Early Bluebonnets

My sister is here so we thought we would tkae pictures of the kids in the bluebonnets. Turns out it was a little early for the bluebonnets, but the kids looked good.

I don't think the kids will humor me again, but we'll have to see!

Double Drive

4 1/2 years ago, a couple of months after Joe started working there, his company announced a bonus program called Double Drive. The owner of the company said that if everyone would work hard enough to double the company during a period of five years, he would buy everyone at the company a $50000 car. That time period just ended at the end of December and they were able to get their cars. This is what Joe picked:

Its a 2008 Porsche Carrera. It has 17,000 miles on it, and still smells new! He says that now that he has it he gets people striking up conversation with him all of the time. Since he wouldn't have to commute in a truck anymore, he was able to trade in his truck and get a huge diesel truck that our whole family can fit in, so we are now a three car family.

Disneyworld!

After working on Joe for years, I finally convinced him to take our family to Disneyworld. We went last weekend for 5 days, and had a wonderful trip. We wanted to go before Nate turned three so that we wouldn't have to pay for his park admission and so that we could stay in one hotel room without paying for a suite.
We stayed at the Port Orleans Riverside. The nice thing about staying on Disney property is that you can ride their buses from the airport to your hotel and then from your hotel to the park every day so you don't have to rent a car. It was nice to not have to worry about one more thing. Joe and I had been to the Magic Kingdom before, but we had never been to any of the other parks. We spent one day in each park and two days in Magic Kingdom. We decided that our best bet to get the most out of every day was to set an alarm and wake up early and be at the park when it opens, so that is what we did. Then we would ride a bunch of rides in the first 2-3 hours of the morning before the crowds got too busy. After that we would ride less busy rides and watch shows and take it a little easier. Overall, the lines weren't too bad. There were some really busy days in the parks, but we got to see and ride everything that we wanted to, so that was good.
When it rained or there was a ride that we could get wet on, we had ponchos that we pulled out and we were never miserable because we were all wet.

We went with Adam's best friend, Jack's family. They only have the one child so it was nice to have extra adults to watch the kids or ride rides with them. Jack's grandma and cousin also came too. They were great company and humored us on our frantic hurrying to all of the rides.

What the Disney dining plan gives you is a counter service meal each day (like fast food in the park) and a sit down meal each day. They had several of the sit down meals in which the Disney characters would come around and visit the tables while you ate. We did two of those, one had Mickey and Goofy and Donald Duck, the other was the Cinderella characters. I really liked the food and it was nice to not have to wait in line to see the characters, they came to us. The kids really enjoyed it.

(It was the end of one of our early rise morning and Nate had lived the day fully as you can see from his shirt).

Nate didn't get to ride on all of the rides, but there were a lot of rides that he could ride on. He would often ask us to ride again, but unfortunately, we didn't always have time to do it again.

His favorite ride was Winnie the Pooh in Magic Kingdom.

The parks all also had 3D shows and the kids enjoyed watching them. Some of them were really well done- this is at the Bug's Life in Animal Kingdom.

One of the nights we got to eat at the "Sci-Fi Diner). We all had seats in a car and we watched movies on a drive-in type screen. The kids really enjoyed it.

These last pictures are of the character dining with the Cinderella characters. They were well done. The evil step mother played her part very well. She would order the kids to "come here," then sneer at them and talk rudely to them. When they were done she told them to "go away."

The sisters were funny too, they were pretty bratty and also a little ditsy.

Seriously, look at that smile:

Ellie with Prince Charming

Cinderella was very pretty and very sweet.

Then they had a royal ball and Cinderella and Prince Charming danced with some of the people there. Our table was right by them so Ellie got to dance with Cinderella.

When she was done dancing with Ellie she asked Michael if he would dance with her. This is the response she got:

Of course after we all started laughing he hammed it up:

We had a fantastic trip, and even Joe had a great time (he dreaded it for a long time before it happened). It probably was a lot due to a great travel agent, if you want her info I will forward it to you. I can't wait to go again in a few years.

While we were gone

While we were in Bali, Adam turned 9. We asked him before we booked the trip if he would be okay if we weren't around on his birthday. He said that as long as we got him an extra special present just for him it would be okay if we went. Before we left we had a special morning where he opened most of his presents.
He was very excited about everything that he got, especially what Nate gave him.

He also got a microscope. He is looking at the microscope and seeing what it does.

That very same day, the day we left, they cancelled school because there was a chance of snow. They also closed down freeways and shut down the airport. Apparently weather forecasters down here do not know anything because this is the third year in a row they have forecasted snow and we NEVER get it. We woke up to a very cold very unsnowy day. The only fun thing we found the kids could do was play in the ice on the trampoline.
They had a lot of fun playing for about 5 minutes until they got cold and wet.

Unfortunately, the day before we left, Ellie got really sick. She had a fever and just laid around all day. I ended up getting it before I left. One by one, while we were gone, the boys got it. Nate had it the worst- here is one of the days he basically laid on the couch all day. My mom said there was only one day on the trip that Nate didn't throw up. I had hoped that even though it would be hard to have 4 kids for ten days that it wouldn't be that hard, but with them being so sick I think it was really hard for them.

This is a reenactment of the trip:

By the end, everyone seemed to be feeling a little bit better. They spent some time out at the land cleaning up leaves.

Thank-you SOOO much for taking care of my kids so we could get away for a few days!