Disney World, Sea World, Islands of Adventure - 2012 Vacation!

We had an amazing time on vacation!!  We headed to Kissimmee, FL and stayed the week with plans to visit all the parks we really wanted to see!

We started with a long, long drive Saturday, followed by a visit to Downtown Disney on Sunday!!  Here we enjoyed eating at the Rainforest Cafe, playing and purchasing at the Lego Store (can we say AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and having a good time!!

Monday we headed to Sea World and we had a blast!!  Daniel loved the dolphins and the whales the most!  We even sat in the splash zone during the Shamu show and got soaked!!  Daniel rode the Shamu coaster and Cassandra (my sis) and I rode the Cracken!!  We saw plenty of other shows and had a great time.  I highly recommend Sea World as a must see for the kids!!

Tuesday we headed to the Magic Kingdom and had a magic day!  Daniel did great - he walked from 8:45 am to about 9:00 pm.  He refused a stroller and insisted on keeping up with us.  We rode everything in sight, except Space Mountain, which I wasn't comfortable putting him on just yet, even though he meets the height requirement.  He especially LOVED the Haunted Mansion and the Pirates ride!!  We never waited more than 20 minutes for a ride!!  We watched the electrical parade and made it back to a porch of a building to watch the night time castle show and the fireworks.  It was here I noticed Daniel could barely control his body movements and he was saying silly things we couldn't understand.  I picked him up and he fell sound asleep in the matter of an instant on my shoulder.  I sat on the porch and Troy laid a blanket over us and Daniel slept through the fireworks.  He never even budged during the loud booms!!  Troy took lots of pictures to show Daniel the next day!!

 Do you see how tired he is!!!!  He tends to hold my hair when he's exhausted!!

 

Wednesday was an easy day for us and we visited my mom at her campground and old friends came to visit.  It was great to see them, including a very old friend of mine that I used to play with when I was young and when we lived in Orlando.  I got to take my family by my old house and show them my elementary and middle schools.  Daniel spent the night with my mom while we headed back to the condo.

Thursday Troy, Cassandra, Brett and I headed to Islands of Adventure to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!!  Cassandra is 13 years younger than I am and when she read Harry Potter as a young teen she begged me to read it with her.  I did and got hooked so this was great fun for the two of us to experience together!  We rode the rides, drank butterbeer and had a great time.  Cassandra and I also braved all the other coasters in the park, including the Hulk and one that shoots you straight up and back down!!   I came home with Luna's second wand and a Gryffindor keychain!!

During our trip we were called by dss and asked to accept 2 little boys into our home.  We said yes and my in-laws were helping to do some final preparations for us at home, while we were away.  It didn't pan out, so we're hoping for the best for the little ones and waiting for the next call.

I'll be posting on my other blog, some tips and tricks for a frugal trip to some of the places we went in a few days!!!

4 Years a Family!

Yesterday marks the fourth anniversary of our court date in Russia and when the Judge said yes, entrusting to us one special little boy! Since it was so late in the afternoon, we could not pick him up that day (our 10 days were waived), so we had to wait one more day!

Troy and I were so tired from our long day and 4 hours in court (that were pleasant, but long) and we celebrated with an exciting PB&J for dinner in our room!! We laughed that Daniel was already on a sleepover and then we barely slept anticipating and packing our things to pick up Daniel and fly back to Moscow.

Oh how I miss that sweet little baby boy we picked up. But oh how I love the little man he's grown into!

Then....

and Now....

Introducing "The Furious Eleven"

This was too fun not to share!!

I came home from work yesterday and was introduced to "The Furious Eleven". Daniel and Troy worked hard making a crime fighting crew and Daniel named them appropriately!!

Alas, I shall make you wait no longer....

This neat guy below, Daniel created all his own and is named Duckie Dodo - he is the fixer of all the machines of "The Furious Eleven"!
This fellow below is Spider and he is a "guard" in the words of Daniel and "protects" "The Furious Eleven"!
No name yet for this guy - any suggestions?!?!?
Daniel is quite the builder and can play for hours building blocks quietly. I'm one lucky mom, in more ways than one!!

Catching Up

No time to post when tax season rolls around. So in order to catch you up with our lives here is what we've been up to:

Daniel learns how to put brakes on my car. He officially knows more than I do about cars at this point!

Daniel learns how to check and change my car's oil. He now officially knows twice as much as I do about cars.


Daniel grows like a stink weed in March and April. He ate two PB&Js for lunch and rounded his day out with a whole can of Chicken and Stars soup. Is it wrong to wish you had your child's genes?!
We went and saw Monster Jam complete with taking a friend of Daniels' from Kindergarten who was excellently behaved. I think we proved to ourselves that we can handle more than one child at a time, which is a good thing since our foster care social worker called and wanted to know EXACTLY when we were returning from our upcoming vacation.




Troy found this completely awesome stuff for the bath called Squishy Baff. You add powder to the tub and it turns it to beads of goo and then you add a second powder to turn it back to liquid. Daniel loved it. I took a few photos and stayed out of the bathroom, claiming that Squishy Baff was a dad thing only, complete with a dad cleanup time!
Daniel is rocking out Kindergarten. He's aced all his Friday spelling tests and he's reading short books to us. Of course he's also reading everything else and we can't spell anything to each other anymore because Daniel sounds it all out. No more hiding the fact that we might go to the "p-o-o-l later". Daniel quickly yells "Pool".We've had a great couple of months and are looking forward to the end of tax season and a trip to Florida! When we return, it sounds like we'll have a foster placement right away. We'll keep everyone updated!!