TechyDad

Last Sunday, during JSL’s nap-time, I decided to spend some time with NHL and give B some time to herself. So I took NHL to his first game of mini-golf. Now the skies were not bright and sunny. In fact, some raindrops came down upon us as we arrived at our destination. Not to worry though because the place we went to had indoor mini-golf.

After paying for our golfing session, we headed to the indoor mini-golf area. As we got our clubs, I told NHL to look at his shoes. Thanks to the black light, they were glowing. NHL was quite amused to discover that his socks, white stripe on his pants and even my shoelaces were glowing as well.

We entered the mini-golfing area and a nice family of ten in front of us allowed us to play through. Thanks go out to them. I’m sure NHL would have gotten very frustrated if he needed to wait for 10 people to finish each hole before he could proceed.

The first set of holes had an under the sea theme. Here, we shot balls past an octopus and into a shark’s mouth. Next, we entered a jungle and attempted to get our balls past a bear, tiger, and a big purple gorilla. After we exited the jungle, a time warp took us to a prehistoric era. Here, we putted past a triceratops and NHL was almost eaten by a velociraptor. Finally, we launched into space were we faced off against robots and aliens before our balls were sucked into a black hole.

NHL loved every minute of indoor mini-golf and it was over all too quickly. After a quick call to B to make sure that everything was alright at home, NHL and I stopped by the soft serve ice cream stand right next to the mini-golf. (Talk about convenient!) Luckily, by this point, the sun had fought off some of the clouds. We both had chocolate and vanilla swirl soft serve ice cream, though we had to put our quickly melting conefuls into cups to eat them less messily.

After a quick peek at the outdoor mini-golf course that they had (and protests by NHL that he wanted to play more mini-golf), we headed home hoping to soon head back for more mini-golf fun. Maybe next time JSL will join us.

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On Saturday, we had the pleasure of seeing Walking With Dinosaurs: The Live Experience.  For those of you who don’t know what this is, you travel back in time and see some real, live dinosaurs.  Ok, they’re people in costumes and animatronics controlled by people, but the production values are so good, you’d swear the dinosaurs are real.  The scale is fully kept too, so when the Brachiosaur stomps onto the stage, it is nearly 33 feet (10 meters) tall.  And when the mother T-Rex comes charging in, she is over 26 feet (8 meters) of flesh tearing, loud roaring dinosaur.  (Reminder: Do *NOT* mess with this momma’s kid.  The kid may seem small and weak but the mother can eat 144 pounds in a single bite.  The average adult wouldn’t be more than a mozzarella stick is to us.)  The whole production mixes science and entertainment perfectly.

NHL, of course, loved it.  His favorite dinosaur kept shifting depending on which dino was on stage last.  We took JSL along, hoping he wouldn’t be scared by the loud noises.  Towards the end, he was a little jittery, but not completely freaked out.  A little reassurance that daddy was there and he was fine.  We figured the long-term affects of the show would be more evident with NHL than with JSL.  (We signed him up for an archeology summer program at the local community college.)  However, tonight JSL showed that he too liked the dinosaur show.  At least, he liked the roaring and charging parts of it.  Don’t just take my word for it, though, see for yourself.

My little JSL-a-saurus!