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Monday, May 25, 2009

Disney by the numbers!

3 of us
3 friends
3 days of travel
9 days of vacation
7 days of rain
1 lunch at Cinderella's Castle
1 surprise private meeting with Minne and Donald
5 hour behind the scenes tour of Magic Kingdom
93 pictures taken by the Disney staff
800+ pictures taken by us
$124 for five day park hopper passes for six people
2 vehicles
1 car accident
2 hotels
2 times in the pool
4 ponchos purchased
2 stroller covers purchased
5 umbrellas
24+ inches of rain
4 puke incidents
2 dinners at Boma
2 Upper Respiratory Infections
1 ear infection
6 MRSA spots
2 strollers
25+ bus, ferry, monorail rides
2 rides co-piloting the monorail
3 free fast passes because we were on our honeymoon

Monday, May 18, 2009

It's raining and thunderstorming. Everything is closed up. It cut our night off at 5pm last night and our morning off at 11:30 today. Tonight looks bleak. Its supposed to rain the rest of the week. Please pray it stops or is at least light enough we can still be out.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

And we're off...almost

I don't even remember when my last post was or what it was about. This week has been busy with repair men (imagine that!) and packing etc.

The car is currently in the shop to make sure the rickety, clunking sound that has been there but has gotten louder is not going to leave us stranded in South Carolina or Georgia.

The guy at the shop laughed at me when I said "We just need to know if it needs to be fixed now or not. But don't fix it. We can't fix it now, we just need to know."

I'm experimenting with how low my money can go before payday this pay period. Its making my head hurt on a daily basis. So far we've broken and blasted through all previous records. Not necessarily something you want to excel at.

I should mention after that last paragraph that we are currently taking donations for the "new car fund". We accept cash in the form of coins or bills, checks (as long as they don't bounce and have a valid signature, amount is not reqired, we'll fill that part in for you), credit cards, pay pal, cashier's checks, money orders, gift certificates, reward points, Chuck E. Cheese tokens and foreign currency. We currently have $372.84, so obviously a new car is right around the corner.

(We purchased our 2004 Chrysler Pacifica in October of 2007, planning on having it for four years. However, it seems to be a lemon, from which no one will buy our lemonade so we are saving up our pennies as fast as we can to bump up that schedule before we have to dump much more money into it. Our philosophy for vehicles (aside from the motorcycle, but that was a small abberation in Richard's brain functioning which has since been resolved) is that we trade what we have and add to it whatever cash we have but the total of what we purchase cannot exceed that amount. We aim for no monthly payments. My income is never guaranteed (if we move, it may/may not happen and may take X or XXX months to happen and may bring $ or $$$ in income) so we live (almost) solely off of R's income and that doesn't allow for a car payment. Since my income varies month to month and so does our spending, we just put away as much as we can each month and then when we have enough, buy a car. That way, we don't have to have $XXX for a payment every month. Because some months we have X and some months we have XXX and some months we have -0-.)

Between us and the Woods', we're taking three strollers, two cars, four adults, two toddlers, four sets of keys, 48 cans of pop, 60 changes of clothes, two laptop computers, two iphones (unfortunately neither are ours), six cameras, three coolers, 17 swimsuits, two pack n plays, 7 stuffed animals, umpteen minnie themed things, and 20-30 diaper bags, duffle bags, tote bags, cooler bags, paper bags, etc. That's a lot of stuff.

Ricard is filling out paperwork to re-up for FOUR more years on June 27th. He had the option of two all the way up to six. We felt four was a good in-between-ey-weenie number.

We bought a Baby Bjorn baby carrier this week. I've hated it every other time I've ever used it, but this time when we borrowed it from a friend for Disney, we both loved it, so we now own one.

We leave for Disney in just over 24 hours. Need I say more?

Well yes, I guess I should, in case its not obvious...No new posts for a week and a half.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

I won the Mother of the Year award. Check out the news coverage.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Today...

Today...
-I'm not going to say a whole lot, partially because the day is not half over yet and partly because I'm so freakin annoyed :-)

-Today, the Transmission light came on in the Pacifica, minutes before the car died in the middle of the road and the oil light came on.

-Today the New Car Manager at the dealership (the only one working today) arranged to have the Pacifica towed to the dealership, have a shuttle come pick me and both girls up at 10:30 tomorrow, and send me home with a rental (free of charge, of course) that is equal to or bigger than my Pacifica until they fix whatever they broke on my car while they were fixing what they broke on my car. DORKS! Apparently they drank their lunch too.

-We are leaving for Disney in less than two weeks in this vehicle. Please pray that it gets fixed AND IS TRULY FIXED or that they give us a rental for the entire trip (which is what I'm going to ask them for).

That's all. Well, for now at least ;-)

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Today

I've realized I like the "today" series.

Today...
-I ran on the treadmill (I don't get to it a whole lot on the weekends.)
-We went to the beach and played in the sand for an hour and a half.
-I got sunburnt (on purpose, so I don't at Disney).
-Lillian got sunburnt. Not on purpose. With 50 spf on.
-Lillian had so much fun in the sand, after she got over being scared of it.
-We planted strawberry plants-20, we'll see how many make it.
-We called in a service call for our dryer, which now that the washer works and we did a load of laundry, we found out that the dryer doesn't work.
-We bought 12 cases of pop at the NEX. They have it on sale there often, but I'm sick of running out to get it each time its on sale so we stocked up.
-R caught up on the dishes.
-I estimate our laundry to be done at about 6-7 loads right now. We'll see what it is by Monday afternoon when (hopefully) I can finally do it.
-We drug the kitchen table into the living room (which is now empty because we took the ottoman in for leather repair) and ate dinner as a family at the table and played games.
-We watched "Life After People" on the history channel. It is super fascinating and I recommend everyone watch it.
-I ran into a girl from Michigan at the beach. I haven't seen her since I quit working for Kathy. (Beth, it was Melissa) It was odd, but super fun.
-I fit into my plaid capris that I bought in 8th grade. And for those of you that are wondering, it was 13, yes a WHOPPING 13 years ago. They are now officially in the Disney pile.
-Some girls at church had a "girls night" and did not invite others of us. Unfortunately, this is becoming an ever increasing habit. I thought I left junior high 13 years ago. Apparently not.