Cruise, Day 3

The final full day on the cruise was at Castaway Cay, Disney's private Island. It was a little bit of a bummer, because it was really windy and they had to cancel all of the excursions. Most of my family was supposed to do parasailing. But early in the day, besides the wind, it was sunny and nice, so we had fun on the beach.


This is Christopher swimming. He liked it at the beach almost as much as the Mickey Pool.

Joel spent most of the day making this turtle. I took a later picture with someone elses camera, so I'll have to find it. It was cute because he made the whole shell out of actual shells. Little girls thought it was adorable and started collecting shells for him!

Christopher at dinner, eating his broccoli. Thank goodness he's not like his father with vegetables!When our waiter asked about our day at Castaway Cay, my dad explained to him that parasailing was supposed to be Mitchell and Shauna's birthday present (If I failed to mention, the day we left for the trip was their birthday. Mitchell forever crashed Shauna's day on her 8th birthday), so he brought these little cakes for them. Problem was, we had already had dessert! They brought them back to the staterooms, but not much of them ever got eaten.
That night, after the final show (Disney Dreams, which is Disney cheese in it's purest form, but very cute), the actors and characters were all in the atrium to meet and greet. We went straight to Chip and Dale. After that, the lines were much to long!

So, after a morning and lunch at Castaway Cay, C and Joel and I went back on the ship (It did get pretty cold). C really, really wanted to swim at the mickey pool one last time, but once we got up there he realized it was too cold. We took naps again and shopped and such. Dinner was at Animator's Palate; we went to the show, which C loved again; met the characters; did a little family Karaoke (Denise and I sang "Beauty and the Beast"), and lamented that we had to leave early in the morning. REALLY early. Ours was the earliest breakfast, 6:30! And then we shopped a little and debarked the ship. Christopher was SO upset. Literally crying and had his fat little bottom lip out. The castmembers thought it was the cutest thing! He's still talking about "the Mickey Boat" and wants to go back. Maybe in a couple of years.....

This was the first cruise for everyone but my parents, grandma, and Joel and I. I really hope everyone had fun. I had a great time with everyone and hope someday we can do it again!

Cruise, Day 2

I know those of you who know me will be totally shocked, but Day 2 actually began with me up at 6:30, jogging on Deck 4. So, I got to see the sunrise! Here is the best pic I got of it:

I meant to wake up early every day, but it was not to be! I made everyone get up on this morning early enough to eat at Triton's. They have (by far) the best breakfast, and they close the earliest. Christopher loved that breakfast, because he got a Mickey waffle. In fact, the next morning he was ticked he couldn't have one! (This was my fault, they used to have those things at the buffets and everything. Some things have changed, darn it!). I had french toast with slices of pineapple in between that was really yummy!

This was our day at Nassau, in the Bahamas. Our (well, my sisters and I) main goal was to get cheap knockoff purses, which we did. After shopping, we got back on the boat. No day at sea on this short cruise, so I wanted the extra time on the ship. And shopping was NOT Christopher's favorite thing! : P

Here's a great shot I got of Nassau from the ship. I'm always amazed at how blue the water is!

Once back on the ship, we took C to play shuffleboard. As with most games, he cheated, but he had a great time.

Stitch was in the atrium to meet and take pics. I sent Joel with C. Who's the bigger trouble-maker???? Anyone?? Yep, probably a toss-up! : PThe towel monkey our room steward left that night. First night was a dog, but I didn't have room for the pic.


So, day 2 was basically shopping at Nassau; back on the ship for some fun on deck and eating (cuz it's free, why pay for something on the island??); shopping on the ship; I took a nap with C (we wanted him awake for the show that night!); dinner (Jaime, Denise, Joel and I at Palo, everyone else at Tritons); oh, and it was pirate night, so they gave us all bandanas, and captain Jack was lurking around the ship; the show that night was Toy Story the Musical, which C did stay awake for, and was totally entranced by and loved; and to continue Pirate Night, there was a little show on the top deck- complete with fireworks- and a full dinner and dessert buffet. All I could fit in me were some crepes, but it was great.

"The Mickey Boat," Day 1

So, Dec 21st we boarded the Mickey Boat. This is what C calls the Disney Cruise Line ships. We happened to sail on the Wonder (the ships are basically identical, a couple of the restaurants and clubs are themed a little differently, and the Magic does the longer cruises. I've now sailed on each ship twice and love both!) for a 3 night cruise this time. We went with my parents, 5 siblings, paternal Grandmother, and C and Joel and I.

We had a little drama the morning of embarking as Steven's first flight was delayed and made him miss his connecting flight. For a while it looked like there was no way he would make it, and we were totally bummed. We knew it was a possibility, but it wouldn't have been the same without him! He found out that the flight he was on standby for was already overbooked, so we prepared for the worst, as there was no other flight that would get him there on time to catch the boat. Well, by some miracle, he got on the flight, and Joel's brother Jeremy was gracious enough to pick him up from the airport and bring him to the port. Thanks Jeremy!!! He made it on a couple hours after the rest of us and all was well.

Here are Denise, Shauna and C as we waited to go through security at Port Canaveral:

C and Joel on deck during the sailaway party. Can you tell their shirts match? My mom got these for them quite a while ago, and I'm sure this will be the only time we ever get Joel to wear his!
Christopher in the Mickey Pool (you can kind of tell he's in one of the ears). He would have spent the whole cruise there if he could have!

C on "my top bunk". During the day it actually fold up into the ceiling, and he was totally bummed when it wasn't out. We had some reservations about letting him sleep up there, but there were no problems and he loved it!

C in the Atrium Lobby in front of the Christmas Tree.

We didn't board til a little after noon, I believe. So, we ate at the buffet; looked around the ship a bit; made dinner reservations and checked out the kids club (Which I was so worried about and C didn't even end up going to, because there was so much else to do and he was completely happy), got into our rooms; went to the sailaway party; let C swim a little; had our first dinner (Parrot Cay, except for Mom, Dad, Grandma, Steven, and Shauna, who went to the adult restaurant Palo that night); and went to the night's show "The Golden Mickeys", which C unfortunately slept through.

Princess Lunch

So, I thought it would be fun to have breakfast for the girls at Cinderella's Royal Table, a restaurant actually located inside the castle. But alas, when I called to make the reservation (like 4 months in advance!), they only had lunch for 6. It's very popular (it's also very expensive!). Anyway, it ended up being me, my sisters Shauna and Jaime, My cousin Becky and her daughter Audrey, and my friend Trish, who came back just to meet us for the lunch. A photo package is included, so when you first walk into to Throne room, it was decorated for Christmas, and they took a pic of all of us with Cinderella. Have to find where I put those pics! Anyway, then they call your name ("Royal Family Whatever"), and you go up the spiral staircase to the dining hall.

The Princesses were really only interested in Audrey. This was pretty much fine with us. Shauna did get a pic with one of them. Belle, Jasmine, Snow White, and Mary Poppins all came by the table. Here are Audrey and Belle:
I just love this one. It's Becky, with the wand they gave us, casting a spell or making a wish or something. It was a presentation they told us all to do and then the room got all sparkly. Beck got way into it!

Becky and Audrey:

Me and Trish:

Shauna and Jaime with their menus:

All in all, very fun and girly. And the food was great!

Disney World!!!!

Ha! I figured out how to change the pictures around! Sorry, pretty proud of myself. Been trying to do this for months.

Anyway, as I said, we got to the parks, specifically Disney Hollywood Studios (still SO hard to call it that! Maybe I'll get used to the name change in about 10 years) at 9am. We were early actually. My friend Trish was letting us into the park with her Silver Pass, and I hate to make someone wait when they're doing us such a favor! We wanted to do the Studios first because we wanted to see the new Toy Story attraction. Here getting off the tram after parking:

The Toy Story attraction was pretty cool. It's an interactive 3-D midway shooting game. I took lots of pics of the waiting queue, but see no reason to post them here.

Here is Christopher in the Playhouse Disney Show. As you can see, he LOVED it. It features 4 of his favorite Disney Channel Shows, and all of their characters. He's seen it before, but I guess it hasn't lost it's appeal! You can tell he's happy from this pic, but you can't tell that in addition to clapping, he was dancing all over the place!

After the Studios, we headed over to Magic Kingdom. I had lunch reservations in the Castle for most of the girls. That will be a seperate post. Anyway, we met up with my cousin Becky and her daughter Audrey. She is 7 months younger than Christopher. After lunch, we all rode the carousel, so here's a pic of C and Audrey on their horses:

And I got a pretty good shot of Spaceship Earth in Epcot this trip:

And of course, pics of the castle are a dime a dozen, but I've never gotten to see it done up for Christmas this way before:

So, on the 20th we did 3 parks (some of the family actually did all 4!). We went with plenty of people. My whole family (Well, Denise got there in the evening and just did a couple of attractions, and Steven wasn't in town yet; but they got to go the 26th), Grandma Montes, Joel's parents, and his brother Jeremy all came. At Epcot Jeremy, who drew my name for Christmas, let me pick a pearl from an oyster in Japan. I got a pretty decent sized one and he even had it set in a necklace for me. Not something I would ever do for myself, but it was a lot of fun! Mostly we (as in, Joel and I) just tried to get in the things C really wanted to do, and I think we were pretty successful. Everyone else hopped around and did what they really wanted to. We opened the parks up and almost closed them down (I think my family actually did). 9am to after 11pm! The next morning we were off to the cruise!

Roadtrip 2008!!

Get ready, and comfortable, this is going to take a few posts! So, we took our Christmas trip, which started with driving down to Florida beginning the 18th of December. Here goes:

OK, I can not for the life of me figure out why blogspot changes the order of your pics as they load. And I don't know how to switch them, I've tried everything! So, I'll just deal with how they did it:

This is from when we stopped at McDonalds in Oklahoma the morning of the 19th, after spinning off the road in Kansas and therefore deciding to head more south. Seriously, Kansas is way low on the list of my favorite states. It's always boring, but this time we got stuck there for 2 hours (due to lots of accidents, I don't know if I've ever seen so many jack-knifed and rolled-over semis!), and then once we finally got going, we hit a patch of ice, spun around more than once, and (thank goodness!) ended up in the median facing the right direction and got right back on the road. I don't know how many more roadtrips like this we should do. I mean, how many times can we spin off the road and not flip or have a ton of damage?? We've been very, very lucky.

And here is Christopher sleeping in the car the night of the 18th. He was very good, all things considered!
Below are the road conditions as we got going the afternoon of the 18th. Not too bad, but we drove right into some bad snow. We probably would have beat out the storm had it not been for all of the accidents making the highway a total standstill a little before Colby, Kansas. I think we lost about 3 hours or so altogether. We were totally motionless for 2!

Shauna and Christopher enjoying some tunes on the ipod as we got on the road. He can be pretty demanding. I think she heard the same song a few too many times! Bubbly is his favorite, but I don't think she had that one, he had to bug Jaime for it.

So anyway, the first day was a little crazy. And as I said, we decided to drop south at Salina, KS. Conditions almost immediately got better. And into Oklahoma it was great. Then we drove across through Little Rock; through the corner of Mississippi; through Birmingham and Montgomery, AL; and down into Florida. We finally arrived around 5am, and took naps and washed up before heading to Disney World by 9am! (well, Joel, C and I and Joel's family made it by 9am..... : ))

Deck the.....living room...

I was debating whether to even put up a tree this year, but Joel was all for it, and half the stuff was already out, so we went for it. I totally changed the way we decorated our tree this year. I used to want to do all blue and silver, but this past year my favorite sister-in-law (and NOT just cuz you're the only one, Jody!) bought me the victorian Minnie Mouse tree topper I was totally coveting at Disney World (don't worry, I've repented... : P). So we got stuff to go with it. Eventually hopefully we'll get some of the other ornaments that actually go with Minnie. But for now, we got some poinsettas and balls, and lots of Disney ornaments (those aren't really visible, if we even had them on when I took the pic). Anyway, I love how it turned out! The (mostly) completed tree unlit.

....and lit

C admiring the tree before Joel even got all the lights working. He had a blast helping out!

My Little Boy

The other night Christopher fell asleep in my arms. It had been a particularly draining day, more attempts at potty training, lots of talking back, not listening, etc. And so I looked down at him and thought How can something so adorable, so docile, so absolutely angelic, wreak SO MUCH havoc???

The accompanying picture was a few nights earlier, but similar circumstances. He totally conked out on the chair in the living room, and I had to take a picture to remember things like this!

Some great things he does, in the midst of all the craziness, that I want to remember:

-Mornings. He usually ends up in our bed by sometime ridiculously early in the morning, and when he wakes up, it's instant. He looks over at our window, and if he can tell the sun is out, he declares it's definitely time to wake up! If I'm not cooperating, he'll start cock-o-doodle-dooing! He also usually tells me he loves me or I'm beautiful (brainwashing by his father) fairly early on in the day as well.

-Just the way he talks. There are things he adds on to phrases that I have no idea where he learned. He says "either" a LOT. As in "I don't want to do that, either!" Even if we weren't talking about anything else. He also says "right now" after a lot of things when it makes no sense. He told Santa "I want Pixos right now," and Santa looked at me like "huh?". I explained it's just something he says, and he knows Santa brings presents on Christmas Eve. He also says "I'm hungry/thirsty about (something very specific)." Then we have to negotiate to get him to eat or drink anything besides said item.

-He loves to help clean, do dishes, basically anything but pick up his own stuff! This is both endearing and extremely annoying, because it pretty much has to be his idea, and even if he's "helping", it tends to take longer than doing it yourself! Lately he's been cleaning the snow off of the car with Joel, and every flake has to be cleaned off. This never happens of course, because we're usually in a hurry, so he throws a fit in his seat for most of the car trip.

-When he says "Mommy, I want to hold you", and we cuddle. I'm sure this will end sometime soon, and I'll be very sad! He's already refusing to give me kisses, or wiping them off right away if he does!