Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Our trip to Disney

So, as I posted previously, we took Jack on his first visit to Disney World a few weeks ago.

He LOVED it.

We started out at Disney MGM Studios on Tuesday; the overall reaction from everyone was, 'meh'. It was mostly virtual 3D/4D attractions that, for the most part, we could take or leave. The hit of the day was the "live" Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show. It's one of Jack's favorites on TV and his eyes were as big as silver dollars throughout the whole thing. In it, they do a story with little snippets from shows on Disney's Playhouse; MM Clubhouse, Handy Manny, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, etc... It was interactive and they needed lots of 'help' from the audience. He was talking about it for days. At one point you have to help Tigger and Pooh get a kite out of a tree by blowing real hard and he kept saying "kite, tree" and then acted like he was blowing it out of the tree.

The next day was the Magic Kingdom and after being primed the day before, he was raring to go. We got to the park before Beth's family, so we were waiting around Main Street and saw Pluto posing for pics and giving autographs (who knew dogs can write?). He wasn't too sure about it at first, but within seconds, he was hugging Pluto and honking his nose. After that, he got excited every time we saw the characters. A couple of pics:


































Jack's not really into rides yet, so we did stuff like It's a Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Ever since the mansion, he's developed a tiny "mua ha ha" laugh. It's awesome! We also checked out the Country Bear Jamboree and Tom Sawyer's Island in Frontierland. The jamboree hasn't been updated in quite a while and it's funny how un-pc it is as far as it's portrayal of 'country folk'. Jack had a blast running all over tome Sawyer's island and around that same time, we also had a prime spot for viewing the family parade as it went by. A couple of the characters waved right at Jack as they went by and he ate that up. One of the floats had nothing but villains on it and Beth was making raspberries and thumbing her nose at them; Cruella Deville saw that and thumbed her nose right back. Unfortunately, Beth had the camera at the time and I wasn't able to get a pic. We took Jack on the train ride around the perimeter of the park as well. He loves trains and thought that was awfully cool too. We hit most of the other must see things in the park and then used the park hopper (the ONLY time we used it BTW) to check out Epcot briefly and see the fireworks show. We also checked out these guys in the Canadian pavilion of the World Showcase. They were pretty cool!.All in all, a full day for anybody, but a jam-packed one for a little guy:














He's not looking for something he dropped there, he's fast asleep.

The next day was a full day at Epcot. I'd forgotten just how cool it was. Jack seemed a little bored with most of it, but Beth and I had a blast. Soarin' is probably one of the coolest, non-roller coaster rides I've ever been on. Will definitely be doing that one again the next time we go. There's a lot that we didn't see there because we didn't spend a full day. It was our last day at Disney and we didn't' want to get home too late. We made a bit more leisurely lap around the World Showcase and tried to get a little food from each pavilion. After that, we made our way back out to the parking lot and made the 1.5 hour trek back to the house.

I was a bit apprehensive leading up to the trip, but wound up having a lot of fun. It was crowded, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be and the Fast Pass is probably the best invention in recent history. We didn't spend much time at all just standing in line. Although, I completely forgot about looking for hidden Mickeys until the last day, and that would have been a good way to pass the waiting time. We started planning our next trip before we even left park property on the last day.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Back again.

OK. We're going to give this another shot. Again. I use 'we' in the royal sense, because I doubt seriously anyone is actually reading this (aside from Beth). It's become apparent from my last few posts that this has become less about my running and cycling and more about my everyday life. So, the title has changed even though the URL remains the same. Just in case there is anyone out there that a.) actually reads this, and 2.) has it bookmarked. Plus, I don't want to have to edit my signature files on the various forums where I've included a link to here.

So, what's been happening? A lot of the same ol', same ol'. We went to Disney World a few weeks ago with Beth's family. It was Jack's first visit and he LOVED it. (will follow up in a separate post) Work has been, well.. work. Nothing really changes there. I DO need to start working on some certs and taking some management classes to make it easier to transfer/find a new employer so we can make the move to CO after Spud graduates. I've also started bike commuting to work. Halfway, anyway. It's a 30 mile trip one way, so I drive to a mid-point and then ride my bike the rest of the way in. The original plan was to do it everyday except for our 2 busy days a month, but it's working out to about 3-4 days a week. I'm saving money that would normally be going in the pockets of the oil companies, reducing my contribution to pollution and dropping some weight to boot. to make sure that the money actually gets saved, I continue to fill up weekly, but I subtract the number of gallons it takes to fill the tank from the number of gallons it used to take to fill after a week and multiply that by the price. Then we just set that difference aside.

Not much else to add at teh moment, but again, I hope to keep this updated much more regularly going forward.