Mission: Christmas at Disney Part 3

Day 5: Epcot

Christmas at Epcot

All five of us got up early to beat the rush at Epcot, which never arrived until after 5 pm. The day was a little marred by rain and tornado warnings, but it didn't stop us. We started out by riding the Test Track, that was a blast, we didn't realize it was sort of like a roller coaster.
The whole family at the Test Track ride
Then we rode the new ride called Soarin'. It is a virtual ride where you fly over a lot of landmarks in San Francisco, that was really cool. All of us enjoyed this ride thoroughly. Then we headed off to visit the different countries. We started in Mexico and worked our way through Norway and China before heading off to Morocco for lunch. Lunch was excellent.

You can't go to Epcot without getting a Viking hat.

Trolls!!!!!!!


Mom and Dad then headed back to the hotel for an afternoon nap and we continued on through the rest of Morocco and then to France. We met up with the parents to see the Candlelight Processional in which Gary Sinise read the Christmas Story.

Tami and Jenny in front of Epcot France


We then walked through Germany and England where we had supper at the Rose and Crown. The food and drinks were so good. The last thing we did was head over to watch the firework show that they had. It was fireworks put together with fire, lasers, and even a giant globe that had digital images on it.

Day 6: Home

We got up early, yet again, to catch the bus to the airport, the entire day was uneventful. Once we got home we met up with my mom and Brad for lunch before Mom, Dad and Jenny headed to see Kaye and Bill in Lincolnton.

Greg and I exchanged presents with my mom and Mindrey. I got a travelling bag that I had seen that I absolutely loved from Victoria Secrets. The bag has a painted pink Union Jack symbol on it, this will be perfect since we are going to London in February. I also got a pink iDog, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest DVD, the Gwen Stefani DVD, a Georgia Bulldog pink tshirt, and some socks that have the Union Jack symbol on it. Mindrey also got me some of the New Zealand coasters with Chili Peppers on it and a beautiful necklace from her Sorrelli collection that I have been looking at for a very long time.

Greg got a gift card from my Mom to the Apple store and a book that he had wanted. My present to him came a day late but I think he was okay with the wait, I got him the Nintendo Wii system, it has been so much fun to play, very interactive.

We gave my mom a leather tank cover for her motorcycle that she had been looking at along with a joke gift of a pot and potting soil, maybe she will replant her ivy one day.

All in all Christmas was excellent this year. Can't wait until New Year's.

Mission: Christmas at Disney Part 2

Day 3: MGM-Studios

Greg, Jenny and myself all got up at 6 am again this morning to hit the rides. Mom and Dad stayed at the hotel a little longer to get ready, and to feel better since they were both sick. We got to the park before it opened and were the 3rd roller coaster to go out on the Rockin' Roller Coaster with Aerosmith. That was the best ride that we rode the entire time. We then hit the Tower of Terror which wasn't nearly as scary as we thought it was going to be. We also got some pictures with some of the Disney Characters like Daisy Duck, Mickey Mouse, Chip N' Dale, and Stitch. He was the best, even though we weren't originally planning on seeing him. The three of us were wearing shirts that we bought at the Vortex which have huge skulls on them and they got a lot of attention from everyone at the park. Mickey seemed embarrassed and Stitch wanted Greg's shirt. Stitch was taken with me, since I danced with him, he was a lot of fun.

Tami with Stitch

Mickey was shocked by our shirts


We also got pictures taken with Mike and Sulley from Monsters Inc and even the characters from Cars.
Tami with Tow Mater from Cars.


Afterwards Mom and Dad got there and we were off to the Stunt show, that was amazing to watch. Seeing all of the car chases and explosions and such. We continued on with more shows and rides. At nightfall the park turns on the over 5 million lights from the Osbourne family. It was really neat watching the light show that was going on to the music and the snow was fun. We had dinner at the Sci-fi Diner which was set up like a drive in movie theater, where we all sat in cars to eat dinner and watched an old black and white screen that showed some clips of old movies. Then, back to the hotel for a little shut eye.

Day 4: Animal Kingdom

Game Day at the Animal Kingdom

This day followed the same pattern of the three of us up early to be at the park when it opened and Mom and Dad arriving later. We started off with the Expedition Everest roller coaster, that was so much fun, except for the 35 minute wait we had to endure because the Yetti was being difficult. We were the first roller coaster to go once it started. We ended up riding it again before we hooked up with Mom and Dad since we enjoyed it so much. The next stop was breakfast and then the safari, I love seeing the wild animals just roaming around. We even got to see a baby giraffe. We did all the rides and shows at the Animal Kingdom that we wanted to do and even watched the parade. Recommendation: Do not waste your time with the Tiki Room, it was bad.

We headed back the Magic Kingdom for dinner, we had reservations at the Liberty Tree. We had a blast with all of the characters, we even took a funny pose with Goofy, inside story from the Bufords. We then went outside and watched the Light Parade, it was so beautiful. Then we headed to Cinderella's Castle to watch the fireworks.

Jenny and Tami with Goofy

Mission: Christmas at Disney Part 1

Day 1: Arrival/Downtown Disney

We arrived at our hotel around 7 pm, grabbed a bite to eat and then we were off to visit Downtown Disney. It was pretty uneventful, we walked around, did a little shopping, and even grabbed some hot chocolate from the Ghirardelli soda shop. While walking around Downtown Disney we looked at all of the awesome lego displays that were created. They had small window displays of some cities and large displays of animals and even a dragon in the water. We got to see part of a firework show as it peaked over the buildings. All in all it was fun but we didn't do too much.

Lego London.... We'll be in the real London in a couple of months:



Day 2: Magic Kingdom...a taste of Epcot


Today started out very early, 6 am in fact. We headed off to Magic Kingdom since we had breakfast reservations with Cinderella. The breakfast was really good and we had a ball taking our pictures with the other princesses like Jasmine, Snow White, and Belle, we even had pictures taken with our Fairy Godmother.




The best part was Jasmine's confusion on the Smokey and the Bandit shirt that Greg was wearing. We weren't sure if she really didn't know what Smokey and the Bandit was or if she was playing her "role".



After breakfast we headed off to enjoy the rides. Our first ride was the Futureworld Transit Authority, which is just a covered train system that takes you around part of the theme park. The rest of the day was spent riding rides and watching shows. I happened to be wearing an Alice shirt so all day we kept trying to get my picture taken with her but somehow she kept managing to to slip through our grasps, so no picture with her. We do have lots of other pictures though, so no biggie.

Once done with all of the rides and shows that we wanted to do at Magic Kingdom we attempted to start Epcot. That did not go too well. There were torrential downpours and all of the dinner restaurants were booked so we headed back to the hotel for dinner. The dinner spot at the hotel is called the Pepper Market, my recommendation is to never go there, the food is okay but the wait staff could care less about you.

Look at all of the pretty lights

Got a few quick updates to share. We haven't been too busy lately with anything worth posting. However, we did go up to Charlotte the week before last to spend time with our friends Chad and Marc. Tami has known Chad since they were very little. Tami and I were both sick which put a little bit of a damper on everything, but we still had a great time. We both got better; however, Tami required some medicine to get back to 100%. After that, we've just been getting ready for Christmas.

Tami, me, Marc and Chad













Last night, Tami and I celebrated our 8th anniversary. We went out to a restaurant called Aqua Terra located in downtown Buford. It was the first time I had eaten there. Tami had been there for lunch, but said the menu was entirely different for supper. The food was excellent, we'll definitely be going back. After that, we went out to Lake Lanier's Magical Nights of Lights. We've been every year for the past few years and it's always a lot of fun. Basically, you drive around six miles on the islands which feature tons of light displays. Here are a few of the pictures that turned out the best.

Candles


















12 Drummers Drumming.













The Holiday Village. This is where they have shops and a small amusement park. Normally we roast marshmellows in the large bonfires that they have setup, but last night was just too hot. Instead, we rode some of the rides in the amusement park.








A picture of Tami and me from the top of the Ferris Wheel.












Also, we fly out tomorrow going to Disneyworld with Dad, Mom and Jenny to spend Christmas at the Magic Kingdom. It should be a lot of fun and we plan to take a lot of pictures.

Since we won't be posting anything before, we wanted to go ahead and wish all of our friends a family a Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Eat Well, spend time with family, and watch parades and football.

Goooooooo Dawgs!! Sic 'Em!!!!

I was just excited that UGA beat the 5th ranked Auburn Tigers 35-17 that I had to say yeah!

All is going well just staying busy. We will start the holidays next weekend so we will try to post about it.

Run Willow Run

This weekend we took Willow and Daisy Adair to the Second Annual Atlanta Walk/Run for Animals. The point is to bring your dog in costume and do either a 5k run, or a 1, 2, or 3 mile walk. We only planned to do the 1 mile walk because we still weren't too sure about Willow's knee, but as you can see, she was having a ball, so we kept going and did the 2 miles.




Afterwards, they had a costume contest as well as several contests such as best kisser, best trick, longest sit/stay. We were a bit biased and thought that Daisy Adair should have won...



or at the very least, Willow should have won with her Dinosaur costume.




but alas, we weren't winners. However, Daisy Adair did win the longest sit/stay competition..... I guess all of that money for obedience finally paid off!

Gooooooo Dawgs!

Last Saturday, we attended the UGA - UAB football game. For those that don't know, UGA was the university that Tami and I both attended (the University of Georgia). It was great to get back to Athens again. We let the top down on the Jeep and went down early to give us time to walk around downtown and campus a bit. UAB isn't exactly a powerhouse, and UGA pounded them for a 34-0 victory. The only bad thing is that we both got really bad sun burns....although Tami's was much worse than mine.


Here is Tami at the arch in downtown Athens:


Here are both of us in front of Sanford Stadium:


Here is practice before the game:



The UGA mascot, appropriately named Uga VI:


And finally, our seats were great, 6 rows back. Here is Stafford after running the ball in for a touchdown..... he's the guy laying down on the job in the end zone :)

still alive

Wow, do we suck at this blog thing. It's been well over a month and we've done a ton of things, and I still haven't updated this thing. We're still around and doing really good. Just get busy and don't remember to do little things like keep our blog up to date. Recently we did a tour of the north and visited our friends up in Philly and Rhode Island and also met up with our niece Carol up in New York (pictures will be forthcoming.... I promise before October rolls around.)

We're also excited that football season is back. We have tickets to go this weekend to a UGA game.... the first time we've been in about 6 years. We're doing fantasy football this year, and of course Tami is ranked #1 after the first week. We've also started bowling again, so we're definitely busy. I'll try harder to keep this thing updated....I promise

Birthday

It has been a while but we have been busy. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I got to celebrate it multiple times.

Jenny came down on June 30th and spent the weekend with us. Friday we went and saw The Devil Wears Prada. On Saturday we went shopping and then we went to the Braves game, which they lost, but still had a lot of fun. On Sunday (my actual birthday) we got up and me, Greg, Jenny, mom, and Mindrey all went out for breakfast and then went bowling. It was a riot. In all of the years that I have known Jenny and Mindrey we have never gone bowling so it was a lot of fun. Afterwards, Jenny had to hit the road but the reamining 4 of us went and saw The Lake House. All 3 movies were really good.

We had wanted to see Superman III on the IMAX but it was sold out so me, Greg, Mindrey and mom saw it on the regular theater on Tuesday, July 4th. Thursday night we went and saw Pirates of the Carribean at midnight. That was a lot of fun and a lot of people.

Wow! We sure do like our movies.

On Friday, July 7th Greg surprised me and took me to Savannah for the weekend. It was so relaxing. We had wonderful food, a great bed and breakfast room, an hour and a half massage (ahhhhhhh) and lots of sight seeing. That was the first time that we had ever been to Savannah just the two of us. It was nice just to get away and relax.

I want to thank Greg so much and make sure everyone knows how lucky I am to have him.

Today we are off to Philadelphia, we will have lots to report on when we get home at the end of July.

Tami

The School is going to the Dogs!!!!

Graduation day.....Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Today Daisy Adair graduated from her beginning obedience training class. Training had been going well but the final night was filled with stubbornness. We were to have a sit-stay contest and the dog who would sit for the longest won a prize. At home we had been able to get her to sit for almost 2 minutes without moving. However, it class she would not sit at all, we were out of the contest before it even began.

Oh well, she still graduated. Isn't she so cute in her cap.

























Also graduating is her friend Murphy, he is a handful but so cute.

and a good time was had by all....

This weekend, we traveled up to Dillard for our Aunt Mary Ann's birthday party. I dragged my drums up there and Dad brought his piano and we played a lot with Uncle David and his group which was a lot of fun. As an added bonus, that will serve as practice to our 1 "gig" that we play every year at the Tignall Fall Festival. Anyway, we got to meet a lot of Aunt Mary Ann's friends and visit with everyone who we don't get to see nearly enough, so it was a lot of fun.


Moving on to the dogs. We came home Sunday from running some errands and found Chewy covered with something sticky. We had no idea what it was, but it quickly became obvious that her ear was in a lot of pain. She was a mess, so we gave her a bath.




We also gave all of the other dogs a bath since they were due, so Daisy had her first one (and she wasn't very happy....)



We did give her the traditional "mohawk"



We took Chewy to the vet on Monday morning, and it turns out that she has a bad ear infection. We're putting drops in her ears twice a day, and we're already seeing an improvement. She is much happier.




On the Willow front, she went to the doctor yesterday and they removed the staples. They said that she's doing pretty good, but now we're going to start doing short walks and help her stretch out the legs to make everything work properly again. She has started to put her foot down a little, but not putting much weight on it yet. On the plus side, the lampshade is being retired and she can pick at her leg all she wants now :)

Chewy!

In the interest of equal time, I realize that Chewy hasn't gotten nearly as much time, which is really a shame since I have plenty of cute pictures of her. So, without further adieu:








and the big finish is Chewy playing hide and seek with Chopper:

Animal House

Willow is still doing good. We have to just keep her from hurting herself since she wants to be so active. It's hard to see in this picture, but if you look closely, you can see the scar on her knee. Unfortunately, they shaved her entire leg, so she looks a little unbalanced:


Also during this time, Tami's mom Mindy sold her house, so she's staying with us until she gets a new one. Which means the number of animals in our house doubled. Here are the new ones:

This is Millie. Millie is Willow's sister, so you will probably notice the family resemblence.


Next up is Mystic. She is about a year older than Daisy Adair and has a pretty similiar temperment, so they get along really well.


and finally we have Chopper. Chopper is the only male of the bunch and is still getting used to being an indoor cat.



Daisy Adair helps out with the cat by walking him and keeping him from jumping on the counters.... she has her work cut out for her.

Between the Benches

First off, the important stuff. Willow still appears to be very well. She doesn't move her leg much, but still doesn't appear to be in any pain. She is, however, very VERY stir-crazy being locked up in the cage. We take the lampshade on and off depending on if she is leaving her wound alone or not. Sleeping is another story since she is unhappy about being put in a crate at nice.... and the upstairs crate isn't nearly as big or posh.

Last night we went to game 4 of the Kelly Cup playoffs for the Gwinnett Gladiators. They have been doing really bad in this particular series and were down 3-0 in this best of seven playoff series. So it was do or die time. Fortunately, the team came out strong and ended the first period with a 2-0 lead. It was all good after that as they extended their lead and ended up winning the game 6-1 (the other team scored with around 2 minutes left in the game because they had a two man advantage power play.)

As if the game wasn't exciting enough, Tami was walking around after the Second period intermission and spoke with one of the staff that she speaks to everytime she sees them. Turns out, the person who had won the "Between the Benches" contest didn't show up where they were supposed to be and she had 2 minutes to get someone down there, so she asked Tami if she wanted to go. Anyone who knows Tami will realize that she was jumping up and down by this point!

For anyone unfamiliar with the "Between the Benches" contest, here is how it works. The winner gets to sit for one period on ice level in a little enclosed room between the benches where the home team and the visiting team sits. It is great because you are right next to all of the players, you can even see which ones are missing teeth!

and boy, did Tami pick a great game/period to get those seats. We got to see a goal, a big brawl, and even hear the coaches hurl obscenities at the refs..... good times! Towards the end of the game, the Penalty boxes were getting pretty full of players and a few even got ejected because of everything that was going on. Unfortunately, we didn't bring a camera with us to the game, so don't have any exciting pics to share.

That must have been some wild party!

Willow is home!

We picked her up earlier today from the vet and she is doing fine. She seemed a bit loopy from the pain killers, but once I talked with her, she recognized me and perked up. She hasn't acted like she has been in pain at all, but she's going to have a lot of medicine to help with the pain and make sure that there aren't any infections for the next few weeks.

The doctor said that 90% of his patients are in too much pain and don't bother to mess with the staples. So, or course Willow was already licking them before we got 5 miles down the road. This means that at certain times, we have one of the dogs with a lampshade on their head.







Willow is going to be confined to a crate for at least two weeks to keep her from running and jumping. Also, to keep the other dogs from licking her wound. We tried to make her as cozy as possible and got a really large crate (almost St. Bernard size) and populated it with the softest pillow that we could find and plenty of chew toys. I think she likes it as much as possible, she just hates being cooped up.