Everything is better in Florida

Several weeks ago, Eric bought William a shirt with the phrase "Everything is better in Florida" on it.  He wears this shirt proudly and often quotes it to prove a point.  Though, not always effectively.  Not far from our house there is a McDonald's with a jungle theme.  Unfortunately, it is not the McDonald's less than a 10 minute walk from our house. Or maybe fortunately, come to think about it.  Anyway, we went there last week with Aunt Megan and we were all impressed.  They have various robotic animals hanging from the ceiling, a tree (Will was super impressed by this), a couple of slides, a few tvs, and a few game stations.  And the bonus for me was that it didn't smell bad.  I tend to think that McDonald's play areas have a unpleasant odor associated with them.  The kids loved it, they ate pretty well, and Will walked away feeling that his shirt had once again been proven true.
  Later we were telling Eric about it and Will got into an argument with him about the quality of chicken nuggets available there versus the chicken nuggets available at Chick Fil-A (the parental fast food restaurant of choice, which has a quality play area as well, though without all of the technology).  There is a Chick Fil-A within walking distance of our house as it turns out. Will eventually brought out the big guns with the well-known fact that "Everything is Better in Florida" unable to comprehend that this argument didn't work when comparing two things that both exist in Florida.  Eric, understandably, remains unconvinced and I very much doubt he will go to McDonald's anytime soon.  His loss.

In an unrelated story (though I could tie it in to the general theme if I had more energy) relates to our adventures in Homeschooling.  Which is going quite well, by the way despite the following anecdote.  We just finished our first quarter and Dom is doing very well and continues to have a great attitude.

Anyhow, we had gotten away from doing state collages as the move came up and I've yet to begin them again.  However, I purchased a coloring book of the states and each page contains the general information that we covered on the collages anyhow.  State bird, State tree, State flower, State capital, and so forth.  They also have a picture of the state with rivers, lakes and mountains.  Dom knew that the lines denoting rivers were areas of water, but understood them to be the border of a larger body of water and so tended to color the area to the north of the river blue as well.  As he worked on North Carolina, I explained to him what the rivers were.  He was disappointed not to color more areas of water and so I pointed out that he could paint the area to the east of the state blue because it was the Pacific Ocean.  He didn't look convinced, but went ahead with his coloring.  Eventually he asked me why it was the Pacific Ocean and I started to explain about it being more calm than the Atlantic.  He then asked if there were two Pacific Oceans.  I silently congratulated myself on understanding his confusion since we live on the Gulf side of Florida and therefore there are two areas of the ocean we are closer to.  But, before I could start to explain this misunderstanding he goes "You know, because Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean".  I was properly humbled and am proud that my son is better at geography than I am.  Perhaps we will do a study abroad to ensure that this subject is properly covered.