zebra domes for lunch... yumm ( well there was food too)

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November 1st Lunch @ Epcot and MNSSHP

So we where going to head to magic kingdom first thing this morning. The plus of such a long trip is the time to be lazy if you want. So instead we slept in til about 9 and then headed over to Epcot for our lunch reservation at Coral Reef. We are also doing dinner here later in the week. I can honestly say though looking back I wouldn't do dinner again. 11:40 reservation here with an early arrival was the best choice ever.. We where the first table seated and where put at at table right next to the tank in the window where the sea turtle hangs. Except for a few breaks for air he hung next to us the ENTIRE meal. It was incredible and Alex was in love with the whole experience. It a boys version of a character meal to be sure. We had more steak here .. Yum, we aren't seafood people. We where here for the experience.
After lunch we headed out to transportation and headed back to our hotel to relax and get ready for the Halloween party. We got changed. Alex in his Jeff Hardy get up and Jason in his budget ninja shirt. Got camera and goodies bags and headed off around 5 to the parks. Got our bracelets and headed in. Rode a few rides, went to the candy stops and then found our spot for Hallowishes. Oh my wonderful. It was every thing we had hoped it would be and really where not dissapointed. I have TONS and I really mean TONS of pictures. Afterwards we moved over for the late parade. It was great as well and I have tons more pictures to share of that too. The plan of doing November first to avoid the crowds was a great one and it was a nice relaxed feel. All the other parties during our visit where sold out but this one wasn't and you could really tell. The people where much more sparse. Still rude as always ( we had A LOT of rude people this trip and I was really disapointed in that) but all in all we where still at Disney. When it came time to leave I found myself wondering why we even bothered with the treat trails. Since it was the last night they park had candy to kill and they had cast members at the gates with boxes and boxes and bins and vats and tubs.. All told I think we had over 50 lbs of candy.. No joke. We left half in the pay it forward box and brought the rest with us. So, Overall.. Love the party.. Def would do it again!

October 31st Hollywood Studios and Fantasmic

So while we are waiting for Monsters Inc to start i thought i would begin my report for yesterday. This was an early day for us. We had to be on the bus by 7 am because we had a 8:20 ressie for Crystal Palace. This was so nice. I really enjoyed getting into the park before it opened and I Loooved the potato casserole. The meal was wonderful and we where seated before our time and had our visitors at our table in no time. Alex got them to sign his cast and he was really happy with that. After Crystal Palace we headed into the park around 9:20. We started at Adventure land and worked our way around the magic kingdom. We hit all the rides and and had a great time. We needed to head to Dhs around 4 so we finished up and headed out by about 345. Ok. Shows staring more later. Love ya ladies. Talk to u soon

So we got to the bus right around the time we had planned and headed on our way to Disney's Hollywood Studios. According to the time guide b4 we left home it was a 730 close night with one showing on fanatasmic. Well when we got there we found out it was going to be a 9pm close with two showings. So we decided to hit some attractions. Get our dinner and do the 9pm show. Great choice in my opinion. We did the movie ride and midway mania. As well as the Narnia exhibit and then headed over to get dinner on Sunset at the quick service. The boys had ribs but I wasn't hungry so I just had their baked beans. After that we found the wheelchair entrance for Fantasmic and then waited til it was time. The cast member at the gate was great at keeping alex entertained and had him help her direct traffic leaving the first showing. Finally it was tine to take that Long Long walk up to the theatre. We
where seated in the top handicap seating. Best place in my opinion.

So like I said we where seated for our first time seeing Fantasmic . We skipped this last time because it was a bit more crowded than we would have liked to deal with. So this was a def this trip. Since it was Halloween night the numbers weren't too bad since most people wanted to go to MNSSHP on actual Halloween. The show was wonderful as we expected. Got lots of great photos and both guys enjoyed it as well. After the show was over we wait for the crowds to clear some before we headed out. Then we wandered some shops on the way to the exit. Got some Christmas gifts for Alex and then headed back to the hotel. Jason went to the room to get our mugs and I headed to the food court with the kid to finally get a steak and cheese wrap for my dinner. After that it was back to the room to get ready for the next day and go to sleep. Hollywood studios again tomorrow. More soon.

October 30th Epcot and Kona Cafe

So yesterday was Epcot day. Our first park day. We got up early so we could be there when it opened. soon as we did we went in road spaceship earth since it had no line yet. Then we got Alex's GAC. Headed over to nemo because i didnt get to ride that last time. When that was done we explored the sea then headed over to The Lqnd. Road Soarin and Living the Land. we really enjoy both. From there we headed to club cool cause Jason really wanted to go. Tried all but the beverly. lol. I really liked the china one which was watermelon. Yummy. Then we headed to test track. Had a blast.. literally. Afterwards we headed to the world showcase to take in some food and wine festival goodness. Rode the ride in mexico and had a yummy Empanada. Did some more walking in the world showcase to get to Japan. ( the kids goal) then road friendship 2 back to canada and headed back to the room to rest b4
dinner at Kona. More to come....


Time to finish up our epcot day report. Left off at going back to our room to rest before kona. So we rested in our rooms and set the alarm so we would have plenty of time to be ready for dinner. Unfortunatly for us the busses where very crowded as where the monorails so when all was said and done we ended up being 3 minutes late to Kona. It ended up being not a big deal and they had us seated in 2 mins. Our waiter was pretty nice and we ordered our drinks and Jason got his lapu lapu and i got a blue glowtini. Holy damn was mine strong. Jason drank both lofl.
Jason ended up having the teriyaki new york strip and alex and i had the rib eye. Both meals where great and dessert was wonderful. Jason had the kilauea torte alex had the one with cotton candy and I had bananna chocolate creme brulee. Holy yum. After that we had planned to go to Mk for xtra magic but where beat so we took our goodies(pineapple bread to go lol) and went back to pop and called it a night. Good day. Tired bodies.

Jason got a Lapu Lapu @ Kona. I got a blue glowtini

October 29th Downtown Disney and Mini Golf! No Park today

I would say today has been a pretty nice non park vacation day. We started off around 9 this morning. Showered and headed out. We planned to go check out Animal Kingdom Lodge but decided to do it later since alex really wanted to go to downtown disney. So off we went. We did some shopping. Mostly for alex. Got legos and a perry platypus and some nightmare before christmas silly bandz. We had lunch at Earl of Sandwich( we took pics) it was really nice. wandered around some more than decided to come back to the room to chill a bit. Hung here for a few hours then headed out to go play fantasia minigold. Now I a. not sure what disney was thinking with this one. The place is really nice but has no direct bus. so u have to get us bus to swan resort and wak. Worth the hassle but geesh. After that and a long trip back we ate dinner at pop. It was yummy. I had a steak wrap and the guys had
burgers. Now we are in for the night to rest and get ready for Epcot tomorrow. Night All

We are in the 80's building 9.. hell of a walk but alex loves the pac man and rubix cube. Heading to the contemporary now for Chef Mickey's. Stopped at the pop gift shop first and got stuffed jack and zero for alex. Gotta stop on the way back to get our refillable mugs.

Got our first souveniers so far. Halloween disney silly bands( on his cast lol) and a stuffed jack and zero.. total spent 30$

Arrived safely. Will update soon.

Arrived safely. Will update soon. Love you loopie ladies.

So fall folliage really looks diffrent from 32000 feet. Took off a few ago and are scheduled for an ontime landing possibly early. The flight is very full. Overbooked even and they asked for 6 volunteers to bump and recieve free roundtrip tickets. If it was just me and jason we would. I had already thought about it.. but the idea of an extra 3 hour wait made alex all freaked lol.. thankfully 6 single riders where willing to bump. So we are in the air and on the way. Jason is listening to his ipod. Alex is using my head sets to listen to radio disney on the free satelite radio. And I am i just wishing my nose wasn't so congested lol

Breakfast with some big birds. This is the view from our breakfast seats at tgifridays

Waiting at the airport with figity magoo. We had to get here earlier than we would have liked so we didnt get stuck in pittsburgh business rush. So now we can't check our bags for another 45 minutes

Always something to make the plans go crazy.

So the kids flag football season ended a week early due to injury. He fell ( got run over more like it) on the field on Thursday. He twisted his ankle and landed wrong on his wrist. The dr at the hospital thought it was broken but the xrays where clean. Just a nasty sprain. Its bruised now and hurting him but its up in a splint and bandange with a sling for support. Its annoying but its hurting him less in the sling than it was without it so thats a plus. Course he has to wear it until friday at least and we leave for Disney on thursday morning. He will be wearing it til then and then after if needed to protect it from the oeople at the parks who aren't always cautious with the bumping into small humans. lol

Well the good news is we finally won a flag football game today. 28-0. The kids did great. Bad news is I am still cold. We have been inside since 7pm and I swear everything is frozen still. Lol. The kid is happy so thats a plus. Tonight should have been the last game of the season but since we have had sooo many cancellations this season we still have 3 games left. Thursday of this week and then Monday and Wednesday of next week. Team pictures are friday also. At this point we don't plan to go to the games next week since we have to be ready to leave for our trip on Thursday and the kid needs to be complelty caught up on his school work before we leave.

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This time 9 days from

This time 9 days from today we will be eating at Chef Mickey's. Yum can't wait.

Sad Day

Dreading leaving the house in a few minutes. Today is the first of two days of viewings and a funeral for my aunt. She passed away on the 13th after an 8 month long battle with cancer. She was only 51 years old. It sucks and there is no better words to explain it. She had so much left to do in life and her children have so many more years left when they needed their mom to guide them threw lifes snares and cheer them at lifes triumphs. :(

Hmm. Will it let me send pictures to post via text?

So here is yet another attemp at mastering the art of the blog via text. These are the only two reasons I am worried about going on vacation. Our new kittens. One is 10 months old and one is 12 weeks old. We lost our other furrie friends Kovu and Tigger over the summer :(

So I am hoping to use this blog a bit more in the next few weeks to keep track of our Disney vacation. We will not have internet access so the ability to text message a blog post is appealing. So trying this out to see how it works. Fingers crossed. We leave in 12.5 days :)

Catching Up

Since I have a little bit of free time I decided I should write a entry in my journal since it has been so long. Things are going well here. We are just finishing up 4th grade and ready for a busy summer. Alex has Karate Camp and Kids College planned as well as STARS reading camp through his school.  He is excited about summer and hoping to get to spend some time hanging out with his friends from both his elementary school as well as his karate school.
  Things have been busy for us running back and forth from place to place all year long and eventually we decided that the best choice for all of us was to stop doing Cub Scouts so that we could free up at least one evening in our week just to have some time to breathe ourselves.  It seems to be working nice and doesn't seem like anyone is missing not going to scouts anymore. I think our time there had run its course.
 Alex is still very involved in Karate and loves it as much now as he did two years ago when he started. He is now a Level 6 Jr. Blackbelt and if he stays on schedule should test again at the end of May. Then the end of June and the end of August. He is excited about moving up to a new belt and learning new things and also loves getting to see his friends at karate.
 I am busy working on learning how to use my new Camera. I got a Nikon D90 DSLR camera for a combo gift of many Christmases and Birthdays. Its worth not getting gifts for a while to have such a nice camera. I am looking forward to learning to use it and have already gotten many great shots that I could never had gotten with my old camera. Its definitly a work in progress as the camera has more buttons and settings than my car.
 Jason is busy working and in his free time he is taking Hapkido classess as the karate school as well. He really enjoys them and misses it a lot when work gets in the way.

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Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S.

Its 4 am and my son is STILL awake. We have to get up in less than 2 hours to take Jason to work. Then Alex has school at 9.. and yet.. At 4am. He is still laying in his bedroom calling out to me.. Mom.. I cant sleep.. 
  I was in bed. I laid down.. I tried to sleep.. he called out to me every 5 minutes.. makes it hard to sleep.. Finally I came out to the computer.. ( so that jason could sleep at least) and what does the kid do?? He comes out to..@@ Oh man.. So I said.. ok.. lets try a warm shower.. maybe that will help.. So I get the water running.. and he takes a very noisy shower.. Swear this kid has NO volume control whatsover.. lol.. So now he is back in bed... Fingers crossed that he falls asleep.. Cause I KNOW he is going to be a monster when I wake him.. and that will only be the start of a fun day.. Since tomorrow he also has a appt with the dentist at 2 o'clock.. Fun fun.. 
  Thats actually what brings us back to the stem of the not sleeping. I fight with him daily over teeth brushing.. big pain in the butt over it.. and now he is upset cause he is afraid the dentist will yell at him.. To which I point out.. YET AGAIN.. that while the dentist will point out what you havent done.. and will tell you why its a bad thing to have done that. He WON'T actually YELL at you.. Yelling is what mommy does when she has to take you to the Dentist and she only got 45 minutes of sleep.. 
 Which leads me to my question?? Why in the world is he more scared of the Dentist than of mom?? That is sooo not right. 

First Photos..

Between being busy and being sick I have't gotten to work as much with my new camera as I would like to. Even so I did get a chance last week to hold my child still and get some photos to share. Here is my favs from the ones I took last week .