Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Magical Days!

Wow – so much has happened since my last entry! I had every intention of blogging before we left for our very first Family Vacation, and since I seemed to be in denial that we were leaving right up until the day before, I should have had plenty of time, but as usual, the difference between “should” and “reality” was vast.

School was busy before we left – Gracie started her morning computer sessions, and seems to be doing well with it. Donuts for Dads was one Tuesday – the girls were so excited to have their Daddy go to school with them. He stayed for the Charge-Up – that’s their weekly pep-rally type assembly. Between the two of us, we were at the school every day that week – I got Campbell’s flyers out before the holiday cooking season heated up on Wednesday, helped in the Library on Thursday, and with the Book Fair on Friday. The next week was Turkey Bingo (Bingo with frozen turkeys as some of the prizes) and Thursday was Oklahoma’s centennial. There was a school-wide assembly and each grade did a song and skit about Oklahoma. The local news channel filmed it, but we didn’t get to watch the news to see if the girls were shown or not.

Since our big trip was taking us out of town for Thanksgiving, we headed to Mary Jo and Jerry’s house for an early turkey dinner the weekend before. I didn’t realize that it was (my) Jerry’s first trip to Texas since we moved to Oklahoma – I’ve made the trip so many times in such a short while but he didn’t make it across the border once! We got up early on Saturday and had pancakes and went to see the Bee Movie. That was the first time I’d been to the cinema in my old hometown – it was actually very nice inside under that plain-looking exterior. We also stopped and stocked up on Caffeine-Free Dr. Pepper, since it isn’t available in Oklahoma, and then did our usual feeding of ducks and eating of Tex-Mex. Sunday before our dinner, Uncle Larry was kind enough to repair my messed-up hairdo. I guess I’m just not cut out to be trendy. At least I feel presentable again! Bill and Jimmy drove out for the day, and we all had a great meal a la Mary Jo, (Her stuffing is my favorite – sorry Grandma!) and watched the football game while we visited. The highlight of the trip was Gracie’s loose tooth – everyone wanted to pull it for her! Pepaw even offered her $100 if he could pull it, but she decided to wait until we got back and have Daddy do it. It was a stubborn tooth – he had a hard time getting ahold of it, but he eventually got it out and she put it under her pillow – the tooth fairy gave her $2! For such a tiny tooth, it sure left a big gap in her smile!

The weather turned a bit cooler, and the leaves are coming down in droves. Gracie was totally pumped about making a leaf pile, since we have never had a yard that had a tree big enough to produce enough leaves to make one. While Maggie was at scouts, Gracie decided our mommy-daughter activity should be to make a HUGE pile of leaves, and I got some great shots of her flying into it. Maggie also made a pile when she got home – she named her leaf pile “Blush-Bottom” from a book that she’s reading at school.

Finally, the day before we were supposed to leave, I started freaking out about not being ready – I printed out boarding passes, confirmed our Disney Dining reservations, and tried to leave my type-a personality behind. We got us packed, and were ready to go, and out the door early for our flights to Florida. We made it without incident, and got settled into our hotel suite, got a few groceries for breakfast and purchased our Disneyworld tickets. Now we were ready!

We tried the strategy of starting with the most boring (from a kid’s point of view) park, and working our way up, so our first day we went to Epcot, since it’s more educational. We stopped to meet characters first, since Gracie said the thing she wanted most from our trip was to meet Minnie Mouse, and she was there, along with Mickey, Pluto, Goofy and Chip & Dale. We did the Seas, which the girls liked, and Crush even picked Maggie out of the audience to talk to at Turtle Talk with Crush. Next we went over to the Land, and the girls really enjoyed touring the greenhouses, and then we tried a new ride – Soarin’. We all liked that a bunch! We spent the rest of the day leisurely taking in the attractions, and then moved on to the world showcase in the afternoon. We found us a good vantage spot for the light show, and left with the crowd after that. We all slept very soundly that night!

The next day we visited the Animal Kingdom. We enjoyed looking at the animals, especially on the safari, and also in the Hippo tank. The hippos are very graceful under water, but you usually don’t see them that way! The girls rode their first big roller coaster – Everest – and they liked it right up until they saw the animatronic Yeti. I kind of wondered if we would get them on any more coasters after that, but Maggie tried the Primeval Whirl in Dinoland, and loved it (Gracie didn’t meet the height requirement.) Both girls loved the triceratops twirl (three times!) and had a blast in the play area with all the slides. We weren’t sure we’d ever get Gracie out of the area where you “dig” up fossils. She was well on her way to uncovering the entire mammoth skeleton by herself when we dragged her away. This park closes earlier, but we went to dinner afterwards, so we didn’t get home until late.

The third day was our first day at the Magic Kingdom. It was PACKED! We made it through Adventureland, Frontierland, Liberty Square, and half of Fantasyland. The girls really liked the Big Thunder railroad. We were running out of steam, so we found a good spot for the 8:00 parade, and sat there for awhile until the parade came by. Then we went to Fantasyland to use our last FastPASS and watched the fireworks before we left the park. Whew!



The fourth day was the pinnacle of the trip – the day we met the princesses! All my effort to secure us a table at Cinderella’s castle would finally pay off! The girls dressed up in their princess costumes and we headed back to the Magic Kingdom. We took the train around to Mickey’s neighborhood and saw his house and visited him in the Judges tent. He danced with the girls, and they gave him a kiss on the cheek. All the cast members around the park addressed the girls with the name of the princess they were dressed as or as "princess". Then came the big moment – we went to the castle and had lunch with the princesses! First Cinderella came out to greet us, and then we went upstairs to eat. As we ate Jasmine, Belle, Snow White and Aurora each came around to our table to visit. The girls got to talk to each of the princesses, although they were pretty shy with most of them. After lunch we finished up Fantasyland and Tomorrowland and headed back to our hotel for sweet princess dreams.

The next day we relaxed in our hotel for the morning, and then headed to Downtown Disney to see the new movie, Enchanted, and get our shopping done. The next day was Thanksgiving, so we headed to the Old Key West resort for our dinner, and then went back to Epcot to ride Soarin’ again. Before we left the park, we decided to ride the monorail around to the TTC and back to Epcot. On the way back to Epcot Jerry asked if we could sit up front, and we could! The girls got a monorail co-pilots license when we left.

The next morning we very reluctantly packed our bags and headed to the airport, back to cold Oklahoma and away from our Magical vacation. We had a great time though, and the girls and I are looking forward to making a scrapbook so we can remember it always! In case you want to see more pictures (we took more than 600!), they are at our family picture website, just e-mail me or leave a comment if you need a password!

Hope your day is Magical!

Saturday, November 3, 2007

A Full, Rich Day. . . Make That Week

Well, today has been what I think of as a full, rich day. I know that is an expression that I picked up in my reading, and I wish I could remember who to credit it to, but my mind is not the steel trap that it used to be. You know, they say that when you are pregnant, many of your brain cells go down to the baby, resulting in the ever-so-common "Mommy Brain." I've also heard that you regain those cells after the baby is about two years old. Since my two babies were only seventeen months apart, I figure my supply of brain cells was so depleted, it'll take me about 20 years to get my mind back. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Anyway, I searched through my favorite blogs to see if I could find that term, but I can't. If you know where I picked it up, please let me know and I'll credit them for it!
Anyway - to define a full, rich day, let me tell you about today. The girls and I got up late, having gone to bed ridiculously late last night, and went about quietly making pancakes since Daddy was asleep on the couch. He had an important "thing" at work, so he was up late, late, late last night dealing with that, so I tiptoed around in the kitchen doing my best to make pancakes quietly. Why, I don't know, as Gracie has never learned to lower her voice below a scream when they are playing, and Jerry has been known to sleep through storms, smoke alarms, and freight trains going by in the night.
After pancakes I got dressed and went to look at a FSBO house in the neighborhood. It was cute and well taken care of, but it had room for neither a craft room or our office furniture, (and it had leopard print carpet on the stairs) so it is out of the running, I think. Unless we downsize considerably, it was just too small. I've got appointments to look at two more tomorrow, so who knows?

Once I got home I got the girls up from their descent into the Disney Channel and into their Girl Scout uniforms and we headed off to an event that celebrated the 100th birthday of Oklahoma and 95th anniversary of Girl Scouting. The girls got to try their hand at cattle roping, play with games that were popular in 1907, learn a dance from an Indian Fancy Dancer (Creek Tribe, Muskogee Nation), see a magic show and a mad scientist show, take a ride in a horse-drawn wagon, and play on the playground. Whew! Then we went back home and rested for awhile before heading for a long-promised dinner at "the McDonald's with the palm trees in the play land." Lastly we stopped at Target for some bananas and hit the Halloween half price sale. Maggie picked up some pom-poms and has since been chanting around the house, "Give me an M! Give me an A! Give me a G! Give me another G! Give me an I! Give me an E! What does that spell? Maggie! YEA!!!!!" She did all our names, plus "Girl Scouts", but she left out the U. When she yelled, "What does that spell?" I yelled, "Girl Scots!" and she was a bit confused, but I thought it was a riot. I foresee an extremely enthusiastic spelling test review this week.

So, that was it for today. As I said, a full, rich day. As for the rest of the week, it was also jam packed, but not so much as today. Here's the highlights:

Thursday was Parent Teacher conference night for us. We were fretting a bit about having to take the girls with us to this, but Monday, my dad called to let us know he was going to be in town on Thursday evening after business meetings. I jumped on that opportunity, "Hey Dad, how would you like to babysit that evening?" I think that was more than he bargained for, but he was a good sport and agreed. On Thursday evening the girls inquired how I was going to go to the Parent Teacher Conference - "Are you going to leave us at home by ourselves?"

"Um - no. Have I ever left you by yourselves? No. I got a babysitter."

"Really? Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy."

"It's Daddy, isn't it?"

"No, Daddy is going with me to see your teachers."

"Is it a stranger, or do you know them?"

"Like I would leave you with someone I don't know! I know them."

"Do you know their name?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Robert."

"Robert. Oh." They ran off, contemplating a new sitter named Robert. When Dad got there and rang the door bell, they yelled, "The babysitter's here!" and cautiously peeked through the window, and then went berserk when they saw their Granddaddy. What a big surprise! They had a great time while we were gone, reading books and such.
While both girls are doing well in school, and working hard, Gracie is having some trouble overcoming some issues concerning fine motor skills and letter reversals, so we are going to be going to school 15 minutes early every day for extra practice on the computer. We will also be seeing about having her tested for any learning quirks. It was very interesting to compare the two conferences by the two teachers - Maggie's teacher is relatively new, this being her second year of teaching, while Gracie's teacher has 28 years of experience. Both are good teachers, but Maggie's teacher is still very much in learning mode.

Wednesday, of course, was Halloween, and I'm sure everyone wants to see my little princesses - you just knew that was what they had to be, right? Here they are: Okay - the big one is me. Gracie was Ariel, the Little Mermaid and Maggie was Barbie as Rosella (The Island Princess). Both girls begged to have crowns/princess hats as part of their costumes, and I caved. On Halloween though, I braided Maggie's hair to look like Rosella's does on the video, and then she didn't want to wear the hat because it hid her braids. I figured that I had paid $5 for that hat, and somebody was going to wear it! I even wore it into Barnes and Nobel with Maggie to pick up a Children's Dictionary for her on the way to the Halloween festival that we went to. We also went around the block trick-or-treating. Gracie totally cracked me up - after each house she would say very emphatically, "They gave us even MORE candy! I totally LOVE this night!!!"

Tuesday I helped out with the children's program at Bible study. I observed something while watching the kiddos. We were teaching the story of the good Samaritan that day - the leader told the story, and they play-acted it out so nicely, and then the leader asked them a few questions to see if they had understood the story. As she read the questions, she would never get very far into the questions before someone's little had would shoot up and an eager voice would shout, "GOD!!!!" And it made me wonder - when and why is it that as we grow up we stop thinking that "GOD!!!!" is the answer to all the problems?

Well, I think that's about it - I spent most of the remainder of the time this week in bed or on the couch resting - I got the crud that is going around. I think it's whatever Maggie had on our trip - I don't feel sick, just nauseous. Most folks that have had it says it lasts a week or two, but I'm ready for it to be over. I'm already feeling much better though, so perhaps I'm on the upside. I hope so! Enjoy your next week - I hope it's a Full, Rich one!