What did yyyoooooou do this weekend?

Some weird beetle stung Nadia's heel. If you know what it is, please comment :)

Cooling off!

Rock on!

12 yards of rock! Big, beautiful basalt.

Yes it is that time in landscaping when we try to ward off the weeds with a little heavy weight rock. When 12 yards of rock is dumped in a neat little pile in front of your house it does not seem like that much. At 8:00am all is well, you have your gloves on, your smile, you are even joking around. When you try to move that rock, literally rock by rock because they are too big to shovel, the pile seems to grow.

To make a long story short, the bobcat arrives Monday morning.



Oh, and another 12 yards, but this time it is 5/8th's minus!

Disney World Land and Sea Vacation

Warning... this post is very long. Read at the risk of recalling all the times you have been made to sit and look at someone else's vacation photos and suffered severe bordem as a result.


I have been struggling with how to organize this post to really convey all of the memories we made on this trip and have realized that there is just no way to capture it all. Instead, I am going to upload a few of the over 400 photos we took to try to highlight some of the moments we shared. Let me preface the photos with just a few words.

First, this is a trip that we have been planning for many years and I am just thrilled that it met the years of anticipation.

Second, I had moments of fear that we would be draggin' our sweaty, sleep deprived, hungry children from line to line forgetting all together about the wonder of each event. Thank to Tony's explicit planning we did not wait in ANY lines on the Disney World leg of the journey (except for the one ride I chose on a whim and that was still only a 10 minute wait). We went with smiles from ride to ride. We laughed when we got soaked on the Kali River Ride and happily traipsed along during the afternoon storms in our brightly colored ponchos. Tony is a man of action and for that I owe him for making all of these memories so wonderful.

Third, here are the logistics. We rode everything from trains, to trams, to buses, to vans, to cars, to planes, to boats to ships, to escalators on this trip. We stayed in the Port Orleans Riverside Resort the first 3 days. We walked Downtown Disney, visited our relatives at the Animal Kingdom, enjoyed food and fireworks at Epcot, hit every ride at the Magic Kingdom that we wanted to from Dumbo to Splash mountain and even swam and played at the resort before heading to the cruise. We spent 4 nights aboard the Disney Wonder. Our ports included Castaway Cay for a day of adventure that included snorkeling, sting rays, swimming in the ocean (a first for three of us) and floating. Then on to Nassau where we made our way through a very rainy straw market and were saddened by sheer poverty, inspired by innovative hard work and awed by a crazy traffic system that relied too heavily on ones horn. Then back to Castaway Cay for the most relaxing day of all. We earned hours of lawn chair time watching Aidan and Nadia enjoy the waves and we even sailed a little Hobie Cat. We spent another day in Orlando, this time in a non-Disney hotel (the only part of the whole trip I would not recommend). We went back to the Magic Kingdom and tried out the things we missed the first time around.

Of course there were low points...seasickness, plane sickness, puke in the pool that was on the hush hush, one cranky afternoon when naps did not happen... but really those were so few and far between all of the magic and wonder that they will not be a part of the memories for long.

Now for the pictures... In no particular order!

We got the beat. Apparently it is some sort of feel it in my toes kinda beat too!

Lion King is amazing! AGGGH, it has me buns!
Would you take a look at the size of the fish that caught me?
Wait a minute, are we in China?
Oh look, it is uncle Goofey!
Relaxing all cool next at the bow of the ship just catching some waves.
Building a moat on Castaway Cay.
Catching the waves when most of the cruisers were back on the boat a little too afraid of overcast skies.

Aidan the TigreNadia the Unicorn
This is a picture of the Orlando Airport Boogie Shake Down Dance after smuggling some 'dirt and worm' pudding that was apparently laced with speed and pure joy into the airport terminal.

OK, so they were in chronological order. You caught me.

New To Do List

We are home from our WONDERFUL vacation!

I will post more pictures later, but for now we are working on a new to do list...

---laundry

---pull weeds

---comfort the cats

---thank Tony a thousand more times for all of the planning he did

---sort mail

---sweep up the sand that made it's way home with us

---more laundry!

Watch out

or I will sick my kid on you

15 days to go

We have just 15 days until our vacation!!! From the moment we had children we started talking about when they would be ready for Disney. When Nadia was born we decided that since golden birthdays are a big deal to Tony and I that we would go to Disneyworld for her golden birthday.

Well that turned into the DisneyCruise and WaLa, here we are!

Honestly, I can not believe that it is happening! Aidan is already talking about where we should go for his golden birthday. Since he is born on the 30th we have some time to plan (and save).

With so many wonderful (and complicated) things happening right now (school ending, trainings begining, Sara and Trevor's wedding, me having to go to a conference right before the trip) I feel like I am a little overwhelmed, but in an excited way if that makes sense!

5!

On her lips is a song
One she makes up as she goes along
It might be a little cat ditty
Maybe a song that says you are pretty

She is lovely and sweet
Even when she giggles

“smell my feet”
She makes the obvious a discovery
Look there’s rain
Oh send me to recovery!
I exclaim!
She has earned her Coco nickname
I hope she will never be tame

I wonder what the future brings
I know she will do many things
She wants to be a cop
Or maybe a keeper of a zoo
But never forget
What she really wants is to have a baby
or two
Maybe ten will do.
The mom vein runs deep within her heart
But she knows it goes college, then love, before she starts

My baby turns five years old
Thank you my Nadia for being so bold
With beauty for all to behold
I love you with all my heart can hold