When You Wish Upon A Star...

...makes no difference who you are!! We finally made our Disney wishes come true over Thanksgiving weekend. We had a great trip. The weather was gorgeous (mostly low 80's) and the Magic Kingdom was all I imagined it would be.



Friday--
We got into Orlando about 1pm and picked our rental car to drive out to our hotel welcome center (we got roped into one of those time-share thingy's and had to jump through all their (stupid) hoops). After getting our free tix to the park on Sat., we had a simple lunch at the "Biggest McDonald's in the World". It was fun for the girls and M&I got to play Ms. Pacman and Asteroids. We made our way to the Hotel Royal Plaza and unpacked. We settled down for awhile and then hit Downtown Disney for some sight-seeing and then took a Ferry Boat to Old Key West Resort for some fancy (slightly) Carribbean food.



After dinner we returned to Downtown Disney where they were having a kiddy dancy party and Avery jumped right in. After some cojoling and hearing her fave HS Musical song, Maryn finally joined the party too and couldn't drag herself away. It was the funniest and cutest thing I've ever seen. We grabbed hot cocoa from Ghiardelli and walked back to our hotel.



Saturday--
We started with breakfast at Perkins, and then made our way to the Magic Kingdom.



We started with Tomorrowland, had $7 hot dogs for lunch, and then we were onto Main Street USA. After that we started Fantasy Land, but were so exhausted, we called it a day around 6pm. But not before squeezing in a quick visit to Santa. We got back to our hotel and had TGI Fridays for dinner.



Sunday--
We had to go to our (stupid) timeshare thingy at the crack of dawn and left feeling a little used and jaded. We shook it off pretty quickly after getting to the park again and starting where we left off in Fantasy Land. This was our best day because the lines were shorter and we were more prepared. We had lunch with Pinnochio and then continued on into AdventureLand, Liberty Square, and FrontierLand.



We even had time left to go back to Tomorrow Land and finish some rides we missed on Sat.



Before we left we got to see the castle lit up by a swoop of Fairy Godmother's wand and some sweet fireworks too.



We definitely ended it properly. But some of us were more tired than others.



We hit Perkins for a light dinner (after stuffing ourselves with funnel cakes, caramel popcorn, and ice cream at the park on our way out).

Monday--
We had a breakfast buffet at our hotel, and swam in the hotel pool. The heater was broken, and so the water was chilly but still fun for the girls. We checked out and stowed our luggage in our car and hit downtown Disney again to pick up our souvenirs.



We said our final goodbyes to Disney and headed towards the airport where we had Cracker Barrell for lunch. We got back to Detroit around 8pm.

The trip was great. It was a bit stressful at times, but mostly relaxing and exciting and a chance to spend quality time with the girls. We were together constantly and it's the first time in a long time I've been able to just walk around for hours with them holding my hand. I can see why people love it. It's more than the $ it costs to get there, it's really the memories that you come away with that are priceless.

The Trouble With All Of This Lovliness...

...is that it has to be raked up eventually. This is a gorgeous little Japanese Maple tree in our backyard. We barely realized it was there this summer because it is buried beneath some random, huge hulk of a tree that literally overshadows the entire yard (no grass back there either). Anyway, these past couple weeks, the little Maple just popped with color. It's wonderful to look at, but we also came to the harsh realization of how time consuming it can be to clean it all up and dispose of it. [Tangent: Have I ever mentioned the the trash/refuse collection restrictions that are enforced in Livonia? Oh. my. gosh. The list of restrictions is like longer (and probably more boring) than the manuals I write for mainframe software at Compuware! Yard Debris has to be separated from regular trash and clearly marked in an appropriately sized bin. Leaves can be collected in paper bags, not plastic or in "windrows". The list goes on and on literally. I'll stop now.] So you can guess what we did this weekend. About 6 (paper, not plastic) bags later, we are hoping that the snow doesn't come down before the last of the leaves gets scooped up. But it might be nice to have a "white" Thanksgiving.

4 Random Facts about Me

1. I hate roller coasters. I’ve hated them as long as I can remember. All those trips to Cedar Point, I’d be sitting on the bench holding purses, drinks and jackets so everyone else could ride. You know the day after Prom where all the seniors took a trip to Cedar Point? I didn’t go. I’ve stayed away from them for awhile and finally broke down with Mark when we were first dating. We were at the Eastern Idaho State Fair and I didn’t want to seem like a wuss, so I agreed to ride with him and was simultaneously crying and screaming the whole time. We got off the ride and I ran to the bathroom in humiliation and to clean up my mascara-covered face. Needless to say, he still liked me after that, but I swore him to secrecy that he’d never tell his brothers.
2. I rarely puke. I’m not sure about when I was a baby, but as a child I rarely actually vomited. The only incident I really remember was after eating a bad Strawberry Sundae from McDonald’s. It happened in the car on the way home and luckily we had a garbage bag. Because of that incident I think I got stereotyped, but after that I remember not throwing up for a long time. Even when I was pregnant, I didn’t puke, I’d just feel like I needed to all the time.
3. My fingers are funky. I don’t have double joints or toe-thumbs or anything. It’s basically just my index and middle fingers on both hands lean out. So for example, the two fingers on my left hand sway to the left and the fingers on my right hand sway to the right. Who knows why, but it’s like my hands got stuck in a really bad windstorm in utero and are permanently bent. It’s kinda freaky looking.
4. I love thrift stores. I sometimes spend hours perusing them just to relax. When we were living in Twin Falls, they had a thrift store “Rodeo Drive” on Main Street in the old downtown area. I started out at “The Mustard Seed” and then worked my way up through antique shops on either side of the street to “Society of St. Vincent de Paul” and then finished up with the “Idaho Youth Ranch”. Unfortunately the DI was further out, as well as the Salvation Army. I actually had to make specific trips to these stores. Since I’ve been back to Livonia, I’ve found a few regulars…Salvation Army on Farmington and Plymouth, Society of St. Vincent de Paul on Wayne and Hunter, and Value World on Ford and Wayne. I’m still able to satisfy my craving for thrift and finding a great bargain.

Cute Little Things

Avery is doing this funny thing lately where she talks with an accent. It’s not identifiable…not British, or French, or any ethnic stereotypes like you’d imagine, but something consistent and silly in her opinion. I have to admit it’s pretty entertaining when the mood is right. She purposefully mispronounces her s’s and replaces them with “sh” and then kind of puts a southern twang into the word and does this all in a deeper tone than usual. Her favorite word to do this with is “yes”….so it comes out like “yay-ash”. And imagine her sticking out her bottom jaw in a major underbite when she does it. It’s pretty cute.

We were driving to return library books last night and it was warm and cozy in the van. Mark was flipping channels on the radio and I heard some Christmas songs coming from 100.3. He kept going and I immediately told him to turn it back. It only took a fraction of a second for Maryn to shout “WHAT!?!” from the backseat. She not only recognized what she was hearing, but then continued to inform us all that “IT’S TOO EARLY--IT’S ONLY NOVEMBER THE 8th!!” This amused the heck out of me for several reasons. First of all, the fact that she could place a song that quickly…she definitely has gotten my freaky genes for identifying songs, phrases, and faces like a savant. Second of all, that she knew that it was too early…that Christmas is still over a month and a half away, and that if you ingest too much “Christmas” before the actual holiday, you will surely get burnt-out. And lastly, that my little first-grade-know-it-all now knows the precise day and month (from writing it on her papers all day at school). She is a crack-up sometimes!!

And lastly, I called Mark from I-96 around 5:20 to tell him to go ahead and get dinner started. He agreed and when I got home the chicken was defrosted, the oven was preheated, the potatoes were cut (exactly like I asked), he was in process of cutting the “slimy parts” of off the cubed squash, and was getting ready to “drizzle” the olive oil over the vegetables in the roasting pan. It was just so dang cute in it’s own way. I know he knows how important seemingly unimportant things are and he really tries to please me and make sure it’s done the way I like it.

I know it’s probably the same for you all in your own lives. It’s these little things that our loved ones do that make our hearts sing and make us want to shout into the heavens. I’m so grateful to have these people in my life and feel so blessed in so many ways. Every day and every “little thing” is such a treasure.

One-Year Anniversary for Maryn...

...of being lice/nit free. You may recall that it was almost exactly a year ago that Maryn came home with the "scratchy's". My theory now is that it came from that stupid Jack Sparrow pirate hat that was popular last year at Halloween. There was a little boy named Max who was Jack in her kindergarten and he, of course, let everyone try on his nappy, dread-locked, lice-infested disaster. It was only a few weeks after that we started getting the notes in the cubbies to wash all of our linens and winter gear. Then we got the emails from the Center director to treat all family members for preventive measures. Then the Dr. started visiting their class and checking the kids, and teaching the teachers how to check the kids, then the parents, and then the dreaded lice came anyway. As you may recall, that was the longest month of my (and Maryn's) life. It sucked in every way possible. It was incredibly disgusting to begin with...imagining tiny bugs crawling through your hair...laying eggs on your folicles, and those eggs hatching and growing into more bugs. Yuck. It was also incredibly time-consuming. The laundry! Oh, the laundry! It never ended. We bagged up lots of stuff and sent it over to Mom&Dad's, where they washed it and then it just stayed there because I didn't want any kinds of fabric in our house until we were all clear. For a month, we had no blankey's or pillows or stuffed animals to snuggle with while watching TV or reading. It was a cold, spare time. We also had to do the initial shampooing and combing...which literally took us into the wee small hours that first night. We had to go to dr's to get notes, and we had to repeat the nit-checking process every night. The scene went like this...imagine our biggest, brightest lamp, and two chairs. I was in back, Maryn was in front of me. I started at the front of her hair and worked back. Lots of clips held the already checked hair in place, while I combed and separated her fine mountain of never-ending hair with a fine-toothed comb and tweezers. Phrases like "nit-picky" and "lousy" had new meaning for me. But this was not all about me. This was about poor little Maryn too. The poor girl was only 5 at the time, and was forced to sit in that chair while I scraped and pulled and actually plucked out her hair for hours at a time. She had to have the stinky shampoo at bathtime and sleep on plastic tablecloths (at her Dad's). She even had to lie to her teachers a few times because I couldn't afford to take off any more work. She was a real trooper and had to grow up a lot during that month. She also had one of the most spiritual experiences of her life to this point.

We were so exhausted and frustrated with the lice. She used to cry about how much she hated the lice, and why did she have to get it, and she wished she'd never gotten it, and on and on. We started praying more earnestly in our bedtime prayers. Every night. And then every morning. And then at meals. And then before we started the "nit-picking" rituals. Maryn's faith was really tested because after the first time she prayed, the lice didn't go away. I found more the next night. And the night after. They didn't go away as if by a miracle. But they did go away. There were fewer and fewer until they were eventually gone. She learned that Heavenly Father doesn't just take away our trials, and make things miraculously better all at once. But if we are patient and have faith, He hears our prayers, sees our humility, and blesses us. He also gives us trials and experiences to make us stronger and to teach us lessons and to remind us that He is in control.

This is a long story, but the reason it is fresh in my mind is because we had our Primary Program this past month. The topic was "Faith in Jesus Christ". Maryn's class all came up with their own talks. How has their faith in Jesus grown this year? Maryn's teacher asked her class to think about it and she helped them write down their feelings. Maryn's talk went something like this..."I got sick...with head lice...I prayed and it got better." I got a call from one of the Primary Counselors who told me what Maryn was planning on sharing in the Program. She was pretty tentative about it...maybe we could encourage Maryn to choose another experience to share with the entire congregation, she thougt. I concurred. I encouraged Maryn to come up with something different, which she did. However, the new talk never got written down and the original notecard was included in the master Program script. Maryn got to the podium and waited for her teacher to whisper in her ear. She knew it was the wrong talk, but she said the words anyway. "I got sick...with head lice...I prayed and it got better." Of course, she was a little red in the face and the Ward snickered and shot glances in my direction. I knew she knew that it would get this reaction, but she perservered. She got down and returned to her seat. I tried catching her eye, and when we did I gave her a thumbs up and she returned it with her closed mouth little grin. When she came back to our pew after the program ended, she was a little nervous. I told her she did great and gave her a big hug. I think she knew she had done well, and I think both of us realized that this was the talk and the lesson she needed to share that day...unedited and true to life. Maryn's faith in Jesus Christ did grow and for that I am thankful.

All Hallows Eve

Here are the little "ghouls" dressed up for their (short) night of trick-or-treating. We whipped up these costumes from our dress-up box at the last minute because the ones from the trunk-or-treat just wouldn't do for a second run. We were joined by the Griswold's, and Mom & Dad passed out our candy. (Mark was at class that night.) We did a couple streets, and were pooped out pretty early. Things have changed since I was a kid, because the kids got full-sized candy bars at at least 3 or 4 houses. Their loot was seriously enviable this year...lots of chocolate and only one house gave out money, and even that was a quarter and not a bunch of pennies like when I was a kid. The weather was wonderful, and we got back before it was dark.

Halloween 2007=Success.