This was Winter Break for my son and myself, which meant it was time to set up daily adventures.  Preferably those that don’t require waking up before the sun.  The weather was chilly at parts . . . warm enough to skip gloves at other parts . . . snowing . . . raining . . . How many seasons did this week have?  Anyway, I figure I’ll make a fun post today by separating by days.  Especially since tomorrow is going to have a fairly heavy post in terms of topic.

First, I do want to mention that I managed to write 1 2/3 chapters of War of Nytefall: Eradication by using nights.  Hoping to get another 1 1/3 done over the weekend since I have the time.  So, what adventures did my son and I have?

Monday: Build-A-Bear Part 1

Now, several activities were being done in preparation of seeing How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World on Friday.  So, I decided it would be a great idea to go to Build-A-Bear.  My soon made a Toothless when the 2nd movie came out and now they had a Light Fury.  Figured his Toothless could use a girlfriend.  First, we stopped at Barnes & Noble for me to pick up 2 books.  Then, we arrived to find that a lot of people decided to get a Light Fury over the previous weekend.  None in the store until Thursday.  Of course, my son understood after all my hype and we went home.  Nope.  He noticed the deal of get one full price and another for $10.  We made a Bowser from Super Mario Bros. complete with sounds and a Piplup (Penguin-looking Pokemon) with a pink backpack to sit in.  I’ll admit now that I spent more this week than I planned, but it had been a really long time since my son and I had such a long amount of time to have adventures.  We watched the first How to Train Your Dragon movie while eating lunch and then it was playing with his new friends until dinner.

Tuesday: To the Arcade

The morning was a late starter because we were both tired from a long night that I can’t talk about.  Actually, I had to visit the sleep apnea doctor to make sure the device was still working.  That was quick and I got lunch for us on the way home.  We ate and then it was off to a big arcade that they have nearby.  I thought we would do bowling there too, but this was different than the smaller arcades he’s been to.  It wasn’t a birthday event, so the limit was my wallet.  There were a lot more games too.  We tried out a bunch with him leaving a game as soon as he’d be done with one play.  This included him demanding that we play a game from Japan that wasn’t in English.  There were two guns, but it turned out to be one-player with an insanely long tutorial.

The real event was when we went back near the front and we played the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.  We played with what we had left on the cards to beat 2 of the 4 levels, but he wanted more.  I had enough to put more points on a card, which we shared while trying again.  Unfortunately, we made it to the last level and I died just after he used the last of the card.  You have to battle through the 6 previous bosses while Shredder watches from his throne.  My son managed to beat the third one on his own, but didn’t get through the fourth.  Needless to say, he was bawling and he wanted me to get more points since we had 2 minutes to continue.  The machines were busy, so I was using that to get out of spending more money.  One opened up and I figured I would try because I wanted to win too.  A technical error got in the way and the timer ended.  I had to calm him down since this was his first time dealing with the pain of losing an arcade game and not having enough money to continue.  He did leave with me without throwing a real tantrum.  Pretty sure every parent there understands a kid begging to try again since they came so close to winning.  Still, no tantrum and it’s on the books for a mid-March return, which gives me time to save up money.

Wednesday: The Delayed Bowling Game

We had snow coming in the afternoon, so How to Train Your Dragon 2 was being used as the indoor activity.  For the morning, we headed out to go bowling, which we didn’t get to do on Tuesday.  There’s a place nearby and it has a small arcade, so he got to play a few games too.  It was half-price video games too.  He even made it onto the Top 12 player list for one of the Jurassic Park levels.  My son didn’t understand why I was so proud that I needed to wait for the list to come back and get a picture.  Anyway, bowling was a lot of fun.  We played two games and he used a ramp.  I won both, but he gave me a run for my money.  Only beat him by 3 points on the second one and he was the first to get a strike.  We each got one.  To be fair, he had bad luck in the first game where he kept creating these horrible splits.  Still, he had a lot of fun and it was snowing by the time we got out, so he enjoyed walking through that to get lunch to go from next door.  He wasn’t so happy later when we had to walk agaisnt the wind.

I will put the one piece of bad news here since I had a really bad night with those itching allergies.  Not sure what set me off, but it seems to be stress.  The medication I took might have given me a reaction too.  Strangest thing is that I haven’t had any attacks since that really bad night.  Not sure what happened unless my body just found a new level of dealing with the stress.

Thursday: Build-A-Bear Part 2

This was slated to be a recovery day because of that rough night, but my son had an appointment in the morning.  We were near Build-A-Bear, so I figured we would try to get the Light Fury afterwards.  They hadn’t unpacked them yet.  My son kind of took that as them not receiving them, so I had to explain inventory and shipping while we walked back to the car.  I was running out of energy too, but I mustered the strength to get us to McDonalds as an apology.  The rest of the day was him playing with his toys and me trying to snooze on the couch.  Didn’t really work since he would get me to play too.  Eventually, he got tired and used me as a mattress to take a nap.  I tried to sleep too, but he didn’t like my snoring.

Friday: DRAGONS! (Build-A-Bear Part 3 and 4)

We saw How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in the morning and the theater is in the mall.  I might write a review for next Sunday since I don’t want to accidentaly mention any spoilers.  We both loved it, but I do recommend bringing tissues if you’ve gone through the whole journey.  Yeah, I do a ‘review’ next weekend.  Anyway, we went right to Build-A-Bear, which was busy.  They kept the Light Fury and Toothless stuff behind the counter, but we got a Light Fury and a little dragon you can put on your wrist or shoulder.  They had sounds too.  So, why am I saying Part 3 and 4?  Well, they said that they could put one of the sound devices into my son’s old Toothless.  I was going to wait for the weekend, but we didn’t get a certificate for the Light Fury.  He really wanted that, so I drove right back with only a few sweet potato chips for lunch in my belly.  Took Toothless with me, which meant he had his talking dragon couple within an hour.  It was exhausting, but totally worth the smile on his face.  He got a poster too, which is now on his wall.  Ended the week of adventures with pizzza.

This is a really long post because a lot happened.  I didn’t want to skimp on anything because it has been months since I got to spend this kind of time with my son.  He has school and appointments while I have work.  His Holiday Break was filled with appointments too, so I was happy to get a straight run here.  That’s really all I can say about things.  Dang.  Anyway, here are the goals for the week:

Goals of the week:

1. Back to school!
2. Back to waking up early!
3. Get references for summer job.
4. Try to do some writing at night if I have the energy.
5. If no book time then blog posts for April.
6. Read more Naruto.
7. Continue doing biking since I seem to have lost a few pounds.  (Lunches of fruits and veggies probably help too.)
8. Look forward to seeing Aladdin on Broadway next weekend.

Hope everyone has a fun weekend.  Feels weird having a 95% positive post after so long, but it was bound to happen eventually.