"We conqured the "Happiest Place on Earth (part 1)

Yup!  We have returned home from Lily's 3rd, MJ's 2nd trip to Disney World.  The kids do a phenomenal job traveling.  We left early Saturday morning (October 12th).  Dane and Dad drove Dane's Charger, while Kyle, Lily, MJ, Pam and myself piled in the van.  We stopped in Ocala for the evening. The next morning, we drove to see Kyle's Uncle Jamie and Aunt Cissy.  The kids had fun playing at Cissy and Jamie's house.  They looked for lizards, admired Cissy's flowers and walked to the playground/lake.  Cissy fixed a delicious corn bread covered chili.  In the meantime, Dane and Dad went to Downtown Disney.  Dane said it as crowded, which we soon found out when we met up with them.  Crowded and hot!
We checked in at the Art of Animation.  The concierge was able to get Lily into the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique in Cinderella's castle...and a reservation for the 8 of us for Chef Mickey's.  I've only been trying to get reservations for those two places since about the beginning of our commitment to go down to Disney. (Rewind...) While at Downtown Disney, we made reservations for a restaurant on the lake.  We ate outside, and it was so wonderful.  The weather was perfect and the sun was setting.  We returned to our resort to conquer Day 1.
Day 1-Animal Kingdom
We chose Animal Kingdom to visit on Monday because their extra magic hours were early in the morning, allowing us priority to the park and an opportunity to get on the safari ride to see the animals.  We have noticed, thanks to Dane...but Kyle says it was him...not sure exactly who it was now..., that the animals are more active in the morning.  The best part of the safari was seeing the baby giraffe run the plains.  He had a special path he took, running laps around the safari jeeps.  We got to see Nemo the musical with puppets.  That was the second time we've seen it, this time MJ was awake!  He was completely enthralled with the show.  We also went to see the Lion King production. There were four sections within the auditorium, each responsible for an animal sound.  Our animal sounds was the elephant.  The kids had fun making the elephant noises and singing along with the Lion King music.  We also rode Expedition Everest.  Kyle and I had Pam ride in the front.  She was hilarious.  When we reached the top of the track and went in reverse she yelled at Kyle "This goes backwards, you didn't tell me this goes backwards!"  Before we left Animal Kingdom Lily and I rode the Dinosaur ride with Pam and Kyle.  Lily and Pam worked on their roars to roar back at the scary dinosaur, which they did.  Lily did ok.  I did cover her eyes when the big dinosaur came out.  I am still completely blown away that my sweet baby girl has such a deep, ferocious growl that could come out of her!  
We left Animal Kingdom to take naps and prepare for our first ever Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween! (To be continued)
....while on this trip, I noticed MJ started saying "yeah, but..." "i love your kisses, but...."  Almost everything that came out of his mouth was something followed by "but" and I absolutely love the way he says but!

New Adventures

Wow!  Almost a year since my last blog.  As usual, so much has changed.  MJ is 2, Lily turned 3 and we moved to Indianapolis.  I also finished my Master's degree.  I doubled up during the summer (during our Disney trip, what was I thinking!?!) and finished 8 weeks early, in November.  I'm so glad I did, because December was extremely busy.  I decided to look for another position because what I was doing was not something I could do another year.  Unfortunately, I didn't have much seniority, so I had to branch out, and branch out and branch out.  I ended up getting an interview in Indy. I was offered the job and accepted it.  I started right away, which meant I had no place to live. I had a good friend who opened her home to be for the week and every weekend I traveled back home.  It was the hardest thing to do, leave my babies for a week at a time.  Throughout the week, I had to look for houses on my own.  When I found something that might be the house for us, Kyle would come up.  We finally found a house about 5 minutes from work.  We moved in the weekend before Halloween.  It was a bittersweet move.  I hate that my kids have no family up here; however, we have a house big enough for all of us and we have new adventures.  Since we've moved, MJ comes home almost every day we leave, enters the house, approaches "Buker" (AKA Cooper, our dog) and tells him of the events as we were out.  He squats down and leans in to make sure Buker hears everything.  December, MJ was old enough to begin Puggles, an AWANA program ran through Faith Baptist Church.  He finally got to go to AWANA.  Lily started Cubbies as soon as we moved up here in October.  I was so surprised when MJ's Puggles teacher informed me that he sat the entire night (hour and a half) and did not eat snack.  Of course MJ cried when I first dropped him off, but I thought for sure he would play, if nothing else, EAT!  Slowly, throughout the rest of the year, little by little, he began to participate.  The first thing he did was in the middle of story time, the teacher asked something like who plays baseball.  MJ ran up, out of his chair, to the teacher and told her in her ear, "I play ball."  In late February, early March, the teacher told me MJ might have pooped.  The teachers thought they smelled something.  They asked, "Who pooped?" MJ raised his hand and said, "I did".  They checked him but he was clean. A few minutes later the teacher said, "Who stinks?" at which point all the kids pointed at him and said "He does!"  (So embarassing!)  Lily looked forward to Cubbies and seeing all her friends.  She finished the AWANA year passing her book, which means she memorized verses every week.  Kyle and I are so very proud of her.  Many things have happened since we've moved but most recently, just last week, Lily and MJ got in the fridge (before we got up) and ate several pieces of cheese.  Lily is pretty sneaky these days. She's too smart to only be 3 years old.
I will have more to write to update, but for now this will be it. 

Tippy Toes

Wednesday, June 19 Kyle drove to Evansville so we (Grandma Pam, Grandpa Matt, Lily, MJ and myself) could go to Holiday World together.  It was the perfect day to go.  Weather was beautiful, not too hot and a nice steady breeze throughout the day.  The park was not very crowded and we had little to no wait for lines.  As we entered, the kids immediately went to the kiddie rides.  After the kiddie rides, we headed towards the waterpark, stopping at the log ride first.  We measured Matthew, a good 2 inches from being able to ride, and decided to go ahead and have him wait with us in line, knowing Grandpa would step out and wait with him while we rode.  As we approached the front of the line, Kyle talked to MJ about how to stand real tall...and step back on Kyle's toes.  This is the same thing I remember my dad telling me to do when I was just shy of meeting the height requirement.  We were at the front of the line.  The guy measured a couple times and let MJ ride.  We quickly got in boats before he could remeasure.  MJ really enjoyed the ride.  Kyle told him to raise his arms as we plumeted to the bottom of the hill.  Kyle said he could feel MJ tense up.  At the bottom MJ, covered with water, said "Hey, that got me wet!"  Our next stop was the Raging Rapids ride.  Again, MJ was still too short.  We got to the front of the line and told the ride operator "6".  Apparently MJ was hidden between Kyle and Grandma, because the operator counted the guy behind us in our group.  We quickly got on this ride, too.  But then I thought, when we were in Disney World Lily was barely tall enough for this same type of ride and they had to make her wear a special harness.  Then I thought, maybe MJ should have been measured.  But all was well, Kyle and Grandpa held each side of MJ.  Next, the water park!  The water was a bit cold, but that didn't stop the kids from having a blast.  They love going down the kiddie water slides.  After awhile in the park, we went to a different play area, where the ground was like a splash pad.  The "jungle gym" of ladders and slides were monitored by Holiday World staff.  I guess because when the kids go down the slide they land in what looks like a bathtub full of water, there is a height requirement on those slides.  MJ became very comfortable with one slide.  He'd walk up the steps, get on the slide and slide down.  Then he got brave.  The boy in front of him slide down feet first on his belly.  Next thing I know, here comes MJ flying down feet first.  Not a huge deal, just wasn't expecting it.  A few more times down on his stomache and then he came out head first!  I quicky scooped him out (because he was head first in 1 1/2-2 ft of water) and he coughed a little bit.  I laughed and he started to fake cry.  I told him that was the worse part.  He turned and looked at the slide, then ran off to go do the slide again.  I was very ready this time to grab him just in case he went head first.  Apparently he learned his lesson.  He came down sitting up. 
We had a lot of fun in the water park.  After lunch we went to another kiddie section.  The kids wanted to ride the Holidog roller coaster.  (Which is all the kids can talk about...riding roller coasters-their hiccups are making them grow so they can be tall enough to ride the Tower of Terror in Disney when we go in October).  So MJ is an ol' pro at standing on an adult's toes to meet the height requirements, but this time the rider operator didn't even measure him.  Lily was such a big girl and rode the kiddie roller coaster in a seat all by herself.  MJ loved the roller coaster.  He gave the ride operator a thumbs up when he asked who wanted to go again.  Two times around the track and then we had to get off.  MJ went back on a second time after riding some other rides.  We ended our day adventure with blue ice cream and a visit with Santa.  What a fun day!