Adopt A Block

Adopt A Block

Today, Celebration Serves had a huge Adopt A Block Party! It was awesome! We had live music, hot dogs, drinks, snow cones, nail painting, face painting, bracelets and necklaces, we handed out Bibles, had the Fire Department bring a truck out for the kids to get in and look around in, had a barber come in to do free haircuts, tons of prizes and a big bouncy house. It was so much fun. I took Riley with me, he loves helping out at Adopt A Block.

It's at an East side apartment complex, lots of kids whose parents aren't around, or are involved in drugs, and our church has just kind of adopted this whole complex. We have picked up trash out there, power washed, planted flowers and grass, as well as monthly trips to have parties with the kids.

So today, Riley and I started off with nails and bracelets. He was so cute painting the nails for the little girls, and helping them with their bracelets. But then we moved over to snow cones and we made 100's of snow cones! They were a big hit, we had a line almost the whole time. Then the concert started, a guy from church, and he was awesome, the kids were dancing around! We passed out Bibles to the kids that needed one, helped the kids get in the fire truck and then helped pick up trash and give out prizes to the kids. It was a lot of fun, and I love seeing those sweet little faces each time I go!

Snake Farm

March 17, 2012

My new favorite obsession is Groupon and the like...Living Social, Adealio, you name it, I'm all for a bargain! I recently bought a coupon for the Snake Farm, a place we've driven by hundreds of times on the way to San Antonio, but never stopped. So, I figured it would make a good day trip. The kids had a friend, Michael, spend the night so we could leave first thing in the morning. Well, they stayed up all night long, so they slept the whole way there, and all the way home!

But the Snake Farm was cool, we got there just in time for feeding the carnivores, and then we walked around, they had a lot of neat animals, zebra, warthogs, monkeys, lemurs, peacocks, hyenas, wolves (Regan's favorite) and a lot of gators and snakes. We spent a little time there, then hung out in the petting zoo area, feeding the chickens mostly, who would crow when they stopped feeding them.

Then we stopped for lunch at Wendy's and then had a nice nap on the way home (not me, the kids) and as soon as they got home, they came in and crashed on the couch for another couple of hours! Fun place though, we will definitely visit again.

Spring Break!

We made it to Spring Break! And trying to cram as much fun into one week as possible. I took the kids to Austin's Park and Pizza on Monday to spend the day, but it got so crowded, they didn't stay as long as I thought (hoped) they would. But they came home and the neighbor took them to Texas Jumping Beans and to the park, and then I took them back to APP later, but they were closing. Then on Tuesday we went to the dollar movie to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, Chipwrecked, but they were sold out (oh, darn) so we saw Big Miracle, which we all enjoyed, about whales that were trapped in Alaska. Cute movie. On Wednesday we just hung out at the house and played with friends. Regan went to see The Lorax with her friend, and we went to church Wed night.

Then on Thursday I took the kids to the carnival! We love the rodeo carnival, usually. But I think this year, fresh off a trip to Disney and Universal Studios, the rides just weren't as thrilling I guess. The kids rode all the rides they wanted to ride, we shared a funnel cake and some lemonade, and they were ready to go. We stopped off at the petting zoo before we left, and they were ready, beyond ready, to leave after that.

Shriner Circus

We did this weeks and weeks ago, but I forgot the pictures were on my camera! Jay and Tammy had extra tickets, so we met up with them and saw the circus. The kids got to ride an elephant so they thought that was super cool! Of course I couldn't get them to both look at me at the same time! Anyway, they loved it, there were motorcycles and they did some cool tricks, and Riley was mesmerized. Jay and Tammy then came back to the house and we went to our favorite tea place for tea and scones, it was a fun day!

Random Pictures

Just a couple of cute pics of the kids. David bought a Groupon for Salt Lick BBQ, Regan had never been, and it was about to expire so we took the kids for dinner. Regan thought she had died and gone to heaven when they just kept bringing out beans and meat! She really liked it. And the other one is Riley at Kawaii Ice, eating his blue coconut snow cone. The kids love that place (the kids, yeah!)

Broken Toe

On Saturday, Riley and David were at the park for a father/son small group, and Riley decided to play football with the boys, barefoot. Not one of his smarter ideas and now he knows why. He ran into a pipe and hurt his big toe. We debated about whether we should go to the emergency room or wait until Monday morning and go to the doctor. We decided to wait, thinking they wouldn't cast a big toe anyway, and he has crutches from one of his (many) earlier incidents.

So, we took him in first thing Monday morning, they did x-rays (only our 10th set of x-rays in the past 3 years) and sure enough, it was broken. They had to call the podiatrist and set us up with them, so today we went there, they wanted another set of x-rays, and she said there are two clean breaks on that toe. If the bone had shifted even 1 millimeter, she would want to do surgery right away and put a pin in the toe. Riley was VERY relieved that he didn't have to have surgery! So now he's sporting a nice clunky boot, AND crutches, and we have to go back in 3 weeks for even more x-rays and hope he is healing by then. It's gonna be a fun spring break.

Happy Texas Independence Day!

Riley went home with a friend after school, and David was off for Texas Independence Day, so we picked Regan up from school and took her to the Domain, one of her favorite places! David and I had tea and scones at the Steeping Room while she had her favorite, Bacon, Arugula and Tomato sandwich. Then we went shopping, and visited Charming Charlie for the first time and got her some cute earrings and a headband, and tried on a bunch of hats. It was a fun day for Regan to have all the attention, which is about how she likes it!

Haircuts

Took the kids to get their hair cuts, they said it's been 17 weeks since they've had a cut! Riley always HATES getting his cut, but on the way there, Regan said she wanted hers short, but to hurry up before she changed her mind. I was afraid she would regret it, she's been growing it out for years now, but she was adamant, she wanted it shoulder length. They cut about 8 inches off, about an inch at a time! But it's cute now, and it's layered, and she LOVES it, and has gotten a lot of compliments. Of course Riley wouldn't let me take a picture of his.

Long Overdue Update

I can't believe I haven't updated this blog since Christmas! I'm going to blame it on the fact that I'm still sharing a computer with David and Riley, so I don't get on here much these days. Also, we've been pretty busy I guess.

I'll try to hit the high notes! So, we had our wood floors put in while we were at Disney, came home and started painting, I repainted my red wall to a burnt orange color (I like it!), got a new couch, and then went to Ikea to accessorize and got a new table, a new entry table, wall hooks, etc. Slowly pulling the place back together:



And then...one day at home, I walk from the living room to the kitchen and find water coming out from under the staircase. I totally freaked out, but it turned out there was a hose that broke under the kitchen sink and it went behind the cabinet and down to the stairs and was coming out under the wood floors. Yes, the one month old wood floors. I was sick! I threw down towels, hoping we could get it all up in time, called a plumber who fixed it right away, then called a water drying company, they came out right away and ripped out baseboards, punched holes in the walls, and put in 6 giant fans to dry out the water, and 2 dehumidifiers.


So, right now we are insurance limbo. The adjuster came out, gave us a quote of around 6K, and the dryer people gave us a quote of around 13K, so I don't know what we're doing at this point. The floor is discontinued or we would just get a couple more boxes and replace what was damaged. But now we might think about putting tile down in the entry area, and leave wood in the living areas. Who knows at this point. I'm still upset when I think about it! All that hard work down the drain! Anyway, so for now, our house that we were finally enjoying fixing up and decorating, looks like a war zone, with holes everywhere, flooring ripped up, baseboards torn out. UGH!!

And then, cookie season hit. I'm the cookie mom for Regan's Girl Scout troop, and we sold just over 1000 last year so she wanted to sell more than that this year. Well, for a while, our house looked like this:


But last night we had our very last cookie booth:

And can you tell she was pretty excited! All total, and we're not quite done, I haven't added them all up yet, but we should be right around 1117 boxes sold! Woo hoo! She will get $300 in cookie dough (which she will use to pay for her summer camp) and a ton of prizes, including a day trip to Six Flags. So she's pretty excited.

A few other things that have been going on...my brother Donnie called out of the blue and stopped by last week with little Donnie. It was good to see him, even if it was just for a short visit.




Regan had 70's day at school, Riley had to go to the doctor (again) for x-rays, thankfully he was fine, he had jammed his finger pretty bad and torn some muscles in his leg. Just being a boy, nothing more.




And I guess that about wraps it up. It's been a busy couple of months with all of this going on and our regular stuff, school, church, Girl Scouts, and birthday parties every weekend! I will try to be better about keeping everyone updated also!!

Merry Christmas!

We had a pretty low key Christmas since we did the whole Disney thing this year. On Christmas Eve we went to Dave and Pam's with the rest of the family and had a yummy Christmas dinner of Rudolph roast, I mean, deer roast :) and tamales, and all kinds of goodies! David had parking work at church, and Riley was not feeling well, so we just had an easy day. I did however, decide to go on a baking-palooza, and made Paula Deen's toffee butter bars, mint chocolate chip cookies, gingerbread rice crispy treats, pumpkin spice rice crispy treats, mint Oreo cookie fudge, chocolate chip marshmallow pillow cookies, and cranberry nut bars. Makes me tired again just thinking about it all! But, I wrapped most of them up and sent them to all our friends in the neighborhood, and still had plenty to bring to Christmas dinner!

So on Christmas morning, the kids each had a gift from Santa, and one from Monty and Princess, and one from each other. Not much, but it ended up being a really nice day. They liked what they got, and there wasn't a huge mess. We had put the tree upstairs before we left since we had to have the downstairs empty, but we didn't have time to decorate it until the night before when the kids realized Santa wouldn't want to see a naked tree! They didn't even put all the ornaments up, just enough to look okay, so at least taking it down should be easy this year!

House Update

So here are some before/after pics of the house with the wood floors! Some of them have spots since I used my flash. But you get the idea :)

Of course, the floors look so nice, we can't put any furniture back in until we paint, so we're working on that now! The last picture is the new paint color. New house by New Year's!

Today is a Very Sad Day

Caribbean Beach Hotel

Last day at Disney, we are all sad. But, I think we are all wiped out also. Even the kids asked if we could skip Hollywood Studios and sleep in and take our time heading out. Sounded like a good idea to me!

The kids slept most of the morning while I packed all our stuff. David brought our bags to the lobby and got us checked in for our flight, and they take care of the bags (awesome). Then we loaded up our backpacks and went to the food court for lunch. We still had 2 quick service meals each, and about 13 snack credits left! My plan was to use our snack credits around the World Showcase in Epcot, but that didn't work out so well.

So, we had lunch, then took our leftover fries to the sea gulls outside by the lake and fed them. They were funny, and Riley would put a fry on his hat and the birds would swoop down and grab it! After we ran out of fries, and any other food the kids could find that birds would eat, we hit up the gift shop, getting all our last minute gifts and letting Riley spend the last of his souvenir money. Then we went to the bakery and got brownies and cookies for the trip home with our leftover snack credits! I was NOT going to leave money on the table!!

Then we headed to the front to wait for our Magical Express bus to take us to the airport. Somehow it seemed much faster going back than coming in. We had a direct flight, with a quick stop in Houston, so that seemed to take forever. We finally got home around 9PM, and picked up Princess and Monty from Mimi and Papa and headed home to our new wood floors! It was so nice to come home to!

Overall, it was a great trip. I'm glad we could go while they are young enough to appreciate the "magic" of a Disney vacation, but tall enough to ride everything! It might be a while before we get a chance to go back, but we certainly had a great time, created a lot of memories and it's something the kids will remember for the rest of their lives.

Hollywood Studios

Hollywood Studios

This was the day the kids had been looking forward to for the entire trip! Riley remembered the Tower of Terror from our last trip, and he was SO looking forward to riding it again.

But what we didn't plan on were the crowds! Holy Moley that park was crazy! I guess because it was a Saturday and Christmas break had officially begun, it was a madhouse. We got there early (not quite rope drop, but still pretty early) and had done what our planner recommended, ran straight to Toy Story Midway Mania to get our Fast Passes, and it's a good thing we did, they were time stamped for 8:30 that night!

We had an early lunch planned at the Sci Fi Diner, we ate there last time and the kids enjoyed it, so we decided to give it another try. You sit in these "cars" that are all inside, facing a giant movie screen, and it looks like a big drive in theater. They play old alien movies and cartoons on the big screen too, mostly black and white. It's a lot of fun.

And this was where we had our first melt down of the trip. We had done really well up till this point, but I guess the long days finally caught up with us, and the kids were getting into it. It took a little while to sit and talk things out, but then we were finally ready to get about our day. First we got some FP's for Star Tours, the new and improved ride, then we went to the Lights! Camera! Action! Stunt Show. I thought at first it was a "Cars" themed thing only, and it was a little bit, but they had cars doing stunts, giant explosions, people catching on fire, it was really neat and the kids liked it a lot.

After that we tried to do the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, but it had a long line, so we skipped it and headed to the Muppet Show. Now, I *love* the Muppets, but Riley is indifferent and Regan HATES them with a passion. I have no idea why and it's my mission in life to sway her to my side. This was step one. It's a cute movie, and I think she liked it. Success!

We tried to finish up everything on one side of the park because I knew once we got to the Tower of Terror and Rockin' Roller Coaster, there would be no going back to the rest of the park! And sure enough, we finally headed that way and it was so crowded, still. There were 90-110 minute waits for each ride. Well, David and I told the kids to go ahead and line up for Tower of Terror, we would just sit and wait, we got FP's for it, well, the kids got in line, and someone handed them 2 FP's so they were able to ride it right away, they were so thrilled! Then they got in the single rider line for Rockin' Roller Coaster, and were able to ride that one pretty quick too, so we all decided to do the single rider line for that, and when we were done with that, our FP's for Tower of Terror were up, so we got to walk on to that one also. Do we know how to work it or what?!

By then it was dinner time, so we booked it back to the 50's Prime Time Cafe. I had heard a lot about this place and was really excited to try it out. It is like stepping back in time to the Leave it to Beaver Show or something. Everything looks like it came from the 50's, old black and white TV's at each table, the decor is all 50's, it's hilarious. The waitresses are supposed to like "mom" and fuss at you for putting your elbows on the table, tell you to take your hat off, etc. but our waitress didn't seem to be in on the game. The waitress at the table next to us though, she was a hoot and those people were loving her. The food was decent, but it was taking forever and by that point, I just wanted to get out of there.

We still had our Toy Story passes, so we headed there, via the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights! That was really cool, there are lights on EVERYTHING and they dance to music and it was really neat to see. We were kind of in a hurry, and it was again, super crowded, so we didn't linger, just made our way down the street, and over to Toy Story.

And surprisingly, Toy Story (unlike Soarin') lived up to its hype! It was a great ride! You get to shoot things along the way and try to get a higher score than the other people in your car. It was like being IN Andy's room, everything is huge so you feel like a little toy. It was really cute, and the lines were LONG, i was so glad we got our FP early!

And then we headed back. By this time the park was closing anyway, so we just made our way back to the hotel. The plan was to come back the next morning since we had a late flight home. We got back to our hotel and decided since it was our last night, we hit up the pool and hot tub one last time. But, there were a million high school kids swarming around so we didn't stay long (we're getting old).

Epcot Part Two

The plan for today was simple. Downtown Disney first, playing at Disney Quest, with lunch at T-Rex Cafe, and then back to Epcot for the World Showcase, and dinner in England.

So we got to Downtown Disney, had about an hour or so at Disney Quest, we played some old school games, I showed Regan Frogger, Q-Bert, and Pac-Man, and they have these cool bumper cars, they are two person, Buzz Lightyear bumper cars, one drives while the other one loads rubber balls in a canon and shoots the other cars. If you hit them in certain spots, their cars spin around and light up. They have a lot of virtual reality games, like one where we went on a virtual raft ride, a virtual magic carpet ride with Aladdin, and a Pirates of the Caribbean ride where we shoot other pirate ships and steal their booty!

Then we walked down to T-Rex for lunch, it was really cool. The same concept as Rainforest Cafe, but with dinosaurs. We sat under a giant glowing jelly fish, right next to the ice room, where a meteor shower would hit every 15 minutes, lighting the place up! There were all kinds of dinosaurs all around that would stomp and look around every once in a while. It was a neat place, and the food was pretty good too.

Then we went back to Disney Quest, while the rest of them played, I found a quite booth upstairs (this place was 5 floors of gaming goodness) and I put my feet up and took a little rest! By this time my feet had blisters on top of blisters, and there was no end to the walking! I was more interested in resting my feet than playing the games, so I just waited patiently for everyone to finish up and then we headed over to Epcot for the evening.

We grabbed some Fast Passes for Mission: Space, hit up Club Cool again, and then got Regan a Kim Possible mission. This was pretty neat, they give you a "cell phone" device that tells you all about your "mission". Her mission was to go to France and look around for clues for an evil mastermind that was trying to take over the world. There would be shop windows you would have to look in, and press the button on the phone and then a hologram looking thing would show up in the window with your next instructions. It was neat, and Regan really enjoyed it, and we all got a really good tour of France!

Then we headed back to England and checked in for our dinner at Rose and Crown Pub. We asked for a patio seat so we were prepared to wait a little while. While we waited, we browsed the Twinings Tea Shoppe, and let Regan practice her "British". Finally, our table was ready, on the patio like we wanted, and we had a great waiter from Windsor, England, who we enjoyed talking to. We had a great meal, and the sticky toffee pudding for dessert was one of our favorites! Also, our waiter told us that to get a great spot for the fireworks show, to just go down to the edge of the patio, where we were sitting, and we would have a great view.

While I settled the tab, David went down to secure our spot, but then was told we couldn't be there by a worker. So our waiter went over and told her we COULD be there! It was awesome. We had like, the BEST view of the whole park. We were right on the water, the only people there, front and center! The fireworks shows there are just epic. It was definitely one of the best fireworks shows I have ever seen.

By this time, we were all pretty wiped out, and it was Extra Magic Hours at Epcot so it was swarming with people. I had never seen a park that crowded, and we just weren't up to dealing with the crowds anymore, so David ran to Norway to get School Bread (something I had read about online and knew we had to try, and I was right, it was awesome!) and we headed back to our hotel room, and back to the pool and hot tub!

Downtown Disney

Epcot Part One

Epcot Day One

We actually slept in a bit, had a leisurely morning. Our plan for the day was to do the front half of Epcot (Future World), and then head to Downtown Disney, maybe Disney Quest for a while. We got to Epcot, got our Fast Passes for Soarin', the ride we had been hearing SO much about, and the line was short so we went ahead and got in line to ride, only to find out we all thought it was the most boring ride known to man. Seriously, I don't know who thinks this is a great ride. I guess if you want to take a short snooze or something, but I don't know why you would waste valuable time, and a Fast Pass on it! As we were leaving, we found a family of four and gladly handed off our Fast Passes! They seemed happy, maybe they hadn't ridden it yet either.

Then we made our way over the Mission:Space, which still makes me sick to my stomach and dizzy as all get out. The kids liked it though, especially making fun of me for being so dizzy. Then we got Fast Passes for Test Track and decided to hit up Morocco for lunch. They have a pretty good quick service restaurant, we each got the chicken plate, with grilled chicken, tzadziki, tabouleh, hummus, and cous cous, pita bread and baklava for dessert. They actually gave us an extra plate, so David was VERY happy we made the trip to Morocco. It was decent food too. And while we ate, the kitchen staff gave us a musical treat while banging drums and singing some traditional Moroccan songs while they worked. It was very entertaining. That's one thing I love about the World Showcase of Epcot, learning about other cultures and meeting all the people!

After lunch, we took the boat back to Future World, and finished up the rides and pavilions we wanted to do there. One of our favorites last time and this time was Club Cool, a place where you can get samples of sodas from around the world. The worst is called Beverly, from Italy. I don't even know how to describe it, but it's nasty! There's aqua fresca from Mexico which is good, a Ginger-Ale from Germany I think, that's pretty good, the Israeli one isn't bad, a honey, lemon type, and there's a watermelon one from China, but I didn't try that. It was fun watching the kids try all of them and then hit the Beverly!

One of the neatest things of the day was The Seas pavilion. This is a Finding Nemo themed area, where you can see very large, intricate salt water aquariums. But they have a show called "Turtle Talk with Crush" and it was very cute. Crush, the sea turtle from Finding Nemo, comes on screen and talks to you, answers questions, and even plays with the little kids in the audience. It was a lot of fun, and Regan really enjoyed looking around the aquariums.

We finally left, early for the day, and Regan and I decided we had enough for the day and went back to the hotel where we changed into our swimsuits, had dinner at the hotel food court, and then swam and sat in a hot tub that we found kind of hidden out of the way, behind the water slides. I really loved our hotel, the Caribbean Beach. Even though it was huge, I would stay there again in a heartbeat. The pool was awesome, the rooms were nice, and the walk over the bridge each day to the food court and pool was very pretty. They had a playground along the way, with hammocks, and several beach areas where you could swim when it was warm enough.

David and Riley headed to Downtown Disney again and hit up Disney Quest. It was the one thing David really wanted to do on our last trip and we never got around to it. He and Riley were there for HOURS! They loved it, as I figured it would be right up their alley. Then as they left when Disney Quest closed, what so happened to be right across from them but another Wolfgang Puck, so that's where they ate again!

By the time they got back to the hotel, Regan and I were in bed, cuddled up and watching Finding Nemo! (which was cool because we were staying in a Nemo themed room!)