i saw one of the dinosaurs spitting

OK. We went to Disney Quest last Friday for Brian's birthday. It was a great time! We got to do some really fun Virtual Reality stuff. We were just about to get on the Jungle River ride when i saw that the rafts were actually a little wet - I said to Brian, "There's water. We might get wet on this one." Brian's reply was, "I saw one of the dinosaurs spitting." ROFL!!!! This struck me as so funny! He was right - one of the dinosaurs spit right on me. It was hilarious.

All in all, I'm glad we did Disney Quest, but I don't feel like I need to go back anytime soon! It was REALLY loud in there. Luckily, it was at Downtown Disney, so we took a break in the middle and went and saw a movie - "21." It was REALLY good!

Saturday morning we got up at the break of dawn to get to our Segway tour at Epcot. I wasn't feeling the best, but I was still really excited to go. We had an ABSOLUTE BLAST on the Segways!! I would recommend the tour to anyone - it was fabulous! We learned how to ride them at Innoventions and went through some obstacle courses, and then we went off into the countries. It was amazing!! We didn't want to get off the Segways when the tour was over. We LOVED it.

After we finished the tour, we rode Soarin' and then left. By that time, I felt REALLY bad. We went to the walk-in clinic at Walgreens. I had a FEVER!! And I had a lot of pressure on my ears and a really irritated throat. To make a long story short, I spent my whole spring break sick in bed. :( Here it is Friday, the last day of spring break, and I'm JUST now feeling better.

Anyway, hope this finds you all well. Enjoy these pictures of us on our Segways! I'll write more soon!

happy birthday, brian!

Today my sweet husband turned 34. He had a great day at work, went out to lunch and had Mexican, and tonight I made lasagna in the crockpot (lowfat, of course) and we had strawberry cheesecake parfaits for dessert (fat free, sugar free). Yum! He's taking the day off from work tomorrow and we're going to Disney Quest. Games all day - fun for B! And then on Saturday comes my gift to him - we're going to learn how to ride Segways and then we're taking a tour all around Epcot - the Around the World Segway tour. It's going to be SO much fun! We are SUPER excited!

In other news, we FINALLY moved back into our bedroom. It is SO NICE to sleep in there again! The bathroom is done, all except the glass shower enclosure. I don't know when we'll get that done - at this point, I'm SO OVER having workers in and out of our house, we may NEVER get the glass done. So, we have new tile in the shower and around the tub, new tile on the floor, 2 new sinks, a new toilet, and new fixtures in the shower, on the tub, and on both sinks. I know I keep saying that I will post pictures, and I promise I will. Whenever I have time.

Kindermusik is going great - next week is Spring Break and I will be happy for the break. Although, I will be visiting a Mommy and Me group to talk about Kindermusik and do a demo class. I also hope to help my friend Christi get unpacked in their new house, I'm having lunch with a friend on Thursday, and I need to go to the dentist and probably some other doctors too - dermatologist, etc. So, part of my week is planned, and I also hope to organize and clean out a little in the piano room and maybe the guest room - I'd love to get some things listed on eBay! We have so many things to sell. Oh, and we're having date night with another friend and her husband, which will be fun! Plus, I want to wash the windows and do some other spring cleaning. It will be a busy week!

Anyway, pics coming soon of the bathroom and also of Brian's crazy fun birthday weekend! Cheers!

thankful for family

Well, the fam has come and gone and we had a WONDERFUL time! It was so great to be with everyone, especially Braden!! He is an absolute delight and he's just SO FUNNY! I thought I should share some pictures of our Thanksgiving week. Our first stop of the day was Magic Kingdom:
Braden on the Monorail with Papa, Daddy, and Aunt Sis

Braden playing trains on Aunt Sis' face while waiting for the ferry boat

Braden and Papa got to sing with the Dapper Dans on Main Street! (Shameless plug: some of the Dapper Dans are going to be featured on Papa's Barbershop Chorus Christmas Show in Ashland, KY on December 15! Don't miss it!)

Braden on the train with Papa and JoJo (and some people we don't know in the background!)

Braden and Daddy driving the cars at the Tomorrowland Indy Speedway!

Braden with his first ever Mickey popsicle!

Braden in line for "It's a Small World" with Uncle Brian & Aunt Sis

Braden riding "It's a Small World" with Mommy & Daddy

Our second stop of the day was Animal Kingdom. We rushed right in to ride the Kilimanjaro Safari! We saw lots of cool animals! (I won't share all of the animal pictures, there are too many!)Braden and Mommy on the safari

Our last stop of the day was Epcot. We were all amazed and impressed that Braden was such a good boy for such a long day! Papa, JoJo, Uncle Brian, Aunt Sis, and Daddy all rode Test Track several times and loved it! Even JoJo! Mommy is pregnant so she couldn't ride, and Braden was too little, so they played in the car showroom and went shopping while the rest of us rode. At Braden's request, we had dinner in China. ;-)

Braden riding "The Seas with Nemo and Friends" with Uncle Brian & Aunt Sis. In the middle, Braden called out, "Hey Nemo! Is that you?" Aunt Sis loved it!

We were at the parks for nearly 14 hours that day! It was an all-around spectacular day! Hooray for Braden's first visit to Disney!!!!

Wednesday night we had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Braden wasn't so sure about the gorillas, but he loved the fish and the elephants! Afterward, we scooted over to the Contemporary where we hopped on a boat for the Wishes Cruise!
Braden & Mickey at the Contemporary

Braden got to drive the boat!

Braden and Daddy on the cruise

Uncle Brian & Aunt Sis enjoying the cruise

Papa got to drive the boat too!

Mommy, Daddy, and Braden cruisin'

Fireworks!

The whole fam as we left the Contemporary!

Well, those special adventures were lots of fun, but Braden's very favorite part of visiting Aunt Sis and Uncle Brian's house was playing with the cats! (Notice there are no pictures of Sam, he's the "grouchy and soft" cat!)

Braden & Max

tomorrow, tomorrow

Well, the fam is coming in tomorrow night! I am SO excited! We're having Mom and Dad, Brad and Kari (my brother and SIL), and precious Braden (my nephew) over for Thanksgiving! Tuesday we're spending at Disney, Wednesday night we're eating at Rainforest Cafe and then taking the Wishes Fireworks Cruise, Thursday is turkey day, Friday is shopping, and Saturday...well, we might go to a corn maze or something. We're gonna have a great time!

In other news, tomorrow is my first day teaching elementary music at Lake Mary Montessori. I'm nervous, excited, and stressed. I'll keep you posted!

we interrupt this vacation recap...

...to talk about Whole Foods! I went there for the first time on Friday and it was amazing! It's definitely going to be a new Saturday afternoon shopping/lunch spot for B and me. And they even had Mizithra cheese, our favorite! I can never find it anywhere! Thanks Jase, for telling me about Whole Foods. :-)

Also, B & I rented "The Holiday" on Saturday evening - and it was a truly great movie! We also watched "Stranger Than Fiction" on Friday night and really enjoyed it too.

Saturday during the day we went to Disney, Magic Kingdom to be exact. We rode the new Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was cute and kinda cool, but not exciting. We also rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad twice - that used to be my favorite ride as a child. Saturday I remembered why - it's so fun! That's all we got to ride because we had to leave for practice at church. It was ok, though, cause it was really hot. We were there long enough to enjoy it without being worn out!

That's it for now. Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there, especially to our moms! :-D I obviously didn't blog every day this week like I wanted, but that's ok - I'll hopefully finish my vacation recap this week. I also have to get caught up in my Kindermusik classes and prepare to teach a practice class! Warning: busy week ahead.

dresses, sunshine, and love

Well, I had a post all fixed the other day, but then the browser crashed on me and I didn't feel like typing it all back out again! In it I had described our Valentine's Day dinner at Bistro de Paris at Epcot. It was delicious! Here are some pics of us:



Our weather has been getting warmer and warmer, tomorrow and Saturday it will be in the 80s, and I'm finally getting a little tan again since I'm walking several times a week again. I really really want to get these last 20 pounds off. It would be a shame to get this close to my goal and not make it! Plus, I want to get into single-digit sizes, and I'm not that far off!

Speaking of clothes, I went shopping today after I got my hair done. I've been looking for a dress or two, and I finally got lucky at Ann Taylor Loft! Here are the dresses I bought:





I know, I know, lots of brown - but apparently brown is big for spring. Good thing I look decent in it! I had fun shopping, which is still a shock to me. Although today it reminded me that I REALLY want to get rid of the extra 20 pounds I'm still carrying around!

Tomorrow we're headed to Animal Kingdom for the day. We're meeting Brian's friends Glenn and Lorie (Glenn was the best man at our wedding) and some other friends. For dinner, we made reservations for just the two of us at the Sci-Fi Cafe, which is probably our new favorite cool dining spot. It will be a fun day.

Sunday, we'll have church and then Sunday evening, the whole band and praise team and spouses are coming up to our neck of the woods to attend a service at Northland Church, and then they're all coming over to our house for dinner! So I've been cleaning. I'm making my wonderful friend Sera's Tortellini Soup. Yum! OK, gotta go dust.

Oh! I almost forgot! I've mentioned before that we have a clear glass shower in our master bath. Since it's CLEAR glass, you can see every bit of soap scum. Well, I finally figured out how to get it off. A DRYER SHEET! I took a NEW dryer sheet and wet it and scrubbed the door - it rinsed beautifully! I was amazed. Just another tip from me - your favorite lazy, short-cut-finding house cleaner. :-)

playing catch-up

Well, has this blog been boring or what??!! It seems like 40 years since I blogged! Christmas and New Year's came and went with barely a post from me, let alone a picture! So I thought I'd take a little bit of time and try to catch up a little.

Let's see. A few weeks ago, my friends Julie and Rob came to Orlando for Children's Pastors Conference. I used to work with them at Brentwood-Benson (Provident) Music and it was so great to see them! They came last January too. No, they're not a couple. They are just the ones from work who come and man the BB booth at the conference. The week they came was extremely busy, but we met them for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe (Downtown Disney) late on Saturday night. Here is a pic of us:



And for fun, let's compare it to a pic of us from January 2006:



Um, yeah. Check out my 5 chins in that second pic. Are you tired of me talking about my weight loss? Do you want another update? hahahaha! I actually haven't officially weighed myself since October. My home scale says I haven't lost or gained, so that's good, but more importantly, my clothes tell me that I haven't gained. I'm back into the exercise and healthy eating full-force now. I'm easing myself into some Yoga - it's kicking my butt so far! But I can see that I'm going to really enjoy it, if I can ever endure it for more than 10 minutes!!

Ah, Idol is back on. I don't enjoy the preliminary auditions as much now as I used to. We've seen it all before. People who live in their own little world come out of the woodwork and make fools of themselves, blah blah. I'm ready for Hollywood week and the top however many they're going to pick this year. More Idol chat to come, for sure.

Brian and I have been busy little bees every weekend in January and so far in February, and it looks like it's not going to let up until March. Whew! But at least we've been having fun! Last Saturday we went to Tampa for a matinee showing of the Broadway show "Monty Python's Spamalot." Let me just say, it was hilarious. This was Brian's birthday present, even though his birthday isn't till the end of March. But I saw last fall that Spamalot was coming to Tampa, and we bought tickets the day they went on sale in October - and we got orchestra seats! It was a great time and we laughed our heads off!

As we were walking from our car to the Performing Arts Center, we saw this:



As we came around the truck, we saw that they were giving out free samples of Spam! Of course, Brian couldn't pass up the chance to try some Spam:



That Spam was gross, it smelled VERY bad! Brian ate a few bites, but he couldn't stomach too much of it. Yuck! At any rate, the show was excellent and hilarious, and we would highly recommend it.

I've been busy with the band at church, too - we've been doing gigs other than church and it's been a lot of fun! Someday I'll figure out how to put some music on here.

I've been scrapping a ton! Scrapfest is still going on at Lifetime Moments, and we all know how much I love that! Here are some of my favorites I've done during Scrapfest:






I think that's about all I have to tell you about right now. Oh, except for that my best-friend-since-we-were-born, Jenni, finally got to meet Joey McIntyre, with whom she has been obsessed since she was like 12, when he was in New Kids on the Block. Here's the proof of their meeting:



Heehee. Hope everyone is having a great year so far. We're busy tomorrow, but at least Brian and I get to spend some time together! Yay! So I'm off to bed. Good night!

happy anniversary to us!

Well, it was on Saturday, but we celebrated on Sunday, and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it!! SIX happy years for us!!

At any rate, we headed to the Disney parks after church on Sunday to celebrate our anniversary. Brian's back has been out for 2 weeks, so we didn't get to ride anything, but that was okay. We went to Animal Kingdom first - we had never been there. It was cool! We got to see lots of animals! We saw a hippo - it swam right up to the window where we were standing! I couldn't BELIEVE how huge it was!!

Of course, my favorite animals of the day were these beauties on the left. It was so fun watching them walk around - one of them was sniffing all around with its mouth open! So cute! And then she showed off for us by jumping back and forth across a fountain.



After we exhausted the Animal Kingdom, we headed to MGM and had dinner at the Sci-Fi Cafe. It was the coolest place - all the tables were inside these old fashioned cars and the whole place was set up like a drive in theater, complete with huge movie screen playing snippets of movies and cartoons. It was VERY cool.

Thanks, Jenni and Eric, for the recommendation! We will SO be going back to the Sci-Fi Cafe!

In other news, it looks like Brian might have to have back surgery. He has had back problems for years and years, and last week's MRI showed that he has a herniated disc that is bulging onto his sciatic nerve. He's in quite a lot of pain, so we pray that it can be alleviated ASAP. We're going to see the surgeon next week - y'all keep us in your prayers!

AND it looks like I have an ear infection. Sigh. My throat is killing me! The dr. called in a prescription for me. I have a fabulous doctor. The trick-or-treaters have been ringing the doorbell the whole time I've been typing this, and now it's time for me to fix dinner - herb-crusted flank steak, brown rice, and green beans! Yum! Brian is on his way home. Tonight we'll watch Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin! Happy Halloween, everyone!

a few days at disney

Jenni and Eric and their adorable son Evan came to Disney World this past week for their vacation, and I was fortunate enough to be able to spend
a few days with them. I had a BALL! Jenni and I have been to amusement parks together many, many times over the last 30+ years, and this time did not disappoint. If only we knew, during all those trips to King's Island when we were little, that we would someday be at Disney together with our husbands! :-)

On Monday, we went to MGM. I had never been to MGM and it was fun. We were in line for the Rockin' Roller Coaster, and we were probably about 2 or 3 rides away from getting on...and it stopped. After waiting for what seemed to be forever (but was probably about 15 min.), we left and headed to the Tower of Terror, which scared the living crap out of me. :-D I LOVE roller coasters, and I will ride just about anything (but nothing bungee-ish) - but those rides that drop you freak me out! It was way fun though, and Jenni got a good laugh at the picture since my eyes were squeezed shut and I was holding on for dear life!

On Wednesday, we went to Epcot and Brian joined us just in time to ride Soarin' - which is one of my favorite rides ever! Then we had dinner at a fabulous Italian restaurant in "Italy," and I had some of the best lasagna I've EVER had. Yum! Epcot was open until midnight that night, so after dinner, we rode the ride that's in the big golf ball - I forgot what it's called, but it's really dark and perfect for some smoochin'!

It's always great to spend time with Jenni - we've known each other literally all our lives. Our parents have been friends since before we were born and our families have spent lots of time together through the years. Jenni and I always love to reminisce about mean things we did to each other - can you believe she thought I was mean?? SHE was mean! - haha - and fun times we had, crazy things we did, how we used to fight, etc. Jenni's my oldest and best friend and I wish we could spend more time together. Someday maybe I'll get a scanner that works so I can post some pics of us in our younger days.

(Just adding a photo here for my avatar!)

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I have been SO TIRED this week! I don't know if I'm still trying to get caught up on sleep from the weekend or if I'm fighting off some virus or bug! But I just can't seem to wake up this week. I REALLY hope I'm not coming down with something. :-( B and I keep trying to go to bed early every night, but then something will happen that deters us from getting to sleep. Of course, Brian is on deadline at work and is working overtime, so he's not getting home till late. And I've been working extra at the church - the newsletter goes out this Sunday (I've never done one before!) and I just finished it today. Tomorrow I've got to copy, fold, and put the labels on them. And there have been tons of funerals lately, the church is calling a new pastor, and they're having their annual elections a week from Sunday. Oh, and their Fall Festival is in about 2 weeks. Needless to say, things have been busy!

Other than that, things are going great. It's starting to act like it's going to cool down a little bit soon - we had a lovely cool breeze today and I didn't even sweat all day!! Shocking, I know. Brian and I bought seasonal passes for Disney and we're excited about being able to come and go in the parks during the holidays. AND Jenni, Eric, and Evan are coming from Ohio next week and I'm so excited to get to spend some time with them!

FINALLY, here are some pics from the inlaws' visit. (Click on any picture for a bigger image.) The first 3 are Brian (doing his famous "evil eyebrow" look) and both of his parents at the Harley Davidson store at Downtown Disney. :-)


Here's me and Brian on the pier right before our boat ride (here's a good example of my clothes being too big for me!) and then a picture of the lighthouse near Disney's Yacht & Beach Club Resorts. (I just thought it was a pretty picture. I think Brian took it.)




As you can probably tell, I don't do so well with the picture feature on Blogger. Does anyone know how to make them look better? If so, can you please teach me??!! Last but not least, here are the jewelry sets I made for the auction:

a day of fun

Saturday, Brian and I went to Epcot for free! Yay! ESPN paid for everyone on his team at work to go, including their families. (He's working on a game for ESPN.) Anyway, we got there at around 1:00 or so and had a great day. The weather was awesome - a little overcast, but warm. We went straight to Mission: SPACE and rode that first. There was no wait at all! It was an amazing ride. There were so many G's that at one point I could feel my face being pressed back! Awesome!

Then we went and got a fastpass for Soarin' and headed off to the countries. (Test Track was closed!) We had lunch in France and it was delicious. Then we watched a film of the French countryside and it made us want to go there! We wandered around the countries for awhile, watching another film of China and riding a boat in Mexico. It was very enjoyable.

Finally, we headed back to Soarin' and it was fabulous! We got to see the coolest things, and when we flew over the pine trees we could smell the pine, and when we saw the orange groves we could smell the oranges! It was so cool! (I'm so glad we had gotten a fastpass, because there was an 80 minute wait!!)

We ate a quick dinner and set off to watch the fireworks and have dessert with the EA and ESPN people. They had a section of the park roped off and there were tables with drinks (coffee, hot chocolate & tea, and lemonade) and tons of fancy tables with amazing desserts! It was so cool! We had a front row seat for the fireworks and they were spectacular!

BUT - my very favorite part of the day was meeting up with two friends from my old work at Brentwood-Benson Music. Julie and Rob were in town for Children's Pastors' Conference and we met them at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney after the parks closed. We had appetizers and talked until nearly 1:00 am. It was SO WONDERFUL to see them again! I hadn't seen Rob since I quit in January of 2000, and I hadn't seen Julie since my wedding in October of 2000! What a wonderful day it turned out to be.

Yesterday, Brian and I watched the rest of Season 1 of 24. It was SO! GOOD! We love it. We also went to Home Depot last night and got a cabinet for my scrap room. I love it! It's looking good in here!

Today, I went to a new doctor because I needed a Primary Care Physician. (Remember I couldn't find anyone to see me when I was sick?! I don't want that to happen again!) I LOVED him - he was so nice and had a great manner. We talked a bit and he wants me to come back in a month for a physical (oh, joy) and bloodwork (wonderful.) I hate having those done but I want to keep healthy!

I'll post pictures of Epcot and Rob & Julie later.