Last Sunday: good bye

We had a relaxing morning.  The kids continued to play well together.  Isaac beat more people with laser chess.  Then everyone left right after lunch.  I crashed...it had been a busy week and the cold was coming on in full force.

(Notice the balloon sword in the bottom of the picture.  It was nice to refresh my balloon animal skills.)

Last Saturday: helicopters

Today the boys and Evelyn went to Hope to make helicopters.  Pat, Liz, and I went to the mall.  (We had a rather productive shopping trip, finding items for both ourselves and our husbands.)

(Snack time is important.)

The rest of the day was playing, talking, and eating.

Last Friday: DeYoung Christmas

We met Nathan and his family at The Good Earth.  The cousins got right down to business, catching up and figuring out who is the silliest.

Dad and Pat came over later in the afternoon and we opened presents.

Then we played with the presents and had Thai food.  Isaac was at an interesting stage of life; he was young enough to play with the other kids and enjoy it, but he also did his own thing several times so that he could play with his older toys.

Thursday: pretty normal

It was a pretty normal day.  Joshua was rather talkative when I picked him up and so I got a lot out of him.  It was a bit of a change from when I left him...he gave his homework to his teacher who commented that they needed to work on his s's.  (He turns his 90 deg.)  While she said it as just a passing comment, he took it a bit harder than expected.  He held himself together, and was fine a minute later, but there was a moment I when I didn't know how it was going to play out.

Wednesday: plans

I had plans for today.  They involved cleaning the storage room.  To clean the storage room I had to take down all the Christmas decorations.  To take down the Christmas decorations I had to...no, it wasn't quite that bad.  But while looking at my to-do list I did realize that there were several other things that I also needed to do.

Now, to be fair, I did accomplish several things today.  I cleaned the kitchen.  I did take down the Christmas decorations and put them in the storage room neatly.  The laundry progressed.  I did a few other small tasks.  But the cold really made me not care about much today.  I took a nap in the morning and laid down again for a short while in the afternoon.  I finally remembered to take some DayQuil and that did seem to help quite a bit.

Oh well, maybe next Wednesday will be better.  One can hope.

Last Thursday: coming home

As the other days, we started with a delicious breakfast.  We came back to the hotel and walked around just a little bit.

Then it was time to go home. :(  Everything was on time though.  I was a bit anxious to get home, but it was also nice to read my book and relax (as much as one can relax while traveling).

Last Wednesday: Epcot

The first thing we did today was have a massage.  Life is rough at Disney.  Then we went to breakfast and I had a delicious lobster Benedict. 

We made our way to Epcot.  We were a bit early for our first fast pass, so we went to the store.  I told Ben that I loved him so much that I wasn't going to buy him anything.  It was really nice of me.  I didn't get him any delicious treats that would be tempting to eat.  I didn't get him a shirt that he might not wear.  And I definitely didn't get him a stuffed animal that he wouldn't sleep with.  I got myself a sweatshirt that says 2020 on it, since we were there to ring in that year.

The first ride was spaceship Earth.

Then we went on Figment's ride for Joshua, even though he wasn't there.  We hit Soarin', which was cool as always.  I got another pretzel...the Mickey pretzel was better than the one the night before.

Next we went on the 'Behind the Seeds' tour that is the companion to 'Living off the Land' ride.  It was pretty neat.

There were about eighteen of us and we went on the other side of all the plants from the boat ride.  The guide also does some research and was able to answer all of our questions very well.  Oh, so there are two restaurants in Animal Kingdom that have a small menu portion of only things that come from the greenhouse.  They also send some produce to the quick service spot in the same building (cucumbers and the like).  Vegetables that people don't want to eat are sent over to Animal Kingdom for the animals.  They harvest every morning.  We went mid afternoon...it looked like some things would have quite a few items ready for harvest (gourds and tomatoes), but some would not (cucumbers).

The plants move because it looks cool, not because they really need to.

The tomatoes are on a vine and as they grow they just keep keep winding it around the bottom. 

The gourds were decorated for Christmas.

There were some amazing smelling roses.

I was able to feed the Tilapia.  They are always hungry.

The black pepper Mickey tree is the oldest in greenhouse...I think it was 18 years old.

Then we saw it from the other side.  The tour was much more interesting, but it was nice seeing it from the other side right after we had learned so much.

We rode the skyliner to get to dinner!  Dinner was delicious, but actually getting to the right place in the resort was more confusing than expected.  It didn't help that feet were sore.

We got back to Epcot  just in time to get some macaroons for the boys and find a place for the fireworks.  It was a really, really cool show, but I only got blurry pictures.