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Saturday, January 31, 2009

It's the Weekend, Baby!

Finally, it's been a long week! I have been working alot on things with my moms group, so I am behind on a little bit of everything. It's dues time, which means trying to collect $12 from about 100 moms, not an easy task. Today was the cut off, everyone has known since Dec 5, but we still had people paying today! ARGGHH drives me crazy!

Other than that, not to much else going on. Hailey's been sick for a couple days but seems to be a bit better today. Jess and I went to a birthday party at the bowling alley today. She had a blast, it was her first actual time at a bowling alley. She's had her practice though on Wii bowling so she had the concept down already.

I have managed to stay caught up on house work though, laundry is done and it's not normally done until late late Sunday night. We have the dishes done with the exception of tonight's dinner plates. I was hoping for a fun night of playing Wii with the family but Hailey was cranky because she couldn't win. She wants to play Mario Kart but doesn't understand it takes alot of practice to get really play, course then again neither does Jess lol.

We are still slowly unpacking the house, it doesn't seem like it'll ever get done, which is depressing! Alot of this stuff I hope to get rid of at a yard sale this Spring, already planning one for late April before it gets to hot! Nice to have some extra spending money for Disney in May as well.

One last thing before I close my semi update post, don't forget to take a moment and make a small donation to Relay For Life. Click the badge up at the top and make a donation today!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Relay For Life - Huntsville Metro

It's time to Relay! Relay for Life that is!

"Each year, across the nation, one event brings together entire communities to take part in the fight against cancer. That event is the American Cancer Society Relay For Life®. It's a time and place where people come to celebrate those who have survived cancer, remember those we've lost, and fight back against a disease that touches too many lives.

Won't you join us this year and be a part of Relay?

It's not just an opportunity to celebrate, remember, and fight back - your involvement will help the American Cancer Society work toward a mission of eliminating cancer as a major health issue and will support much-needed services in your community. Thanks in part to the donations from Relay For Life and other events, the Society is saving lives, helping those touched by cancer, and empowering people to fight this disease all over the world. "
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Last year was my first Relay For Life experience and it was awesome! There are no real words to describe the feeling as the Survivors Lap starts and kicks off the event. Seeing these people who survived cancer, walking and enjoying life is enough to bring tears to your eyes. As evening draws near, they begin the Lighting of the Luminaries, everyone turns off the campsite lights, and observes a silent moment. They begin to play music that is enough alone to make you cry, you begin to walk the track, looking at the luminaries. They are In Honor of or In Memory Of, people have purchased these and wrote the names of loved ones on them. You just can't go to this event and not be moved by the whole experience.

The Huntsville/Madison Moms & Tots group ( the moms group I run) had a team last yr, our goal was to raise $3000 and I am happy to say we surpassed that goal and raised over $5000 for ACS! This year our goal is $5000 for the team and I personally hope to raise $200 or more. You see that round button over at the top, click it, donate money and feel good about helping funding the search for a cure. It's tax deductible, you'll get a receipt in the mail, I am asking everyone to donate $10.00, that's like 2 cups of coffee from Starbucks! Surely you can give up those 2 cups for Cancer!

Thanks to everyone who donated last year and I hope you'll do the same this year as well! Check your local areas, find out if they are having a Relay and go join the fun!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Our Visit With Mickey Mouse

So on to part 2 of our wonderful Florida/Disney vacation this past December. If you read part 1 you know how awful the trip was going down to Fl and I can say even after that it didn't turn out half bad. I think the big problem is we went in with expectations of one thing and it ended up being totally different. The original plan was to go down, meetup with FIL and his family on Sat, he would go with us, his wife, her kids/grandkids would go on their way. That didn't happen though sadly, which put a kink in our scheduling.

Our plans were: Go to Disney Hollywood Studios Day 1 and see the Osborne Family lights that night, go to the Magic Kingdom Day 2 and 3. We orginally wanted to do Epcot and Animal Kingdom but decided against it. What happend was, we went with EVERYONE to MK Day 1 (got there around 12) and did a couple rides, then had lunch, then off to do some more rides. Well finally I told hubby that we needed to split up because they weren't interested in doing the kiddie rides we wanted to take the girls on etc. So finally we do, things went much better after that, we hung around til 4 and then headed back to the hotel to check in our room and plan the evening out. We ended up eating dinner at the Pepper Market, which is a place in Coronado Springs, it was pretty good. Then headed back to MK to take advantage of the cooler weather. We headed back around midnight, of course Hailey fell asleep before we even got out of the park.

Day 2, we went back to MK since we didn't get to do as much as we had wanted. More rides, more walking but it was crazy busy. So we ended up leaving the park after 2 or so and headed back to the hotel to relax. Then FIL decided to do dinner reservations for us all, around 7. We didn't get out until almost 10:30 ugh, and rushed over to DHS to see the Christmas Lights, well the park was closing at 11 I believe, so no rides. Luckily we were able to see the lights and they were beautiful. If you ever go at Christmas, be sure to go see them.

On Day 3 we went to DHS since we didn't get to do much, we rode Star Tours, saw the HSM3 show, which Jess got to be part of, did a couple other rides (not much though because of the lines) and decided to head out around 2. We didn't get there early enough to get fast passes for the important rides, so no riding. Plus this day we had FIL with us, but that part wasn't bad since it wasn't the entire other half! We headed back to the hotel to meetup with the rest of the family and head back to Venice for a few days.
Fil and his wife live in Venice now, so we stayed with them and it wasn't to bad. One of his wifes grand daughters stayed to, shes about Jessicas age and the girls had a blast. They picked oranges and grapefruits off the trees, we went to the beach 2 times and saw Marley & Me on New Years Eve.

Overall the trip home was much better, we stopped in Tifton Ga, which is about halfway back and spent the night. That made such a big difference, rather than driving straight thru, we plan to do that when we go back. Here are a few pics from the trip.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Happy Belated New Year & Updates

Well as the norm these days I am behind on blogging, last post was before Christmas, almost a month ago now. Lifes been pretty busy since Christmas and I haven't been feeling great, so I haven't been blogging. So I'll start with Christmas and go from there and try to catch up! I hope everyone had a great New Years!

Christmas was nice, the kids got way to many toys (we even cut back) but of course it doesn't matter lol they get gifts from relatives as well. Big wins this yr for them, J got a Nintendo DS in pink, along with 4 games, a carry case and a bling kit from Santa, H got a Leapster with 4 games, case and charger from Santa as well. They both love them and boy did they come in handy on the drive to Florida the next day! They both also recieved various other gifts, games, clothes etc and J got a new bike from her papa, she can't wait for it to warm up so she can ride.

We spent the morning at home and headed over for lunch at my grandmothers house. It was nice, crowded as always lol but its nice to see family we only get to see every blue moon. The only downfall to eating with others, no left overs! We fixed that at Thanksgiving, because we cooked a meal at home for dinner hehe but couldn't do that for Christmas since we were going out of town for a week.

Christmas evening was spent packing for our trip to Florida to go see the Mouse, you know Mickey! Everything seemed good, we were up and ready and on the road by 6 am as I hoped and the girls slept the first few hours which was nice. The drive from here to WDW (Walt Disney World) is supposed to be a 10 hour drive, we figured 12 with stops for lunch/dinner as we planned to drive straight through. The first snafu was traffic near Atlanta, we got stopped for approx 2 hours...no accidents, no actual road work going on but they did have lanes closed down for the work. The reason for the real traffic, people trying to get on and off the exits from shopping, arggh!

We finally made it out of there, stopped for some lunch and hoped the rest of the trip would go well. Murphy followed us though, we got to Valdosta GA and sat in traffic for another 2 hours due to shopping traffic and lanes being blocked for non existant construction. Sigh, we still had about another 5 hours to go by this point and its dinner time. We eat and hit the road again, determined to make it to Orlando to our hotel. We FINALLY arrived in Orlando at 11:15 pm or so..yes you read that right, we left at 6 am from home and didn't get there til 11:15 or later at night. So basically a 10 hour trip turned into 16 hours, not fun for anyone, but thankfully the girls did really well.

So one would think that our trip would go much better at this point, except you would have forgotten that Murphy was with us still. Hubby goes to check in the hotel, the kids and I stay in the car so we can park it in a few mins. He comes back pretty quickly, we head up to the room, now there is 4 of us, we booked a room with 2 queen beds. Simple right? not for the Sheraton in Orlando. They gave us a room with 1 queen bed, that was it, no fold out couch, no other beds and boy was I livid! So we head back to the front desk close to 11:45 by now and theres tons of people down there complaining and the jerk at the desk said to us: we don't have any rooms available. You know I went off, I was not in the mood after driving 16 hours to get there only to find out they had overbooked their rooms and had nothing. I told the jerk, he was going to fix this because my kids were NOT going to sleep on the floor and they would give us a room.

I was almost yelling at this point, finally the manager comes up and asks how she can help us, she was quite nice, despite how pissed off I was. I told her she needed to fix the problem NOW and get us a room with queen beds or bigger. She said no problem and don't worry about payment, we'll take care of it. I was like DUH! So they ended up putting us up at the Crown Plaza down the rd about 4 mins, in an Executive Suite. Thus around 12:30 am or so we finally went to bed. Sleep sweet sleep, and a morning wake up call and off we went to find the Mouse!

Stay tuned for my next post about the rest of our trip!