Disney Day 2

So our first full day at Disney was a Sunday.  We had no big schedules so we slept in and usually made it to a park around 11.  Can't beat that!

Of course we went to The Magic Kingdom first!  We never really had any problems with any of the buses from our resort.  Of course, this was off-season but we never had to wait very long for a bus to any park.

We were super-excited to be heading to our first park together!  Because we didn't have a stroller or anything like that, we ended up renting a locker at each park for around $7 a day.  On our last day we found out that if you rent a locker you can use it at any park that day.  So if you start out at Epcot and then go to Magic Kingdom, you can also use a locker at Magic Kingdom and not have to pay anything extra.  It just worked out easier for us to keep some waters and sandwiches and sunscreen in our locker instead of having to tote it around.

 

We got a FastPass first then went to Small World and Snow White! FastPass is your friend, use it!  I know it helped us get through the rides we wanted to ride while we did other things.

We brought Goober Grape sandwiches to tide us over and then we had a pretty good hot dog meal that we split.  After lunch we headed over to Adventure Land to ride Pirates of the Caribbean!

 

We got a FastPass for the Jungle Cruise.  By this time we were about done.  It was HOT!  It was around 88 toward the end of this day.

I love these baby elephants on the Jungle Cruise.  They're too cute!

I kept reading about something called a Dole Whip, so I knew I had to get one!  You can only get them in two places on the whole property.  We got one on our way out.  It was good but it was sooo sweet.  Think pineapple juice with pineapple soft serve on top!

We went back to Port Orleans and got ready for our dinner reservation at Epcot.  We ate at the French Pavilion at Les Chefs deFrance and I was NOT at all impressed.  There was a huge page of people in front of us even though we had a reservation.  We didn't wait long but I just didn't like the food at all.  It was just OK and for the price we paid, I was NOT happy!  I don't think we'll be back to that one!

On the way out of Epcot we walked right onto Spaceship Earth in the big ball.  There wasn't a soul around so we went ahead and rode it while we could!  It was a fun first full day at Disney!

A Little Glimpse & Disney Day 1!

Since my computer has been out of commission I've missed blogging about two important things!  First, before we left for vacation we had our routine 20 week ultrasound.  Everything looked just fine and we got a good report that everything looked great!  Just like last time, we didn't look when she told us so that it would be a surprise!  We took John Michael with us and I was glad we did.  He sat and watched the monitor and said he was watching a movie of a baby!  Sweet moments!

Here's sweet little baby #3!  Boy or girl?!  This little one has a cute little button nose.  We haven't seen that on either of our other ultrasounds, so maybe it's a girl?  Who knows!

No matter how many times you get to do it, seeing that ultraound never gets old.  It's such an awesome and awe-inspiring thing to watch!

So.......

Let me explain our Disney vacation.  Jordan and I decided that we really needed a vacation together before the new baby comes this summer.  We thought and thought for weeks what we might like to do. We thought of lots of different places, but  ultimately, we decided to go to Disney World...by ourselves!

We figured it would probably be years before we could go leave 3 children and go somewhere on our own, so we just went for it and took a vacation by ourselves for the first time ever.  We've never left the boys so it was a really hard decision to make, but the way I look at it is we want our marriage to last 50+ years and our children are only in our home under 20 years of that total, so we need to focus on each other once in a while and remember it's not always about them.  It was so hard to leave, but we had the best time just sitting together and talking and not doing much of anything!  The boys were perfectly happy here at our house with grandparents and they were spoiled all week.  I know they all had a good time!

All the books and websites said the week after President's Day is a great time to go.  It sure was!  There were record highs, so most days it was 88, 87 degrees!  We stayed on-property at Port Orleans Riverside.

We did have to wait awhile at the airport for the Magical Express (and this was not peak season) and it did take around 3 hours to get our luggage; which is what they tell you anyway.

This is a HUGE property with 4 bus stops around the perimeter.  We stayed in the Alligator Bayou section of the resort.  To be honest, I wasn't that thrilled.  Our building looked out over the parking lot, but it ended up being great for us because it was one of the closest buildings to the main building (food/reception) and to the main bus stop.  That worked for this pregnant mama! And really, how often are you really in your room at Disney?  It was nice to not have to walk a long way after being at the parks all day!

Hello Mickey!  We had the nicest housekeeping lady everyday and she kept everything nice and clean for us.

Since we arrived mid-afternoon we just hung out and explored the resort and then headed to Downtown Disney for dinner.  It was crazy-packed and there were 2 hour waits just about everywhere.

We lucked out though!

It worked in our favor to only have a party of two.  We bypassed the 2 hour wait at Rainforest Cafe and went straight to a table on their back porch and split a plate.  We were right on the lake and we had a great view of Downtown Disney and Saratoga Springs Resort!

The weather was perfect for sitting outside by the water!  Warm and breezy!

After dinner we headed to the Ghiradelli store for a dessert treat.  I believe they pump out the smell of warm, melted chocolate to draw you in.  We split some sort of chocolate peanut butter sundae and it was really, really good!

After this we headed back to the resort to get ready to go to the Magic Kingdom the next day!

Nope, Not Dead!

I'm still here, we're not dead!!  I cannot believe I haven't put a blog post up in so long!  Bad, bad blogger!  But, it's not all my fault.....

My computer is broken and I'm randomly using an old computer of Jordan's.  So, that means no photo uploading and not much blogging going on.

Plus, we've been busy taking a little trip down South to the "Happiest Place on Earth!"  Any guesses?!  And boy, do I have a ton of pictures to share from that!

We also had our ultrasound of sweet baby #3, but those pictures are ALSO on my laptop!  Don't worry, we didn't find out what we were having, but it was so sweet to go and have a little look!

Hopefully Jordan will get the part ordered for my computer (Ahem, Jordan) and I can get my pictures off of it and start getting some blog posts up!  Until then....

Valentine's and a Little More

So what have we been up to since my Super Sticky Santa post?  Well, not too much!  We are finally getting into the swing of things after being snowed in and stuck in the house.  Not only is the snow gone, but we are having some crazy-beautiful sunny days!  70's baby! 

We've been playing outside a lot and the boys are so happy!  I haven't even taken my camera outside because my hands are too full with both of them in the yard!

We had tons of leftover snow, so I decided to make snow ice cream!  I remember Mom making it, but I've never made it.  It was pretty easy and I have to say, it was really good!

John Michael helped me mix it up.......

And we all enjoyed a little bit of "snow cweam"-as JM says!

We also made it to week 20!!!  We are halfway through this third pregnancy!  It doesn't feel like we're halfway there!  We have our ultrasound this week!

Here's my two favorite Valentines (besides Jordan) on Valentine's Day.  This was the best picture I could get of them in their red Valentine outfits.

Our parents and my grandparents sent sweet Valentine's Day cards and gifts for the boys.  JM enjoyed his Valentine cookie from Gaga.

 

We mainly celebrated Valentine's Day by making a heart-shaped cake.  Actually, both boys helped me and it turned out cute and pretty good!

And I just couldn't resist taking Matthew's picture Friday in this cute little fire truck outfit!

Here's our cute-pie playing his favorite game, golf!

A Super-Sticky Type of Situation

I hate to even admit this, much less show a picture of it, but it's too funny (or sad??) not to!  I still have a Christmas centerpiece on our kitchen table.  Why? you ask?  Well, that's a good question.

All we can think of is between 2 different milk spills and a syrup incident, poor little Santa is STUCK in the middle of our kitchen table!

He is stuck so badly and it's February and he's still there.  We're thinking about trying hot water to get him unstuck!  Poor Santa!

Snowpocalypse Take 2

So we just thought that last week was the big snow of 2011.  We were wrong.  I got up at 2:30 this morning and it was starting to snow and by the time we got up around 7 ish we were greeted by this:

 

Honestly, we've never seen so much snow before!  Our biggest snow storm growing up was 12" and that was a lot.  This is way more than that!  I'm not sure if it's around 15 or 18 inches!

We had to make a little square for Jack to go potty and I couldn't believe how tall the snow was.  He tried to hop on to of the snow and he just couldn't make it!

It was nice having Jordan work from home today.  After breakfast the boys watched a few videos about trucks and ABCs on YouTube while they had their juice.

I also got out JM's truck activity center that we haven't had out for awhile.  He was sooo excited to play with it again.  It's just dump trucks and lots of fun rice to sift through!

While JM worked on his dump trucks Matthew did an art project with his Crayola Color Wonder.

 

After lunch we re-scooped Jack's potty spot since it had been covered up with snow again.

This is out front!  Big-time snow drifts!

 

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*edited to add these new pictures that Jordan took after he shoveled all the snow off the driveway and part of the sidewalk.  I know we seem crazy about the snow, but we have just never seen this much snow before!

 

 

And to top off our epic snow day, we had a rare treat, a steak!  I marinated the steaks all day and then made twice baked potatoes and asparagus.  It was quite good and my family will be shocked that I sat and ate a whole steak by myself.  I blame it on the pregnancy.  Maybe I need the iron?!

Snow Bored!

So what did we do to keep ourselves occupied while we were snowed in for close to 5 days?  I tried hard not to have too much Mickey or Cars on, but some days it was a total loss.  We did different activities around the house and I tried to come up with some fun projects to keep them happy.  There's only so much you can do with a 2 year old and a 1 year old for so many days on end in the house.

I have to admit, by Saturday I was so excited to get in Jordan's Jeep and just go and get out of the house!  It was a rough week just being stuck here but I know it was my attitude that needed adjusting!  I'm so glad that God gave us a beautiful, sunny, and slightly warmer day on Saturday.  God knew we needed a sunny day to lift our spirits and also to get us prepared for the next "big" snow storm that we're supposed to get by Tuesday night.  I felt so refreshed and happy after being out all day Saturday.  Bring on the next storm, I think I can handle it now!

I got out some of our Christmas present Play-Doh and I actually got John Michael to participate and play with it!

 

They played with it for about 45 minutes and we brought it out a few other days too!

Matthew drug out some of my acrylic glassware....

and I got out the old baby bathtub and we used it as a "boat"!  They both liked it and played in it off and on!

We watched Cars a lot!  We are definitely in that stage right now!

And to round out our week I used an idea that I had gotten from a friend from MOPS.  I got some pudding and put food coloring in it and let them go to town in our guest bathroom shower stall.  For some reason they like playing in it because it's quite large and you can easily walk in.  Who knows why, but I just go with it!

Matthew was a little more unsure of it, but he played a little bit.  After they were done, I handed them off to Jordan and I just rinsed the shower stall out.  Not bad!

I have my Saturday morning pictures on another camera but we left right after we rolled out of bed and threw some clothes on.  I was ready to get going!  I'm so glad we have one car with 4WD!  Our first stop was to head down to the donut shop right down the road.  We enjoyed our first day out in a while and we saw some friends from church while we were there!  We went to Target, got Matthew's feet measured at Stride Rite, ate at the food court and rode the trucks there, and then finished up at our Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market.  It was all we could do to keep the boys up until we got home for naptime!

Later that afternoon we decided it would be SO nice to have some friends over since all of us had been stuck in the house for days on end.  We ordered pizza, I made a big salad, and they brought a peanut butter pie, our favorite!  It was low key and last-minute but it was fun and it was so nice to get some adult conversation in!

They really enjoyed the drumset!

Our Sunday morning service was pushed back a bit since it was still so snowy and icy.  After service we went out to eat, which we never usually do on Sundays.  We knew we would be having another big snow storm this week so we wanted to just be out as much as possible!

I love this picture for many reasons, but mainly I love how I have ketchup on my right shoulder and sleeve from John Michael eating his chicken and holding onto me with ketchup hands.  I also noticed I have hot sauce still left on my hand (hey, it was a fried chicken place, you gotta have hot sauce!).  JM loves my sunglasses and I love him in them!