Just back from Disney World

I just got back late Friday night after a week of fun and relaxation with my sister, Sara. Sara had a conference for work that was held at the Disney Swan and Dolphin Resort by Disney World in Florida. Since the room was paid for, she asked if I wanted to come along for a vacation "on the cheap". That was in February and the countdown started then (my condolences to my co-worker Lynn for putting up with my countdown). We left on Friday, November 5th, so that we could spend Saturday and Sunday at two of the parks. We also checked them out to see if they would be good places for her two boys when they come back next March.

We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside the first two nights. Since we went early, these two nights weren't covered by Sara's conference. The grounds and buildings were gorgeous, but housekeeping left something to be desired. Also, we were on the second floor of one of the buildings and there were no elevators. We were two women that had packed for a week (read as, the suitcases weighed a ton!). We decided that lugging those suitcases and walking around parks for two days justified us to not do additional workout exercises for two days. I think you'll agree.

Bright and early Saturday we hopped the bus to the Magic Kingdom. To our surprise, they had already decorated for Christmas and were playing Christmas music! Here's Sara on Main Street with Cinderella's Castle in the background.

This was my third time at Disney World. I had always really wanted to see the wax figures of the presidents at The Hall of Presidents. It's more of an adult thing to do, so we hadn't done in the previous two times because we had been with smaller kids. Here was my chance! The even had President Obama on stage and he even spoke! Here's me standing outside the entrance. By the way, this was an excellent time to visit the park because the lines were very tolerable. We just walked right in for this and wandered around looking at the presidential paraphernalia leisurely until the show started. We also had our pick of whatever seat we wanted.


On Sunday we went to Epcot. They had a wine and culinary festival going on. Neither Sara or I are big into wine, but the food was something we definitly wanted to try - and we did!

And here's the typical Epcot shot.

The only ride we went on at Epcot was "Mission: Space". In Valley Girl talk, it was totally awesome! Very realistic. After that we headed over to World Showcase. I had heard from a friend of mine, Sheila, that they now have something for kids involving Kimpossible. It was a cell phone that was like a secret agent treasure hunt. There are apparently seven different missions you can go on to seven different countries. We got one for China. We would both give it a thumbs up! Kids would have a blast figuring out the clues, plus learn something without even knowing it - what could be better?
One of the countries along the way was Moraco. The layout of they shops was what I envision shopping in Moraco. The tile work was beautiful.

That night we had to switch hotels. The Walt Disney Swan and Dolphin Resort is gorgeous. I can't complain about anything. They even replaced the three bars of soap each day that I had taken for the soap squirrel (Alyssa). The weather was a little cool to be in the pool for my taste, but all the pools were beautiful.

A funny note is something that happened at one of the shops at Epcot. We were trying to remember the names of all the princesses. We got to the one that wears the pink dress and Sara said it was Sleeping Beauty. I said I thought it was Princess Aurora. Little did we know we were both right until someone cleared it up for us - how funny! We also had the opportunity to go to Downtown Disney one evening. Outside the Bibbity Bobbity Boo Store, they had a statue of Cinderella, Sara's long time favorite, and Sleeping Beauty. How perfect!



One of the days Sara was at the conference, I went to Hollywood Studios by myself. I scoped it out to see if her boys would enjoy going to it in March, too. The parade at 3:00 featured Monsters, Inc. Very fun. Below is the character called Boo. Even though the movie was animation, Disney does a great job making the characters 3-D.

At the end of my day there I went to see the musical Beauty and the Beast.

Spending time with my sister was great. We had such a good time just being free to be as goofy as we wanted. Thanks for such a wonderful time, Sara!

Booyah!

Can you say PARTY?! Mom threw a booyah bash in September. She asked me to create a scrapbook to remember the event. And . . . . here it is! I finished it last night. It is 20 pages. The first will be the invite and the next nineteen are below. Hope she likes it.



















Thanks for stopping by to look at my latest addition to my blog. Happy fall, y'all!
Jill

Catch Up

Been a while. I don't get to go on-line very much, so it's catch-up time!

September 1st Lys started 8th grade. She's terribly excited about it (yeah right). She loves her skinny jeans, though.

She decided to give soccer a try this year. Not the most aggressive player to hit the field, but she's part of a team and trying to be a team player. Good life lesson if you know what I mean. Five nights a week she's either at practice or at a game. A highlight for her is that she got one of her favorite numbers for her jersey number - 3. Would have been better had it been 5, but three will do.

Schedules have been full, so we couldn't find a date for my Godson to come and pick the pumpkins he helped plant in spring. So, the pumpkins came to him! I think he enjoyed it!

I've also been working on my gardens. Don yanked out a hedge that the neighbor had put a fence behind - didn't really need the hedge any more. I split a bunch of my hostas and bought some from a friend to fill in the area. BIG difference. Below is the before picture (but after Don pulled out the hedge).

And now the after picture.

This is the view from the other direction. I love paths.

My mom had a HUGE booyah party this past Saturday. Before it began, we had lunch and celebrated my brother's birthday. Here he is with his "friends" - a.k.a. nephews and our cousin's sons.

My brother lives in the country and has really cool vehicles - like tractors, etc., just ask my nephew Ben. What would be more perfect for a birthday cake with a skidster on top?

Or a skidster on top that's sunk into the mud, er, frosting?

I said booyah. Well, to have booyah, you have to have a booyah chef, right? Here he is, my cousin Dean.

I think this picture turned out really well. My cousin, LaDonna, from South Dakota stayed at my mom's. She's in the middle. My sister, Sara, is on the left, my sister-in-law, Michele, is on the right, and I'm at the top.

Here's some tough guys. These cousins played football all afternoon on black top!

This is the most used part of the yard - the hill. Lots of Spray-n-wash will be used on kids clothing in the next week!

The SELF NAMED folks in the next picture are Uncle Unicorn and Aunt Dumbo. I'm assuming the water bottle is the horn and the paper plate is an elephant ear. They're so creative and I'm sure it had nothing to do with them not wanting their picture taken.

Is this little guy a cutie or what?

Well, there you have it. You're all caught up on what's been happening for the last month. Hope yours was fun, too!

New Cartridge!

Since Provo Craft introduced the Cupcake Wrapper cartridge, I've been DYING to get it. It's available at Wal-Mart for $39. It killed me to pay that much since I can get the cartridges with all the features on-line for $35 after they've been around for a while. However, I HAD to have this cartridge for my daughter's birthday. I chose the gift box wrapper and the stars topper. The best part? She LOVED the finished product! Makes all the work so worth it. A couple of years ago I bought the cupcake tier at Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon. I was afraid the cupcakes wouldn't fit on the tiers with the wrappers, but with a little persuasion, they looked great! Bonus -when I lit the candles I didn't start the cupcake above it on fire, so the house is still intact.

Gotta get the close-ups in.

Slightly different angle.

My husband thought I was nuts to put all that work into the cupcakes, but I'm definitely going to do it again. I LOVE the way it turned out. Thanks for looking!

Good job!

What did I do this past weekend? My brother Eric and I did some landscaping for my Mom. She had the windows in her basement replaced last year. To do that, the window wells had to be taken out which really tore up the yard. Eric put the wells back in a week or two ago, but the yard still needed to be put back together. I don't have a "before" picture, but it wasn't good. The grade was off and Mom actually got some water in the basement through one of the windows a couple of weeks ago. She was lucky and didn't suffer any damage, thank goodness. Below are the "after" pictures. Once we get some bushes and flowers in, and let's hope the grass seed takes off, I think it will look great!



Has anyone else started to work out to lose weight? I started about a month ago. I lost 5 pounds in about 2 1/2 weeks in the beginning. However, I've actually gained some of that back even though I've been doing Weight Watches AND exercising. How disheartening is that? I'm hoping that it's because I'm building muscle. I've heard that muscle weighs more than fat. I think my clothes are fitting more losely around the waist and hips, so I'm going with the loss of fat, gain of muscle theory. If you have any insight, I'm all ears!

Jill

Last minute

My daughter's birthday is coming up this month. I've been asking for several weeks if she'd like to have a party with some friends this year, go up to our camper for the weekend, or just lay low this year. She kept shrugging her shoulders and saying, "I don't know" incoherently as only a teenager can do. Then Wednesday she said why aren't we doing anything for a party for her birthday this year? As all parents of teenagers know, it doesn't pay to remind her you've asked several times what she wanted to do without a definite answer. So now we've got to kick it into high gear. I found out she wanted a beach theme, so I pulled several of my Cricut cartridges for her to look at to find out what kind of look she wanted. She made it perfectly (can you say crystal) clear it couldn't look baby-ish. I finally came to my Everyday Paper Doll cartridge and hit pay dirt. I drew up a design that night. Thursday I took a couple of hours to cut everything and put it together. This morning they got mailed with 12 days to party time. AND she likes the way they look. As my daughter would say, "I'm gooooooooood!"

Here's the front. You can see there is no "baby-ish" stuff on it. All teenager approved colors. I used my Cuttlebug to emboss the sun and sand. Adds a little something something, don't you think?

I popped up the sand castle after chalking the edges to make it stand out against the sand underneath.

Love the dancing crabs across the top. The stamp is from one of my Stampin' Up sets. The info stamp was one I got from my Aunt Dot after she passed away. I think we had the same taste in stamps.

Well, I'm very happy with the way it turned out. But, most importantly, Alyssa is happy with them. Now, on to the party planning. Should be fun - yeah, right!

Jill