Disney World: Part 1

We've been back from Disney World for about five days and have brought with us so many magical, wonderful memories.  I shared a bunch of them on Facebook. . . but I would refer to that compilation as: "The Highlights".  Over the next several days, I will share on this blog the "Extended Version" of our vacation.

On the night before we left, our next door neighbors came over with little Mickey Mouse treats for us.




And party hats!  We've really hit the jackpot in the neighbor department.


Saturday morning:  The day we've all been waiting for!!!  I put up a countdown on our closet door beginning in August with 70 numbered circles.  We finally got to pull off the last one!


Just before we left, the Meades came over all dressed up and with a little goodbye song.


It went a little something like this. . .


I think we hit the jackpot in the family department too. :)

And we're off!!!


We intended to get to southern Georgia that first night on the road.  Around 8pm, we reached a town that we wanted to stop in, but due to Georgia's State Fair, there were no hotels available.  We kept driving.  45 minutes later we stopped in another town.  No hotels.  This time it was because of a Luke Bryan concert.  We just had to keep going.  We let our fingers do the walking after that and didn't find an open hotel on our drive route until over 100 miles into Florida!  That made for a long drive the first day; but then our Sunday drive was a two-hour piece-of-cake.

I reserved a room at a Marriot in the Disney Springs for our first night in Orlando.  It felt so good to arrive and the hotel was really nice.  The kids wanted to go swimming right away and the pool area was wonderful.




We sat in the hot tub for a little bit, but it wasn't really needed.  The Florida air was hot!




That evening, we ventured into Disney Springs and ate at T-Rex.

We met up with some friends from our church in New Jersey who moved to Florida.  

The kids were pretty impressed by the Lego store.




There were several areas where the kids could build their own creations out of Legos. Graydon cried when it was time to leave. We tried to explain to him that we had a week ahead of us that would be filled with so many fun things.  But all he wanted to do was play with Legos.

On our way out, we watched the volcano erupt over Rainforest Cafe. That was pretty cool.  Curtis didn't want to leave that!


But we needed to get back and get some good rest that night.  The next day we were going to Epcot and checking in to our resort!

Home Landscaping Project

When we first saw this house, we liked it; but it was missing one major thing:  landscaping!  The huge yard was filled with trees, but the ground along the house was completely bare.

This project has moved in phases that began in the spring.  The first project was to knock down the fenced-in area next to the garage.  It's super helpful when your neighbor owns just about every tool, large and small.


This pen was put in place as a dog run for those who lived here previously.  Since we don't have a dog, this was just wasted space for us.  And kind of an eyesore.  We didn't take a before picture of this area, but it can be seen in this photo from our Easter egg hunt.  


Once the fence was down, some dirt was brought in so that we could plant some grass.


Graydon got to ride along.


Child labor!  It's already looking so much better - and much more open.




We bought some pavers to create a little garden area and some hydrangeas to fill it up.


He finished after the sun went down.


A few weeks later when the grass started to grow in.


With the side of the house done, we turned our attention towards the bigger project: the front!  It doesn't look bad. . . just kind of plain and unfinished.


We put some pavers down to create the garden space but hit a roadblock that kept us from planting for a long while: the gutters.  Whenever it would rain, instead of going down and out the gutters, the rain would just fall off the edge.


And that created a huge puddle of water on both sides of the porch.




We can't plant anything in those conditions!

We thought that the gutters needed to be cleaned out.  But that wasn't the case.  There was, however, an obstruction in the drainage areas that needed to be fixed.

Once that was finished, Andy began the job of trenching and adding tile (piping) to the bottom of the gutters so that it could all go underground and drain out further down in the yard.  I didn't get any photos of that process; but it was a lot of work for my dear hubby.  But now that it's complete, we don't have any huge puddles by the porch and there is no piping to step over.  With that part finished, we could finally start planting - about four months after this whole project started.

This is sort of a before picture of the front.  We added the pavers, though they are not in their final spot in this photo.

After:  Andy planted some mums in front of the porch.


Before

After: In addition to the mums in front, Andy planted two varieties of boxwoods, some drawf burning bushes, and rhododendruns.


Before:

After

Since our house is so wide, it's hard to get a good "After" photo of the whole thing.  I had to stand pretty far back, making difficult to see all that was planted.  But once it all starts growing, it's going to look great!


We're still going to fill in some of the spaces with Hostas.  But that may not get done this year.  And eventually, we'd like to create some sort of a path that leads from the driveway all the way around to the front door.  But for now, we are very happy with the progress that's been made.

In other news, we celebrated our 13th Anniversary last week!  The kids spent the night at their cousins' house and we enjoyed a nice dinner out.

And this is just a random: I looked into the living room one Saturday afternoon and overheard Graydon talking to his Ferb about how they could watch "Wreck-It Ralph" together.  I thought that was so cute.

 

In about 38 hours, we'll be on our way to Disney World!  When we come back, I'm going to have TONS of photos to share!

Hello Fall!

Bella was in cloud nine.  Any time that she gets a chance to visit a farm, we can count on a happy girl.


On this particular day, we fed apple slices to llamas, goats, and sheep.




The boys were there too.  Graydon enjoyed the apples as much as the animals did.


Curtis felt a little shy, but he eventually came around.  (Side note: When Curtis found out that we were going to a farm, he changed into "farm clothes".  And in his mind, farm clothes are a plaid shirt and jeans.)




This past weekend was our town's annual Heritage Days.  Graydon is officially a Cub Scout and he spent part of the weekend at a booth selling popcorn.  


I spent several hours at the 'Pioneer Village' with the kids.

They sawed a log.


Walked on stilts (definitely popular with them).


Pet animals.


And played tug-of-war.


Sunday afternoon was the parade.  Our church's youth group had a float.


The theme of Heritage Days this year was 'Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow'.  We changed the song to 'Don't Stop Thinking About Sunday' and recorded in a couple of weeks prior and "performed" it on the float throughout the parade.


And our group won Best Float!!!  The judges must have liked our song. :)

Also. . . we had some exciting mail come this past week: Magic Bands!  Nine more days until Disney!!!