Thanksgiving Pow-Wow

Look how Jolie showed up from school this afternoon. I knew her class was having a Thanksgiving pow wow today, but I had no idea. Her teacher is is the best!

How are your Thanksgiving preparations coming? Do you have your turkey thawing in the sink and your pie pastry in the oven? Me neither! Actually, I told Gavin we were going to make our pastry today but we haven't gotten to it yet. Still working on laundry and trying to figure out what we're having for dinner tonight. Maybe I'll get ambitious later if my back isn't killing me. At least being 35 weeks preggo got me out of hosting this year! Thank goodness for that.

Queen for a Day

Saturday was quite a day for Jolie. We went to have her ears pierced and then she got to go on a $50 shopping spree at Toys R Us. Saturday night she got dressed up and went to see the play Little Shop of Horrors with Grandma. Three indulgences in one day!

Jolie has been earning stickers toward the ear piercing for the past few months by keeping her room clean. I've been at my wit's end with her messy room. I'll spend a good portion of a Saturday helping her get it organized and then within a few weeks it's back to being a disaster. So we came up with a chart and Grandma was in charge of dropping in from time to time to do room checks. Jolie didn't know when they would be so she made a special effort to leave her room in good shape when she left in the morning. The goal, ofcourse, was earning enough stickers on her chart to have her ears pierced. Let's hope the habit has stuck.

Jolie was also fortunate enough to win a $50 Toys R Us giftcard from Coldwell Banker who sponsored a coloring contest at school. She must be the lucky one in our family because we never seem to win anything! This will make two wins for Jolie in the past few months (the other being a pie-eating contest at the fair). Her picture turned out pretty cool. After looking at it I think she won because she added some things to the picture instead of just coloring it (stars and ghosts in the background). Hmmmm... I wonder whom she gets that creativity and artistic talent from????

Jolie loves musicals and was so excited that Grandma invited her to see Little Shop of Horrors. If we were wealthy and she were an only child, she and I would definitely have season tickets to the ballet and theater. It amazes me that she can sit still and pay such close attention at her young age. But then again, maybe that's because I spend so much time with little boys and they're so UNABLE to do those things!

Je deteste daylight savings!

How is it that I feel so exhausted while everyone is saying that we got an extra hour of sleep this week?

Daylight savings is a great concept but it sure BITES for people who have little kids! Mine (all three) have been up at 5:30 the past three mornings. That combined with being in the last trimester of pregnancy, being sick, and trying to recover from our trip and the time change from the east coast has just about put me over the edge. I feel like a walking dead person.

We spent our last day in Orlando at Magic Kingdom. We wanted to see Animal Kingdom but we decided to go back to Magic Kingdom because the kids really wanted to ride a lot of their favorite rides, plus this time of year it stays open 2 hours later than Animal Kingdom. It was a fun way to spend our last day. I couldn't resist Splash Mountain even though it's not advised for people in my "condition" (shhhh...) Jolie was a lot more cautious our last day there and wouldn't go back on it so it was just me and the boys. I was amazed at Gavin, he truly is fearless. It was a lot more violent than I remember and he had no reservations about going back on it. We even sat in the front seat and got completely soaked! Fortunately, Friday was a beautiful day and there was no rain. On our last trip out of the part we were able to ride in the very front of the monorail with the driver (pilot? conductor?) which was a thrill. You have to have special permission so we lucked out.

Saturday morning we got up and started packing. A few of us had been coming down with a cold while we were there and it really hit Tristan and I on Saturday morning. Tristan woke up and said his ear was hurting. Not a good thing for a parent to hear a few hours before getting on a plane. He had some problems on the first flight but I was able to talk a guy in a coffee shop into giving me some hot water and I used a shirt as a warm compress to massage his ear canal before we got on our second flight.

We're still trying to recover from this HORRID cold virus and get our lives back in order. I've done 9 loads of laundry over the past few days and finally got it all folded and put away last night but I noticed that the hamper is half full again. If anyone finds my extra daylight savings hour please let me know, I could REALLY use it.

Thursday

This morning the kids wanted to swim so we headed over to a pool we discovered on yesterday's scavenger hunt. It has waterfalls and water cannons. Tristan met some friends who he played water football with. Florida still has the strangest weather I've ever experienced. It was sunshine... rain... sunshine... rain all morning. The temperature is still plenty warm (mid 80's) so in a way, I'm grateful for the rain. The first day we were here I was really feeling the heat and humidity and I was wondering if I'd made a mistake coming here 8 months pregnant.

This afternoon we went back to MGM to catch a few things we missed and to see the night-time Fantasmic show. We rode Star Tours which I had forgotten I wasn't fond of when we went to Disneyland a few years ago. Gavin wasn't thrilled with it either, he was sitting between Tristan and I and he was asking for Dan the whole time. I kept telling him to close his eyes if it was too scarry and at one point I even put my hand over his eyes to spare him the motion sickness that seems to come with that ride. He pulled my hand away from his face as though the curiosity was too much to resist.

We also saw a fun Jedi training show in which Darth Vader made an appearance. It was especially fun since we brought the first three Star Wars movies on this trip. The kids have been watching them in the morning and a lot of our conversations have revolved around me trying to sort out the whole Star Wars saga.

We also saw a Little Mermaid Show (Jolie loved it but Tristan acted as though we were torturing him to make him sit through it), an Indiana Jones stunt show, we came across Jo Jo and Goliath from Playhouse Disney, and we went to the big Fantasmic Show which was incredible. Gavin was very concerned about whether Malificint would be making an appearance. She must have made quite an impression on him at the Magic Kingdom show the other day!

It was a fun day! Sadly, tomorrow is our last full day here. We're not sure whether we'll go to Animal Kingdom or back to Magic Kingdom for our last day.