DisneyWorld 2010!

Earlier this spring, we began thinking about what we wanted to do for our summer trip 2010.  Last year we flew to Southern California and went to Disneyland, Sea World, San Diego Zoo and Huntington Beach.  We decided that it was time to camp again and Jack and I began talking about a week in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.  Having never been to Tennessee before, we sent away for the big Tennessee tourist book and poured over the pages.  We figured it would be a good two day drive from Houston with the national park being on the eastern side of the state.   We also figured Pigeon Forge would be a good place to base our trip.  The more we investigated though, the more this area seemed like Branson, Missouri which is where we camped summer 2007.  We loved that trip!  It was so much fun.  But, Pigeon Forge shares many of the same attractions and parks as Branson, and we just didn't feel like rehashing that trip again, only much further away.  While the Smokey Mountains attracted us, we would much rather see them in the fall when color abounds, as opposed to oppressive summer.  It didn't take Jack long to voice a second opinion: DisneyWorld.  (Except said in Jack tone: DisneyWorld! DisneyWorld! DisneyWorld!)  As soon as that option was on the table, the girls expressed their agreement and it wasn't long before I was begrudgingly booking another week long trip to the World.  (Mind you, I love DisneyWorld as much as the rest of my family, but we did Disneyland the summer before, and DisneyWorld the summer before that.)  I just didn't want a lackluster vacation because we have become so accustomed to Disney.

Well, I should not have feared that, because it was another absolutely magical, fantastic trip.  We are just a Disney family, I guess.  The magic is always there and we never fail to have anything other than a near perfect trip.  I had booked a week at a Disney's Beach Club Resort in the Epcot resort area.  We had never stayed there before, but it accommodated the five of us in one room and I had read good things about it.  Well, we were blown away by this resort complex.  The pool, Storm Along Bay, is the best and biggest of all of Disney property and it lived up to it's reputation.  Our room was spacious and beautiful as was the resort itself.  Epcot was less than a five minute walk from our room!  That was awesome!  There were movies on the beach at night and the Boardwalk hotel (with actual Boardwalk and accompanying entertainment were just a 10 minute walk around the lake.  In short, we LOVED it.  So much to do and see.  It was hard deciding whether to go to the parks, or hang out at our resort.

We visited all four parks that make up Walt Disney World....some more than once.  We ate many great meals and took the girls to see La Nouba one evening.  Everything was wonderful.  Yes, it was hot.  And yes, the parks got quite crowded at times.  But by getting to the parks right at opening and taking advantage of Fast Pass, we rarely waited in any lines longer than 5 minutes.  We went back to Storm Along Bay every afternoon and/or evening and cooled off in the gigantic pool complex.  It was so much fun.  Try as we might, we just can't not have fun at DisneyWorld.  It holds magic for us and we get to all act like kids.  Jack was on a giddy high the entire week and that was just contagious. 

Our arrival at Beach Club

The lobby of Cape May Cafe restaurant

 A giant rainbow when we first arrived!

The grounds and a very small part of Storm Along Bay

The lobby of Beach Club Resort

About to wake Anna up on our first full day! She slept on the daybed.

A little of the room decor.  Claire is grabbing something out of the fridge in the room.

Our first day: Magic Kingdom of course!  First castle picture of the trip.

Jack floating in the lazy river part of the pool

Claire and Megan hanging out

Anna coming out of the wading pool.  It was huge and only about 2 feet deep...great for playing and sitting in the sand bottom.

The girls lounging

More pictures of the pool area

Looking back at our hotel from the pool

Another pool picture

and another

Another pic of our room...Jack and Meghan ipad-ing & texting

Claire and Jack in front of Jack's favorite place.....the quick food shop at our resort

Anna with her Angel and Stitch purchase with CB

This is the view of our resort's courtyard at night

This is the view from the courtyard looking across the lake to the Boardwalk Resort

and this is the view of the Yacht & Beach Club Resort from the Boardwalk

Anna ran into Baloo during our day at Animal Kingdom...

...while her sisters rode Expedition Everest (the first of 4 times that day!)

The girls in front of the Tree of Life

I think I will leave the animal pics for a separate post, but these tigers were amazing!

The Jammin Jungle Parade

Mickey!

Meghan enjoys her refreshment in "Africa"

Claire checks out the Stitch pins.  I cannot tell you how many she has collected!

You may have noticed the lack of captions after the first day.  I have somehow messed up the formatting and I can't figure out how to caption the rest of the photos.  I will try to figure it out (Honestly, I am the only person alive who can't blog on a Mac.)

Wicked

We spent the 4th of July doing something a little different this year.  Instead of bbq and fireworks, we ventured downtown to the Hobby Center to see the touring production of Wicked that evening.

We loved it!  The music, costumes and sets were all fantastic.  And the story, which is really the back story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, is so clever and original.  I will never look at the Wicked Witch (Elphaba) the same way again. 

The girls really enjoyed the show!  Meghan had been to one previous Broadway production show when I took her to see Mama Mia at the Hobby Center, but that was probably 7-8 years ago.  Claire and Anna had never been before, and all three of them loved not only Wicked, but the theater experience.  One thing I do have to give Houston is that the quality and quantity of theater productions in this city is amazing.  I believe I read somewhere that Houston is second only to NYC in terms of the number of theater seats this city has.  Pretty impressive.  I wish we took advantage of it more often.   But it isn't cheap, that's for sure.  Taking a family of five to the theater for one evening is akin to a month's worth of groceries!  Totally worth it to see Anna's impression of Galinda's "Toss Toss" though.  Girl has got it down PAT.

I shall now rename this blog the Kris Allen blog

So Kris Allen has been touring all summer with his band and one of his stops was Galveston, TX, about an hour south of Houston.  Of course, I jumped on those tickets right away and the five of us drove down on July 3rd to see our second Kris Allen concert.  (We saw him perform at Six Flags San Antonio back in March.  I know, I know....dragging my family all over Texas to see Kris Allen perform is a bit fangirly.  I admit it.  But, our girls really love him too, so it's a very family-oriented obsession.)

The concert was awesome.  You must see Kris Allen live sometime!  He is such a great performer and every single one of his songs sounds better live than on his cd.  (This is a huge compliment because I love his cd.)  Plus, he covers Michael Jackson, Allison Krauss, Radiohead, U2 and The Beatles just to name a few.  Seriously, who does that?  And he pulls every cover off originally and convincingly.  Plus, as Meghan would say, his band is "tight."  Simply put, they are a talented, fantastic band.

Okay, so the concert was amazing.  When it ended, we headed out of the venue and heard some people shouting over to the side and went over to investigate because Kris is known to come out to greet fans after his shows.  It was his tour bus!  (A gigantic Prevost....that bit is for my parents.)  There were about 40-50 of us just waiting outside the bus and after a few minutes, Kris stepped out with his tour manager!  It was so exciting.  The crowd basically mobbed him, but he was so gracious and patient with everyone.  The girls and I hung back a bit because dragging my family around for concerts not withstanding, I do not like acting like a crazy fan.  Also, I'm not into autographs, so I was just having fun watching him do his thing.  But after about 20-30 minutes (and Jack standing around semi-patiently), the crowd died down and we were able to get in line and get a picture with him.  So we got this nice family shot above that Jack took!  Thanks Jack!! (Ignore my deer-in-headlights eyes.  I believe the entire time, I was repeating, "I can't believe this, I can't believe this...")  It was a quick encounter, but he was so nice.  Claire asked him for a hug and he said "Sure!" and gave her one.    Seriously, he signed and took pictures for everyone who wanted (and that number quickly grew...probably well over 100 people.)  So yeah, I love him more than ever now.

Unfortunately he's not coming back to Texas on this tour but I believe he's playing Atlantic City this weekend.  Who's in???

Midsummer Afternoon's Blogpost

End of July already?  No way.  I dread flipping the calendar over to the next month.  Back to school month.  Back to scheduling life down to every minute month.   Back to....eh, you get it.  Does anyone else dread it as much as me?  Aren't moms supposed to be happy when their kids go back to school?  Not me.
We have had a somewhat, uneventful summer punctuated by some really fantastic events.  (Is that an oxymoron?)  The girls have had lots of unstructured time and we have had a lot of lazy days.  (Is that not the purpose of summer?)  Lots of sleeping in, tv watching, book reading, and internet surfing culminating in late nights where I am usually the first to bed.

But amidst the monotony have been some fantastic times:

+ A Kris Allen concert that would have been fantastic in it's own right, but then: WE MET HIM (visual proof coming shortly)

+ An awesome evening at The Hobby Center downtown to see the touring production of WICKED 

+ Another fantastic weeklong vacation at DisneyWorld in Orlando  (It's official, we are that weirdo Disney family.  Yes, we realize there are other places to vacation.  But. the. magic.  it. is. inescapable.)

I will blog separately about these things.  I just had to get them out there.  To remind my daughters that we HAVE done some fun things this summer.  (Yeah, it's getting a little long in the tooth around here.  Maybe I should scratch that paragraph above complaining about the S word.)

Also, I've played around with the blog design a bit again.  I dunno....too busy?  I like the colors and the design, but I'm just not too sure yet.  And, I am not even going to go there about the whole lack of blogging thing.  Just.  You know.

Has this place been condemned?

My poor little dust-covered, neglected blog.  I just spent some time sprucing things up around here hoping it will spur me to rekindle my blogging efforts.  Stay tuned.