Room Makeover

Madison and I started the process of her room make-over back in the summer. It was quite the lengthy process but mostly because we didn't have large chunks of day time hours to work on it. The first step was to take off all of the wallpaper. Madison did most of this herself, however she recruited Abby to help her during the summer days when I was working. (Thank you Abby!) After the paper came off, the walls needed to be prepared; patched, sanded smooth, washed down... This project was pretty quiet through the first semester of school, although we found the bedding and picked out and bought the paint. She also started going through her things and boxing up the little girls things, and gave things away. We moved out a big bookshelf and Quinn added that to his room.

This past week we spent several more days back in her room. We taped all the walls one day, primed the walls the next and painted the final coat the following. We discovered that purple was a hard color to paint over. Thank goodness for the priming coat! After the painting was done, the fun part of decorating started. We bought new curtains, 2 lamps and set her room up. Altogether we think we put in about 25 hours of work into her new room. She loves it. No longer little girl looking... out with the bunnies and bows.

What do you think?

Happy New Year 2009!

Happy New Year! Today we went to John & Colleen's house to watch the Iowa Hawkeyes play S. Carolina in the Outback Bowl with them and also Tim, Tonya, Preston and Peyton. It was a fun game, lots of things to cheer about and I thanked our sweet hostess when we left for arranging for the hawks to win today as well. 31-10! The kids downloaded Mario Karts on their DS's and played each other between some of the football action. Peyton came home with us to hang out with Madison for the rest of the evening. We meant to get back to her room project tonight but it didn't happen. We watched lots of football today, a great way to start off 2009 (right Cheryl?)!

New Year's Eve 2008

Tonight we went out for supper at Chili's and then went to see Bedtime Stories. This is a really cute movie! Very good! Madison brought Holyn and Quinn brought Nate. Holyn stayed overnight. We played some games and waiting for the ball to drop. The hugs in the pictures were the mid-night hugs. It was a fun but small party to welcome the new year.

In other news...It has been a very busy week so far. I took this week off from work. We are trying to accomplish some major projects. Madison and I spent over 8 hours painting in her bedroom. Out with the bunnies and bows, in with the teen look of polka dots. We still haven't gotten her room completely back together yet. I'll post some pictures when we get her moved back in. It is looking really good. I'll be glad to have her stuff out of our bedroom/hallway, and back into her's. I think I might need to go back to work so I can rest next week. Ha! ; ) No, actually I have truely enjoyed all of my time with my family and am trying to savor the last few days.

Home Again...

We got home last evening at 4:45 and were welcomed by 2 inches of ice on our driveway. Obviously they had lots of snow and ice here last week. We flew out of Orlando at 9:10am and landed in Indy at 11:30 or so. It was super foggy in Indy which made for a "creative" descent and landing. We had to make 2 attempts at the runway and it was so turbulent that one passenger lost their breakfast... too close of quarters for sure! Better than my poor mom and dad though... over 400 flights in/out of Chicago were cancelled yesterday due to an ice storm, including their connecting flight. Their journey included a bus drive to a neighboring airport (Cedar Rapids) and then finally arrived home about 16 hours after they left the condo in the morning. They had to drive to Moline, IL today to get their car and luggage. They could have nearly drove back from Florida in all that travel time. It took Amy & Jeff 20 hours on the way down.

Madison and I were in bed by 9pm last night. I slept 10 hours and she slept 13 1/2. We were obviously a little low in the sleep department. I'll have some more pictures for you but somehow my camera cord ended up in Jeff & Amy's van (after Jeff stole it from our condo) so I have to wait for them to mail it. We spent Christmas at the resort, putt-putt golfing and swimming. We grilled steak for supper. It didn't seem very Christmas-like in the 80* weather though. Amy said it didn't feel all "ooohshy-guuushy" without the cold, snow and abundant Christmas decorations. We took a big family picture by the Christmas tree in the lobby though and I'll post those pictures the future.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas!
Leah

PS... I've gradually added pictures from our trip, including the first day. Scroll all the way down if you haven't seen them yet.

Merry Christmas from Orlando, Florida!

Merry Christmas from Bonnet Creek in Orlando, Florida!


Christmas morning brought a few "stocking gifts" from Santa. Our gifts to our kids was our trip to Florida this year. It felt really weird not to have any gifts under our tree. A different Christmas for sure... but warm and FUN!


Us Midwesterners aren't used to swimming, putt-putt golfing and playing cards outside on Christmas day! We heard the overhead speakers playing Christmas music all week, but some how the snowy songs just didn't "go" this year. We didn't miss the HUGE ice storm that Indiana received this week though. We picked a good week to be gone.


We grilled steaks for our supper this evening. Plenty of food this week! Amy brought 2 huge containers of Christmas goodies that she made in Iowa. This was our last evening together. We hated to see our week's vacation end. We are taking home lots of good memories for souvenirs though!

Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure

Today we went to Universal Studios for most of the day. This is not a Disney Park but was very, very nice. We really liked it a lot. In fact, this was probably our favorite of the week. Their attractions included "shows" such as the movie, Jaws, Twister, The Mummy, Shrek, Jimmy Neutron, and the Simpsons. Although the kids hadn't seen half of the movies, they still enjoyed their rides or 4D shows. The park was really quiet in the morning, but busy by afternoon.


The highlight of the day was watching Jeff (Amy's husband) participate in Fear Factor. He got to be one of six people to compete in their 30minute show. He knows how to ham things up and did a good job making the audience laugh. He told the cameras that his reason for knowing he was going to win Fear Factor was because "I've seen the other contestants and I look better in my Spandex than all of them." Their first task was to hang from a bar, 50feet off the ground with a huge fan blowing in their face. He wasn't one of the last ones to remain so he had to take the "walk of shame" after this stunt. We enjoyed his fame while it lasted. Some of the other stunts on the rest of the show got kind of gross... the eating part was disgusting.

Around 3:30 or so we walked over to Universal Island's of Adventure which is their amusement park section. It was awesome! We were amazed at Quinn's love of the Hulk roller coaster which pretty much went in loop after loop and lots of barrel rolls. We are pretty sure this was the wildest roller coaster ride he has been on... and he loved it! At this point we had been in amusement parks for over 45 hours this week and I was done with the rides. I spent the rest of the evening with Amy, Jeff, Mikayla and Haley in Seuss Land while Tony took the older kids on the other wild rides of the park. : ) The Seuss Land was adorable! We watched a live production of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" which was so cute. I think we were in Seuss Land for 3-4 hours.

We finally found our Christmas Eve supper at the NBA restaurant around 8:30. It wasn't very "Christmas-y" but was sure good.

Downtown Disney

Happy Birthday Mikayla!

Mikayla turned 8 while in Disney World on December 22 (yesterday)! She spent the day at the Magic Kingdom. Can you imagine a better place to spend your birthday as a kid? Her birthday present was getting her ears pierced the next day. After we drove in a big loop to find "The Loop" and a Claires store, she had 11 people watch her get her ears pierced that morning. It was a lot of fun. She didn't even blink an eye during the piercing. Quinn wondered where the boys section was at Claires... not to be found. ; ) Doesn't she look cute with her new jewels?

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom

Our family of 4 went to Animal Kingdom on Monday, the 22nd. The rest of the group went to Magic Kingdom which we decided to skip this year. We had a great day but it was a cool 60 degrees and by the time we left, 12 hours later, it was in the 40's. Brrrr! We enjoyed the Everest Expedition rollercoaster the most and rode it 4 times. We also enjoyed the safari and the Christmas parade. Their Christmas tree is decorated with animals. So cute! We missed the last bus back to the resort and it ended up taking us 2 1/2 hours to get back! A long story... but a memorable one for sure!

Epcot (stands for Every Person Comes Out Tired...?)

Highlights from the day:

"FAST passes" work to get through lines without standing in lines forever!

Tony ran into Dan from work!

I laughed so hard I cried... at my overly safety conscious husband (long story).

Epcot at night.... gorgeous!

My feet hurt SO bad after 12 hours in the park today!

Christmas lights at Hollywood Studios

You can't see this picture in the bottom right very well. Quinn walked around the corner on to this street and then turned around and gave us this open-mouth-awe-struck look on his face and just held it in disbelief. (You will need to double click the photos for sure). The pictures are pretty good but don't capture it all. The tall skinny picture in the middle is of Jenna and Quinn trying to catch the "snow" that was falling by the end of the show. Wow! Disney is incredible!

Hollywood Studios (aka MGM Studios)

We spent the whole day at Hollywood Studios (MGM) today. We just got back at 9:15 tonight. Whew! My feet ache! It was a gorgeous day with temps in the high 70's I'm guessing.

Highlights included: Tower of Terror, Rock'n Rollercoaster, Indiana Jones, the new Toy Story ride. Most of the lines weren't too bad, except for Toy Story. While waiting for the Toy Story ride Jay used his 3D glasses as the "eyes" while holding them over his belly button. We were really bored in a 90 minute long wait for the newest ride! Look closely at the bottom right picture.

Disney is decorated for Christmas. There is a huge tree with lights, poinsettias fill almost all of the flower beds and Christmas music plays in the air. It is easy to forget that it is Christmas time in this warm weather though. Strange. There is a street in MGM that is decorated top to bottom with Chrismas lights which they set with timers/music. It was beautiful at night!

Hope all is well for those of you back in my real world.
Love, Leah

Day 1 in Orlando

We flew into Tampa on Thurseday, 12-18 and then drove to Orlando. While waiting for the rest of our family to arrive on Friday, we went to the grocery store and putt-putt golfing. We are in "awe" of the beautiful warm sunshine in the high 70's today. Grandma & Grandpa's flights were re-routed out of the mid-west because of snow and ice but they arrived around 4:30pm. Amy & Jeff drove to Florida so they had been on the road for a few days. Doug & Jen arrived about 5:30 into Orlando. We all arrived safe and sound.

Orlando or bust!

Tonight marked the start of our Christmas vacation to Florida! We are meeting up with my whole family for an Orlando week. Mom, Dad, Amy and her family are coming from Iowa and Doug and his family are coming from Tempe, AZ. We've been looking forward to it for a long time now although just told the kids about their Christmas present at Thanksgiving. They've been marking off the days on the calendar! We are staying at the Bonnet Creek resort which is a Wyndam resort on Disney property.

We are looking foward to lots of family time, some theme parks and a break from the cold weather! I'll try to keep you updated on our adventures and I'm able.

Merry Christmas!

The school Christmas program was tonight. It is soooo cold! The wind chill in the negatives. The kids did such a good job with all of their music. Heart warming for sure. I know she's my daughter, but doesn't Madison look beautiful?...and Quinn a cute looking Joseph?

Sadness

Michelle (Tony's sister) and Archie's beautiful baby girl was stillborn late this morning after a c-section delivery. The cord was wrapped around her little neck, otherwise she was a perfectly formed baby with lots of hair. She was due in January but Michelle noticed the baby wasn't moving yesterday. What was gearing up to be a great time of rejoicing and family celebration in a couple of weeks has suddenly been replaced with raw grief and loss. There are really no words to describe the feelings... God can feel the pain in their hearts as well as in our hearts. We would appreciate your prayers for Michelle, Archie and Jade as well as the rest of the family during this time of loss.

Love, Leah

Still here...

Sorry I haven't posted in a long time. It feels like I haven't been home in a long time. I've got pictures for you... the small group Christmas party, the children's Christmas program, hunting for our Christmas tree (which is still naked in the corner). I just don't have the energy tonight. Hopefully soon. I will leave you with one picture that might make you smile. I've finally captured Cocoa's obsession on camera. She will spent a good hour or more working on putting 2 of anything in her mouth at the same time. Her favorite is tennis balls. Pretty talented huh?