Notes from ShellyCentral

We're going to Disney World

Here's the thing I didn't tell you about Mother's Day.



For almost 3 weeks now, Danny and I have known that we're taking a family trip to Disney World this December. His office has their annual Christmas Party in a different city each year, and this year they've chosen Disney World. !!! Go Danny's office. Seriously, how fantastic is that?

We decided to keep it a secret from Hannah for a while. At first we weren't sure if his office would allow us to take her, and we weren't sure we should spend the extra money it'll take us to all go. We finally decided the trip was a go and it was time to tell Hannah.

We wanted to announce it to her in some fun and kind of surprisey way. I checked out some ideas on the web and decided to do the backpack reveal sort of surprise. I bought her a Disney bag from Walmart, and a bunch of silly Princess things at the dollar store. I threw in some travel supplies, and I bought her the Camelbak water bottle with a filter she's been asking for.

I waited till after I opened my presents and then told her I'd picked up something for her too. "For me?" she asked. "It's no big deal," I told her. "Just something I saw and thought you might like."

I handed her the bag. She unzipped it and barely glanced inside before she said,

"We're going to Disney World, aren't we?"

She's clever, that girl. I was all denial. "What? I don't know what you're talking about. Just see what's inside."

I had picked up a few things for Danny as well and shoved them in a Mickey gift bag. I gave him his.

Danny got some travel sized supplies, a different kind of filtered water bottle, a Star Wars shirt and a pack of Disney tattoos.

By that point she was pretty positive we were going, so Danny gave her the details. 5 nights at the Coronado Springs Resort at Disney World. D and I are considering adding a night or two at the new Art of Animation resort, but we'll have to give it some more thought (and number crunching).

203 days. I'm so excited.

Disney World Trip Report

Remember last year when Hannah and I went to Disney World with my baby brother?
Well I finally finished my trip report. It took long enough, I know. But it's done, and if you'd like to see all the pictures and read all about it you can head on over to the Dis Boards and check it out.

The Disney Book

It's Art Journal Friday, and I have worked in my art journal almost every day this week, but I don't have anything really fun to show for it. So instead I thought I'd show you some of my Disney book. I've spent a lot of time on it this week and it's finally done enough (will it ever really be done?) to show off, I think.

These are my favorite pages from day one. If you click any of them it will take you to Flickr where you can look at it bigger or look at some of the other pages, or even other days. Eventually I'll show you favorite pages from all the days, but today it's just four pages from the first day.

 

I used scrapbook papers meant for Disney, but mostly I used pages and pieces from kids books I found at the local thrift store, like the Ariel here.

Every day I wrote what we had for lunch and dinner on the Guest Check pages my boyfriend bought me years ago. I love those pages. Also here is the schedule for the Magic Kingdom fun events.

The first night we ate inside the castle, at Cinderella's Royal Table. It was fantastic, both the food and the experience. Here inside a princesses gift card I have pictures of us with our favorite princesses, Ariel and Belle.

More pictures from dinner, including all of us with Cinderella with too much glare. We went to Epcot afterward and I took a picture of Space Ship Earth. In the back ground you can see the page with Hannah and my high points for the day.

You can look at half the trip or so on Flickr now, but I'll be posting more daily hilights here over the next several days!

whoops. i forgot to post this (.thursday.)

Oh hi.
I've failed to get back into the swing of this since I've been back from Disney World. Yes it was amazing and I had the best time and posts about the trip are in the works.
But now I've been back for 5 days and it's about time to be back to normal. ish.

Today was a normal super busy day. Alan was over and we ran errands and did some shopping all day long. In the afternoon I took Hannah shopping for a dress for her winter formal. 3 stores and about a dozen dresses later, she walked out of the dressing room in a dress we both knew right away was the one. That was good.

But after all the rushing, Alan and I hung out trying out new music with Pandora. I love just listening to music with him. After he had to leave, I talked for a while with Hannah and then came down to work on my Disney book for a while. I have no idea if I love it or hate it, but isn't that how it always happens with stuff you make yourself? It is for me, anyway.

 

A long time ago Hannah started a tradition of telling your high and low points of the day. Usually over dinner, but I'm feeling like doing it here.

High Light = when H walked out of the dressing room in that dress
Low Light = trying to talk on the phone and pick out baby bottles at the same time

more or less

So I'm back from Disney.

There is less warm.
There is less excitement.
There is more down time.
There is less walking
There is worse food.
There are more beverages.
There is more quiet.
There are more dogs.
There are more responsibilities.
There is less Hannah time.
There is less map consultation.
There are less snack credits.
There are less strollers & scooters.
There are less crying babies.
There are less lines.
There are more phone calls.
There is more internet.
There are less bag checks.
There is less Disney.

I'm on a plane

Google chrome is giving everyone on Delta free in flight wifi for Christmas, so this post is coming to you from something like 40 thousand feet over somewhere between Atlanta and Kansas City. Hannah is sleeping by the window. This flights a little empty so we have the row to ourselves which is nice. Leaving Disney World isn't exactly nice. Hannah is ready to be back home but I am not. I will miss the weather and the all day fun and the fantastic dinners every night. I don't think I can shove that much fun and excitement into my days back home. There are some things I miss. My boyfriend, friends and family. My dogs and my bed. Mmm my nice own bed. And having all my clothes and toiletries and art supplies where they belong. Oh and not having screaming children around every corner, or having to navigate through a stream of strollers and scooters when I try to get anywhere. Still I'd stay another week at least if I could.

Blog posted here.

Waiting by the pool

Weare waiting by the pool. Our bus will be here in an hour to take us back to the real world and as you might guess I am not ready for re-entry. I love Disney World. I want to live here.

Blog posted here.

what i've been watching

To get ready for the trip to Disney (one week from today), I've been watching a lot of Disney movies. Here's a list of what they were and what I thought.

Aristocats
Fantastic as always. I think it's my favorite Disney movie. I love the kittens. I like Thomas O'Malley. I seriously love the jazzy number of Everybody Wants To Be a Cat.

101 Dalmatians
Another one of my favorites, Pongo, Perdita and the puppies are all so sweet and charming, as are the brigade of animals that help get the puppies home. The Twilight Bark is the greatest thing ever.

The Little Mermaid
I've seen this movie probably hundreds of times. Silly Ariel. Luckily it all ends happy, just like a Disney movie. My favorite songs are the Chef's Song and Under the Sea.

Beauty and the Beast
Belle is my favorite Disney Princess because she is independent, smart, loves to read and everyone thinks she's strange. I love this movie for it's excellent songs and since my major teen hearthrob was Robbie Benson, of course I love to hear him voice the Beast. It makes it easy for me to imagine falling in love with him.

The Princess and the Frog
We had never seen this movie before, although I head heard a few of the songs on my Pandora Disney station. I was super pleasantly surprised! I loved it. Sweet and charming, a little creepy in parts, and another Princess with a mind of her own. Great supporting players as well. Also, I enjoyed a Disney Princess in America for a change (and New Orleans was a great choice).

Finding Nemo
So this one I didn't feel so much. I just wasn't really that interested. It might have helped if it had some songs. I didn't really love any of the characters and I wasn't really worried about what was going to happen because it was a Disney movie - of course they would be reunited in the end. I did like the fish in the tank with Nemo but not enough to really like the movie.

Toy Story 3
The first thing I noticed is how fantastic it looked in HD on my big teevee. Amazing. I don't really love movies that are just one catastrophe averted after another, but other things made it mostly enjoyable. I cried a little at the end, like the mom of a high school senior might. The ending was terrific.

 

When I'm not watching kid movies, I've been watching the series Torchwood from Netflix streaming. I'm kind of loving it.

DW -16 days

It's barely over two weeks till our Disney Adventure begins. I woke up this morning thinking about it and spend the morning making lists and thinking about Disney things. Mid morning Hannah called from school not feeling well, poor boo. She's been laying on the couch upstairs watching The Little Mermaid and 101 Dalmatians. Our Netflix queue is full of Disney flix, I doubt we'll get through them before we take off.

I posted a pre-trip report report on a Disney vacation message board. It's not full of little emoticons, but I did add some pictures, including these of Hannah the last time we went. In 1997. She was 4. She had a really good time. I hope she'll have a good time this time. She doesn't seem that excited, but then again she's never really been excited about a trip before it happens. She kind of saves it up till she gets there. She says she can't really believe it's going to happen until it's happening.

In the mean time I think about it a lot. And I worry about it a lot. Today's worry is about our dinner reservations. They're all at 8 or 8:30 and I'm thinking I should have gone for more like 5 or 6. We'll be starving by 8:30 and this week I've barely been able to stay up that late! I don't like the thought of eating a giant meal and then going back to the room and going to sleep. But the reservations are made and it's only 2 weeks away so I think I'm stuck. I need to find a way to shift my schedule some before we go. Other common worries are about what to wear to match the weather, if we'll have any money for anything extra (we're doing the dining plan so we'll at least be able to eat), if I'll be able to find any quiet time and if I'll be able to sleep past 5am. I think I'll take the big time sleep drug, that should work.

16 days. It's going to fly by.

My Disney Book

Inspired mostly by Monkia Wright's Charlotte book, but also by Mary Ann Moss's travel journals, I decided to put together a "scrapbook" of sorts for our Disney trip before we went to Disney. It's just the pages, and in some places spots to journal. While we're there we'll fill it in with memories we write and bits and pieces of ephemera we pick up along the way. When we get back we'll finish it off with some of our favorite pictures.

For a couple months I've been finding books of Disney stories we like, Disney papers, stickers (I haven't added those in yet) and just recently I decided to use a few of our pictures from our previous trips, when Hannah was 3 & 4. The covers are from little golden books; the front is an old Alice in Wonderland and the back is from Hannah's favorite, The Lion King. Most of the pages are from The Little Mermaid and Bambi with some 101 Dalmations and Aristocats thrown in.

This is each day's page laid out in a stack, with the covers at the end on the right. The stack on the top left is for before we leave.

It's only slightly interesting right now, before we go and fill it up. But I took some pictures from a random day's pages to show you the before.

After I look at it too long, like today, I think it's lame. But usually I love it and can't wait to get it into my hotel room in Disney World (39 days) and work on filling it up every night!