|
7 Years
Every time I remember to update this, I say "OMG how can it have been that long since I wrote here?" I guess I have to put a reminder in my calendar or something like that.
Let's recap 2015 as much as possible:
January: Ty turned 7, I took the RN boards on 1/26 and passed in 75 questions! My car caught on fire on the way home from Lexington (where I took boards). Bought a new car while Eric was at his work conference, a 2015 Honda CRV.
February: I started orientation for my job at St. Elizabeth, and interviewed for a position at Cincinnati Children's in the PICU.
March: Accepted job offer for CCHMC PICU, my dream job! Quit St. Elizabeth. Began orientation for PICU.
May: Family vacation to Disney for Star Wars weekends. We had an amazing time! Turns out that was the last time that Star Wars weekends will be held, good timing! But we came home to find out that Peeka had passed away the day before we got back. We were all shocked and sick with loss for our sweet kitty.
June: We took a family camping trip to East Fork state park in Ohio. It was a very nice location, but it poured rain all weekend and I got violently sick on Friday night and had to be taken to the closest ED. Not exactly the trip we were hoping for. We adopted 2 kittens and named them Butterscotch Ripple (Rip) and Dread Pirate Roberts (Westley). Marf became so depressed from the loss of Peeka that he stopped eating and drinking. Despite all of the meds and fluids I could give him, he did not improve and we had to say goodbye to him.
July: We celebrated Eric's birthday and Ty's half-birthday. But Oy became sick with what we eventually learned was cancer and we had to say goodbye to him as well.
August: Ty attended a week of circus camp that ended with a performance and a pie in the face exchange between Ty and mom. We went to Battle Creek for Gram's 96th birthday. Ty started 2nd grade at NKMA!
September - November: We are always so busy in the fall. Eric and Sean went to Riot Fest in Chicago, we went to the Cincy comic expo, and Louisville for St. James. The annual Cason Halloween party theme was Harry Potter, so we were Luna Lovegood, Fluffy the 3 headed dog and a dementor. Ty won best costume! I worked Thanksgiving and black Friday and then had surgery on my left shoulder on 11/30. I had a large bone spur removed, the head of my clavicle removed and my rotator cuff and labrum were repaired.
December saw the return of Jingle the shelf elf, he's quite a character. Ty saw santa at the festival of lights. He asked santa to bring him a Pokemon card set and Quixels. Santa also brought the new Skylanders game and Disney Infinity 3.0. It was a very Star Wars and Lego Christmas for us. We saw the new Star Wars movie at 3:30 on 12/18 and it was AMAZING!
On 12/28 my cousin called to say that Gram was not doing well. We got in the car and drove to MI immediately. We arrived and I stayed with her that night until 4AM. We came back the next day and stayed with her until about 6pm when we left to get dinner. Shannon called and told us that we should come back as her breathing was slowing down. I got back to her room at 6:31 and she had passed at 6:29. 12/30 was spent cleaning out her room and trying to get things ready for a funeral. We had dinner and spent the evening telling stories and putting together the photo board at my cousin's house. 12/31 we had her viewing at 10am and funeral service at 11:30. We observed while she was placed next to my uncle in the mausoleum. Eric, Ty and I had lunch in Marshall at Schuler's where we would take Gram for her birthday in her younger years. Then we drove back home and watched the ball drop on 2015. We had picked up 3 fireworks on the way home and lit those off in the driveway for a welcome to 2016.
This is supposed to be about Ty, that last post was mostly about me and what things we did in 2015.
Ty played baseball spring 2015, mostly as team catcher. We started fall baseball, but it was getting truly competitive to the point that he was no longer enjoying the game. I think we're done with sports for a while.
As for 2nd grade, he still loves math and science. He started the year off saying that he wants to be a video game designer. He went to a week of engineering camp over the summer where he designed his own video game and built lego robots to perform certain tasks. He loved every minute of it! Reading is a struggle because he lacks self-confidence. Everyone says that it's typical for his age, and that he will catch up, but it concerns me.
He enjoys teaching the 1st graders and helping in the classroom. He's still the sweet, kind, sensitive kiddo that he's always been. You couldn't ask for him to be more polite and thoughtful.
6 Years
Apparently it is the start of the school year that reminds me to write in the mom blog. Ugh, it's sad stuff that I've only posted once a year. But hopefully that will not continue to be the case in the coming year!
Ty is now a 1st grader at NKMA. There are only about a dozen kids in the elementary program, but we love it. His teacher is Ana, but Adam is in the same area teaching upper elementary. Ty had some anxiety a few days before school started as it was a move to a new room, new teacher and most of his old friends had left for other schools. But after a few days, it was business as usual for him. He is enjoying all of the additional responsibilities that are given to the elementary students. Today he had to choose something about the earth to research. He chose volcanoes and is thrilled to read and learn about them.
Ty is in his 4th season of baseball, this time he is on a 7u team called the Reds. In 7u they have to hit off the machine only, no tee allowed. Three strikes and you're out, 3 outs and the inning is over. They are allowed to lead off the bases and steal in this league as well. It's interesting. Much more challenging than it has been in the past, and as usual, Ty loves it.
His latest obsession is Pokemon. He talks about it 24/7. I honestly miss hearing about Legos right now. He does still love ninja turtles enough to have chosen a turtles backpack for the school year.
Now on to the adults. I'm entering my last semester of the MSN program. I'll graduate on 12/11/14. 12/13/14 we leave for Disney! I've really enjoyed the program, even with as stressful as it has been. I had a great time during my clinical at Children's and have my fingers crossed that I'll be placed there for preceptorship, starting in October. I'm planning to take the NCLEX in January.
Eric continues to be super-human in his ability to work ridiculous hours to keep us fed, clothed and happy. Poor guy, I'm sure there is something interesting I should say about him, but I'm not sure what that is at the moment. He's a great husband and wonderful dad. That will have to be good enough for now.
5 Years
Hmm, I think there are a couple posts missing... I don't think I've gone almost a year without writing something.
But lets assume that is the case. My how things have changed for our little family.
Back in October 2012 I was surprised with a "reorganization" at Triplefin that meant I was no longer employed. This left me thinking, do I want to continue to work in a field that I don't really care about for the next 30 years, or is it time to try something new?
After a search, I decided to go back to school to become an RN. January 2013 I started back to school taking my pre-reqs. I'm starting my 15 month accelerated program at Mount St Joe on September 3rd. I will graduate with a Masters in Nursing and be ready to take my certification test in December 2014.
Eric is a happy camper working for NSIP. He is traveling more than we first expected, but that's not a big deal for us. He's also still doing contract work with Image Vault. He's busting his hiney to make ends meet while I go to school full time.
Continued news about the adults, we had a car accident on the 4th of July. It was raining pretty hard and the expressway was wet. Eric was driving his beloved Civic and it hydroplaned and spun into the concrete wall. Airbags went off, which was a crazy experience. Ty was shaken up, but completely unhurt. Eric had a burn on one wrist from the airbag and a torn ligament in the other wrist. I somehow took the brunt of the impact, of course. :) I saw it coming, so I put my arms up to shield my face. Well that made things worse as my wedding ring put a gash in my forehead and my other hand hit with enough force to break my glasses. LOL In addition to that I had severe seat belt injuries, causing a fracture of my sternum and my C3 and C4 vertebrae. I had a lot of left shoulder, neck and back pain as a result. But as of now, I'm about 90% healed. No one had serious injuries, except the car, which was totaled.
After a LONG search for a new car, we decided to get a 2013 Ford Focus ST, which is about as close as Eric could come to replacing his Civic. Blue, of course.
We are headed to Michigan this weekend for Gram's 94th birthday. Hard to believe.
I think that's about it for the highlights on Eric and I. I'll add another post all about Ty.
Mr Tyler Kramer is now a Kindergartener. That's the big news, for sure. He started on August 22 at NKMA. Honestly, it wasn't a big deal for him at all, as this is his 3rd year in that room, with Sara as his main teacher. He's just thrilled that he doesn't have nap time anymore!
He went to Goddard again over the summer. He enjoyed it much more than last year, I believe. He didn't have any trouble with bullying, thankfully. He reported that when anyone was mean, he just ignored them! YAY! He had a lot of field trips, one a week, and that was the highlight of the summer for him there.
Speaking of highlight of the summer, Ty started T-ball this year. He LOVES it, truly loves playing and practicing. And I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the experience from the parent perspective as well. We are playing Fall Machine Pitch right now. And he's loving that just as much. He's got speed, that's for sure. He can out run any kid they play.
What else? There is so much to say about this kid. He's truly amazing. He's sweet, kind, empathetic, smart, polite, the list just goes on and on. He's happy to go out of his way to help anyone, parent, friend, adult, baby, anyone at all.
He's really developed conversational skills over the summer. He's interested in asking other people questions and carries his end of a conversation well.
His latest obsession is with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is a remake of the same show that Eric and I watched when we were kids. The other one he's into is Lego Ninjago, which is a show and line of toys with Ninja Lego people. Speaking of Legos, Ty got real Legos at his 5th birthday and not a day has gone by that he hasn't played with them. He is loving Legos.
Oh, another thing from this summer. Back in May, Ty had his tonsils and adenoids removed. At the same time, during surgery, he lost his first baby teeth. I'll be honest, the recovery from the surgery was hard on him and me both. It took about 10 days for him to be close to normal and it was a painful 10 days. But, the upside is that he hasn't had any of the runny nose, sore throat issues since then.
He did also have to have 2 baby teeth pulled at the dentist as his 2 adult teeth coming in were too crowded. I had a consult with an orthodontist, to see what they had to say, and it looks like the poor kiddo will end up needing braces one way or another as his lower jaw is too far back. Poor guy.
So we've had a lot of changes over the past few months. As always, I tell myself that I need to write here more often.
4 Years
Hello!
Just a quick update of our Disney Cruise and Halloween trip.
First let me say that my husband is a wonderful person. He agreed to try a cruise knowing full well that he was likely to be motion sick the whole time. He was sick, unfortunately, but he was a good sport about the whole thing.
We flew out on Saturday the 13th, planning to spend time at Kennedy Space Center that afternoon. Our flight was delayed by 2.5 hours, so we were not able to get to the space center after all. We visited the Disney outlet to check it out, while it was nice, I don't really feel the need to do that again. Drove down to Cape Canaveral and got into our hotel for the night. The next day we were up bright and early, grabbed breakfast and headed out. We got to port right around 11, checked in and were able to board a little before 12.
The ship was gorgeous! I can't say enough about how pretty it was. Everything was clean and excellently themed.
We got lunch at Cabana's and meandered around till our room was available at 1:30. Eric took a nap and Ty watched a movie while I went to the Sail Away party. Dinner that night was at Animator's Palate. Eric ended up going back to the room because he was feeling really badly. The show with Crush and Nemo friends was really entertaining, but because of that I had a hard time getting Ty to focus on his meal. Our table mates for the cruise were a nice couple from Canada and their 4 yr old daughter. We got along quite well.
Ty loved the kids club so much that I had a hard time getting him to leave each time he went. He ended up getting an award for being the "best computer game player" from the staff.
Day 2 was at Nassua - We had booked the Dolphin Encounter with time at Aquadventure the water park at Atlantis. The Atlantis resort is stunningly beautiful. I would definitely consider going there for a vacation someday. The dolphin encounter was a lot of fun. There were about 10 people in our group. Each of us got to have the dolphin do a trick, kiss us and hug us. She also did some other tricks for the whole group. Ty really enjoyed the kids only water slides area. We would have liked to have had more time at the water park, but we needed to get back to the ship to get cleaned up for dinner, etc. Dinner was at the Enchanted Garden that night. It was a beautiful setting.
Day 3 was at Castaway Cay. We got off the ship and on to the island around 9:30. Ty went to the kids club and Eric and I rented bikes. We rode over to the adult beach, I ordered an adult beverage and then Ty paged us that he wanted to be picked up. We had lunch at the island buffet, then Ty and I went back to the ship where we played on the Mickey Slide and in the Mickey pool. Eric did some more bike riding and then joined us at the pool. That night dinner was at Royal Palace. Again, it was beautiful. That was also Pirate night. Ty didn't want to go to the pirate party though, he wanted to go back to the kids club again!
Day 4 was at sea. Ty spent almost all day in the kids club again. Eric spent a lot of the day hanging out in the room. He and I did do the Midship detective agency game though and found all the lost dalmatians! Dinner was at Royal Palace again.
Day 5 was disembark 1st thing in the morning and head to WDW.
I do want to say that while we had an amazing time on the cruise that the food was nothing special. I would call it adequate. Character interaction was almost always available, but there were long lines if you didn't get there early. The shops were nice, but there really wasn't a lot of selection. I went planning to get a shirt or something for myself, but didn't find anything that I liked well enough to spend the money on it. Also, I was surprised that there weren't more adult things to do in the evenings. Aside from the main show and the bars, there really wasn't anything happening. I found myself going back to the room to hang with Eric when I would have liked to have tried some other things. But all that aside, Ty and I would go again if we had the chance.
Now on to Magic Kingdom! We got checked in to Bay Lake and headed over to Magic Kingdom for the day. We rode all the rides that we wanted before our 3:45 dinner/lunch at Crystal Palace. Poor Ty practically fell asleep at the table, he was a bit tired. I had ordered a special Haunted Mansion themed cake as a surprise for Eric and Ty. After we enjoyed that we went back to Bay Lake, planning for a short nap. No one napped! But we did change into our costumes and go back for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party. We had done rides earlier, so the priority was seeing characters in costumes. We managed to get Pooh and pals, Donald and Daisy, Mickey and Minnie and the Princesses and Princes before my 2 guys totally pooped out on me.
Day 6 we spent in Magic Kingdom till about 2PM. Then we had to leave for the airport.
We had a great trip, as always. Now I have to wait 6 months before our April trip back to the world.
Last night Ty brought a book home from school and read it to us! He was able to sound out all the words by himself! The book was "Max", it's part of the phonics reader book system.
Just wanted to mark the date!
YAY! Less than a month since my last post!
We are now in single digit days till our cruise! I'm so excited! The only possible problem that I see, is if Eric's motion sickness gets the best of him. Fingers crossed and meds purchased.
The cruise is a 4 nighter. We are flying in to Orlando on Saturday, spending a few hours at Kennedy Space Center and then heading to our hotel for the night. Sunday we will board the ship and set sail. Monday we are in Nassau. We are doing an excursion through Atlantis where we get to do a shallow water dolphin encounter and spend the rest of the day at the resort water park. Tuesday we are in Castaway Cay, the Disney Island. That is also Pirate night on our ship. Wednesday is a day at sea. Thursday we get back to port. We are planning to get off the ship, head to the Disney outlet, then check in to Bay Lake, then off to the Magic Kingdom. That evening is Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party. Friday we will have to leave for home. :(
Ty is very excited to do the Dolphin encounter. He has been talking about it quite a bit and it's the first thing he says when you ask him what he's doing on vacation. I hope it goes well.
Tomorrow is St James Fest. We are headed to Louisville to hang out with Donna and her crew for the day. I'll go back Saturday with my parents. Saturday night is Robin's birthday dinner at our house. Sunday is Nate's baptism.
Ty has been playing soccer. His team is the Blue Dragons. They are really cute to watch. He's having fun with it, so that means I'm thrilled with it.
Oh! Last time I wrote, Ty had started to get into reading and he's still enjoying that. School tells us that he will be bringing books home to read to us soon. But it looks like his favorite subject right now is math. He has learned to add 4 digit numbers and enjoys doing that everyday. He comes home with a new number to show us on a daily basis. We are amazed. He's 4 after all.
I suppose I should mention that this is an election year. Last night was the 1st debate between Obama and Romney. Somehow it came out that to cut spending Romney would fire Big Bird. Um, ok. Now that should show you the state of things.
Bad mom here. No good reason that I haven't updated this in months. I guess I just simply forget to do it.
What has happened since March? Well, a lot actually.
Last time I wrote, I was working at a place in Indiana called Deufol. While there was nothing wrong with the position or the company, it just wasn't a good fit for me. I'm now HAPPILY working at a company in Blue Ash called Triplefin. They are a medium sized company with call centers and distribution being their two main services. The company does a lot of community activities, which is a really nice environment to be part of. My job is good, my co-workers are nice. It's all good here.
I also just got a new camera. It's a cross between a point and shoot and a DSLR. I'm taking some classes to learn how to use it and plan to take LOTS more cool pictures.
Ty has gone back to NKMC for the school year. He is enjoying himself quite a bit. Recently he's started to read some smaller words and is interested in "reading" as much as he can.
We started an allowance for him. $1 a week if he does 3 things every day. Get himself dressed and ready in the morning, feed the cats and get ready for bed by himself. He hasn't missed a day since we started over a month ago. He's very proud of his chores and seems to enjoy his responsibilities.
Ty also started soccer about a month ago. The team is made up of 6 four year olds and 1 five year old. They had one practice and have played one game so far. Ty says that he enjoys it and we are excited to go and cheer for them. The 1st game, he did spend some time sitting on the field... Hoping to improve that as we play more games.
The kid is perfect as always. We really couldn't ask for a more well behaved kid. He's sweet, listens, does what he is asked, etc. The only thing that bothers me is that he is very sensitive to having his feelings hurt. If someone says something, he tends to burst into tears. We are working on ways to help him cope better. I guess time will help as well. I grew up with that problem and I know how painful and embarrassing it can be.
Eric started a new job about a month ago. It's not exactly a new job, since he's now employed full time by the company that he was doing side work for. It was a really great transition for him. We are all happy about it, since it means we are seeing more of him on the evenings and weekends.
Back in April we went on our family WDW trip. It was fantastic, as is to be expected. It's hard to believe that it was only April. Seems like it's been forever ago. Ty did the Pirate Kids Cruise and LOVED it. They took about 10 kids out on a boat for a couple hours, using clues, they found treasure that they got to share, had some snacks, sang songs, etc. We did Pirate makeovers again, which has been great fun the 2 times we've done it. We also did a Pirate Fireworks Cruise. We got to have some snacks ahead of time, meet Captain Hook and Smee, have a little dance party and then it was time to board the boat. Our captain told jokes, sang songs, asked trivia questions and generally entertained us quite well till the fireworks went off. Then we came back to the dock and got to meet Peter Pan. It made for a very nice evening. So we had a pirate-rific trip.
We got a new nephew on July 10th. Nathan Eric Adams. Robin had a hard time toward the end of the pregnancy and ended up being on bed rest for a while. But Nate was perfectly healthy when he was born, so all was well. Jake really took to his new brother, which is also great news.
I'm sure I'm missing any number of important things, but for now this will have to be the end of this update.
Wow - I've been a really bad mom. But there is reason for that...
In early November I lost my job at United Mail. That came as a complete shock. I wasn't able to win unemployment, so we had a stressful holiday season to say the least.
We did end up having a nice Christmas and New Year despite my not working. Ty made out like a bandit of course.
I was hired as a temp by the IRS and worked there for about 2 weeks when I was interviewed and hired by Deufol. The only problem with my new job is that it's an hour drive one way. But at least they pay me!
So we are getting back on our feet financially at least.
What's new with Ty? I honestly don't know how to answer that. He's really gotten into sounding words out. Likes to know how to spell words and is always asking what letter a word starts with, etc. I think he will be reading simple books fairly soon.
It's been abnormally warm for March so Eric and Ty have already been on a couple long bike rides. They both love doing that and I love the peace and quiet.
What else? Ty will be going back to Goddard for the summer camp session. He's looking forward to all the field trips that they will go on. He's really into cutting paper and taping it back together into "ships" and other things.
We've got about a month before our WDW trip. Can't wait, as always. This one will be extra special because of all the extra things that we are doing. We are doing the pirate makeovers, pirate fireworks cruise, and Ty is going on his own kids only pirate treasure hunt.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, so that will have to do for this update.
3 Years
I do love October! It's by far my favorite month of the year. Nice weather, tons of awesome things to do. Excellent.
St James has come and gone for another year. I spent the day down there with Donna and 3 of her girls and Ty. The kids had a great time playing, Donna and I enjoyed chatting.
We've take Ty to the Coney Island Falloween party. He enjoyed that up till the end. The very last thing we did was ride the bumper cars again. We got hit hard and Ty's head banged into the center of the steering wheel causing a gusher of a bloody nose. No permanent damage done, but it scared all of us.
We've also been to the zoo Hallzooween festival. That was packed and not as fun as I recall, but Ty enjoyed it and that's what matters most.
This weekend is Robin's Chili party. Ty will go to that while Eric and I go to Sean and Jojo's party. This year's theme is day of the dead.
Then we have Donna's party, trick or treat at the mall and finally the real deal trick or treat. Now that's a full month.
And in addition to all of that, I've had cakes coming out my ears. The coolest thing I've ever done by far happened this month. I was asked to do the cakes for the opening night cast party for the Beauty and the Beast tour. AWESOME! I did 3 cakes. The full rose, be our guest and beast's castle. The company manager was very happy with them.
But wait - then there is the real reason I needed to write today. Last night Ty told me that he didn't want to wear pullups anymore, so we made a deal that last night would be the test night. And he did it! So my little boy is finally out of any kind of pee catcher! YAY!
Sunday is the 10th anniversary of 9/11. There are a lot of things happening in the media right now talking about how we are doing 10 years later. I wanted to take a moment and put down my memories of that day.
On 9/11/01 I was in school at U of L. That morning I had driven to campus, parked in the garage and was walking to the SAC (student building). Out on the sidewalks they were having the back to school poster sale that they had every year. I was browsing some of the posters and listening to the radio that was playing. It was Howard Stern. He was talking about a plane having hit the World Trade Center. Because it was Howard Stern, I initially thought it was a joke. Like the War of the Worlds radio broadcast. I chuckled and went on about my business.
I didn't see any posters I wanted and so I headed in to sit in front of the big screen tv till it was time to go to class. There were a few people already sitting, but not crowded. I grabbed a chair. I realized that the news was showing what I had just laughed off a minute ago. The World Trade Center had a large hole in it and smoke billowing out of it. I couldn't believe my eyes. Shortly after I began to understand what I was seeing, another plane flew into the 2nd tower. I sat there, surrounded by other students and watched as the 2 towers fell.
No one knew what to do. We all had classes to go to, but should we go? Who could have done a thing like this to us?
While we sat and watched, the news shifted to another plane that had gone down. This one had crashed in the Pentagon. Yet another plane crashed in a field. The news was saying that it had been hijacked and was supposed to have hit the White House.
Eventually I got up and went to a Psych class I had that morning. I believe we were supposed to take a test that day. Needless to say, it was rescheduled. But life was still going. I had more classes that day. No one spoke aside from the professors. Everyone looked like they were walking around in complete shock. I don't even remember what it was that Eric was doing that day.
I do know that when I drove back to the apartment that I was sharing with Eric and Robin, I noticed that gas had gone up to $5.00+ per gallon, from about $1.25 that morning. What did that mean?
We sat in front of the tv for days, trying to understand what had happened and what would happen next. A few weeks went by and what made it real for me were the reports of all of the homeless pets in NYC. Their people had been killed in the towers and no one was home to feed them, let them out, pet them and love them. Agencies were trying to place these animals all over the country. Somehow that made it all real to me. Thousands of animals were homeless, thousands of children without parents, thousands of people without loved ones.
I'm not sure what to say to end this post. I want to say that we, as a country changed for the better that day, but I'm not sure that was the case. We changed, but for many, I think it was a call to persecute the people that they were scared of, rather than to reach out to others with love. And that makes me sad.
We made it! California was a great time. I promised myself that I would keep a daily blog of what we did, but that just didn't happen. Oh well. Ty adjusted to the time change better than Eric and I did. He had a great time with everything, but especially enjoyed playing in the ocean and on the beach.
I'll do the recap in 3 sections.
8/16-8/17 - LA
Flew into LA, flight was easy. Ty was great on the plane. Picked up our rental, found our condo and headed out. We went to Griffith Park to see the Hollywood sign and the Observatory. Drove around in the park looking for the little train for Ty to ride. Didn't realize it was as late as it was and the park closed after Ty rode the train. Drove all over most of LA looking for a pizza place because the GPS hated us. Eventually found a place and it was excellent! YUM!
The next day we got up and headed to Hollywood Blvd to see the sights. Apparently no one else gets up as early as we did, so we had to do a lot of meandering till it was time to see Cars 2 in 3D at the El Capitan theater. Very cool theater, fully restored to how it was in the 1920's. After the movie we were planning to get lunch, but they ushered us out the side door because there was an exclusive Cars 2 carnival that we got to go to as part of the movie. Ty had a blast with everything there. Then we got lunch at the Disney Soda Shop next door. Good food and good ice cream!
After lunch we drove out to Long Beach to see the Aquarium of the Pacific. It was nice, but smaller than I expected. I wouldn't bother going to see it again. The Newport Aquarium here is better. After that we drove out to the Santa Monica Pier. Strolled the pier and played on the beach till the sun started to set.
8/18-8/21 - Disneyland and D23 Expo
8/18 we got up in LA and drove down to Anaheim. I messed up our hotel reservations, so we had to stay at a Sheraton that night instead of the Disneyland Hotel as planned. Spent most of the day in the park. Ty got a special build a bear in Downtown Disney. We rode the Nemo ride, Small World, Autotopia, Buzz Lightyear, Astro Orbiters, the Train and had dinner at Cafe Orleans. We were beat by the end of the day for sure.
8/19 Ty and I got up early and walked over to the convention center. We got in line around 8AM knowing that doors should open at 9AM for D23 members. Waited in another line to get into the Dream Store, when we finally made it out of there it was about 11AM and Eric met us. I shopped the other locations I wanted to see, Mickey's of Glendale and the Disney Store. We went to see the Pixar Shorts panel. We saw some of the most famous shorts as well as one that had not been released yet. Listened to the Directors talk about making the movies. After that we headed to the kid stuff and let Ty play games, demo new toys, etc. We went back to the Disney hotel for dinner, ended up eating at Chef Goofy's. Character buffet, ok food, same as I expect.
8/20 The 3 of us headed back over to the Expo to get in line for the big presentation that I wanted to see, starting at 10AM. Well the line that I saw was most of the length of the building already. Turned out that wasn't even the real line. That was the standby line. A cast member told me that the standby line is "in case eveyone else in the real line has a heart attack", ok... Needless to say, we didn't wait in line. That meant that there was very little for us to do on day 2. We only stayed till about 11, gave up and walked back to the hotel. I was incredibly disappointed in the Expo experience. It was nothing like what I had hoped for. We spent the rest of the day at the pool and walking around Downtown Disney.
8/21 We got up early and had breakfast at the Plaza Inn inside Disneyland. I've never seen so many characters at one meal! It was buffet style, as always. We met the Cinderella mice, Minnie, Fairy Godmother, Captain Hook, Chip and Dale, Rafiki, Tigger, Eeyore and a few others that I can't think of. Well worth the money for that one. Cruised around DL doing more rides. Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Casey Jr Circus Train, Carousel, Tea cups, Toon Town. We went back to the hotel and grabbed a nap. We were supposed to meet my friend Jackie, her son Kaleb and a friend of theirs later on for dinner. We got up and went over to California Adventure but Ty fell asleep in the stroller. Turned out that Jackie and Co couldn't meet us till later on. Had dinner at Ariel's Grotto, yuck! Ty did the Adventure trails and then we saw World of Color, a laser, water, fireworks show. After the show we met Jackie, Kaleb and Julie and went to ride Toy Story Mania. After that the park was closing and we went back to the hotel.
8/22 Another day in Disney! This was our last day in the parks and we wanted to make the most of it. Jackie, Julie and Kaleb met us at the Monsters Inc ride. The boys enjoyed that and then went to play on the Adventure trails again. We grabbed lunch and headed over to DL. Kaleb had fallen asleep so Jackie and Julie watched Ty while Eric and I rode Indiana Jones Adventure and Space Mountain. We rode Small World again with the boys and then watched the parade. Rode Alice in Wonderland after that. Had a good dinner over in Critter country. We tried to get in one last ride on Buzz, but Ty was tired and having none of it. Said goodbye to Jackie, Julie and Kaleb and went back to our room.
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7 | Page 8 | Page 9 | Page 10 | Page 11 | Page 12 | Page 13 | Page 14 | Page 15 | Page 16 | Page 17 | Page 18 | Page 19 | Page 20
|
