Yes...Again.

Yes, we were just there.  Yes, it's obscene and a little over the top.  Yes, I am sure it lacks appreciation from our kids because we frequent this spot more often than the local public library.  And, yes, eventually we will stop.  For now, if you tune in here...you are just going to have to deal with it.

Last weekend we headed to the Mouse's House to kick off our holiday season.  Everywhere you looked there was holiday cheer.  Everywhere.  You'll have to excuse my obsession.  With my birthday being in the December, just a week away from Christmas...I view this as my time of the year.  I love this time of the year.  The trees are beyond gorgeous right now with the fall colors, jackets are no longer an option, and I honked at a house the other night because it was the first I had seen with Christmas lights.  I love it.  So, when we plan our trips to DL, we do it at certain times so that we enjoy everything about it.  Luckily Matt's birthday is in November and was a great excuse to go and kick off Christmas!

I am short on pictures, which I'm guessing is fine because really after some point they all begin to look the same, just older faces.  My phone, which if you remember took an unfortunate swim, was working fine after sitting in a tub of rice for 28 hours.  I was pretty impressed by that whole rice thing working, because replacement costs were astronomical and not an option.  My relief was short lived.  My phone wasn't updating correctly and I didn't understand why, so I hit the restart button and that was the end of my phone.  The screen went completely black.  It was weird because I could pick up incoming calls and talk, I just couldn't see anything.  My point in all of this is that the previous trip to DL, I had really just used my phone the entire time to take pictures and so I didn't bring our big camera...now, I had no big camera and no camera phone.  Not good.  And, my husband REFUSED to let me use his phone to take pictures because he said I had bad phone karma and I couldn't touch his!  Whatever.  Good news is that I have a brand new phone now thanks to a top secret classified mission that Rich and I conducted.  It was worth it for him to help me because it seems like when I don't have my phone, half of my body is gone and I'm not easy to live with.

Here is Main Street all done up for Christmas.

The boys in front of a Christmas tree in Toon Town.

Mickey's House.  I love that Mickey still uses the old school lights.

And here is my only shot of Matthew.  Who now tells me to get lost when I want to take his picture.

And Ryan's goal of the trip was to have his picture taken with as many friends as possible.

And if you are willing to part with ten bucks, these cute little apples also get you in the holiday spirit.  Notice I took a picture of them still in the case....

   

I will warn you that we are going again in January and then that will be it for a while.  Promise. 

The Great Eight!!

Ahh...it is upon us.  There is an eight year old living in our house.  When...did...this...happen??  Because in a blink of an eye, he is eight.  And we just love him.  We love him for his seriousness.  We love him for his quirkiness.  We love him for his stubborn, impatient side.  We love him for his sweet, caring side.  We love his strong independent ways. We love him for his quizzical nature about everything.  We love his argumentative side.  Because all of these things make up our Matthew, and we think he is pretty fantastic.

I had all these pictures to share from the last couple of days and his birthday celebrations, but I am sad to say that they may be lost forever because I took them with my phone and yesterday it fell into a "water basin" and hasn't worked since.  I snapped this one tonight of him for two reasons.  It captures the strong, stubborn kid who said I want my hair long because I like it that way and I don't care what anyone else says!!!   And I love that it shows that he finally lost his THIRD tooth at the old age of eight, but he still looks like a little boy. 

HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS MATTHEW!!!

An-ga-ry Birds!!

I know that Angry Birds is spelled incorrectly in the title, but I had to because that is how Ryan pronounces it, no matter how many times we correct him.

So, another Halloween for the books.  Can I just say that I am so happy this only happens once a year??!!  The process of not only the making the costume, but picking the costume is exhausting.  We started this MONTHS ago.  The boys initially had said that they wanted to be angry birds, but as time went on...just like a Christmas list, it changed a thousand times.  I had went on Ebay right away to see what the angry bird costumes looked like and how much they were going for.  The only one I found was $39.99 and I remember turning to my mom and saying..."We could do this, right?  I mean, this looks doable and I bet we could do it for much less."  Because I really can't see dropping eighty bucks on something that will only be used once! 

Luckily they turned out okay, although Ryan told me that it didn't do it to look like the guy on the game at all.  Whatever!  I sat down last week, glue gun in hand, and went to work.  I spent about three hours on them and I didn't stop until they were done.  I want to say that the glue gun needs to go down as one of the greatest inventions EVER!!  I know someone must have said this about 30 years ago and I am a little behind the times as far as crafts go, but come on!!!  These two costumes were made with scissors and hot glue!  Fab-u-lous!!!

One White Angry Bird!  (Ignore the placement of the beak...I had no clue it would end up there, nor was I changing anything!)

One Black An-ga-ry Bird! (Ignore his beak placement as well)

Ready to go!  Notice the egg in Matt's hand?  He said that the white bird drops egg and he wanted me to make an egg for him to carry around...I said grab one of the plastic ones from Easter for crying out loud!

And no, I couldn't leave the Notorious TED out of this!!  Teddy has his own An-ga-ry Bird costume.

And they are off!!  This was pretty accurate for the night, Matthew 10-15 feet in the lead.

And the Crivelli's were kind enough to stay in Lodi this year so we could stop by for our traditional first stop!
Julie having some fun with the birds.

More and more people in our neighborhood are putting out decorations for Halloween.  I predict that Christmas lights will be out shortly.  That's just how crazy our neighborhood is! 

Someone loves this guy just as much as we do!

Look, it's Mario and Luigi!!  Better known as Hayden and Conner!!

Look!!  Even Nana dressed up for the big night!

Field Trip and Football

Howdy!  Last week Ryan went on a field trip to Countryside Farms.  He was so excited.  He's at that age where riding a bus is still fun and exciting and it might have been the highlight of his day, rather than the actual pumpkins and farm.  He was also so excited that Rich got to go as well.  Rich loves going on field trips and tries to go on as many as he can.  I love that Rich loves it, because I really don't love it and I feel he should enjoy a large quantity of kids in an unstructured setting as many times as possible.  Does the heart good!!

Here is Caden and Ryan.  They are best little buddies and Caden's older brother is on Matt's football team.

Bus rides with friends are the best!

Silly goose!

Here they are right before planting seeds.

Ryan and Caden hiding out in the tunnel.

Being silly.  Are you thinking what I am think???  Where have those hands been?

I love this picture because it looks like the kid believes at any time the tractor will move and he is in control.

Ahhh...football season.  I have a slight confession.  I am a little sad that football is ending.  Last year at this time I was BEGGING for football to end.  Remember our "team and spirit building year" when we played for 10 weeks and got creamed 10 weeks in a row?  This year it's different.  They are not bad....not bad at all!  In fact, it turns out that when a team is not that bad...kinda more fun to watch.  This Saturday we play our final game and its a big one against the Packers.  We are the only team to tie them and the last game when it ended in a tie, we actually acted as if we won the game.  True story.  So this weekend were are going all CLEAR EYES, FULL HEARTS on them!! 

Last weekend Matt had one of his better games of the season.  He caught two punt returns and he ran one of them down the field to the two yard line.  He caught a pass in the end zone for an extra point.  Again...a more exciting season for all!

Here is Matt and Stephanos breaking up a pass.  Look below...

See number 7 in the middle of the picture, he caught the ball that Matt and Stephanos tipped and he ran down the field almost scoring a touchdown.  What is so cool about this is that it is the first play Luke has had all year.  He hasn't caught a ball or had a run play. We were all screaming and cheering for him and it was more fun to see his teammates get so excited for him.

Matt and Stephanos again.

Matt and Jake.  What I love about this picture, the entire reason I took it, is that Jake is the poster boy for "ready, set, go" and what is Matt doing?  Standing there with his hands on his flags.  One of these kids is not like the other!

Blocking for Jake!

As one season ends, another begins....basketball season starts next week!!  Woohooo!!!!!

Holy Blogness!!!!!!!

Pace yourself, this is going to be the mother of all posts.  I know it has been a while since the last, but I can explain...I've been gone.  Like, haven't been in my house for longer than 36 hours since October 1st.  So let's catch up on what we have been doing on our fall break!

Join me in a picture walk....

Welcome back to the Magic Kingdom...it's been a while since we were here and we were so excited to be back!!!

First ride of the day!  Alice in Wonderland.

He's pretty excited too.

Tea Cups early in the morning, not a fantastic idea....but someone has to go with them!

Look at us...one the train!!  And more importantly this is a huge deal because this entire trip was STROLLER FREE!!!  Let me say that again....STROLLER FREE!!!  It was fantastic!!!  We used the train a lot!  The freedom of not having the stroller is amazingly liberating.

The second of firsts for this trip was that we were finally able to use our time share and stay at the villas at the Grand Californian.  It was amazing!  The best part about staying here was that I had to run back to our room to get jackets one night and from the back of California Adventure to our room was seven minutes.  Mommy likes that!

And another first...we actually used the pool!  Very fun!

And I went down this water slide.  Officially my first water slide ride since 7th grade.  it was so much fun, but when I realized that I was the only one over the age of 13 doing it, I made it a solo run.

The boys loving our room!

Little bit more room to move around and the mini kitchen was heaven especially since we bring a lot of food with us.

The view from our room.  I absolutely loved that we could hear all the people and music throughout the day.  We had a bet going the first night on whether the lights in the park would be on all night.  Only a few were on. 

Taking advantage of the balcony and having a snack!

Goofy's Sky School turned out to be our favorite "new" ride of the trip.  Ryan was so brave to go on  it and loved it!

It did not take long for them to pull out the bed from the couch and "rest".

Because we were staying at our new place, we got early entry to California Adventure.  Here are the boys mapping out where we were off to first...you know, like they haven't been there before.

Gorgeous day!

Me falling behind as these three race off to Toy Story Mania! 

Rich and Matt on the Ferris Wheel for the first time.  Not such a good ride for people who get motion sickness...just sayin'. 

My boy right before Goofy's Sky School.  The hair is growing on me...cutie!!!!

Lunch break at one of our favorite restaurants.

The Angry Birds shirts that made an appearence nightly.

LOOK WHO'S FINALLY BIG ENOUGH FOR THE ROPE SWING!!!  WOOOHOOO!!!

Matthew was chosen to do the Jedi training.  We thought he would challenge Darth Vader, but it turned out that it was Darth Maul.

Preparing....

Sword training...

The battle...

After a gorgeous start to the vacation, rain moved in on little vacation.  Our first ride in the front of the monorail.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

 After Ryan had been to see him several times, the family finally all went at once.

Hey look!!!!  FRIENDS!!!!  We met up with the Flemmer's on the last day of our trip!  Here is Matt and Ryan with Kendall and Lauren!!

Look at this group!  Half of them were prepared for the weather!  As much as we would have loved to spend more of the day with them, we were SOAKED and had to leave.  It was to the point of becoming miserable.  Luckily for them over the next couple of days the weather got better.  However I want a make-up trip...we need to do this again!

Great overall trip to the Mouse's House.

Change of gears....we came home Wednesday night from Disneyland and then Friday morning I left for West Virginia!!

Look who I got to spend a few days with!!!

On Saturday we went to lunch at one of Noelle and Greg's favorite restaurants.  I love this picture for two reasons...1. She's so damn cute!  2.  It screams..."All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!"

At her favorite place on earth...the children's section at Barnes and Noble.

A view from Noelle's back deck!

On Sunday Noelle and I headed to Pittsburgh to do a little shopping.  I brought my camera from school on the trip and did not take a single picture with it.  I have a new phone that decent pictures, so I found myself just using it.  And, prepare yourself...they are all taken from the car at a high speed!

Here is the stadium where the Pirates play.

A pretty bridge...

Heinz Field.  It was a game day and the place was rockin'.  Here is a crazy thing on game day EVERYONE, I MEAN EVERYONE wears Steelers shirts!  Or they are have on black and yellow, I have never seen anything like it. 

Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory

 Noelle's fish tacos..

Our dessert...pumpkin pecan cheesecake.

 Another view of Heinz Field.

I took a TON of pictures of the landscapes of Pennsylvania and West Virginia not only because with the leaves changing for fall, but because when we were here two years ago in March...the place did not look like this!!  There was not a leaf on a tree and all the rolling hills were brown because the snow had melted and the grass was dead!   I am happy to report it redeemed itself with the views this time. 

On Monday we went to a place call Ali Baba.  It was Mediterranean food....located at the Morgantown Airport.  No joke!  This picture was taken from the window by our booth!

 This is Ali Baba...

Noelle's lunch, she tries things more than me!!!

Gyro for me!

Matt was disappointed we didn't eat at his favorite place.

Me and the BIG SIX YEAR OLD!!!!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATALIE!!!!!!!