Into March...

So this blog brings me into March, so at least I'm caught up to the right month now at the very least. As if we never get to go...we had another day at Disney. This time Sean and I set out early and hit Animal Kingdom and then went to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch, then headed over to Epcot to ride a couple of rides and wait on Sis, Rick and the kids to come meet up with us. Our family also had a visitor...Flat Stanley (a paper boy from a story, if you haven't read it you should) that was sent to us by our dear friend Raymond back in VA. It was so funny when we took him out to take a picture how many people would shout "hey, there's Flat Stanley", really made for some good conversations with people and we got to hear stories of where they took him when they had the chance. It was so much fun, I'm glad Raymond thought of us!
Once Sis and Rick called we headed over to MGM to meet with them and turned out to be ESPN Weekend at that park. We thought it would be a mess, and it was sort of....but on an event weekend like that if you're there for the rides, then not a problem. All the people were there to see the sports stars so the lines had very little wait times so it worked out great for us. The guys did take the kids to go to the sports area to scope out famous athletes, we saw: Roy Oswalt, Lance Berkman (AKA per my Sis and me: HOT), Brian McCann, Jeff Francoeur, Mark Teireira, and Tim Hudson...those were just the baseball players. We also saw some guys from the NFL and NBA...but the only Redskins player we saw was Darryl Green and for my favorite O's...Cal was there but I didn't see him...bummer! After that, Hunter stepped it up and actually rode the "Tower of Terror". I couldn't believe it but he was so excited to go....Matthew and Kenzie won't even ride that ride. Turns out he didn't like it but he did ride so I was very proud of him. Then, I guess being peer pressured by Hunter's bravery, Kenzie decided to ride the "Rock 'n Roller Coaster". The line was about a 50 minute wait but we went ahead and did it anyway because we finally got her talked into it. So while we were waiting of course she had to go to the bathroom...so I took her and we fought our way out and back into the line (Sis and Matt stayed in line). Then not 2 minutes after I got back...you guessed it...Matthew had to go. Didn't have to go when I took Kenzie less than 5 minutes ago but now had to go so bad he couldn't hold it...UGH! So I tried to make him hold it but then felt way too guilty so I fought our way back out of line....the looks we got....anyway on our way back into the line which of course had gotten longer a guy there said "okay, now I have to go can you take me". Ha! We just laughed and I replied "well, I probably could, I've gotten really good at it". Everyone seemed to be okay with us fighting our way back into the line and Kenzie ended up loving the ride so much they all got back in line and did it again...but this time we used Fast Pass. So that was our Disney Adventure for this day.

MGM with Sis and the gang...

My Sis and I decided to take a day together with just the two of us and the kids. We started off at Magic Kingdom and of course it was way too crowded so we didn't even park the car, we just headed on over to MGM. As soon as we got there we saw High School Musical so that made Kenzie happy...which was good because she was a bit sad for not getting to go to Magic Kingdom so it worked out great. We didn't take many pictures because we were more focused on riding all the rides we could in the shortest amount of time, we pretty much covered all of them too. We had only planned to be there for a few hours and turned out we nearly closed the park down...we have a bad habit of that you know? We had a great time and promised to take all the kids back again soon but next time to Magic Kingdom since we haven't been to that park in a while now.

Dolly came to visit again...

Okay, it was fun the first couple of times but now I'm running out of creative writing ideas for this Dolphin. Hunter always has the same excitement when he brings Dolly home from school as he did the very first day, but to me it just means more work. I guess if it makes him happy I shouldn't be so selfish to think of the extra work created for me, but I can tell from the stories in Dolly's book I'm not alone. The first several pages that we read were great stories with lots of pictures, now it's like barely half a page and the kids are drawing pictures at this point too. ha! We still take pictures, Hunter won't let that part slide...especially since I typically have the camera in his face all the time anyway. We did take Dolly out to watch the Great Lunar Eclipse which was really pretty exciting since it won't happen again for another 20 years from what Matthew tells me. We watched and waited for a full hour and can you believe just when the entire moon was about to be covered by the sun.....all these clouds rolled in and blocked our view. We were really upset and waiting for a few minutes to see if it would clear out enough for us to catch a glimpse of the full eclipse and no such luck. We even got in the car and drove around for a bit to try to find a better spot....oh well, maybe in the next 20 year eclipse the clouds will cooperate. ha!

Visitors from KS...

My Aunt Alana and Uncle Mike came for a visit 2/16-2/23 and though they were here a full week it certainly wasn't long enough. We had so much fun with them, and the kids really hated to see them leave as well. The first day we just played horse shoes, cooked out, and you can tell they were coming straigt from a KS ice storms because they even jumped in the pool. Now that we've been in FL a while, even mid-70s feels cold to us...yes, we became FL wimps! They had never been to Disney before so of course we had to give them the grand Epcot tour, and you can't forget the margaritas in Mexico! We went to Cocoa Beach for a day and that was their first time to see the ocean as well. The kids enjoyed having Mike play the guitar and we all loved singing their favorite "The Vegetable Song". They're hopefully going to come back again next year, but if we could get them here sooner that would be even better. Hopefully too they'll go back and share stories of how much fun they had so the rest of the family from KS will come visit sometime too.

Another tooth...gone

Yes, Matthew lost yet another tooth...this time he had a little help from Makenzie. Those two are taking turns just knocking each other's teeth out but hey, what are cousins for right? I'm thinking that one of the two of them have to grow up to be a dentist at this point but will have to change their tactics from knocking the teeth out to actually pulling them. Ha!

Valentine's Day

My day started in an exhausted state already because I had stayed up most of the night preparing for Matthew's class party, yes....the procrastinator strikes again. So I finished everything by 2AM just in time to get 4 hours sleep and get up to get ready to go to the party at the school. It was so worth the lack of sleep, we had a really great time. We had 3 crafts, decorated rice crispy treats cut into hearts and then played some really cool games. I had a jar of candy and they kids had to guess how many and though I'm sure they thought Matthew knew the answer already, he actually won it fair and square. I must admit, he's a lot like me in that we know our chocolates! ha! After school, Grammy and PopPop came by to drop off some Valentine treats for the kids which they loved, mom gave them money which is always good, we bought them a new Shining Star each, and my sister got them candy. Of course Aunt Sholl sent cards as well, I have no idea how she manages to get these kids a card, ON TIME, for every single holiday...it's amazing!

All of our Valentine's have been spent in Washington, DC at Disney on Ice since Matthew was born. So since we didn't have Disney on Ice here in FL we decided to do Disney in real life....but since all the parks closed early except Epcot, that's where we ended up. We had a really fun time, but boy was it crowded....we didn't expect that on Valentine's Day! So we rode a couple of rides, had hot dogs for our romantic family dinner, actually the kids had that, Sean and I just had their chips and then headed home. We had a good time, but we really did miss our Disney on Ice show....

Day at the beach

Sean went out of town, back to VA to work for the weekend so we decided to take a beach day. Mom went with us to hang out and I had actually talked to an old friend from high school who lives close by and so he agreed to meet up with us too. So we got to the beach and no sooner than we got all our stuff (and you know what kind of stuff is required with kids for a day at the beach) out and we looked to the left at this HUGE black cloud. I called Sean to tell him that he probably was only going to miss the rain so he could feel better about being in the cold back in VA. So then I called Adrian to tell him where we were and only got his voicemail so I suspected he probably looked out and saw the same black cloud and wrote it off for the day. So then it came a sprinkle and I told the boys not to worry because it's just a sprinkle....well that sprinkle suddenly became a complete downpour with no warning at all. So we were packing everything and running as fast as we could back to the car, which of course was 2 blocks away in the free parking lot. So Matthew and I were laughing and running and Hunter, who hates to be wet just did not see the humor in any of this. So we ended up going to McDonalds to grab lunch and wait it out. Of course we couldn't go to one right there at the beach, no, we had to go to the one about 10 miles away because it had a playground...indoor playground that is. So it worked out because we got to eat lunch and the kids got to play while we waited and after about 30 minutes the rain was gone and we were back to some sunshine! So at that point Adrian had called and was on his way to meet up with us. So this time, I decided to park in the meter parking so we would be close in case any more rain came. Well, no rain anywhere and of coure I forgot all about the meter and yes...the big $25 ticket when we got back. Oh well, that's a small price to pay to ensure no rain becuase I was parked too close this time. ha! We ended up having a lot of fun. But at the end of the day Hunter cut his foot on a shell so we had to cruise on back home...hey, isn't that part of a song? ha! Nothing was helping the pain he was in until the magic words that apparently heal anything, putt-putt. ha! So we went to play putt-putt and it was beautiful when we went in to pay and get our clubs and when we walked out....pouring! Looks like Hunter got his foot injury just in time to save us from the rain on the beach again...but it wasn't letting up for the golf game at all. So after about 15 minutes of waiting...we decided to go ahead and play in the rain...so we got wet anyway. Oh well, you can't come to the beach and not get wet anyway right?

Okay...I've recovered from my drama so here goes again...

Enough of being a slacker, I'm going to try this yet again. I guess I didn't realize what I was signing up for when I said I'd try to stick to a blog...there's way too much sunshine to be stuck inside with my computer that's for sure...but I'll take one for the team, anything for my lovely friends and family! I will bring you back up to date yet again.....so back tracking a bit to the beginning of February....ready, set......blog!