Archive - November 2008

Hollywood Studios

Oh yeah.  Blogging.  I forgot all about it and left you all in breathless anticipation of my account of how I had a way better time than you did last week. (neener neener)

Actually, I came down with a pretty bad cold (is there such a thing as a good cold?) and I got all stuffy and headachy and sore throaty and wasn’t so much feeling the blog love. (so neener neener back at me!)

Now here I am, generally no worse for the wear.

At Hollywood Studios (previously known as Disney MGM Studios) we ran into the green army men while walking around.  Boo thought they were funny, so we stayed to watch.  Next thing he knew, Boo’d been recruited!  Please note that he’s the only child correctly “at ease”.


Here they are, striking typical bucket o’ soldier poses.

While wandering around the backlots, we found this snowman:

Remember our Star Wars themed Halloween?  Well, Luke and Leia found some sort of Star Wars vehicle to drive.  (please note that I am not geeky enough to know the name of the vehicle)

I kept asking Boo if he wanted to attend the Jedi training that was going on at various times.  He kept saying no until I asked him why.  He told me he didn’t need to attend Jedi training because he was already trained.  How could I forget – he’s known as Master Boo around the neighborhood.

And now…Epcot

We took a week off of school before leaving for vacation because I just had so much to do.  Now everybody is having a really hard time settling back into our normal school routine.  Boo and Pumpkin Girl would so much rather goof off than work on handwriting.  I’m not helping matters when I walk into the kitchen and sing out, “Hi Hooooh!”, causing them to sing “hi ho!” back at me.  To which I replied, “Ha!  I knew you were dwarves!”

And now I sit here, avoiding school, editing my pictures to put on my blog and wondering if it’ll get warm enough today for me to go outside and pull out the flowers killed by last night’s hard freeze.

It was in the mid 70’s the day we went to Epcot.

Before I get to the pictures, I have to tell you that Boo loves Donald Duck as if he’s his long-lost brother.  I don’t know what it is, perhaps because the two of them have anger issues?

So on our very first day, Boo found himself a Donald Duck hat, which you can see in yesterday’s pictures.  We stood in line to meet a bunch of characters, including Donald.  Boo was pretty giddy as our turn with Donald approached, especially because we’d been advised to ask Donald’s handler for a permanent marker and that Donald would sign Boo’s hat.  And so we did and he did.

There wasn’t a lot for Bip to do in Epcot at first, except wait for everyone to go on Soarin’ and Test Track.  So we made a point of going to Turtle Talk with Crush (dude!) and riding Finding Nemo.

Here’s Bip, pretending to throw crabs at the seagulls who periodically said, “mine! mine!”


Here we are in Norway.  I visited this church in Oslo once upon a time.


And now we’re in China.


Look!  I finally made it to Germany!

Did I ever mention that we’re a little tiny bit French?

Boys – here they are after riding Maelstrom in Norway.  They went straight to the weapons and armed themselves.  All three of them, all at the same time.

Not Exactly a Feast Day

But today is Mickey Mouse’s birthday!  Happy Birthday, Mickey!  To celebrate, here are the highlights of our time at the Magic Kingdom.  Did I mention that this was our first trip to Disney World?


Bip and Pumpkin Girl met the Little Mermaid


She kissed Bip!


Boo got to drive the Jungle Cruise boat!  He even got a license for it!


During lunch, the boys waved to the people on It’s a Small World.


Some of the people waved back.


Nobody got to be King of England.


Or Queen.


But we all got Mickey Bars!


Bip was tall enough to ride his first roller coaster!


He got a little congratulations card from a cast member, too!


I topped 380,000 points and Pumpkin topped 200,000 on the Buzz Lightyear ride.


At the end of the day, we spotted an ice castle.

Unforgettable

Veni Vedi Mickey

We came, we saw, we enjoyed Mickey Mouse.  We had an amazing trip with my cousin and his family, we had great weather and not so great weather, we saw the space shuttle launch, we took lots of pictures and bought too many souvenirs.  Nothing overly dramatic happened either during the trip or back at home, though about an hour after we got home I got a call informing me that one of my good friends had gone into labor earlier in the day.

I’m really tired, but it’s all good.  But now I’ve got to go upload the bazillion pictures I took.  I’ll share them later…

Boys’ Fort

We have a lot of empty houses here on base, which isn’t as bad as you might think.  More empty houses means more room for the rest of us.  Boo and his buddies have been rather resourceful in commandeering the backyard of one of those houses as their HQ.  They were actually quite fond of attacking their sisters at their club – it created quite fuss.  I suggested that the boys move to a different house, perhaps to one on the high ground, thus appealing to their inner soldier.  These are the sons of military officers, after all.

They chose an empty house behind ours.  The advantage is that I can an eye on them right from my computer.  I can blog, I can supervise.  The girls are left alone, the boys have the high ground.  It’s all good.

Over the summer the boys scrounged up various and sundry items left on the curb as people moved out.  They’ve got a couple of wood pallets providing cover from incoming fire (mine?), a table and a couple of topiaries.  Last week I noticed they had even gotten themselves a Weber kettle grill.  WHAT is it about men and fire?

Seeing the grill made me giggle.  It’s like they are all set to bivouac up there.  All they need is a water buffalo and they’re all set.


This is the view of the HQ from my house.


Inside the HQ, looking down at my backyard.  Note the clever use of discarded mop poles to prop up their barricade. Shades of Les Miz?


Here’s their main Area of Operations.  Boo informs me that the smoke controller thing on the grill is used to activate the force field.  Right.

Boys.  Gotta love ’em!

Veteran’s Day

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.
- George S. Patton

Have you hugged a veteran today?

Wool+Hot Water=

FELT!

Remember this bag I started on?

Well it only took me a few days of knitting it during snatches of free time.  I embroidered a trailing vine and some berries so then it looked like this:

Just a bag, really.  But then my friend Sheril, who had been crocheting a wool bag of her own, came over and we felted!  Stuck the bags in pillow cases, put them in the washing machine with HOT water and an extra long cycle, then sat back an knit other projects.  Every 10 minutes or so we checked on them until the bags had felted.

Behold

How cute is that?

I love how the embroidery gets totally incorporated into the bag.

The pattern can only be found in the Fall issue of Interweave Knits magazine.  Or you can buy a kit from the designer on Etsy: SheKnits for Knitters.

She sells complete kits to make the original Dumpling Bag and the Double Dumpling bag, which is what I made.  I’m all about letting other people do the shopping and letting all the supplies I need arrive at my front door.

What I’ve Done

In the last four days I

Prepared for Friday’s homeschool group craft
Sent multiple emails about our Girl Scout meeting next week
Got the papers signed officially appointing me the Girl Scout leader
coordinated 2 families worth of breakfast food to be delivered to our hotel
cleaned all our bathrooms
mopped all the bare floors
talked to Bip’s doctor to renew his prescription
roasted pumpkin seeds
sent in the paperwork for a Girl Scout scholarship
took down the Halloween decorations
arranged transportation with the Disney Magical Express
made new covers for the children’s autograph books
wrote an article for the Homeschool Classroom
found our Vacation Club cards
washed 3 loads of laundry
packed almost everything
printed out luggage tags and address labels

I did not do any school.

I still need to

move our CDs with pictures to the fire safe box.
buy and pack snacks, ponchos and blister pads (I delegated that to Philip)
type up our daily itineraries
order Pumpkin new folklorico shoes
clean the kitchen and entryway
call my friend Niki
pack our carry-ons

We’re not leaving until Saturday morning, so I feel pretty good about what’s left of my list.  I’m a little annoyed with myself because so much of it could have been done weeks or even months ago. I got really overwhelmed trying to plan this trip, so I put it off til the very last second.  Do you ever do that?  I was like a little kid with my hands over my ears, saying “nah nah nah nah, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”  Which is not really the way to plan a trip.  But what’s done is done and we’ll be fine.  We’re going to have a great vacation with mild weather and low-ish crowds.  Boo may have to wash some dishes to help pay for admission tickets now that he has to pay full adult fare and Bip needs a ticket now, too, but that’s ok.

Alright already, I need to get off the computer and get busy!

The Day After

Much has been said about yesterday’s election.  I’ve read a lot of blogs this morning, mostly by Christian, homeschooling moms, just the kind of people that Senator-Elect Mark Warner called a “threat to what it means to be an American.”  They are disappointed and worried and I don’t blame them.  I am very glad that my husband’s retirement from the Army is already in the works.  But I’m worried about what happens when he enters the civilian workforce.  I’m all for rendering unto Caesar and all that, but really, where is the motivation to get good grades, find a good job and work hard to achieve your own piece of the pie?  It’s hard not to worry that after 20 years of service to our nation, at a price we never bargained for, we’ll finally be able to make some real money, only to see it “redistributed.”

But you know what?  We will all be OK.  We are not in charge here.  We never were.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Charles L. Allen:

“When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.”

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