Just saw this one over the weekend. It was good. My teenager said he enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t an action movie. It made me more interested in that period of history - of what was going on in England, France and here at that time. Of how information traveled between those places in an age before the telephone, the television, before the internet.

I also watched some of the special features, including the one with Zach Hunter, modern day abolitionist, who’s about 15 years old. I have a hard time fathoming that human trafficking still exists. I remember in the past couple of years, a man from the next town over was arrested for attempting to buy a girl from Mexico. It’s right here where I live. I need to figure out how to help stop it. And I don’t want to be too busy in my life to forget. How can anything be more important?

http://www.u23dmovie.com/

There’s a cool widget on the site, but I can’t find wordpress support and I’m just not too good with this stuff! But I figure I probably won’t be going to see them in person, maybe this is the next best thing.

My 12yo is watching Everyday Baking from Everyday Food (I think it’s the name). Before that he watched the regular Everyday Food show. This is a Martha Stewart series… I think it’s on PBS. It’s supposed to be “simpler” for us regular folk, I guess. I’m sorry, but homemade lemon sandwich cookies don’t qualify as “everyday baking” in my world.

Granted, there are a few recipes I think would be doable for my life and there are some cool tips and tools I can pick up from watching these shows - but I guess I’m just out of Martha’s league - even her “everyday” league. And I’m okay with that.

I told my son that I think I’d just like that guy to come to our house and do the baking for us. The cookies he’s making today sound yummy!

my fingers are cold. all day. the thermometer for outside hasn’t seen above the 30’s today. now i know that’s not really, really cold but i’m having trouble keeping warm. maybe that week in florida ruined me? can i go back?

…I went from sweating like a dog at Downtown Disney to freezing at home. Very weird. It was a great trip all in all. We did Disney theme parks every day, Sunday through Friday, but not all day every day so it wasn’t quite as exhausting as it sounds.

Sunday was Animal Kingdom. I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy this park when I first heard of it, but it turned out to be my favorite. It was not too crowded in the morning so we were able to ride Expedition Everest more than once - that is a great coaster… my favorite at all of WDW. We rode Dinosaur first, though - it was more intense than I expected, but it may have been partly due to being the first thing we did on the trip. I also loved Dinoland with it’s quirky retro style - very fun. I liked Primeval Whirl more than I thought I would. We had lunch at Flame Tree Barbecue. Theme park food is always overpriced, but the portions here were good and the food was not really too bad. Later in the day it began to rain. A lot. We had emergency ponchos but our pant legs and shoes were soaked through. We still had a great time in spite of the rain that passed through. We spent quite a lot of time that night blow-drying our six pairs of shoes.

Monday was Epcot, focused on Future World. Soarin’ is amazing! My favorite Epcot ride, hands down. We enjoyed Test Track and Mission: Space, also. We hit the lunch rush at the Seasons Sunshine Fair, food was pretty good. We had some Mission: Space and Test Track Fastpasses that we were unable to use so we hunted around for a group to give them to and found a family sitting in that side of the park and they were delighted to have them. It was pretty cool because they’d hopped over to Epcot from Animal Kingdom and had given away some FP’s over there so it was neat that they got some at Epcot that they could use right away (they said they were waiting for their FP times to ride). We left the park early so we could rest before park hopping to the Magic Kingdom to see the SpectroMagic Parade. Very cool parade!

Tuesday was the Magic Kingdom. We stayed in Tomorrowland and Fantasyland mostly but did venture to the Haunted Mansion before leaving for the day. Lunch was at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe - the toppings bar for the burgers was surprisingly good.

Wednesday, I stayed home with a sick child but my husband and the other boys went for Day 2 of the Magic Kingdom, where they enjoyed Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean and other classics. By the evening, my son was feeling well enough to head to Epcot to catch Illuminations. Before the fireworks, we decided to ride Spaceship Earth, which turned out to be a big mistake because the ride broke down several times while we were on it! At one point I sent my husband a text message (he was in a different car) that said, “Trapped in Spaceship Earth: A Novel Transcribed Entirely on a Cell Phone.” That threw off getting better viewing of the fireworks, but we still enjoyed them.

Thursday, we slept in and headed to Epcot for the World Showcase. Rain was forecast so we wore our Crocs and spared ourselves the blow drying that night. It did rain, so we skipped a few things but still enjoyed the Kidcot stations where the younger boys could get a paper charm affixed to the mask they got at the first country. It was a whirlwind world tour. I don’t recommend the Fish n Chips in the United Kingdom - it was the worst park meal we had all week.

Friday was Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It was more crowded than we’d anticipated based on our research but we were still able to ride the Rock’n Rollercoaster and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror early. We also got Fastpasses for later in the day. We then headed to Star Tours and the Jedi Training Academy, then had lunch at the ABC Commissary (I tried the Cuban sandwich, it was not bad. I didn’t care for the plantain chips.) Then we had to decide if we could hit both Lights, Motors, Action! and Indiana Jones or not. The timing of the shows at this park is very difficult. We don’t have girls so we could easily skip the “girly” shows, but even then we had to decide to only see the Lights, Motors, Action! show. We needed to get out of the park early enough to pack for our trip home because checkout was 10 am Saturday morning. We had seen Indy on our last visit and enjoyed it, but since we could only choose one with our time constraints we had to pass. After the car stunt show, we headed back to the rides to use our FP’s. We did the Tower then when we got to the coaster, they’d just shut it down for technical problems. Bummer! That was our last thing to do that day and we were not wanting to hang around to see how long the delay would be so we headed out and looked for a group of 6 people to give our FP’s away to. We found a group of teen boys and they were thrilled to have the passes (there were no more FP’s left for the day). On our way out we saw the last part of the parade. We did not get to see Fantasmic - I have heard it’s very good, though!

Saturday after we checked out, we headed to Downtown Disney. Picked up a few souvenirs and had lunch at Earl of Sandwich - I highly recommend it! It cost about as much as a lunch meal in the theme park, but the food was much, much better. Like I said, I was sweating like a dog but the day had started out foggy, cool and misty. It was a very weird day! Our flight was slightly delayed by bad weather, but we still made it home before midnight. When we pulled into the garage and shut off the engine, I could hear our smoke alarms blaring. This usually means that a battery is weak or one of them is dusty. They are all wired together so they make quite a racket. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to come home to, but we were thankful there was not a fire and thankful we were able to quiet the alarms and get to bed.

The boys were all great travelers, even the 4 yo… even in a packed Orlando airport at the end of a long week and a long day. We saw Willie Nelson board a plane for New York - there were a couple of ladies who were pretty giddy about that - they got their picture taken with him and got his autograph. The three younger boys slept pretty much the whole flight home. Even though my tummy does a flip on takeoff and landing (and anytime there’s turbulence), I still prefer it over the 2 day drive. This evening the youngest said next time we go to California we need to take a plane - he vividly remembers that drive last summer, ha ha!

My feet are still sore, but it was a great trip! It is soooo good to be home!

“We never go to Hooters!” LOL! Tim Hawkins is one of my favorite comedians - highly recommend checking out his website or youtube for more clips.

…Microsoft Streets and Trips software

…stapler (I just had this a day or two ago!)

…my youngest son’s 5th Christmas ornament (that I bought in October and never got on the tree because I can’t find it)

…gorilla pod - oh wait, I just found it, yay! My 4yo asked me if I could attach it to the rides at Disney and take our picture while we’re riding. I wish! THAT would be cool!

UPDATE: The stapler was found, the software was found… but the ornament is still missing. I must have put it in a very safe place! But I’m thinking that maybe listing my missing items here will help me find them faster. When I misplace my car keys and need to leave soon, I usually call my husband and ask him to pray that I find them because every time I do - they are found within about a minute.

This should be good. Tomorrow there will be seven 8 and 9 year olds at my house working on their “whittling chips” for Cub Scouts - this means they have learned how to safely use a pocketknife and can carry one to Scout events. It is a big deal for these boys. I have requested that every boy have a parent stay for this one. I think we’re stocked up on band-aids and hopefully we won’t need any trips to the ER.

I think I’m getting more flexible as I get older. I don’t mean physically - don’t ask me HOW I ever laid on my stomach on the floor in college and did homework. I can’t get up from that position nowadays. I’m talking about not getting bent out of shape when my days’ plans are changed by some unforeseen event. I still have a ways to go, but I like it when I realize that it’s not making me tense when a wrench is thrown in my day.

It’s not that I’m terribly structured anyway, but for instance, yesterday we got all our schoolwork and chores done so we could head out and run errands in the afternoon - I had a LIST even. We hit the first 2 places but as I was pulling into the third place, my 4yo lost his cookies right there in his seat. Really, the only thing that was niggling in my mind was wondering if this was a virus that would go through our family and mess up our FL trip. LOL! (He was fine the rest of the day and slept all night so I hope it was just carsickness or something.)

A big test will be on our trip. Will I remember to roll with the punches? Now that I know about “touring plans” and fastpass strategies, will I be more relaxed or more stressed? Will it be better than the last trip where we just wandered around from attraction to attraction… probably waiting in more lines than we needed to? I hope so. We had 2 children get sick on that trip. And we drove it. And on the way home I started to seriously consider driving off the side of the road to put us all out of our misery. At least I won’t be in charge of the plane! My youngest was not quite 1 year old then… now he’s about to turn 5. My inlaws were staying in the condo with us that trip, it was a tight squeeze in beds - this time they’ll be in a different unit with one of their daughters and her family.

I think it has the makings of being better than last time. Someone could still get sick. Things won’t likely go as smoothly as we hope at the parks. Hopefully… I’ll remember to breathe and stop and smell the Disney roses… or whatever magical flowers they have.

we’re going to Disney World this month. My inlaws are letting us stay in one of their timeshare units (so kind). Thanks to frequent flier miles, we are able to fly instead of drive. I kind of forgot that we’d be going on this trip (we had to say yes over a year ago), so I haven’t been doing any planning until the past week. I learned that there are people that start their planning loooong before their trip.

I heard about TourGuideMiKE and his site has been a great help in figuring out what to do when. I can see why people plan so far ahead now and wish I had started sooner, too. There’s like a whole subculture of Disney lovers out there. Personally, I think their prices are way too high - just to get through the turnstiles! But we’ve committed to it now so instead of groaning about what it’s costing us, we’re planning to enjoy it.

So much to do and we need more luggage! We usually drive everywhere and make do with tote bags and such, but that won’t work too well this time. Okay, back to my lists and TourGuideMiKE!