Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Happy St. Patrick's Day!



This photo sums up my St. Patrick's Day for 2009:
- The hat was decorated by Natalie at our St. Patrick's day party on Saturday. Green m&m's were also leftover from the party. Shockingly, it had a green theme.
- The Smithwick's is what I am drinking tonight, leftover from the party. I intended to drink a Guinness, but they are all in the cooler, now warm. While I am an Irish American, I am pure American in my beer temperature preference. Don't like it warm, Guinness or no.
- Though it is not a Guinness, it had to be drunk from the Guinness pint, borrowed by Dean from the The Temple Bar in Dublin. Dean and I were in Ireland for Sherry's wedding and it was at the Temple Bar we got to tell the first person (Melissa) that were were engaged. He had proposed the day before. So I will always love Ireland for many reasons.
- I've been talking up Ireland to Natalie over the past few days, showing her the photo we took on Lettermullen Island right after Dean proposed and promising to take her when she is a little older. I'll get the travel bug in that girl yet!

Sunday, March 08, 2009

I am surrounded

Okay, enough already!

When we moved into our house in FL, you couldn't walk out the front door to the driveway and not see at least half a dozen lizards scattering about. I actually liked this then, and still do now. I enjoy watching them and Natalie loves to chase them.

When I found the lizard in my shopping cart, I impressed myself by my calmness.

However, when moving the couch in our living room today to try out a newly purchased rug from Costco, along with the expected dust bunnies, was a dead and slightly petrified lizard. ew! Thank god for Dean as there was NO WAY I was going to touch that.

I shudder to think what else, deal or alive is roaming in my house.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Things Change

What happens after you have kids and you're relaxing with a cold one...

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Epcot Fun

One great thing about living in Florida is inexpensive Disney tickets. (well, inexpensive by Disney standards) Dean's sister was out last September and he took Natalie and upgraded to the three day pass as it is such a good deal. So we headed to Epcot last Thursday. And will be off to Magic Kingdom this Friday as the tickets expire in two weeks.

Since we had two days, I was going back and forth about Epcot vs. going to Magic Kingdom twice. We've been to Animal Kingdom, which was very cool, but the Tampa zoo is so amazing, I hate to go back until Katherine is old enough to appreciate it. After much googling about taking a preschooler to Epcot, I decided there was enough to make a trip worthwhile.

So the day of, I was really excited. I have wanted to go to Epcot for years. I love to travel and was really excited to see the countries. Dean and I have been wanting to to by ourselves ever since we moved to FL, but haven't been able to make the babysitting factor work out. Well, we should have waited. We did have fun, but honestly, with a preschooler, it was a let down. Natalie could only go on three of the rides because of height limits and her fear of loud movies. And one of the rides had a scary troll which she did not dig.

The highlights were the female taiko drummers in Japan, absolutely incredible. Even Katherine was wide eyed! And Natalie loved the chinese acrobats. Even though we were sitting right next to the speaker and I had to cover her ears (no, it's not really that loud, but she is very sensitive to loud noises). She loved the Nemo ride, although Bruce the "friendly" shark as proclaimed by mom and dad, was still a little scary. And the boat ride in Mexico was a hit with both girls.

The problem was, there was a lot of walking and waiting between rides and shows. We didn't really get to see all the cool stuff in FutureWorld as the kids were too small and we didn't get to explore the countries because again, the younger set wasn't really down with that. So basically, all the great things about Epcot I've really wanted to see, were missed. While Natalie did have fun, she kept saying the "other" Disney was better. So lesson learned. We won't head to Epcot with the kids again for several years, at least until Katherine is four or five. Hopefully Dean and I will get to go by ourselves at some point before then. That said, the fact that you can drink beer and cocktails at Epcot highly increased the enjoyment factor for Dean and I. And the popcorn and frozen lemonade factor kept Natalie pretty happy. I think Katherine enjoyed it the most of all, she was basically wide-eyed the whole time. And that was pretty great.

But we did have some fun and here are the pix to prove it:

Katherine meeting her first princess


Princess love...


The Dixon Chicks!


Enjoying the Japanese Taiko Drummers