Happy 18th, Dillon!!

I am pretty sure that my brother won't even read this but....
Happy 18th birthday, Dillon James!!!

I just cannot believe you are already 18 years old!! That it seems like you were just Sophia's age. That you are now in your last year of high school and will be going off to college before we know it. I know one little girl that is going to miss you like crazy....every time she sees your picture in our house (doesn't matter which one, but she really likes your senior pic) she says Dill, Dill over and over. And she always calls you on her phone when she is playing....as soon as she can use the phone for real, you are in trouble! You are one great Uncle to Sophia and Cooper. If you would just change a diaper, you could definitely babysit Soph!! :-) All diapers aside, I know we picked the best Godfather for our daughter, she loves you like crazy. And you might as well take advantage of someone that thinks farts and burps are funny...she doesn't know better yet! :-)
I hope that you enjoy 18 and the years that follow. College will be fun, but don't rush it (but don't drag it out into a 6 year thing either!!) and learn all you can (wish I had done a little more learning).

Whatever you do, wherever you go, Michael, Sophia and I will always be here for you and whatever you need. We love you SO much and are very proud of you for making it 18 years.

Happy birthday to my favorite little brother, I love you and Sophia loves her Uncle Dill!! :-)

Sophia and the Christmas Tree

The day after we took Sophia to see Santa (Dec 4th, I think) we went and got our Christmas tree. We were a little unsure of how Sophia would do with one in our house, especially since we don't have a lot of extra space to begin with. We decided the best thing to do was to decorate it and put up all of our other Christmas stuff while she was in her nap. I quickly realized that not all of our usual decorations were going to be able to come out, and that some reorganizing was going to have to take place with a busy-body one year old in the mix this year. Also, when we were putting on the ornaments, I had to let go of my "all the ornaments need the perfect spot" issue....this year, all the soft, non-pointy, non-breakable ones went near the bottom and the rest went far out of the reach of toddler hands. So the tree won't win any awards for best decorating style this year, it still turned perfect for us.
When we were done, Sophia was also done with her nap so we got her up and brought her out to show her the tree....and she loved it! And she immediately wanted to touch every. single. ornament. Not that we were surprised. We have quite a few Disney ornaments and she pointed out (while trying to pull each one off) all of them. And Home Depot will get a glowing letter from me for actually selling shatterproof ornaments like they say that they do....and we only know because one ball (which we thought was high enough and back far enough in the branches...it was not) did not escape the clutches of Sophia....she said ball when she grabbed it...and then proceeded to throw it on our hard wood floor, apparently to see if it would bounce. It did not. But it also did not shatter into a million pieces, so good job Home Depot!
Every day I have to watch her like a hawk because she tries to pull her favorite ornaments off the tree (Mickey and Minnie, a few that look like little dolls, and a cupcake that she keeps calling an apple). And every day I have to chase her down and wrestle one of the ornaments out her her hands. She is a pretty strong girl. I think she enjoys the chase. :-)
As for our other decorations....well, she has broken the head off a poor gingerbread girl twice, the hat off a gingerbread boy once, and is pretty much terrorizing a cute little snowman I have by the door. And she tried to walk off with a small lit house once that was plugged into the wall. Other than that, we are doing great!! She is very much enjoying the Christmas season and we are enjoying seeing how much she loves it! :-)

Sophia and Santa

A couple weekends ago, we took Sophia to Michael's work kids' Christmas party that they do every year. Last year, being that she was so young, she didn't mind Santa so much. This year, well, she really was not a big fan at all. :-)
The pictures kind of speak for themselves. Very amusing that Michael and Santa couldn't smile any bigger at her misery, haha.
I hope that next year she likes the jolly old guy a little bit better!!

Trying Again...Sort Of

Because I am so annoyed at blogger messing up most of my previous posts about our Disney trip, for now I am just suspending writing anymore about it. I know I wasn't done with the week but I can't bear the thought of spending the time putting all the pictures on for the last two days (which were Sea World and Universal) and then for them to not even be there at all. I don't know what the problem is, why blogger hates me, but instead of canceling my blog (my initial thought), I am just going to move on. Unfortunately my blogs will probably not have as many pictures as they used to, which kind of stinks. I will try to get on Facebook and get a lot out there so that at least anyone who reads this that is my Facebook friend can see some pictures. I still can post a few pictures on here, but the frustration of posting a lot is not worth it right now, until my computer guy (aka my husband) can figure out what the problem is, my posts might be a tad dull. If they weren't already.
So I have a lot to catch up on, but thought I would start with this past Saturday night. We went to Michael's work Christmas party and had a really good time. We left Sophia with my parents overnight and had a nice date night for ourselves. We even went out to a bar not far from our house after the party was over with a group of people. Yay for us, acting like we have a life!! It was fun for a night, but we were happy to get back to our girl the next morning. Here is a picture of us all dressed up and ready to go out.

It kinda looks like Sophia, or someone her size took the picture, haha. Since we were by ourselves (not that if she was with us she could've helped, hahaha) we had to use our stool and the timer on our camera to get a shot. Guess we could've just had someone take a picture at the party. But since this is the only shot we got of the night, that probably would not have happened. Glad we took this one before we left. It was a fun night and I am glad we got to spend the time together.

UGH!!!

So I was just going back thru my blog and noticed that several recent posts that had pictures when I submitted the blog no longer are showing those pictures...and not just a few pictures, actually a lot of pictures and not just one blog, several blogs. Ugh, I freakin hate you blogger, you always screw up my stuff and now it is after midnight and there is really nothing I can do to fix it now. Plus, I picked those pictures out of a much larger group of pictures and have to basically go back and re-pick and re-upload, which is a HUGE PAIN because you make it so difficult in the first place. I really frickin hate you right now blogger. I should re-title this "I Hate You Blogger" and tweet the same thing and post that as my status on Facebook so some nerd in charge will read this and maybe spend his evening trying to figure out why putting pictures on to a site that is supposed to be about sharing pictures and thoughts is so hard to do just that simple thing. MAKE IT EASIER AND STOP SCREWING IT UP!!!
That is all. I am going to bed. Hopefully the problem will correct itself while I sleep. Otherwise I will have to work on it over the week as well and continue to try and catch up my blogs about our vacation and I still want to blog about decorating for Christmas....all of which I want to include pictures, which should definitely raise my blood pressure each time I try to post a blog with pictures attached. Hope everyone else is enjoying their sleep or at least having a better evening than I am.

Magic Kingdom, Trip Day 4

On Wednesday, we had the most exciting plan....Magic Kingdom! Sophia was very excited about seeing Mickey and Minnie and there were lots and lots of rides at this park that she could ride on. We got there before the park opened so we were able to see the train pull up with the characters on board....and she was SO excited when she saw Mickey Mouse. I caught a good picture of her cute expression when she got a good look at him. :-) We pretty much ran back to Fantasy land as soon as we got in (after taking a few pics in front of Cinderella castle). The wait times were short so we jumped right on some of the rides....Snow White and It's a Small World. Sophia loved them both. I thought she might be scared of Snow White (Coop was terrified the last time we went....although the thought still makes me laugh....my Dad sat him right up front and didn't even hold him on his lap, poor little guy!) but she really liked the dwarfs and said 'apple' every time she saw one, haha. Maybe she was just too little to be scared, or maybe it was going to quickly for her to be scared and she was just trying to take in the things she recognized, like Snow White and the dwarfs and the apple? Either way, no trauma there. And she LOVED Small World. We have been singing the song to her as we change her diaper for a couple weeks now so for it to be playing over and over as we rode a boat with lots of lights and colors and dancing dolls all over the place...um, yeah, she sort of was in heaven. We really didn't take her on any rides that she didn't like the whole day. She was so tired that by lunch time she fell right to sleep in her stroller. But we realized there was a street parade type thing going on so we rushed out to catch the end of it....and stopped right by Minnie Mouse! She woke up quick and was dancing her little butt off in her stroller, she was SO happy and excited to see Minnie so close and she loved the music.
After that we did a few more rides and then headed back (just like we had done on our Epcot day) for naps. When we got back, we had the plan of hitting up some more rides (including Pirates and the Jungle Cruise) and then picking out a good spot for the lights parade. Sophia LOVES parades!! She got the most excited when she saw Snow White and the dwarf crew, but she really loved all of it. She practically waved her little hand off. When the parade was over we decided to ride the Haunted Mansion ride. Probably a mistake. Cooper flat out hated it. Sophia was exhausted by then. And the cast member who loaded us into our cart...well, when I asked if Michael, Dillon and I would fit in one car (with Sophia on my lap, of course), he just barely acknowledged us and said sure that is fine. Um, no. It was NOT fine! First, we were crammed like sardines. I had to put Sophia on top of the lap bar after it lowered onto our laps. Then, we forgot to mention our other passenger, our fricken child-sized backpack, that took up a lot of room as well. I was stuck in the middle of Dillon and Michael, with Sophia on my lap (on top of the lap bar), and it was very claustrophobic. Sophia didn't seem to mind at all, she fell asleep almost right away. Then the ride totally stopped! I very nearly freaked out. I am just not good in tight spaces anymore and this was way more than just a tight space. We were able to move the backpack and adjust a little bit so that I could get a little tiny bit of air but mostly I was just trying to remain as calm as possible. Finally it started back and we were able to finish the ride and get off the thing. We figured it was time to call it a night. After that, we had to wait forever to get a ferry back to the parking lot...and the line to the ferry was actually shorter than the line to the monorail...it was ridiculous. Probably the longest line we had waited in the whole day. Everyone was pretty exhausted by the time we finally made it back, but we had a very full and very fun day at the Magic Kingdom. I can't wait to take Sophia back so we can experience her excitement all over again. :-)

"Rest", Trip Day 3

We didn't have a park planned for our third day of our Disney trip so our plan was just to have a relaxing day. After a few days of getting up early to be at the parks when they opened we decided that sleeping in would be nice. Michael, Sophia and I all slept until about 9, which was really nice after the early mornings. We ate breakfast and since everyone else was already around the pool area we decided that we would join them. The resort had a special area for kids, a baby pool and a fountain area that kids could run through. It was cold, but Sophia and Cooper loved it. Poor Soph was shivering but she kept running right through the water as it shot up right by her head! A couple of times it was getting her right in the face and she would just laugh. Sometimes Cooper would be a good helper and drag her out of it, haha. My sister and I took her in the baby pool and she had fun in there too. She face planted in the water a few times, but she choked it off and didn't seem to mind too much. I guess we need to get her some swimming lessons soon!!
We took showers and good naps and then went for a really good Italian dinner at a cute place we had found a couple years ago. After that, some of the group went back and just my little family and my sister's little family went to the Disney village. It was pretty crowded. We just went in the Lego store and the big Disney store and got a few things. Sophia loved the loud music that was playing outside the stores. Dillon even found someone to hang out with (see picture below, hahahaha).
Even though it was supposed to be a restful day, I felt like I was still pretty tired from being in the sun and around the crowds at the village....but it was still definitely a fun day for sure. :-)

Breaking News!

I must interrupt these riveting posts about our Disney trip (yeah, right...I am sure they aren't that exciting) to give you some even more fabulous news....I do not have to buy a dress for Michael's Christmas party this year!!
I am sure you just fell off your chair with the utter shock and excitement of that statement.
I feel pretty certain that I have blogged in the past of my hatred of shopping for a dress for this particular event (and I am too lazy to look back to confirm this for sure). It always costs a ridiculous amount (dress, shoes, proper foundation garments) and then I am never quite comfortable with my choice in the end. And not to mention, starting last year, I had a baby in tow for the shopping "fun". At least last year she was super tiny and would stay in the stroller and my friend Jennifer came along to help me out. This year, as a toddler, I can only imagine how horrific the shopping trip would be, friendly help or not. Not to mention that it is a week from this Saturday, so I don't have a lot of time to find something.
So you can imagine my surprise when I peeked into the darkest depths of my closet (trust me, if you have seen my closet, there are definitely some dark depths) and found a dress that I really loved that I wore from a Christmas party of my Dad's the year that Michael and I were engaged (Dec of 2008). I did not have high hopes that the dress would actually fit me. There was a single digit on the label after all. But, oh, the thought of not having to brave the mall with a one year old who would surely not want to be there as I tried on dress after dress made me hope and pray just a little more that it would somehow magically work out. I tried it on....but could not get the zipper up. I did not despair at first. It seemed a little snug in the chest region (but when I wore it the first time it was loose in that region....let's face it, the second I got pregnant nothing was ever loose in that region again. So annoying.) and I couldn't contort myself enough to see if it would zip all the way or was just too tight altogether. I would have to just wait (an agonizing number of hours) until Michael got home from work so he could help me hopefully zip it all the way up.
And when he finally was able to help me......IT ZIPPED ALL THE WAY UP!!!!!! Like I said, much more snug in the chest area than when I first wore it. But nothing was going to pop out for sure. No fat hanging over the arm holes (a serious pet peeve of mine when I look at myself in a dress, yuck). And it has a nice bottom part that covers the less than perfect parts without me even having to wear any uncomfortable undergarments (like Spanx...which I hate). Oh, did I mention that the last time I wore this dress was when MICHAEL AND I WERE ENGAGED??!!! I guess my recent work out plan of walk a million miles a Disney and my weight regiment of alternately hold a 22 pound baby and unknown pound heavy backpack paid off.
The best part is that I have shoes that will look perfect with it (ok, so I wore them last year but I am sure that so many people were looking at how fat I looked in my unflattering dress that they didn't even notice my shoes) and won't have to set foot into the mall or spend one penny for this Christmas party!! Nah, the best part is definitely the size of the dress and that I fit into it and that it actually looks decent. Plus, I do have to spend something to have it dry cleaned....I got some deodorant on it as I was contorting to try and zip it myself, haha.
Now back to the regularly scheduled blog posts of Disney adventures.....but pictures of the Christmas party to come for sure, as I am actually somewhat excited for it this year for a change!!

Islands of Adventure, Trip Day 2

On our second day, we got away from the Disney theme a little bit and headed over to the Islands of Adventure Universal park. We had to go really early so that the Harry Potter nerds (which consisted mostly of my sister) could ride some Potter ride that I wasn't at all interested in, but this park has Jurassic Park and Dr. Seuss, which I am interested in, so this was ok with me. While they waited about an hour and a half to ride said HP ride (super geeks, seriously. I know that all three of my readers will probably take this opportunity to write mean comments about how I am the dork for not liking Harry Potter....I just cannot get into it. Nor Twilight. Nor Lord of the Rings. If fantasy is the theme, you can't get me interested, sorry), me and my parents took the kids to the Jurassic Park play area. Coop and I had so much fun with some squirting dinosaurs and Sophia liked stepping on these big paw prints that made dinosaur noises in the bushes (which scared Coop so much he jumped up into my arms!!). Then Coop and I rode a fun ride that I was surprised he even wanted to ride and he loved it. By then the HP dweebs were done with their ride and we moved on. Other than Seuss world, there wasn't much else for Sophia to do. She didn't really like the merry go round, once it started to go round. Michael said she clung more to him with each time it went around. And the Seuss character she met, well, let's just say he didn't get a very warm reception. Haha. She liked the Cat in the Hat ride a lot. We watch that show sometimes on PBS, so she was familiar with the kids and the fish and the Cat and pointed to them a lot on the ride. I think she liked to watch the crowds and see the other kids and just all the general ruckus going on in the park. It started to rain a bit in the afternoon so once everyone had done what they wanted to do we left. Again, I didn't do the greatest with the picture taking, but got at least a few good shots. :-)