Disneyland, Rio, Flags and Superheroes

Every year at Emily's Jr. High, the Student Council takes a quick turnaround trip to Disneyland. Emily isn't in Student Council, but several of her friends are. This year, they needed more kids to fill the bus, so they offered seats to the kids in NJHS (National Junior Honor Society). Emily is in NJHS, so she jumped at the idea to go on this trip with her friends.

Now, what is a turnaround trip. Basically, hell. But kids thin it's fun. So, you get to the school at 10:00 at night. They hired a nice motorcoach bus and a driver. They drive all night and get to Disney at 6 in the morning. They eat some McDonalds and go to Disney. This year, they did California Adventure instead of Disneyland. In order for the school to allow this trip, the kids get a 4 hour leadership training from Disney. It seemed like a really long time, but they did fun team building stuff, and if you are going to learn from any company, Disney is a great one to get lessons from. Then, they were released to go on rides for about 7 hours. Then, they did a little shopping in downtown Disney, went to McDonald's again and got back on the bus at 11 to head home. The seats recline like airplane seats, so they were cushy, but uncomfortable.

One of the Moms dropped the girls off and got a few pictures.

The bus had wifi and plugs, so that was good. I was able to follow them on Snapchat and Instagram. When they first got on the bus, there were photos and laughing and videos. Everyone was hyped up. 

 

We missed our girl though and her lonely unused coffee cup the next morning was sad.

 

This was their whole crew.

Emily had her location services off to save battery life, but I could tell where they were around Disney by zooming in on them. I'd send them little messages throughout the day. They looked like they were having a blast.

 

  

I knew Em would be tired when she got home, so I washed her sheets and got her bed all ready. Dakri was picking up the girls at 6:30. David said Emily walked right in the door, went right to bed and crashed.

 

I woke her up around 1:00 because I didn't want her to get into a bad cycle.   Our teachers are all on strike fighting for better pay and better conditions for our kids. So, the kids had Thursday and Friday off. They already are scheduled to have Monday off and who knows how long this will go. They are supposed to make up the days at the end of the year, but we are going camping and have a beach house reserved, so it is what it is. We will not be making up days. But, I do hope they win their fight. Most classrooms here have 30-35 kids. There isn't enough money for text books, copies are limited. Funding for education in Arizona is a joke.

And while Emily was gone on this trip to Disney, I took lots of pictures of Rio to send her and make her happy.  Here he is trying to get healthy by eating spinach.

 

This is his favorite spot. He lays on this window perch we got him and looks out Ben's window all day at the front of the house. That bush out theHre has bunnies and birds in it.  It's a cats dream.  

He's so handsome. Ben had to rub his head to get him to hold still.

 

 And don't you just want to kiss his little nose and mouth?

  

And in other events....

When Em made flagline, we got her a pole and flag. It's much easier to have a practice flag at home. It came yesterday. Emily's friend Ava who is a grade behind Emily also wants to do flagline, so she got a flag too, and Emily was teaching her stuff yesterday. Ava will have to wait a year to tryout for the team since she'll only be in 8th grade next year. But, these girls were out there for hours twirling their flags.

This  morning was the day these boys have been talking about for months. The Avenger Infinity War movie!  They got on their superhero shirts and were all ready for the first showing of the day. I like superhero movies and wanted to go, but I just couldn't do it. I know several of them die (we don't know who) and I don't want to watch my kids favorite fictional characters die. It just makes me sad. Captain America was Noah's favorite and I have a feeling he's not making it out of this 150 minute show alive. Maybe that's silly, I don't know, I just didn't want to see it. I told them, they all look really happy for going to a funeral. Captain America and Iron Man have had their run of individual box office hits, so I figure they're story is pretty much done. Oh and Thor, if they kill Thor, I can't bring myself to watch that handsome man die, but Thor movies are still going strong, so Marvel would have to be stupid to kill him off if they can squeeze one more box office smash out of him.

In any case, they'll be home in three hours and we'll see how the funeral went.

Oh wait, I just read a spoiler to be prepared for the bad news. I'm not saying who "dies" or who doesn't, but next year is Avengers 4 where superheroes will come back to try to reverse the curse of Thanos. So, basically, they could all come back. Smart Marvel, very smart!