Disney World

After a long hiatus, I am back to blogging! I thought I better start out with a quick overview of our trip to Disney World. We had a great time, and our week was jam-packed with fun stuff! Ruth did pretty well on the plane trip there, and then right after we arrived at our resort, we went to the Hoop-Di-Do Musical Review dinner show, which was lots of fun. Then we rested up for our first day out in the theme parks on Tuesday. We hit the Magic Kingdom first, starting with the princess breakfast in the Cinderella Castle. The breakfast was amazing, and the girls looked so cute in the princess dresses Grandma made for them. Here is Ruth with Princess Jasmine:
We enjoyed balloons, ice cream treats and fun rides on Magic Kingdom day. I think it was my favorite theme park.

Here is Tony trying to pull the sword out of the stone:
He was not successful.

On Wednesday, we went to Animal Kingdom with the kids, and then the adults went to Hollywood Studios in the evening. We watched the amazing Fantasmic show and rode on the Toy Story ride, which was lots of fun.

On Thursday, we went to Epcot, where we saw Nemo and lots of cool fish. We enjoyed many other rides there and had another "princess" meal, this time dinner. I love Epcot, where you can see the "world."

Then, Friday, it was time to head back home. Here are some pics of Tony with his siblings, and Grandma with her grandbabies.
It was so wonderful to see our family, and we can't wait to do something like this again in a few years! We love you and miss you, Jenny, Mike, Mike, Janalee, Marcie and Leila! And we are grateful to Tony's mom for providing us with such a fun, wonderful trip. Thank you!

A blog post about something

M: Hello. Tony suggested we do a blog post and that we take turns writing every other paragraph. I'm not sure what this post is going to be about. We will just have to wait and see! Of course, the big thing on our minds is going to Walt Disney World tomorrow. We are stoked!

T: Yep, stoked. Like wild, blazing fires of Disney nostalgia, waiting for the wind of our jet engines to ignite the blaze of childhood in our hearts.

M: Right..... Anyway, I was super excited about going on all the rides until a few days ago, when I realized that pregnant women aren't supposed to go on a lot of the cool rides. I know, I'm only 12 weeks along, so at first I thought to myself, "I can get around this rule... I'm barely showing!" But I did some research and apparently thrill rides can cause placental abruption. We don't want that to happen. So I'll be restricted to the kiddie rides. Even though I love thrill rides. Oh well.

T: This really is an exciting trip, and it's starting to sink in. Walt Disney productions have always played an integral part in my own childhood. I mean, I remember my father, the man among men, taking me alone to see The Little Mermaid. After the movie, a woman came up and thanked us because, according to her, my hysterical laughter at the scene where Sebastian's jaw drops helped her enjoy the movie even more. I feel like I'm going, not only to enjoy myself, but to say "Thank you" for a childhood full of wonderful memories. Plus, I get to hang out with my dorkface brother and my non-dorkface sister.

M:We're staying at the Fort Wilderness Resort, which includes cabins, campgrounds, fishing, canoeing, horseback riding, tennis, etc. We're staying in cabins. Tony and his brother are planning on fishing during their free time. I'm so excited! We keep telling Ruth that she'll get to see Nemo, her favorite Disney character. Hopefully he shows up!

T:Really, Ruth is at the age where she will probably have a good time because of the visual and audio stimuli, but she can't really associate it much further than that. My sister's daughters, though, are older and will probably get a lot more out of the princess breakfasts, etc. I figure Walt Disney will be sticking around with us as a family for a long time, or for at least as long as Disney continues to put out quality productions. And yes, we plan on fishing. And I have to say I'm pretty excited.

M:We're also pretty excited about seeing our family, including our nieces, Tony's siblings, his mom and others. It will be even better to have this experience with all of them! Our general attitude at this point is that we want to just relax and go with the flow. There's no ride that we can't miss. What really matters is having fun and spending time with family.

T:Meredith just said it's time to wrap it up, so, I guess... *fold* *fold* *spin* *tape* *twist tie*

M:*Cough**dork**Cough* We will be back in about a week with lots of pictures and great stories! See you then!

Tony's projects

Tony has been very handy around the house, and if it weren't for time and money constraints, I'm sure we'd have a lot more done at this point. However, Tony has finished three fairly major projects:
1. Replacing the shower head and faucet. Shortly after moving in, we found out that the faucet on our shower didn't properly switch the water over from the tub to the shower, meaning only a small trickle of water came out of the already broken shower head. We could only take baths for a few days. So Tony replaced that. And it works much, much better now.


2. Installing the dishwasher. The actual dishwasher installation wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. The part that was hard was getting it properly mounted in the space we created. We had to take out some of the cabinets to put in the dishwasher, which wasn't a big deal because we have a lot of other kitchen cabinets. Tony did a great job on this project, and I LOVE having a dishwasher. It saves me so much time.


3. Building sawhorses. We have big, BIG plans to build new furniture (check out this blog, which has some awesome plans for all kinds of furniture: www.knockoffwood.blogspot.com), but first Tony needed sawhorses upon which to build the furniture. So he built sawhorses. He did a great job and was able to use some wood he took out of an old box spring we didn't need anymore. How resourceful! His first project will be building Ruth's big girl bed, which will look like this.

He has done lots of other small projects, but those are the major things. Next up on our list is steaming off the wallpaper in the living room, bedroom, bathroom and upstairs, and then we'll redo the bathroom. We are still debating about whether or not we will totally replace the tub, tub surround and floors. We went to Home Depot yesterday and saw some really nice stuff, so it's tempting.

I've purchased slipcovers for the couches in the living room and bought Ruth a new quilt for her big girl bed. I loved this quilt when I saw it, so instead of painting her room blue, we will paint it yellow to go with the quilt.

In about three weeks, when we get back from Walt Disney World, we may be getting a kitty! We took Ruth to the Humane Society yesterday to look at them, and she had a blast. We are also going to transition Ruth to her big girl bed in April (after the bed gets built). I'm hopeful the transition will go well. We have the mattress all made up for some company we're expecting tonight, and we've told Ruth it will be her new big girl bed. Whenever we go upstairs to the loft she likes to go and lay on it.

We are making progress, and it is great!

Oh, and two weeks until Walt Disney World!!!!

What's new?

Hello. It's Sunday and I thought I'd post a short update. I was going to post photos of Tony's projects he's completed around the house so far, but unfortunately our camera is dead. :-( It will have to wait for another day -- hopefully tomorrow if I remember to charge the battery.

The snow is finally melting, and our spirits are lifting! The temps have been in the 40s and 50s this week and should stay that way next week. We can see patches of our yard! Honestly, some spots don't look so good. They will probably have to be weeded really well and re-seeded. There's a lot of landscaping work to do. We live on a street that gets a lot of foot traffic, and there seems to be a lot of trash in our front yard near the sidewalk, so we will have to go out and pick that up this week.

We are making some progress on our decisions about how to decorate the house. We are going to take down the paneling in the dining room, although it probably won't happen for a while (probably this summer). We are also going to paint the living room a basic neutral taupe color and get some fun fabric for curtains and pillows. I think we'll paint the upstairs a nice cream color and possibly add an accent wall. That's about as far as we've gotten. :) We are also looking forward to a total redo of the bathroom. We were hoping to do it this month but probably won't get to it. Right now we're trying to decide whether or not to replace the tub, which is in okay shape but it's aluminum and pretty shallow. A new tub and liner will easily double the cost of our project, so we'll just have to wait and see how rich we are when we go to buy materials. :) The idea of a nice, deep soaker tub does sound good right about now, though...

We still have some unpacking to do. I need to get it done this week because we have company coming into town on Saturday. We are excited to show our house to some good friends!

Tony has one week to go until Spring Break. Boy, does he need a bit of a break. Poor guy works his bummy off. And then in three weeks we are going to Walt Disney World!!! We've been so busy with other stuff that it really hasn't sunk in yet. But we could really use a vacation, and we are SUPER EXCITED to see all of our family! I'm sure I'll blog more about it in coming weeks.

As for me, I've been pooped and not feeling great. I have to eat every couple of hours or I feel nauseated. I think I'm going to have to start working a nap into my afternoon routine because I'm exhausted by 8:30 or 9 p.m. every night. I've lost my workout routine since we moved, so I'm going to try to get back into that this week. However, I have started using this nifty page from SparkPeople called BabyFit.com to track my nutrition and set fitness goals. I've been doing well with my calories so far. I find that I actually have to make an effort to eat enough calories for the day. If only it were like that when I'm not pregnant!

More pictures and updates to come this week!

Disney Planning (Already)

Disclaimer: This blog post was primarily written for my sister-in-law, Jenn, but anyone else is welcome to read on anyway!

In case you haven't heard, we (me, Tony and Ruth) are going to Disney World (!!!) at the end of March 2010 for a family reunion, courtesy of my mother-in-law. We will be joined by Tony's mother, brother, sister and family, and step-grandmother. We are super pumped about this, and as soon as I found out we were going I started doing research about the trip, as did my sister-in-law.

So my sister-in-law went to the library earlier this month and found some books about Disney vacation planning. Inspired by her library research, I went to the library tonight and found this great book: The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2010.


This book is HUGE, and the reason it's called the "unofficial" guide is because none of the contributors works for Disney. This gives it a more unbiased approach. It has opened my eyes to many unknown aspects of our impending Disney World vacation, and I want to buy a copy. If not, I will be making photocopies of many parts of this book for safe keeping! Here are the things I've learned so far:

• To get the most out of Disney World, you have to get to the parks early in the morning, about 30 minutes before they open. This can be very early, but it will mean much, much less waiting in line.
• We should plan to walk 5-12 miles per day. (I'm going to have to make sure I'm in shape for that!)
• Because of the large walking distances and the (hopefully) early-morning arrival at the park, families should plan to return to their room in the afternoon for a nap/break. They can then return to the park in the late afternoon/evening.
• "Extra Magic Hours" are available to resort guests, but this book recommends avoiding them. Here is how they work: each day, one park (Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, etc.) will be open an hour early or remain open an hour late just for resort guests. While this may seem like a good deal in theory, the park will be extra crowded on this day, making for longer lines. Also, not all of the rides are open during these extra hours, meaning there are a lot of people trying to cram on a few rides. It's better to forego the extra hours completely and visit a different park, which is very likely to be much less busy.
  
• This particular guidebook offers "touring plans" for each of the parks, designed for different groups (just adults, adults with children, mature adults, etc.). These guides often mean a lot of walking and bouncing around the park, but they have been proven to cut ride wait times by 4 hours per day. This allows WDW visitors to visit more rides and spend much, much less time in line (usually only 15-20 minutes per ride). They also eliminate the time wasted by standing around and looking at a map/arguing over what to see next. Jenn, depending on our attitude toward the trip (if we just want it to be leisurely or if we want to get our money's worth [even though we aren't the ones spending the money]), we may seriously consider using these touring plans. The overwhelming response online and in feedback printed in the book is that they really work.
• From our resort (Fort Wilderness Cabins) we should expect it to take an average of 45 minutes to get to every theme park via the Disney Transportation System. This does not include the Magic Kingdom, which we can reach in an average of 15 minutes through the water ferry.
• Meal plans have received mixed reviews, especially children's meal plans, which have very limited menus (think mostly mac-n-cheese and chicken strips). Even though we have a meal plan, I think it will save us a lot of time, money and hassle if we plan on bringing some food with us. We can then eat some breakfasts/lunches in the park. My family did this when we went to Disney World about 12 years ago, and it really worked out for us.
  
• Our resort has some really awesome amenities, including a lot of outdoor recreation options!!!
• FASTPASSES will be very helpful in eliminating time spent standing in line.
  
• In reality, we only have three full days at Disney World. (Do you know our departure and arrival times, by chance, Jenn?) Considering that you need two days to see everything at the Magic Kingdom and another two days to see everything at Epcot, we will have to be aware that we absolutely won't be able to see or do everything. This has the potential to be a stressful, exhausting vacation. However, if we plan it well while remaining flexible, we will have an awesome time.
  
• If the trip does happen to be exhausting/stressful, we just have to remember: We are in Disney World!!!

Let me know what you think, Jenn. If anyone else has read to the end of this post and has any Disney World tips, let me know!

-Meredith