Settling Back In

Getting back from Florida meant that it was time to officially face the big move to Pittsford.  We had to start settling in to our "new normal" in preparation for the start of school, though in the end they wanted to stick around at home a bit longer, mostly for the food, I suppose!  We have come to realize the boys will miss each other, which is probably the biggest irony of this whole thing.  Playing together on XBox will help, but the more time we can manage together, the better.  Hopefully we can find some weekends and evenings to spend together, though a little case of COVID (or two) has already put a crimp in that plan.  But more on that later.  

Amyway, we spent most of the week after we got back together at home.  We had a lot of appointments to catch up on after a week away, and then in the middle of all of that, my dad--fresh from the kidney stone debacle--broke his ankle.  He took some sort of misstep around the house and is now in a boot for a while.  Unfortunately, it meant they couldn't take a trip planned for a couple weeks later to Wisconsin for my uncle's celebration of life.  I did offer to come stay with my dad if my mom wanted to ride there with my cousin, but given the myriad of potential issues, my mom felt better about staying.  We did get to see her the following Saturday at Kevin and Lori's TCU season opening party, which was a fun change of pace.

The following Monday was my birthday.  The big 4-8.  Yikes.  I decided ahead of time to take that day off and finally do a long-overdue meetup with Heather and Mason (and Peter).  We had been planning to go to Strong Museum (again) because there was a Peanuts exhibit there this summer that was coming to an end, and both being from Peanuts households, we thought it would be fun.  Unfortunately, my birthday ended up being a gross, rainy day, which put a kink in my plan to finally get out into the board game garden at the museum (as it's never open when we're there at night or in colder weather).  But we had a great time nonetheless.  Since we had been to the museum around the new year, we had already done a lot of things and could just let Mason do whatever he wanted to do more of!

His favorite thing by far was this little stage.  We sat there many times watching him "perform" and serving us fake popcorn!    

Our favorite map fan also wanted to drive in the car with a "GPS"!

He also had fun making messages to send across the top of the pirate ship, and of course loved running through the crooked room!

The Peanuts room had some very cute photo ops!  

Waiting for the Great Pumpkin!

Linus made a blanket fort!

Joe Cool himself!

Plinko to determine Franklin's schedule!

Schroeder's piano!

The whole gang!

In Snoopy's doghouse!

Selfie with Chuck!

We had a lot of fun, and it was a great way to spend my birthday, with the friend that has known me the longest and my godson (who started Kindergarten the following week...like, how?!).  When I reunited with my guys that evening, we decided to go to a new place for dinner, Moo'd Burger Bar.  It had great gluten-free reviews, and the food was indeed delicious.  

My birthday week was another busy one, including Carter's latest infusion and a ton of work to complete, as I was still catching up from vacation.  I also had a fun plan for Carter's last official summer lunch.  We headed to the Pizza Hut in Brockport because they offer the buffet for lunch two days a week!  Like, the real buffet that hasn't really existed since before COVID!  It ended up being a bit of a wait--no surprise, it's popular!--but it was pretty much just like I remember it.  Carter definitely enjoyed himself!

The next day, we all went to the zoo for the first time in a long time, as the Knighthawks were participating in an event.  I don't think we'd been there since maybe early pandemic times.  It's sort of depressing that they still haven't built the tropics building that they were supposed to have built forever ago.  I miss the orangutans and the aviary and the charm of that old building.  Even with the natural playground that's there now, it just feels like a big empty space where that building used to be.  We were so excited to see the otters, as they have different ones than in the past that are so much more active.  We had a blast watching them wrestle and chase one another.

The lizards seemed to like the windows that day...

These frogs all nestled in the plant cracked me up.

The red panda was adorable...

...but the penguins were pretty much as inactive as usual.

We saw the sea lions from above and then saw the polar bear.  

She looked a little bored.

The lion is so regal.

The baboons gave us a close view of their interaction.

We saw the giraffes and zebras, too.  No great pictures, and honestly, after Animal Kingdom Lodge, seeing them was a little less exciting than usual.  We practically lived with them for a few days, after all!  

I thought this lizard was pretty cool looking!

And this was a very pretty bird!

We got a good view of the rhino...which made me think of the time I saw a tranquilizer dart in the one rhino's butt on our way out of the zoo.  

We got a lovely view of one of the elephants, too.
 

On our way out, we stopped to get the underwater view of the sea lions.  It was cool because there was a service dog there and the sea lions seemed really interested in it!

We went to Buffalo the next day to stop at the outlets (of course) and celebrate Craig's dad's birthday (and mine).  And with that, we just had a quiet Labor Day and summer was over.  Tuesday started a whole new world...but I'll get into that in another post!