Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Wordless Wednesday ~ July 4, 2010

The heavensent30k Group Pic

Good times...great friends...great race thru Magic Kingdom ;)

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Wordless Wednesday - Project Whisper

A perfect post for Wordless Wednesday!

Thank you to my many friends ~ :)





And a special thank you to the other half of the dynamic duo for my late night encouragement ;)

Monday, June 21, 2010

All the Way to 10k Party..the Twitter Version

I think it was March, 2009.  I signed up for a twitter account.  I had NO idea why, either.  I think my first tweet was something along the line of..

I signed up for twitter today because I thought the little blue bird was cool.

Yeah. Seriously.  I had NO clue what I was doing.  I had signed up for twitter to serve as an easy access to updating my facebook page.  I had a stupid phone at the time, so simple text messaging was all I could do.  It seemed to serve a purpose.  And then, as my good friend would say, I had my "a-ha" moment.

In September '09, I had applied to the WDW Mom's Panel & tweeted about it.   A few of my friends had responded to my tweet, but then I started getting new followers...and Erin Foster (@MomsPanelErin) started following me & wished me luck.

And I haven't shut up since.

Twitter had been crazy lately & accurate tweet counts had disappeared.  I was so excited when they came back Saturday morning...just a little over 200 before I hit my 10,000th tweet.  Thats a lot of communicating!  Later Saturday night, I decided to go for it..I would hit 10k Saturday night.  I sent this out to my "tweeps" :


And the party started!  Amanda(Disney Every Day)  suggested we sing a song (Ice Ice Baby). Charles tried to sing Kumbayah.  We talked upcoming Disney trips, Star Wars Weekends & Conventions.  We talked about vacations, kids.  We even joked about making t-shirts to commemorate the "event".  But, 90 minutes & 110 tweets later..

Promise me you'll always remember...you are braver than you believe and stronger than you seem & smarter than you think. ~Christopher Robin to Pooh

All in all, 10k tweets is an accomplishment, but its just a number.  Its more about the relationships & the people that have touched my life in so many ways.  The friendships that have been started.  The lessons that have been learned.  The community that has been so gracious to accept me...my random babbling, my proud mommy moments, my super awesome Disney missions, various pictures & links to various cheesy 80's You Tube songs.  The community that has accepted my super-DIS-functional (get it? DIS for Disney? lol..ok I *thought* it was funny) family..The Boy, Mini-Me, Future Headache & Princess Peanut..and has really taken the time to get to know them!  I so appreciate when y'all remember the things that we share that are going on in our lives!  It means a lot!

Every one of you has helped me reach the 10k mark...and I thank you!!  For those that were there that night to help keep me "tweeting" away, a super special thank you!!  Check these people out if you get a chance..and if you are not following them or tweeting with them, you should be!

And these are in NO particular order ;)

Nicole - @njoysiscaretti - Talk to this gorgeous chick abt scrapbooking, make up & dance
Briana -@BufferflyBrie - Get to know this aspiring new actress before she hits the big time!
Mark - @MHWeaver913 - Fun loving Disney Dad
Charles - @charlesaguillon - Great Dad, Hubby & Friend! Lives too far away from the Mouse..needs to move closer :)
Vanessa - @nessaaguillon - Charles's beautiful wife! You seriously could not meet a nicer couple than these 2!
Jim - @JimGarth - ok so he's a self-proclaimed #moron..but we love him anyways!!
Jared - @Jaredsward - Just a super great guy! Total fun!!
Scott - @bigdsp - another super fabulous Disney fan!
Shaene - @shaene_o_mite - great Disney lovin', adventure traveling, Village People look-alike friend
Amanda - @amandatinney - If you only follow one Disney gal, this is the one! She really is Disney Every Day!
Jillian - @JL_Davis - This girl loves her Disney Cruises, scrapbooking & NASA!  She went to a NASA tweet up, too!
Elisabeth - @itsmydinner - another great Disney fan ;) Not afraid to speak her mind & call out my fave 80's songs as cheesy ;)
Kathy - @Katly123 - This girl was brave enough to go thru high school with me & still talk to me on Twitter!! Loves NASA & her pets!
Brent - @the4orce22 - Resident Star Wars Expert, Disney Fan & great dad ;) Not afraid to "get his geek on" :)
Angela - @stitchlvr - The girl loves Stitch..what more can I say?
Traci - @TraciLeigh - This girl is my long lost soul sister! Ghost Hunting, Fondue eating, Sex & the City watching, Disney fan ;)
Jackie - @jjzmgailey - This gal is my soon to be a whole lot closer Toy Story Midway Mania riding buddy! Scrapbooking & Disney are her thing!
Paul - @PaulChadkin - One of my super great Disney friends! A great friend to watch Fantasmic with!
Tracy - @tiggerlover75 - Fabulous stay at home Disney Momma :)
Puddintain  - @disneymom1218 - great Disney mom :) Always takes the time to check on ya & see how things are!

My 10k tweet is a quote from the original Winnie the Pooh stories.  I felt it was perfect. "Promise me you'll always remember...you are braver than you believe and stronger than you seem & smarter than you think."   Someone somewhere thinks the world of you.  You are brave & strong & smart.  Use these to do good in the twitterverse.  Make someone smile.  Its contagious & will help make the world a better place.  Promise me.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me!! Love you all!!  Looking forward to the next 10k tweets!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Tower Suite

If you missed the beginning of this story, check it out here

Okay, so its not the Boardwalk or the Luxor, but this is West 192.  And any kind of upgrade, especially the FREE kind, is so exciting!  Especially when it is called the "Tower Suites"...  and its after 4am....  and someone had waay too much caffeine while driving.

The front lobby at 4am
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On our way to our room
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We found our room on the 5th floor..and I have to say, it was a nice room.
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Lots of floor space, a huge closet...and a large window with a fabulous view (which we really appreciated at 7am!)

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The arrows are pointing to hot air balloons.  What a beautiful sight to wake up to crystal clear skies & hot air balloons just floating past my window!  It definitely helped make a stay in Kissimmee a great one!

Friday, May 14, 2010

Living with a Neurotic Disney 2 year old

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No one said life with a 2 year old would be easy to understand.  But, when you can understand your 2 year old, there most certainly are times that you wish you & everyone around you couldn't!  Hello, my name is Maria, and I have a Neurotic Disney Kid .  As you can see from the above picture, Princess Peanut can navigate her way around a Disney park at the tender age of 2 (yes, i am proud!).  She can also speak her feelings & retell the events of the day.

Last weekend, while at Hollywood Studios with Princess Peanut, I met up with a group of friends.

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@RoraBorieAlice, @JL_Davis, @shaene_o_mite, Shaene's wife & @disneyworlds

Meet my friends Aurora, Jillian, Shaene, Shaene's wife & John.  Princess Peanut met them.  And this is what she had to say...

"Rora" - I like Rora. I go see Rora. I pack my suitcase.

"Jooeyan" - Jooeyan gave me a leaf. A BIG leaf.  We like the ducks.  I go see Rora.
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"Sheen" - (pinched her nose at Shaene MOST of the day) I gave him some chickies.  Sheen smell.

"John" - John gave me choco chip cookie. Yup, gave me a cookie.  And my tummy doesn't hurt.  Pack bathing suit. I go see Rora.

Now, if it isn't already obvious, Princess Peanut is IN LOVE with her Rora.  Just loves her to death.  And while only spending a portion of the day with Jillian, Jillian really made quite an impact by finding her the BIG leaf.  Princess Peanut has a thing for leaves right now.  She carefully held onto that leaf until we got to Epcot later in the day.  She was sad that Jillian was not with us, but left the leaf at Epcot so it could stay "with its friends."  John has spent the day before with us, so he is no stranger to Peanut.  She likes him because she can "scare" him.  And then she laughs uncontrollably!  And then there is poor Shaene.

I really have NO idea (I promise!) why Princess Peanut decided at lunch time to pinch her nose when Shaene walked by & said hi to her.  Most of the time when he looked at her, she did the same thing.   All I know is, by the time Illuminations was ready to start, she had looked past her earlier feelings & shared her baby chickie crackers with him.  Any sharing of food is a sign of acceptance from the 'Nut.

I am really impressed with how much a 2 yo can retell.  Especially days after the fact.  While packing her snacks in the diaper bag for tomorrow's trip to the World, she told me she wants to see Jooeyan & John again.  She has her "plink" bag of toys packed to go see Rora.  And she wants to see "Sheen" too.  She has fishie crackers this time.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Too much caffeine at 5am makes you wake up at 7am & blog about the night before

What a long night!

We had everything packed & ready to go by 11:30 last night.  We were ready to head out to Orlando for the weekend..all we needed was for Future Headache to come back from Busch Gardens Grad Night.  The busses were to roll in between 12:30-12:45 am.  Since being instructed NOT to be late picking her up, we left at midnight & parked & waited.

And waited. (1am)

And waited (1:30am).



Slightly before 2am, I had corralled my very awake & super hyper middle-schooler-for-6-more-weeks.  She informed us of all the night's events which made driving so late at night easy for me ;)  Finally, pulling into our hotel just before 4am, we were checked in, parked, car unpacked and headed to our room.  We were excited, as the hotel has a mini-golf course thru the courtyard, basketball hoops, and our room was facing the pool...the kids were excited.  All we needed now was to get some sleep.

Well, at least I thought we were.

When we tried to unlock the door to our room, the key worked, but the inside latch was locked.  Was someone in that room?  Scared that someone might freak out on us, we pulled the door shut & ran back over by the stairs.  I called the front desk & they asked me to come back to the lobby. Ugh.  If this was a premonition on what the weekend was going to be like, I was not going to be happy.

I drive up there(and yes, left everyone else sitting on the sidewalk with ALL of our stuff) and put on my "Hey, I realize its 4am & I have been in a car since MIDNIGHT, but everyone makes mistakes" smile.  Holy cow did it work.

I asked the man if there was anyway to put me in a room in the same building since we had already unloaded & he looks at me like I am insane.  He then says....

"Ma'am, I have already made you new keys.  We upgraded you to the Tower Suites."

Ummm....ok ;)

Can you say "Be still my heart???"  An upgrade?  A free upgrade??

Needless to say, everyone repacked the car & we set off to find a new parking spot & check out our new room.  Maybe I will get to touch Davy Jones after all this weekend!