Walt Disney World Vacation Photos 2009

I noticed as I posted the Pinewood Derby photo links that my previous post was posted during our trip to Florida and I never posted our arrival or any of our vacation photos. I took lots of fun pictures.....too many to resize and post in my blog so I uploaded the best to my Photobucket account and if you click the title to this post it will take you to a slide show of our Walt Disney Vacation Pictures.

Pinewood Derby

Justin had a great time at the Pinewood Derby today. He came in third in his Den and won Most Creative in his Den. Gary and Justin worked for a couple weeks on the car and did a really great job, especially for their first attempt at building a car out of a block of wood! Click the title for a link to the photo album.

Perry, Georgia

Hi Everyone,

We drove 15 hours yesterday and made it to Perry, Georgia. Hopefully we have about 6 hours left for today. It is presently 6:20 am and we getting ready to leave. The kids were amazingly good yesterday, even through our one hour of just sitting on I-75 in Kentucky. Apparently a truck tipped over and was blocking all of the south bound lanes. We stayed in a cheap Howard Johnson's last night, but it was clean, had free wi-fi and has a free breakfast. We are pleased and know the hotel my parents booked for us will be much nicer!! :) The only disappointment from the kids is that we didn't go swimming last night because we got in later than we had hoped we would. Even though they didn't have that energy outlet they were also really good in our room and watched the Incredibles on TV until the fell asleep in their beds. Gary and I went to sleep when they did and I can't say I am feeling well rest this morning when our alarm went off at 5:30am but I will survive. Well it is time to be off!! More coming soon! Danielle

Floor Hockey starts

Justin and Megan started playing Floor Hockey with their teams this morning. They both did a great job and had a good time. The only person who isn't as thrilled by our Saturday AM activity is Kyle. This year instead of just sitting through one game, Kyle gets to sit through two sets of games. It's too bad they don't have a team for his age level, with all his energy Kyle would be great a Floor Hockey.

I am posting this blog entry on my laptop which made its way home to me from the repair shop yesterday afternoon. I spent a frustrating afternoon trying to be patient while attempting to reinstall all my necessary programs and files. I think I am most there, although things are never quite what they once were, but I am certainly better off than when it wouldn't work at all. Anyway hopefully this new hard drive will continue to function and I won't have any further troubles. Meanwhile I remain the back up queen.

For those of you not in Michigan we remain pretty much house bound with our frigid weather. It warmed up this morning to only -1. To top it off we are getting snow supposedly 4-6 inches worth. I think I will end this post and go start packing for our trip to Florida this coming Friday! The kids are getting pretty excited about going to Walt Disney World. :)

January Updates

I think in my last post I mentioned we were going to paint our basement. We spent the first three days of our two weeks off painting. While we still have too much stuff, the rooms look fresh and clean again. Luckily we got our project finished right before I got layed up with my pneumonia. If we had waited we probably wouldn't have been able to do the project over the holiday break at all! I am thrilled to have the project complete!!

Sledding Fun!!

Hello Everyone,

It has been awhile since my last post, so I better get caught up. I was laughing as I read my last post. I was having a very productive day and out of the blue decided to back up 90% of the content on my 4 month old laptop. I will never be sure why I decided to do the back up instead of the long list of other Christmas things that were on my list....but it turn out to be one of my better decisions. Four days later my computer starting acting slow and not functioning properly. I discovered that my Internal Hard Drive was going bad fast, so fast I wasn't able to back up the few things that I hadn't done 4 days previously. And as annoyed as I am that my laptop is still in Texas being repaired......I am so relieved that I didn't lose all my content. I store a ton of photos and digital scrapbooking stuff....not to mention all the other stuff I try to keep track of and organized in my life. So that day of organizing turned out to be such a huge blessing. I also realized how spoiled I had become by being able to use my laptop up in the kitchen where I spend most of my time. Now that I have to use the desktop in our basement I just don't make the effort as much. Thus you haven't seen a post in a month. Not to mention we had a couple of holidays in there and I also had a wicked bout with pneumonia over Christmas as well.

This last week I am finally feeling more my normal self and my energy level is returning to normal. It was nice to have the kids go back to school and get back into our routine. My parents were able to come for Christmas. They weren't able to get here until the evening of Christmas Day due to the weather but we were glad they were able to make it. Ryan and Lisa tried to come and join us on the 26th but after two hours they had to turn around and go home due to icy road conditions. Luckily they were able to join us for a few days the following week.

At present we are enjoying a snowy weekend at home. We got about 10 inches over the weekend. This morning Gary and I were able to take the kids sledding. Everyone had a great time. At least once we got there, getting 3 kids ready to go out in the snow isn't that much fun!!

We have also been finalizing our plans for a trip to Disney World in a couple of weeks. My parents have graciously invited us to join them at their timeshare condo in Orlando for a week in January. So we are looking forward to a week in the warmer weather and doing all the theme park stuff! Since last fall when Kyle was still giving me a hard time about being completely potty trained for preschool. I told him even if he didn't want to go to preschool he still had to be potty trained to go to Mickey's house. The other day Kyle told me that he was going to tell Mickey that he was putting all his wee and poo in the potty just so he could come give him a big hug. We will see if he has enough guts to actually give Mickey that big hug! And it did work he doesn't have accidents too often these days!! Kyle was 11 months old the last time we went so he has no memories of the trip at all. This time I think they are all at ages where it will be magical for each of them.

I will post some pictures from Christmas and sledding. Enjoy!! And Happy 2009!!!

Snow Day update

It finally stopped snowing about 2:00pm. We took a ruler outside and we have 9 inches of snow. Our backyard is relatively flat, so the kids and I shoveled the snow off our elevated patio to create a mini hill. They took turns using the sleds to slide down our slope. I don't have any pictures however as snow was blowing like crazy and I didn't want the camera and lens to get wet. After our snow adventures we came inside for some yummy hot cocoa! We even used candy canes for stirrers, whip cream and marshmallows!! I didn't accomplish much else today, but I did get some computer maintenance and back up completed. Gary is on his way home now. He tells me he accomplished what he had to get done and now he can officially take 2 vacations days next week and be off until the new year. (Except for phone calls and email checks :) I'll take it, we haven't seen him much lately!

Snow Day

The kids are home for a SNOW DAY today. Today was the last day of school before Christmas Break. Luckily we had school parties yesterday. Gary went to Kyle's preschool party and I participated in Megan's in the AM and Justin's in the afternoon. By afternoon I was partied out! It is 8 am and we already have quite a bit of snow on the ground and it isn't supposed to slow down until after lunch. Right now they say we are getting 1-2 inches per hour. We live on a main road and usually it stays plowed and clear but the few times I have looked out it has been cleared but it doesn't stay cleared! ( The bottom pic is from my front door. Beyond the crabapple tree in our front yard is the road, but in the picture you can't tell what is what under the snow!) Traffic is pretty light as well. However, it didn't stop Gary from getting up earlier than usual and making his way downtown to GM for the day! Hopefully it will be is last before he uses some vacation added to the shutdown and is off for the holidays!

He can't wait I have a big painting project waiting for him in our basement! I don't feel to bad though, I wanted to get it done 7 years ago when we moved in our house....so it is long overdue and I have been patient! I need to get the patching started so all the holes and dings will disappear under the fresh paint.

The kids have BIG plans for some fun in the snow. I slowed them down a bit as they wanted to go out immediately after breakfast but I tried to hold them off until late morning or lunchtime and hopefully the snow falling will slow down. Our black dog was white after going out for her morning potty break. Hopefully I will be back later today with some fun snow day pictures!

Through the years

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

I started looking through the files and was swamped with memories. The time seems to have flown by, it is amazing how much the kids have changed from year to year.

12 days until Christmas

Today we went to visit Santa Claus. We love to visit the Santa in the Renaissance Center, which is where Gary works in downtown Detroit. In years past I would take the kids down and we would meet Gary for lunch and go see Santa. This is our first year with all day school for Justin, so we made alternative plans and went downtown on a Saturday for lunch and our Santa visit. We took the long route home and gave the kids a first hand view of some of the blighted areas in Detroit and tried to give some explanations about poverty and the like. I think Megan and Justin understood at least some of it. Megan kept saying, "this kingdom is very sad and dirty". I haven't thought of Detroit in any fairytale like scenerios lately, but I thought it was cute that she kept using "kingdom" rather than "city".

We are praying that the Big 3 get some government assistance really soon or things will be looking really bad for us and most everyone around us in SE Michigan. So keep us in your prayers. Meanwhile we are pretty much prepared for Christmas and looking forward to getting together and spending time with friends and our families in the upcoming weeks. Danielle's parents and Ryan, Lisa & Matthew will be celebrating together in Michigan for Christmas this year. We started playing card and other games during our Thanksgiving visit and are looking forward to getting our competitive streaks going again during our next visit. Megan and Justin are finally old enough to play some more adult type games and enjoy being part of the fun!

We hope you all are happy and well!

God Bless, Danielle

Megan's Nursery Rhyme Recital

Both Kindergarten classes participated in the Nursery Rhyme Recital today. Megan was happily participating! Such a change from last year when she would just stand on the stage and not sing or do any movements. Megan is wearing a light blue shirt and is standing at the very top on the right side. Unfortunately 8 children in Megan's class were home sick today with the stomach flu today, so luckily we are going to get a repeat performance next week during their Kindergarten Thanksgiving Feast! And I can't leave out Kyle. He hasn't had any recent performances but he sure looked cute cuddling with his bear! And I realized I never got a Halloween photo posted either, so here it is! (you will want to go to the bottom and pause the music before you start playing the video clips)

Justin's artwork at Book Fair

Justin had his artwork displayed at our local Barnes and Noble this week for the Hill Book Fair that was held there. He was quite proud to go into the store and show us his masterpiece!

October Updates

Megan and her friend, Sydney, made a trip to Libby Lu's today. They had a great time and so did their moms! I just noticed I haven't posted an update for ages. Sorry, we have been BUSY! One more week and soccer will be over for the year. I have been heavily involved in the school's PTO and our huge Jog-a-thon fundraiser. The event and the award ceremony were great successes!!!! Most of the other committees I am involved with are events of a much smaller scale. I have several friends involved and they all pitch in, so it is actually pretty fun to participate. The committee I am most excited about is the school yearbook. That is right up my scrapbooking alley!!

Justin and Gary went to Cub Scout camp this weekend. They stayed in a cabin with lots of other scouts and their dads. It is kind of cold and rainy here this weekend. Hopefully they stay dry and warm. I am sure they will have fun regardless!! There were lots of activities planned to keep them busy. Hopefully Gary follows instructions and gets me lots of good pictures!

Kyle is really enjoying preschool, at least most days. I was surprised today to hear him reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to Megan this afternoon. I didn't know he knew it!

I will be helping at both Justin and Megan's class Halloween parties this week. The kids are so excited to go Trick or Treating!!! Justin's class also has a field trip to the zoo this week. Gary is chaperoning. Justin thinks that is pretty cool. So lots of fun picture taking events coming up!!! October always seems to be a big picture month.

I hope to get more scrapbooking done now that the Jog-a-thon is over,so hopefully you will be seeing more pictures soon. Happy Halloween. Danielle

Blake's Orchard and Cider Mill

Camping at Port Crescent

Roller Skating

Megan's T-Ball layouts

Justin Baseball Layouts

First Day of School Layout

Here is my layout of the photos from last week of the kid's first day of school. I am getting a lot more scrapbooking done now that I have a laptop and can sneak in a few minutes here and there. It was more difficult when I was tied to the basement computer. I also work while I watch TV with Gary in the living room after the kids go to bed.

Justin's best friend's name is Carter, they met two years ago when they both attended the Young Five's Kindergarten and stayed best friends all through last year in their regular kindergarten class and it appears it is continuing again in 1st grade, they are happy to have the same teacher again. There are a lot of coincidences between Carter's family and ours,to start with his mom's name is Danielle and he also has a younger sister who is 5 and is now in Kindergarten with Megan. This has thrown us together with Carter's family frequently for playdates, sporting events and school. We have become pretty good friends. The funny part is we don't discuss it, except afterwards and laugh, but Danielle and I must think alike because we are constantly dressing our kids alike. Notice the bottom right picture, that is Carter and Justin. We did not discuss which shirts they would wear the first day of school. And I can't tell you how many times this summer at T-Ball, Safety Town and Soccer Camp Megan and Sydney (Carter's sister and Megan's friend) had their hair styled the same, down to the color of hair bands holding their pony tails or pig tales. They already had matching shirts at this events because you wear the shirts they provide but people kept asking us if they were twins. Just funny coincidences.

Today is Carter's 7th birthday and after school I have to pick Justin up (rather than the bus bringing him home) so he can get ready for the party at Chuck E. Cheese. I am picking up 3 other friends and taking them all to the party. Afterwards I have to bustle home, drop everyone off and run to the PTO meeting. We also have curriculumn nights on Wednesday (Kindergarten) and Thursday (1st grade) this week. It is where you go meet the teacher and get the scoop about her plans for the year. Oh and I can't forget soccer practice for Megan and Justin on Thursday as well. The arrival of fall is keeping us busy! But so far the kids love being back in school.

Last year Justin used to make books (daily) and go through a lot of paper. While it drove me crazy to see him use so much paper, I just bit my tongue because it was a good cause. Over the weekend Megan decided to take up where Justin left off. She (on her own) decided to make an alphabet book. One letter per page! Then she decorated each letter and is quite proud (and so am I) but I need to introduce the idea of using both sides of the paper. I couldn't get my stapler to go through all the papers. I am going to have to get brads to hold her book together.

Kyle's first day of preschool is tomorrow. I am sure I will have a report and pictures for that occasion as well.

1st Soccer games

Today Justin and Megan had their first soccer games of the year. Gary and I had to split as they were at the same time. Since Gary is Megan's coach, he went with the Kindergarten girls and I took Justin with me to watch the 1st grade boys. Justin is playing with most of his friends and thinks it is great. Click the title to go to my Photobucket album with pictures from Justin's games. Hopefully I will get pictures of Megan next week.

Our first week of school went well. The kids love school and riding the bus. Justin is anxious to join Cub Scouts.

First Day of School

click on the "First Day of School" title above to go to my photo album with pictures of Justin and Megan's first day of school. Justin is excited to be a first grader and Megan is thrilled to be going to school. She told me she was going to school and going to learn how to read today. I think she thought it could happen in one day. Both kids like their teachers and are excited to go back again tomorrow. :)

Tigers game

Pictures from a Tiger's game we went to in June. We split a partial season of tickets with some friends this year. It has been fun attending games.