Playing with Kimmy

There are FOUR new posts today...So keep scrolling.

On Wednesday, we went outside to play again, so that I could rake all the leaves off the patio. While we were outside, Kimmy came over to play with us. We played for about a half hour outside, then it was too cold so we went inside. (By the way, I was able to rake most of the leaves into a pile, I just need to go out again today and get it all cleaned up.)

Kimmy showed Boston how to dig in the leaves.

The phones for you.

I think the flash was too bright, she closed her eyes in all the pictures I took of her with Boston's Mickey ears.

She kept telling me the cow was broken...(the letters are magnetic, and come apart)

Boston to the rescue...He found the head and put it on for her.

Trick-or-Treat

The lightsaber from Dollartree, Zariph will buy all things Star Wars for Boston.

Boston loves climbing up on this stool. It's right by the window so he can stand on it and look out.

First Snow

Tuesday was our first snow of the year. I really wanted to go out with Boston and play, but we didn't go until after naptime, so most of the snow was already melted. Here are some pictures from our adventure: I thought I was bundeling Boston up, too much and that we'd be taking some things off when we got outside. Luckily, I had bundeled him up that much, it was SOOO COLD!

See? There's some snow in this picture...

Carving Pumpkins

Monday night for FHE, we carved pumpkins (we got free pumpkins last Saturday at J & J, including a hay ride). It's been many years since I've carved a pumpkin, I thought we could just use a knife, but Zariph wanted templates, so I went out hunting for something. I found a kit at JoAnn's for two knives and 10 templates to choose from, it was $9.99, but was 60% off! Score! Here are some photos from our fun evening:

I stripped Boston down because I thought he would get messy. He actually didn't care that much to get his hands in it, he just watched us.

Can you guess what Zariph's pumpkin will be?

Can you guess what my pumpkin will be?

Ta-Da!

The finished projects...A dragon and Frankenstein and his wife dancing in front of the full moon.

Halloween Decorations

I've been meaning to post these pics, but was a little busy organizing all the Florida vacation photos and working on the video, that I'm just getting around to it now. Here are a few of my favorite Halloween decorations:
My front door...I bought this little holder probably 5 years ago after Halloween when it was clearenced at JoAnn's, but never did anything with it until this year.
My cute pumpkins...Thanks to Rachael for the idea and supplies, I just accessorized them.

A little wax Jack-o-Lantern...I don't think it will last many years, Boston likes to throw it and I noticed a little crack in it. It's lit up with the battery opperated tea lights - love those things.

Disney World - Part 2

Here's the rest of our trip, I'll get the pictures in when I can:
On Wednesday, we went back to Magic Kingdom. The weather was a lot better this day, it felt like a nice warm fall day back in Utah - not humid really at all. We had a great time riding all the rides we wanted. We also met Alice in Wonderland, she was very nice. That night there was the light parade, which was really neat. And a fireworks show over the castle. A person dressed as Tinkerbell flew out from the top of the castle on a zip line, to somewhere out into the park, she was really high up there.
Thursday we went to Animal Kingdom. It was a little warmer this day, but still okay. My favorite ride at this park was Mt. Everest. It's a rollercoaster that goes backwards and down steep drops. It's awesome. The park closed at 5 p.m., so we went to Rainforest Cafe, which was just outside the park. Boston loved the gorillas. I took him up close to look at one and he would turn his head and grab onto me really tight. After dinner we went to Hollywood Studios for their night show, "Fantasmic". The stadium is huge! It holds like 10,000 people! And the show is awesome! There's fireworks, movies showing on the waterfountains, characters come through on boats, and Malificent turns into a huge fire breathing dragon, which Mickey slays with the Sword in the Stone. We had to go to the show Thursday night, because it wasn't showing on Friday, the day we were going to be at the park.
So, Friday we went to Hollywood Studios. They have a couple of new attractions since we were there last. They have American Idol, we watched three guests sing and then we got to vote for our favorite. Another new ride was the Toy Story ride. It's a 3D ride where you play Midway games and try and get the most points. So of course, Zariph and I were a little competitive on this ride. It was lots of fun! Friday night we had to do all the laundry and pack up because we had to check out of the condo the next morning. There was a little problem with the dryer though, after drying the first load for three hours the clothes were still wet! At this point I was too tired and needed to get to bed and hoped it would dry during the night.
Zariph took out the clothes during the night and let them air dry and put the next load in the dryer to start. Since we had this little problem, Saturday morning, I stayed back and finished up the laundry and packing while Zariph took Misty and her family to the airport and his parents and Teliece to Animal Kingdom. This was our extra day to go to any park and ride whatever we wanted. By the time Zariph got back to pick me up, his parents were done at Animal Kingdom so we picked them up and went to Hollywood Studios. We rode Toy Story again and Rock'n'Rollercoaster, then had lunch. Then we were debating whether to go to Epcot, but we were all pretty tired. I wanted to do some outlet shopping and then head out to Tampa to our hotel there. So, that's what we did. We found a fun little outlet mall, hit my favorite stores, and Zariph sold back our unused days on our tickets and made $30. Then off to our nice hotel in Tampa.
We got a nice 2-bedroom condo that we shared with Zariph's parents. It was right on the water and really nice. We had a kitchen and everything. We stayed there two nights, and Olivia stayed there all day Sunday with Boston while we went to Busch Gardens.
Busch Gardens was awesome. They have about 5 huge rollercoasters. My favorite is called Sheikra. You sit in this huge car - 3 rows of about 8 seats each row. Once you're in, the floor lowers and stays behind as you're off heading up this huge hill. You wrap around and get close to where you drop off, but then it STOPS and you're dangling there for a couple seconds. I'm pretty sure it's only holding on by a little bit on the back seat, so the front row is already facing straight down just waiting to drop. My heart beats a little faster just thinking about it. It was awesome! Then it drops you straight down. Our first time, we rode in the third row, then we had to ride it again in the front row. Then later in the day we rode it two more times.
Monday morning we checked out of our hotel. Zariph dropped us off at the cruise port, and returned the van while we did some window shopping, waiting to get on the cruise ship. Zariph met back up with us and we proceeded to wait in the first of a few lines to get on the ship. Eventually we made it on to the ship, it was so exciting! I love cruising! It was Zariph's parents and Teliece's first cruise, so it was exciting to see how they liked it. We first went up to the buffet for lunch. The choices there are amazing, they had several options of what to eat. Surprisingly, Teliece and Olivia couldn't find anything they wanted to eat. Teliece was just being picky and Olivia was scared to leave the table because she didn't want to get lost (it was a big room and she gets lost easily). Anyway, I loved it. Then we went down to check out our rooms. Our luggage hadn't been delivered yet, so we went to explore the ship. This was Zariph and my fourth Carnival cruise, so we were pretty familiar with how the ship was set up. Then we went back to our room, unpacked, slept a little, participated in the wonderful lifeboat drill, checked out the ship some more, had our late seating dinner (which I love) at 8:15 - we sat at a table for 10, but we always had four empty chairs, we were the only ones on our table. Then Zariph, Boston, and I went to the Welcome Aboard Show that night. Boston didn't make it that long, so Zariph went back to the room with him. I stayed by myself. The dancers did one song, then the comedian was on for about 30 minutes, it was pretty good.
Tuesday was a relaxing Day at Sea. Teliece did a lot of activities with Circle C (the 12-14 year old group). She made some friends that she hung out with most of the time. The rest of us relaxed and did some of the activities. Olivia and I went to a scrapbooking activity. We went to the ice carving demonstration, a game of Win, Lose, or Draw where I drew for the winning point on our team! And of course, we had lunch and dinner. Dinner that night was our formal night with lobster tail - yum! The show that night was probably my favorite of all week. The dancers put on a show to music from the 50s through the 80s. I love all the costume changes, it was a fun show. Boston even sat through all of it! We were in the front row, at the end they had sparklers come out from the front of the stage.
Wednesday was our day in Grand Cayman. Here we booked an exursion to go snorkeling and swim with stingrays. I was a little nervous to be with the stingrays, but was able to relax and have fun once I warmed up to it. When they swam against me, they felt really smooth, like freshly shaven legs, so it wasn't as scary. Then we also stopped in two other places to snorkel. I liked the snorkeling and I liked being on the catamaran. It was a fun day. I burned my back though on the ride back to the cruise ship. I was sitting in the sun for about 30 minutes, I should have reapplied more sunblock or put my dress back on. It was red, but actually didn't hurt enough to ruin the next day. That night was the comedian. We sat again on the front row - Boston does a lot better if he sits that close. I laughed so hard at some parts. The comedian was bald and he was making jokes about it, then he could see that Dexter was bald also. And he said something like, "It's bad enough you're bald, but then you add that pimp mustache, too. Yeah, let's see how much ugly we can get onto one head." Dexter was just laughing. Also, Boston was getting a little squirmy and we were trying to hold him still. And the comedian said something like I get that reaction a lot from parents trying to hold their kids a safe distance from me. Joking about his looks - he was bald and a pretty big size guy. It was funny.
Thursday was our day in Cozumel. We booked an excursion that was pretty much our whole time. We got on a ferry over to the mainland of Mexico, Playa del Carmen (I think). Then we rode a bus for about an hour to the Mayan ruins. These were awesome! Aside from the heat returning at full blast and humidity unbearable again, I loved the view! There was a rock wall all around these ruins and our tour guide was explaining that there were lots of buildings and they were mostly used as temples. When I stepped through the little walkway in the wall, the view that opened up was totally amazing! I could tell it was a sacred place. It was beautiful. There were ruins everywhere, everything was so green, palm trees were all around, and the ocean was just right behind all of this. It made me think of what it would be like to be a Lamanite and live back then. It was really neat. There were also some little shops where we could bargain for some souveniers. We didn't get done with the tour until about 6:30 and the cruise ship was leaving at 7, so there wasn't much time, but Zariph wanted to do some quick shopping at the port, and he met us back on the ship later. We had dinner and the show that night was a talent show, which was actually really good. There were about 8 or so guests that sung.
Friday was our last Day at Sea. We had breakfast at the dining room, but I was starting to feel sick - congested. I bought a decongestant and slept the rest of the day away. Zariph took Boston up to the water park and let him play, he also went and had lunch, then we all took a nap and packed up. We had to have our luggage ready to go by dinner. There was an early show that the dancers put on, it was all Latin music, and then we had our normal dinner time. The waiters sang goodbye to us. I really liked our waiters, they were very good with Boston. On the formal night, they played a song for all the couples to get up and slow dance and the waiter sat with Boston, so we could dance. He entertained him with a little light that he had.
Saturday morning, we woke up early had breakfast and were part of the first group off the ship with checked luggage, Zariph's parents were flying out at noon. We caught a shuttle to the airport and then sat and waited for our flight that wasn't until 2 something. We sat at the kids play area for a couple hours, and the airport had free WiFi, so I could catch up reading my blogs and facebook. The flight home was normal, we had a layover in Dallas again and Lindsay picked us up from the airport in Salt Lake around 8. Then we came home and started the joy of unpacking and laundry.

Disney World - Part 1

Photobucket is still importing pictures, so here is the first bit of what we did:
We had a FABULOUS time in Florida! We left on Friday, September 25. First of all, we woke up around 3 a.m. to catch our 6 a.m. flight out of Salt Lake. This was Boston's first airplane ride and I thought he might be a little scared. But, he wasn't, he feel asleep while the plane was taxi-ing to the runway, and he stayed asleep for the first hour or so. I discovered on this flight, that although the airplane bathrooms are VERY small, they still have a baby changer. We landed in Dallas a couple hours later, and only had like an hour lay over, so we were back in the air before too long. We made it to Tampa around 2 p.m. their time, picked up our HUGE 12-passenger van, and started the hour drive to Orlando. We stopped by Wendy's for some lunch, checked into our Orlando hotel, and headed out for Epcot. The first thing to hit me was the HUMIDITY! I knew it was going to be humid, but I was not expecting it to be SOOO bad! It was also still very hot! It was like 95 degrees and 100% humidity! And that was just evening time. I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through a whole week of Disney World in this kind of weather. I decided to not care how my hair looked and just wear a ponytail the whole week - that helped a little. Boston's first ride at Disney World was Journey Into Imagination. It has this little dragon "Figment" that comes around throughout the ride and "messes things up". Boston kept laughing whenever he would appear - it was too funny. So, we were able to ride quite a few rides that evening and then we watched the fireworks show. It was awesome.
Saturday morning, we checked out of our hotel (because we were checking into our condo later that day), so we had all our luggage in the van while we went to Magic Kingdom. We wanted to make it a point to ride all the "kiddy rides" for Boston, while it was just the three of us. He loved the rides, he just didn't like waiting in line. The lines really weren't that bad. I think the longest we waited the whole trip was like 20 minutes, and that was only like once a day. Most of the lines we were through in about 5-10 minutes. But, Zariph knows how to work the system with the Fast Passes. Anyway, we were only at Magic Kingdom for half the day (which was fine with me because I was getting a little overheated), because we needed to go to the airport and pick up the rest of the family. We picked up Zariph's parents and Teliece from the Tampa airport, did some grocery shopping, checked into our condo, then Zariph went to pick up Misty and her family from the Orlando airport while I stayed back and got some things ready for our SURPRISES that night.
We wanted to have like a big vacation kick-off party once everyone got there. I made dinner for everyone - BBQ chicken, baked beans, salad, and biscuits. It turned out okay, but was a little stressful because I didn't have all the right pans. Anyway, once everyone got there we ate and first gave Destiny her birthday present. Then we had presents for all the adults. Zariph and I had made everyone "matching" t-shirts. We picked a character that we thought each person liked and put that on their shirt on the front. Then we photoshoped a big picture of everyone's characters on the back. We used the iron-on transfer paper that you just put through the printer and ordered pastel colored t-shirts off the internet. We made everyone two shirts, because I wasn't sure exactly on what sizes to get. Anyway, we gave them to the adults first and the kids kind of just sat there like "I want that, too". Then we told the kids that we got them all some pins. Disney does this pin trading and we got a bunch of cheap Disney pins from ebay so we could trade them out. So we explained the rules of pin trading and then gave the kids each 10 pins and a lanyard. We gave Miranda both the pins and t-shirts, we said we didn't know if she was a kid or an adult so we gave her both. And people thought she was pretty lucky to get both. Then Zariph asked if the kids wanted t-shirts too and they were like "Ya". So then we brought out their shirts. And then he asked the adults if they wanted pins, too and they were like "Ya" so we brought out all the pins for the adults. For the kids, we had them in a little competition to see who could get the most of their character. But, the adults can just trade to get whatever they wanted to. It was a good night. Everyone was totally surprised, and it was fun because when they thought we were done giving out gifts, we brought out more.
Sunday morning, I had to drive Roy and Zariph to Epcot earlier than the rest of the group. We told Roy that we had early passes for just the two of them to get in early, but actually they were going on a Segway tour of the World Showcase. Unfortunately, Roy didn't know to bring his admission ticket, so we had to go back to the condo and get it. Luckily, they had another group going out an hour later and they just hopped in on that group. Then I went back and picked up the rest of the group. Everything went really smoothly. I got the fast passes we needed and we rode the rides exactly like the schedule that Zariph and I had rehearsed several times - I know that may sound weird, but it works. It was, again, another hot day. When we rode Test Track (an indoor and outdoor ride), it had started to rain while we were waiting inside (we didn't know). So we were riding along and when it started for the fast outdoor part, we started screeming, not because of the speed, but because we were getting sprayed with little fast water pellets! We stayed in the front part of the park until 2, when we went back to Italy for lunch. Then we roamed around the World Showcase and saw a few performances and shows. It was awesome. Then that night we watched the fireworks show (again, for Zariph, Boston, and me).
Monday we went to Universal Studios. They have two parks in Florida. One is set up more about the movies (similar to the Hollywood Universal Studios), and the other park is all about roller coasters. We went to both parks in just one day. I thought it would be too much for one day, but it really wasn't. The weather was hot, but not as humid, it was starting to feel a little better. My favorite rides of the day were the Spiderman ride - it's a 3D ride, where you're in a vehicle flying, and like the villans jump on your car, it was pretty cool. My other favorite was the huge roller coaster. It goes straight up to begin with, then straight down. It's awesome because you can choose your own music. Each person sits in this comforable chair and the speaker system comes down around you, so everyone can hear their own music. Then after, we saw that they took video of you during the ride, so we watched our video. It was hilarious, I probably should have bought it, it was way funny watching yourself scream, not knowing that I was being video tapped.
Tuesday, we went to the Disney water parks. First, to Typhoon Lagoon, then Blizzard Beach. They were lots of fun. I really enjoyed spending some relaxing time with Boston. I mostly, stayed and played with him in the kiddy area. But we did ride this way fun family raft - which Boston could go on. He even was tall enough to ride the ski lift up to the top. He had to be 32". And he was even a little over the measuring stick - standing in bare feet. I was kind of surprised he was actually tall enough. At Typhoon Lagoon, there is a pool that you swim across that has little sharks in the bottom. I was a little scared of this, but tried to talk myself into it. You get snorkel gear and everything, but when I actually put my face in the water I couldn't calm myself down enough to do it. Anyway, we still had a good time.
Well, that's all for now. I didn't proofread this at all, so hopefully there aren't too many typos!

1,988

For those of you wondering where my post about Florida and our cruise is, it's coming...We took 1,988 photos and video clips. Wow! I'll see what I can get through in the next couple of hours.