El Cinco de Mayo Grande: las Venta de Garajes y Terra de Mar

Buenos nachos, hombres!

So, once again, it was time for the semi-annual Hunter's Creek Women's Association Garage Sale (*queue glorious fanfare*).  We always look forward to this (maybe me a little more than Kris, as I love treasure-hunting for junk), and this year was no exception.  Sure, we weren't as gung-ho as we've been about it in previous years, seeing how we're currently in packing-mode and anxious to move into our new house, but we were still ready to roll come Saturday morning, bright and early.

Unfortunately, the rest of Hunter's Creek was not.

There was practically zero participation this year, and I have no idea why.  It was like the collective masses of Hunter's Creek all said to themselves, Well, looks like I wanna keep all this random crap in my attic for another year.  I've never seen such a poor turnout for a community garage sale - it was absolutely horrifying.  As such, we called it quits by 9:30am.

That's right, 9:30.  In the morning.

Yet, before sorrow befalls you all, however, I should point out that the day's 90-minute quest was not without some small victories.  Kris, as usual, did round up several shirts and outfits for the girls - princess/cartoon character-themed, brightly-covered garbs that will surely be strewn about the house on a consistent basis - so she was satisfied.

Yours Truly stumbled across an awesome set of OLD editions (1912) of collected works by Tolstoy, Stevenson, and Hugo, which was a great find for an avid book-lover such as myself.  The price for all three books?  $1.50.  I found them at Kris' church, where we ended up once again donating a few bins of crap for the good of the masses.

The highlight of the morning's trek, however, was this small General Electric TV that I bought off some rich guy for $5:

 

 

Sure, there's no remote for the thing, and the screen's small, but it works perfectly, and - contrary to how it was marked - it's in color!  I hooked it up first to my Atari 2600, and then to my Pinball Breakout system.  Definitely a match made in Heaven, folks, and a fine addition to the upcoming Study (ManRoom 2.0) in our new house.

By the time we got home, it was about 9:45am.  Which, for Garage Sale Day, is just, plain sad.  We had the whole day ahead of us, we were all dressed up with nowhere to go, the kids were being eerily cooperative, etc. . . so we decided to head off to Sea World and make the most of our annual passes.

After a quick bag-packing session (diaper bag, lunch bag, my man-purse tactical camera bag), we set off and were in the park by 10:30am.  Since there wasn't a whole lot of pressure to go and show the kids everything the park had to offer (since we've done that a few times already, being annual pass-holders and all), we opted to hit up a bunch of the random stuff we usually skip over instead.

Namely, the Tower of Doom.

I'm not sure what this is really called, but I've been calling it the Tower of Doom for the last ten years or so.  For whatever reason, this is what Alayna wanted to do, which seems bizarre since it's not necessarily the most kid-friendly attraction at Sea World: you wait in line for at least a half-hour, in blistering heat, to slowly spin up (idly rotate would be more accurate) to the top of a very large pole and then back down again.

I think the whole purpose of the 'ride' is to give patrons the opportunity to see all of the park from a high altitude vantage point.  For me, this isn't really all that awesome, since the duration of your going up and coming down is somewhere around 5 minutes - definitely not worth the half-hour wait in the sun.

But hey, maybe I'm weird. . .

Sweating in line. . .

The Tower of Doom

Ascending the Tower. . .

Happy kids.

Abby couldn't have cared less about this.

Kid juggling

Shamu Stadium (if you look carefully, you can make out a killer whale. . . sans bludgeoned trailer)

"Hey kids - a parking lot!"

The Manta

(I don't know what this one is - I hate roller coasters so I don't pay attention to them all that much)

Lunch break (we opt to bring the kids' food from home, as we'd rather have them waste FREE food)

The Lunch Pavilion

Pizza!

Alayna, makin' friends with some random duck.

. . . and then a crap-load of noise interrupted our lunch.

The noise turned out to be a bunch of weird-ass dudes in flamboyant outfits, jumping around on platform shoes and bangin' on drums. . .

(I have a pair of pants like this at home. . .)

Back to lunch, after our short drum-watching break. ..

We decided to go the opposite way around the main lake this time, as we usually go along the route with the most attractions.  Like I said before, we treated today like a pick-ups day, covering all the crap we missed the last few times we've brought the girls here.

. . . this meant that the first attraction we came across was Sea World's Arctic Expedition.  Following a (lame) presentation/ride, we took the kids through the 'expedition' to see a bunch of arctic mammals.  Like Beluga whales. . .

. . . and Polar Bears. . .

. . . and even Walruses (these pictures, alas, are complete crap - my apologies)

The Cannonball checks out the Beluga whales being fed. . .

(She LOVED this.)

After Arctic Expedition, we took the kids by the Pirate Splash Zone. . .

. . . but they were on the verge of passing out, so - after a mere two and a half hours out and about - we decided to leave Sea World.

Once the kids woke up from their naps, we took 'em out back for some water fun in the yard. . .

Sprinklers, while once the bane of our kids' very existence, are now proving to be quite the cherished past time around here. . .

So, that's how the Houghs celebrated Cinco do Mayo.  No Coronas, no fiestas, no Mexicans this year - just garage sales, Sea World, and sprinklers.  I'll take it.

Alayna working on her writing skills on her LeapPad, deep within the bowels of Fort No Moms Allowed. . .

- Brian