Epcot Adventures

We spent the next two days at Epcot.  The first day we spent doing things in the space, land, and sea areas.  I've always wondered what was inside the big white orb, and I finally got to see it!  I liked this ride because it was air-conditioned and because it was a great history review for my girls!  We also rode several of the other rides and hung out at the aquarium. 

I hung out with the little ones while everyone else rode Test Track.  I had read that the ride lasted six minutes, and I thought the whole six minutes was racing around the track.  I didn't think that would work with my vertigo-like symptoms on roller-coasters.  Of course, after they rode it, I found out the ride only goes around the track once! 

We left early in the afternoon for siesta time at the hotel.  Then we went to Downtown Disney.  The Lego store was fun for a while.  While my friend and her kids waited for a free Lego set, my girls and I shopped for souvenirs at the Disney Princess store next door.  They each selected a charm bracelet and several charms as a way to remember Disney.  After shopping, we at at Wolfgang Puck Express.  It was fabulous!  Definitely our best meal of the trip!  And it was on our meal plan.

We ended the evening by going back to Epcot and riding Soarin'.  After Paul's experience with the motion simulator at Hollywood Studios, he decided to stay with the littler ones while the rest of us rode.  This ride was so much fun!  Everyone really enjoyed it!  Then we made our way over to watch the fireworks show before we left for the evening.

The next day we had planned to tour the country areas in the morning before the day became too hot.  We planned to eat pastries for breakfast in one of the countries as well.  No one noticed that the country part of Epcot opens several hours later than the other part!  We had a few snacks with us that we ate for breakfast.  Our friend conned his older kids into riding the intense version of Mission Space.  Thankfully, no one vomited!  After lunch, we rode Test Track again.  This time I rode it, too!  Lots of fun!

We then rode the boat rides in Norway and Mexico.  We spent some time in Norway since our friend has ancestors from there.  The Viking helmets in the gift shop were a big hit!  We also spent a little time in Japan.  My girls enjoyed seeing all the Japanese things.  My sister and her family lived in Okinawa for a few years, so we felt like we had a connection with Japan.  We made the lap of countries on our way out.  We stopped in France for a wonderful snack of French pastries.  Yum!  In England, we saw Alice of Alice in Wonderland.  She had just arrived, so we were able to get pictures with her and her autograph with no waiting!  And while walking through Canada, we saw this:

After another siesta time we ate at one of the other resorts.  Then my friend and I went back to Epcot with her two girls and my oldest two.  We rode Soarin' again.  Twice!  We toured Britain.  We spoke in British accents.  We ate more pastries in France.  We tried to talk in French accents but couldn't do it very well.  So we reverted back to the British accents.  We examined belly dancing costumes in Morocco.  It was such a great mom/daughter time.  This was one of the highlights of our trip!  And the girls agree!  Even though we got rained on, it was fabulous!

Off to Orlando!

One of the highlights of 2010 for our family was our trip to Disney World!  Paul & I had been considering taking the girls, and we realized that if we did decide to plant a church (We weren't sure about this yet.), it would be more difficult to go afterward.  And then we found out some of our good friends were also thinking about going, so we decided to go together!  (I think this really sealed the deal for Paul.)  Their kids got out of school the last Thursday in May, and we left the following day.  Our friends have 6 kids, ranging in age from 2 to 13, so we had 14 people total!!  I know it sounds crazy, but we had a blast!

We took a couple of days to drive, so we got to Orlando on Saturday afternoon and went to Animal Kingdom.  Since it closes earlier than the other parks, we didn't have much time there.  We did the safari ride first.  Since it had been raining that afternoon, it was a little cooler, and we were able to see a lot of animals, including Hope's favorite, elephants. 

 
The older kids and the dads rode the rapids ride, while my friend and I stayed with her two little ones.  It was no sacrifice for us because neither of us wanted to get our hair wet!  However, everyone got soaked when it started pouring rain.  We quickly discovered that the Dollar Tree ponchos weren't sufficient!  We were able to see the Lion King show on our way out.  Then we got settled in our rooms in The Port of Orleans French Quarter and headed out to eat and to Walmart to get snacks and better rain ponchos.

The next day we went to Hollywood Studios.  We had heard that the Toy Story ride was very popular, so we immediately got fast passes for it.  My girls really liked the Narnia exhibit and enjoyed seeing costumes from the movie.

They also were impressed by the stone table.

 

Lunch that day was a disaster!  We waited about an hour to order and get our pizza!  Fortunately, our meals went smoothly the rest of the trip!  When we rode the Star Wars ride, Paul discovered that simulators mess up his equilibrium.  But the rest of us enjoyed it.  In the afternoon, the dads and older boys went to see the stunt shows while the moms, girls, and little boys saw the Beauty and the Beast show and The Little Mermaid show.  Faith was selected to announce The Little Mermaid show before it started!  So cool!  We met back up for the Muppet show and dinner.


The Toy Story ride was great and definitely lived up to the hype.  We were all disappointed (but not surprised) that the line was too long to ride it again!


My friend and her oldest daughter stayed to ride the Rockin' Roller Coaster, while the rest of us took the bus back to the hotel.

  


We had just experienced our first full day of Disney, and, I must say, we were impressed...and exhausted! 

2010: Some Retrospective Lists

The beginning of a new year is often a time of reflection of the past year and thoughts of changes in the new year.  The beginning of our year was just survival mode.  Paul went to Passion on New Year's Day.  The girls and I tried to recover from staying up WAY too late on New Year's Eve!  Then we started the routines of school, dance practice, and piano lessons.  And I washed dishes by hand because our dishwasher is still broken!  All that to say that it's already January 7th and I'm just now thinking about 2010.

2010 had a lot of lasts for us:

*Last Daddy/Daughter Valentine banquet.  (It would have been the last even had we remained at that church; they'll be too old this year.) 

*Last time to watch my younger 3 girls sing at the children's musical at our old church.

*Last AWANA award ceremony.  

*Last time to go to camp with our old church.

*Last Sunday at our old church.

*Last time for me to teach high school girls there.

*Maybe our last swim lessons.

*Last time to have to make overseas calls to talk to my sister.  (I hope!)


It also had some firsts:


*First time to plant a church!


*First year of middle school for Hope!


*First time to see the Riverwalk in San Antonio at Christmas time!


*First time to host all of my family for Christmas!


*First time to go to Disney World!!! (Which will get a whole post of its own very soon.  Even though it happened way back in May and June.)


And, of course, many things remained the same:


*Dance practices


*Piano lessons


*Recitals


*Our crazy dog


*Our sweet cat


*Homeschooling


I'm kind of hoping that 2011 is a little more predictable than 2010.  Well, except for the awesome vacation part!  That was not something that was on my radar in January of 2010.  But I know I can trust God when things change or when they remain the same.

A Lot of Words and a Few Pictures about the Last Couple of Months

The last few weeks, I've been so busy living life that I haven't had time to blog about it!  So, for posterity's sake, here's a brief chronicle of the end of November and December.

* I attended a terrific women's conference at our old church.  The speaker was wonderful, and I really enjoyed seeing friends I haven't seen in a while. 

* I celebrated my 40th birthday.  I can't believe I'm that old!  Paul and the girls took me out for Tex-Mex and made me a cake.  Some of the sweet ladies from church made a video for me, too.

* We had a small Thanksgiving celebration with just our family.  We watched the Macy's parade, ate a fabulous meal, and then one of Paul's brothers and his family came over for a while.  We also put up our tree and our indoor decorations!

* One of my birthday presents was a trip to San Antonio!  I've never seen the Riverwalk all decked out for Christmas, and was so happy to finally get the chance!  We ate great Tex-Mex, took in some history, visited with some new and some old friends, and saw the zoo.  I didn't realize how much I needed a break until I got one!

* I had a fun evening at a cookie exchange with some of my friends.

* I helped Faith and Hope with their presentations for 4-H Demonstration Day.  They won first place on the demonstration they did as a team and Faith won second and Hope won third on their individual demonstrations.

*  The girls and I went to see Tangled and absolutely loved it!  Paul joined us when we saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  It was another great movie.

*  Hope did an excellent job at her piano recital!  She played some the teacher version of the duets in her piano book and did such a good job!  I'm so proud!

*  We had fun with our Christmas traditions:  making gingerbread houses, looking at Christmas lights, lighting our Advent candles.

*  We opened our gifts the Tuesday before Christmas since my Mom was coming the next day.  The girls loved their presents, and I love my new Pandora bracelet!!

*  My Mom and my sister and her family came to our house for Christmas.  We had a full house, but we really did have a good time!  (And it motivated me to get my house cleaner than it's been in a while!) 

*  I spent lots of time bringing the Faith, Joy, and Grace to ballet practice for their performance in the Nutcracker!  To their great disappointment, we even had practices over Christmas break.  But those practices paid off!  All the girls did such a good job, and my three were fantastic!!  My Mom, my sister, and my niece got to come to the performance.  It was so much fun watching my ballerinas perform and do so well!!


* We hosted a fun Christmas party at our house for our church family.  (It would have been even more fun if my dishwasher weren't broken!)

Never Say Never!

While I do have some serious stuff I'm mulling over, I'm still tired from last weekend's garage sale, the time change, and ALL THE COUGHING (Allergies are no fun!) so I'm going for lighthearted and fun today.

Today I did something I said I would never do:  I bought a pair of skinny jeans!  Until a few days ago I thought skinny jeans only worked on slim teenagers or those enviable women who somehow managed to escape childbirth without the typical hip expansion.  I am neither.  My daughter tried some on, and they looked cute on her, but she wears a size 0, so she can wear just about anything and look adorable!

I got a pair of boots at the garage sale that are really cute and that I thought might actually look good with skinny jeans.  So on Monday I tried some on with a really cute long top.  I tucked the jeans into some black boots I had, and it did look good.  I was surprised.  I got the great shirt, but wanted a second opinion about the jeans.  So last night Paul and I went to Kohl's where I tried some on.  He really liked them!  I was hoping to find a more comfortable fit, so I passed on that particular pair.

I went back to Kohl's today.  And tried on a different pair.  They looked good.  They were comfortable.  And, to top it off, they only cost me $6.72 plus tax!!!  Which totally makes it okay that I bought a great shirt to go with them, right?  

Week(s) at a Glance

Wow!  Life has been full these last couple of weeks!  Our schooling has taken more time, we've had several extra-curricular activities, and my allergies have been overactive!  

We had fun carving pumpkins in late October. Faith did a pretty floral design; Hope did a Border Collie; Joy did a cat face; and Grace did a fleur de lis.  It was fun and messy!

We also celebrated Paul's birthday.  I cooked one of his favorite dinners and we had Italian Cream Cake (minus the coconut - I'm allergic!) for dessert.  I tried a new recipe, and we all enjoyed it.  

Some friends of ours hosted a "Retro Prom" on October 31st.  Faith wore my old prom dress.  Hope found a formal at the Salvation Army store for $5.  And Joy and Grace wore some cute 80s-inspired skirts and shirts from Target that are still fashionable enough for them to wear again.  I wore my old Coca-Cola shirt from high school, and Paul wore his leather pants from back in the day and eyeliner a la Billy Idol!  Everyone had a terrific time!

Last weekend we did something we said we'd never do:  We hosted a garage sale.  The money went to help the college students at our church go to Passion 2011 in January.  The students did most of the work, and we made enough money to be a help to them.  And I hope to never host another garage sale again!  (The late night of getting ready and early morning start time wiped me out!!) 

We also started offering a children's church during Paul's talk time.  One of our families lives right across from the clubhouse where we're meeting, so we bring the children there after the singing time.  I think it's going well and will only get better!

I have some thoughts rattling around in my head about being a pastor's wife and hope to blog about them soon.

Happy Saturday

It's late Saturday night, and I'm waiting for Faith to come home from a friend's house.  Joy and Grace have been asleep for a while, and so has Paul.  The friend that Hope has over tonight is sleeping on the couch, and Hope is waiting for all to be quiet to try to sleep.  It's nights like this that not having to be at church as early comes in handy!

After hearing so many good things, we went to see Secretariat today.  And we were not disappointed.  It really is a great movie!  I knew Paul would like it, and I was confident that Faith and Hope would enjoy it.  But I wasn't sure if it would be able to keep Joy and Grace's attention.  I needn't have worried; they LOVED it!  We don't see many movies as a family.  With four kids, that would be too expensive, but this movie was so worth it!  And I really enjoyed seeing a movie the whole family really enjoyed and that was so inspiring.  

This evening we were pleasantly surprised by a group of young singles from our church displayed a row of jack-o-lanterns that spelled "Go Jesus!" in our front yard.  Today is Paul's spiritual birthday:  twenty-one years ago he began his relationship with Jesus.  To mark that occasion, these great people decided to gift us with one of Paul's catch-phrases in such a fun package.  It was so much fun!  (Except for the mosquitoes;  those were no fun at all!)  I'm so glad our friends love us so much!

And to top it all off, Baylor won!!!