Happy Birthday Daddy!

Today my Daddy turned 65! He came to Disneyland with Daniel and I and used his free birthday admission. Though his knees only let him be there for about 2 1/2 hours, we went on Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion (the Nightmare Before Christmas version), Winnie the Pooh and Big Thunder Mountain. I wanted to take him on Its A Small World and show him the Disney characters they added to the ride, but it was closed. We had a nice lunch at Applebee's on the way home. We'll celebrate with my Brother, Aunt and Uncle on Saturday. It should be fun too. Happy 65th Birthday Daddy!!

Happy Birthday Raven!

Today was Raven's 13th Birthday. Ugh. She's officially a TEENAGER now. Heaven help us. For her birthday I chaperoned Raven, her sister Amber and 7 other teenage girls (Miranda, Melanie, Madelyn, McKenna, Stephanie G, Stephanie K and Taylor) on a trip to the movies to see "Where the Wild Things Are." We walked to and from the movies since there were too many of them to fit in my car. Then I took them back to Trina and Gregg's empty house to feed them pizza and sparkling cider and listen to them scream, sing, giggle and generally make noise for a few hours before Trina and Gregg got home. It really wasn't that bad. In fact, they reminded me a lot of me and my friends when we were that age. It was really quite entertaining. And I am proud to say that I didn't have to kill any of them. I can't believe Raven is a teenager now. I remember when she was in diapers. I remember the first time she told me she told me she loved me, in a soft little whisper, while she was sitting next to me in her little carseat. I remember reading her bedtime stories and doing the voices for the characters. I remember scooping her up and singing to her when she would cry. I remember her kindergarten graduation. She'll be graduating from 8th grade this year. They grow up too fast. Happy Birthday Sprout!

Disneyland with Roo

Whew! I've been so busy I haven't had time to blog at all this month! Well, let me get a little caught up. A couple weeks ago, my friend Ruby (aka Roo Bee Dee or Roo for short) and I went to Disneyland together to bask in the Halloweentime goodness. We've been talking about going together for a long time, as we are both annual passholders and Disney fans. I remember when we used to work together, we would write Disney quotes on her dry-erase board and quote lines from Disney movies at each other. ("More tea?") We went on Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy (I didn't care for it - the "ghost" thing was icky and the sub-par projection effects didn't go unnoticed by Roo, a talented Media Artist), the Haunted Mansion Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as many other of our favorite attractions. In a "weird but true" coincidence, when we went on the Winnie the Pooh ride, guess which honeycomb we ended up riding? That's right, we got the honeycomb named Roo. How cool is that? The highlight of my day had to be sharing Toy Story Mania with Roo. I showed her all the secrets I have learned over the past few months of playing and together we both set personal bests on our scores: Roo got over 158K and I got over 209K. We went on it 3 times. I think I created another TSM addict LOL. Roo also showed me her 2 favorite dining spots, so I now have 2 more places to eat at the Disney Resort that are inexpensive, air conditioned and not crowded. We closed out the night by watching the Halloweentime Fireworks display and seeing Zero fly over Sleeping Beauty Castle, then heading off to enjoy a late dinner. We will definitely do it again very soon!