Birthday Week

I'm just now winding down from this birthday week whirlwind. My little man turned 4 on March 2nd, I can't believe my baby boy is four. I remember when we brought him home the first night from the hospital, and being new parents for the first time my (now) husband and I both stayed up the whole night at the same time because we were terrified something would happen or we wouldn't hear him cry. That obviously was a mistake. And we never missed him crying. When Mj was little and squishy, my husband would ask "when is he going to move so I can play with him?". Now we can't get the kid to STOP moving, even in his sleep, he's a sleep thrasher, he literally either ends up upside down or across the bed, and if you share a bed with him you feel like you just got your ass kicked in a MMA fight. I know, I've been elbowed and right hooked in the mouth before. We had his birthday party at Tumble Time Gym in Pocasset which was fun, it got his energy out and I didn't have to worry about entertaining kids in my house, and it wasn't too expensive.
The cake was okay in light of Roche Brother's previous incident with my "birthday wishes" cake that looked like it had poo on it. Next year though I think I'm going to end up doing an old fashioned birthday party complete with a home made cake. We forget about what its really all about, always worrying about if you're "doing enough", like people are going to judge you if your kids party wasn't cool enough. I'm tired, I'm broke, and I don't give a crap anymore :)
After our birthday party bonanza we had our first family mini vacation. Which when you have small children is more work than vacation, but you do it really for them to have a good time, because after all you can rest when your dead. I had booked two nights at the Crowne Plaza in North Shore for the CoCo Key waterpark package after reading reviews, I thought I'd risk it. Over all it was okay, it was a very nice and clean hotel with courteous and efficient staff. The waterpark was clean and not too crowded and MJ had a great time, Mýa tolerated it.



A couple of things that kind of put me off and jaded my own personal expierience:
1)The hotel nickel & dime-ing you for every item or service that is normally complimentary at other hotels such as :
- $25 per item per day on the mini fridge and microwave
I've heard of maybe a $10 charge for the mini fridge, but $25 ?!?!?!
- $10 wifi internet for guest rooms, free in lobby & lounge
- $5 per guest for 1 hour use of hotel pool, family swim time startes at noon
I've never heard of a hotel charging the GUESTS to use their own pool never
mind putting a time limit on it, and limiting the time when children can use
the pool, plus you can not use it if theres a water aerobics class going on
- no coin laundry only dry cleaning which is $$
- charging $8 for crappy contential breakfast, and an extra $3.00 if you want
eggs
2) The arcade associated with CoCo Key has the same operating hours as the waterpark
Which means as a parent with 2 small kids you spend more $$ outside the hotel to
entertain them



If you want just a day pass for CoCo Key it's $40 per person per day regardless of age, except kids under 2 are free. CoCo Key is open from 3pm-9pm mon-friday and all day on the weekends and school vacation. In my opinion its not right to charge people the same price during the week when the hours are limited as on the weekend when the park is open all day. So hence why I decided on the two night hotel package because for like $40 more we got a nice room and Danvers is a good 2 hour ride.

We went to the New England Aquarium during the day tuesday while we were waiting for the resort to open, and that was another money pit. We didn't have time to grab passes from the library (I believe you're required to return them the next day anyways and we wouldn't have been able to)and got stuck parking at the nearest garage which was $30. Between paying admission for 3 people (Mýa was free), getting ripped off at the locker rental ($4 PER TIME YOU OPEN IT) it was well over $100 just for that alone. The kids seemed to enjoy it, but I think our money would've been better spent at the Children's museum for the day.


Overall it wasn't a bad vacation, but it was kind of defeating to feel like everyone was out to suck your wallet dry, it's hard to enjoy a trip when you have to worry about where your money is going :-P In my opinion, for those who are interested in waterparks, I'd save your money for Water Wizz when it open's, its about 3 X bigger and $10 cheaper, plus when you're local you don't have to worry about paying for a hotel.