The trip begins

Today we took off on our big adventure. We are going to Disney World!!! Right after we decided to take the house off the market, not only did we buy a dog, but we found a screaming deal on a Disney World vacation. So, after a little research, we bumped our trip to Florida up a summer. We'll be spending 9 days and 8 nights on site with the dining plan. It was also the kid's first true plane travel. They did pretty good. Our first flight was down to San Francisco, leaving at 8AM. As you can see in the picture, the kids were pretty excited to take off. The first flight went off without a hitch.

We had celebrated Court's birthday a little early too and had given her her first camera, so we're working off two cameras on this trip.

We arrived in San Francisco and prepared for the 4 hour layover. Luckily, the San Francisco airport has a decent kid's area that was a mixture of the Exploratorium and playground. It also just happened to be right next to our gate. YES!!! We grabbed an assortment of airport food for lunch and hoped to arrived at our resort early enough that we could grab dinner. As a back up option, we bought a couple extra sub sandwiches.

It was a good thing we did too. We boarded the plane on time, but were delayed for about an hour due to a cargo door problem. Welcome to the glamorous life of an airline traveler. It was a long flight (~6 hrs) to Orlando. We got lucky and they changed the in flight movie from Maid of Honor to the Spiderwick Chronicles. That bought us a couple hours. We broke out the sub sandwiches and the pringles and had dinner on the flight.

We grabbed the magical express (ie airport shuttle with Mickey painted on the side) and had to wait around for about 20 minutes before they released the shuttle. The driver let us know that they hold onto the buses late at night to cut down on the number or runs they have to make. We made it to our resort, Port Orleans Riverside at about midnight and did minimal unpacking. We were getting up early to get over to Epcot. Julie and I prepped the next morning's backpacks and hit the sack. The bell boys showed up with our breakfast food box (the only thing we checked) at about 3am. We threw the chocolate milk in the fridge and went right back to sleep. It was going to be an early morning.

Rupunzle, Rupunzle, Let Down Your Long Hair....

Courtney decided to take the plunge and have me cut her hair to her shoulders. It has been my practice to let the girls decide if they want long hair or short and Court has been letting hers grow since early last year. I asked her (more than I should have) if she really wanted to do this. She kept saying yes and we had even run it by Pete to see if it was okay. (Dad likes long hair).

So I took out my shears and off if came. All 7 inches of it. As soon as it was off she ran to look at it. I kept waiting for an adverse reaction but she came back happy and as she put it, " lighter".

It will definitely be easier and cooler to deal with on our upcoming trip to Disney World.

Mallory

Yesterday Miss Mallory had a date with the dentist. They needed to pull 5, yes 5, teeth out. The baby teeth weren't releasing and the adult teeth needed to come in. The unfortunate part of this is that they were all across the top so Mal is our toothless wonder for awhile. She has been a great sport about it all and we're hoping that the adult teeth drop in quickly. So on with the soft food diet for a week and Mal should be feeling much better.

The funny thing about this is that Courtney had no front teeth last summer. It wont be long Mallory!

My Garage!

It has been 8months since a car has been able to fit into our garage because of our hopeful move. Well I cleaned out half of the garage and now my van can be inside!!! It was so much fun to be able to pull inside and get out of the car without getting rained on. I had almost forgotten how much I LOVE parking inside the garage. It's been kind of funny because the kids have gotten in the habit of going out the front door so as they veer to the left in the hallway I holler out, "the car is in the garage!" Have I mentioned how excited I am to have the garage back, at least half of it anyway. Just another step to being "put back together".

A funny addition to this story, just after I finished writing about the van I had to take Courtney to gymnastics. We headed out and I went veering left and actually opened the front door. Court looked at me and said, "see mom, you forget too!" I guess I've gotten used to being outside too.

Moving Forward

The carpet is in!!! It was supposed to be in Tuesday, but a comment from Pete made me postpone it. All of our furniture was moved out of our bedroom for the first time since we moved in. We were sitting on the floor looking at how large our bedroom looked when Pete said, " This would have been a good time to paint." I told him that had we been planning ahead, we would be painting over the old carpet so we wouldn't have to worry about drips. We both shrugged our shoulders and Pete said we could wait to move our furniture in so that I could still paint it. (It was green when we moved in and he never really liked it.) So I went to bed thinking yeah right!

Pete flew to Arizona for work the next morning and I decided to paint. I ended up waiting until 5:00 pm before I got started because it was a busy kid day. I had pretty well stressed myself out and the girls really wanted to help paint and so I actually let them. The carpet didn't matter after all, right? They did a great job and I have to admit, I was kind of shocked. A friend of mine, Lisa, came over and helped to put the second coat on and kept me sane. Thank you Lisa! Anyway to make this long story longer, my room got painted and the carpet was installed Wednesday instead. Pete got home and we put our bed back together. That's another story all together. (Kids, mommy and daddy's bed was the hardest to put back together.)

I LOVE my new carpet and luckily Pete likes the bedroom color. I'm trying to put the house back so I can start organizing the garage. One thing leads to another and hopefully it keeps us moving forward!

Life Goes On

It is crazy how quickly life moves sometimes. I feel like we're in fast forward lately. Swim lessons are over and each of the kids passed their levels. They did a great job and caught on quickly to the instructions.

Saturday we had the first bit of new carpet installed. We let Brian in and took off for the coast. Hershey had her first long trip in the car. After awhile in the car I asked if we could stop at camp 18. It's a restaurant on the way to Seaside that people love. We've been here for 8 years and have never tried it, so we stopped for breakfast. Pete, court and Connor ordered pancakes, Mallory got french toast and I got biscuits and gravy. Yum! When the waitress brought out the first plate of pancakes Pete reached over to get them and the waitress told him those were the kids pancakes. (flatcars here). Pete's were HUGE!! Everyone enjoyed what they got and we were all full for quite awhile. The kids liked the wood sculptures so we took a few photos.

When we arrived in Seaside, it was pretty crowded. Once we got onto the beach we saw why. They were hosting a beach volleyball tournament. It was kindof fun to see all of the nets all over the beach. We walked just beyond the nets and found a spot to call our own. The kids took off for the waves immediately and took Hershey with them. She played in the waves a little but then would want out until she was ready for another go around. Then it started to pour! I took out the dragon kite to make an umbrella for myself. The kids didn't seem to notice the rain at all. Pete faired pretty well too. Once the rain passed we were able to fly the kites for awhile but the wind decided to join us. I think I prefer the rain. I packed up the blanket and our things and we headed for town to get off the sand. Hershey was a big hit with everyone we passed even though she was drenched.

All in all it was still a fun trip the the coast. We had promised the kids at least two trips to the beach and this was the quota. Maybe next year we'll make it out there more often.

Getting back to the house, it was pretty fun to walk in and see the new carpet installed. They had gotten the front room, Connor's room and the girls' rooms all done. Pete, the kids and I jumped right in and started replacing the beds and dressers back to their places. The girls chose different placements for their furniture but Connor stayed the same.

The rest of the carpet is being installed Tuesday. Pete and the kids have been huge helpers moving furniture and hanging things back on the walls. It is coming together pretty quickly. Hopefully my brain can start to relax about what needs to go where soon.

Swim, Swim, Swim

This second set of lessons put Dave and Connor, and Mike and Mallory in the same classes. Courtney was the odd man out. It's been fun to see the cousins a little more often. I chose this class to continue their lessons and because it is late July and early August. Good weather is expected right? Well Nonna and Papa joined us to watch the kids and I was proved wrong. It just goes to show, you can never be too sure of the weather here in Oregon.

Hershey has newly aquired another "home" in the backyard. Bob and Kim's dog, Kinsey, didn't like the "dogloo" so we took it. Pete happened to see Hershey all cuddled up and sound asleep and so comfortable in her new place. Oh wait, that's the other one! We thought it was a pretty funny picture. She does actually use it every so often.