's Christmas

Well, this Christmas was a little tough without having my mother around and the spirit and joy that she has always brought to my holiday season. But luckily, when you have little kids - they aren't going to let you mope around and be sad because "IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!" Our morning unofficially started at 6:30 am. This year Santa started the tradition of leaving a gift wrapped book at the end of the kids beds which bought us an additional half hour of sleep. We made it downstairs around 7:15 to find milk and cookies gone and lots of presents left behind.

The kids had a good time opening up all their loot, although to be honest with ya there could have been one present under the tree - Kirby's Super Star Ultra for DS - and they would have been just as happy. But Elias was also thrilled to get some Godzilla stuff and they were both ecstatic over plush characters from the Angry Birds game.

Myself, I scored a few DVD's including Disneynature's Oceans. In the CD department I got the multi-CD set Walt Disney and the 1964 World's Fair, which features tons of audio from the four attractions that Disney designed for the New York World's Fair. I was also happy that my wife gave me the Tangled soundtrack, as last year she assigned giving duties of the Princess and the Frog soundtrack to another family member and it was a little embarrassing opening that up sitting next to my 6 year old niece who had just got some other Disney Princess stuff.

I really had a fun time shopping for my wife this year. She was elated to receive a bracelet from the fine folks at Tiffany & Co. As a big jewelry fan, she's always dreamed of a piece from Tiffany's. She also loved her Zumba scarf which I ordered from the Zumba website, and then realized that Zumba and scarfs have nothing to do with each other.

Joey snagged a bunch of stuff for her upcoming college days. In case you haven't heard, he's heading to a branch of University of Pittsburgh next week to begin his college career. He'll be about 3 hours away, which will be hard for his mom - and she'll in turn make it hard for me.

I think I learned a valuable lesson about Christmas this year. It's more than gifts, it's more than Christmas movies and TV specials...it's about friends and family and giving and I think I'm going to paint myself a merrier Christmas next year by giving more to those around me who are so important.

Burrito Joe

If you are a friend of mine on Facebook, I apologize and you can skip this entry because I know I've been going on about it all weekend over on the ol' FB. But...for the rest of you:

Friday night Joey closed the door on his public school education. His high school graduation was upon us. Instead of having the class valedictorian speak at the ceremony, the school held auditions for two random students to present a speech to their class. We were proud of Joey for just trying out for the gig...we were even more proud when he snagged a spot...and his mother and I both were beaming with pride the night of the graduation and we heard the speech. Joey delivered a humorous, motivational, and totally engaging address to an audience of not only his peers but at least 1,000 other audience members crammed into every corner of the school's football stadium. There was a thunderous applause when Joey was done entertaining and inspiring the crowd.

After the proceedings, Joey and his mother and I were stopped by tons of people telling us how good Joey was and how impressed or moved they were with his speech. For the evening Joey was a rock star and we were his entourage.

The excitement carried over the next day when a quote from Joey's speech was the headline of the town's newspaper. "The World is Your Burrito" the headline read...a passage from Joey's speech which was actually a quote from a "Weird Al" song. (I have to take a little credit for introducing Joey to the world of "Weird Al" Yankovic.)

Here's a clip from the article:

It was likely the most important speech of Joseph [last name]'s life so far.

And, the [name of school] High School graduate said, while grinning in his cap and gown, he was wearing what can only be described as "a silky dress."

Luckily, 299 other graduates were right there with him at Friday's graduation.

"The world is your burrito," he said, drawing laughs from his classmates. "Think of your future not as a task, but an endless hallway with every door open."

After graduation, about 78 percent of the graduates are going on to higher education, 13 percent are going into the workforce, 4 percent are joining the military and 5 percent are undecided.

No matter what their next step will be, [Last name] encouraged all of the graduates not to waste their potential, but to never forget where they came from. "The past is something that should be cherished," he said.

That past has held many memories for the Class of 2010, from elementary school trips to the zoo and birthday parties, to sports games at the [team stadium], to first loves and first breakups, [last name] said.

Before heading off to Senior Week at the beach...for a full seven days of mini-golf, sandcastles and ice cream sodas - No doubt...Joey had time to upload my home video of his speech onto YouTube. For some reason, the site isn't giving me the code to paste the video on this site, so click through the link below to watch the video of Joey's phenomenal graduation speech.

Click on this link, not the picture, for the YouTube Video of Joey's Graduation Speech