Why We Love Disney

We love Disney. It's pretty obvious to anyone who knows us for any amount of time that it's our favorite vacation destination. Most of our friends accept it, many even share our Disney obsession joy but still from time to time we're asked why we go to Disney World...or rather why do we go repeatedly. Our answer is always a little lost on those who have never been or those who have only gone in the middle of summer with little to no planning. The answer is simple...it's the atmosphere. We love the Disney bubble. 

I could go into the nerdy details about the park's architectural engineering and how Disney has made it almost impossible to see the outside world while in their bubble but it's more than geographic. Where else in the world can kids dress up every day as pirates and princesses? Where else do grown men wear R2D2 ears with pride?

But it's even more than that. It's the culture. It's the customer service. And it goes beyond the parks. While at Disney World last week with his grandparents, our son lost his Woody doll (from Toy Story). It was a BIG deal. It's been his favorite toy for quite some time and when they realized it was gone, after landing at the airport near Grandma's house, he teared up. He's not the kind of kid to cry easily or be attached to his stuff. In fact, we usually have to convince him NOT to give away his things but Woody is different and when Grandma tried to comfort him by suggesting they go straight to the Disney Store, his heart and the dam holding back his tears broke. He didn't want a new Woody. He wanted HIS Woody. So Grandma called her local Disney Store and told them what had happened. The cast member (Disney's word for employee) told her not to worry, he would call Mickey and they would have the Disney Resort housekeepers (called Mousekeepers) find Woody and send him to their store immediately. When they got to the store, not only was there a Woody waiting behind the counter for our son (tags off) but he was wrapped up in a box with tape and "RUSH DELIVERY/PRIORITY MAIL" written all over it. Inside a note from Mickey himself that told our son Woody had been accidentally caught up in the sheets and had been cleaned professionally. 

That is why we love Disney. They go above and beyond and magical things happen.

I'm Back...again.

I'm probably the worst blogger ever when it comes to unexplained blogging sabbaticals. I haven't written since JULY! How crazy is that?! Here's the thing, stuff happened. I probably won't go into great detail on all the "stuff" but I'm back and here's a quick run down of what we've been up to...

*Most importantly, I'm still pregnant. We had a couple complications  (given my history, no real surprises there) but everything is going well now and I'm already huge which is good...mostly. 

*Joshua has a new civi job...this one takes a little explanation. His old civi job fired him. Yup. Fired. He's never been fired before and despite the fact that they always gave him glowing reviews and he's never had a complaint, they fired him...basically, they were tired of having to work around his Guard schedule and responsibilities so when he came back from his two week AT, they let him go. I wasn't surprised because they've been anti-military since day one but I was angry and if I think about it too much now, I'm still angry...but I'm also grateful. He hated that place. They were HORRIBLE. Not everyone who worked there of course but yeah, horrible is the only word for it. Just to give you an idea of the atmosphere, before he deployed they were interviewing people for an open position and he overheard one of the managers say that there was "no chance in hell we're hiring that guy-he's another Guard guy and that's the last thing we need." Then, when Joshua returned from deployment, several of his co-workers thought it was funny to surprise him with loud noises just to see if they could make him jump. Classy, right?! Anyway, I say I'm grateful because his new job is better. I mean it's not hard to be better than his old job but it's WAY better. Like God did an awesome thing better. The hours are a little odd but we're good with odd and he enjoys the work.

*We've started with our new homeschool group and curriculum-Classical Conversations if you're interested. It couldn't be going better. I'm tutoring the 4/5 yr old class which has been a blast and the boy is amazing us with how much he's learning. Actually, our little 2 yr old princess is even trying to get in on the action sometimes.

(1st day of CC-our homeschool group which meets once a week and our 1st day of homeschool at home-yup, in pjs)

(our favorite project this semester...we created a multi-level eco-system...I plan to write a post with more details to come but if you want to build one yourself, you can find the step-by-step tutorial we followed here)

*I was asked to be a pattern tester for a new "ruffle top" which I loved making but unfortunately in the process my sewing machine died :( so now I'm at a bit of a standstill when it comes to sewing.

(here's the finished project...once the pattern is available for purchase, I'll post a link to it)

*The boy is, at this very moment, on vacation with his grandparents at Disney World. I'm jealous. I'm really jealous. But I'm also really pregnant and on travel restrictions...kinda going crazy with cabin fever. I have, however, enjoyed the one-on-one time with our princess. We switched some of the kids furniture around in preparation for Baby 3.0 so now the princess is in a big girl bed and loving it-still waiting to find out the gender but Joshua's trying to convince me not to wait so we'll see if that changes.

That's been us the last couple of months. I plan on spending the next week reading all the blogs I love and have been missing to get caught up on your lives!

PS>I just got a pic from Grandma of our little man and a couple of his cousins at Disney World's Pirate's League...so wish I was with him!

Quick Update

Things have been a bit crazy lately but I wanted to stop by and give you a quick update...

We...
*went to the farm, took some family pics (which we hadn't done really since last March!)

*taught a couple good friends to shoot (always fun!)

*finally took the last of the holiday decorations down...yeah, we were sort of those people...the outside stuff was all down on New Year's but the inside stuff sort of just stayed

Joshua...

*has been pulled in 12 different directions all at once but seems to be handling it pretty well and will hopefully be home more after next week

Me...
*finally has a picture of JUST me that I like (no kids, no Joshua, JUST me...wow...it's been YEARS)

The boy...
*is on a photo boycott...he refuses to smile for real anymore

*loves his new bike but not as much as his sister does...(this is her pouting because she didn't get to ride it)

The girl...

*went in for her 18 month well baby check up and is up to the 12th percentile in both height and weight (woohoo she's proportional)...unfortunately she's still not yet 20lbs so we'll be rocking the rear-facing car seat for a while longer

Bubba and the foster puppy...

*Bubba has, for the most part, enjoyed having another dog to wrestle with but I think he's also looking forward to the puppy finding a forever home so he can just lay around

*we thought we had found the foster puppy a home but it fell through so the search continues...who wouldn't want this sweet girl?!

Oh my goodness, I just looked at the clock! I have to get ready, Joshua and I are going to the theater tonight (eeek!). We have tickets for Jekyll and Hyde and I've somehow convinced him to go big and where his dress blues. Meanwhile, I bought a pair of black 6" heel because I'm crazy awesome like that!-my husband is a foot taller than me, I have to do something!

Colorblind

Something interesting happened last night. My son drew a picture of he and I holding hands. Before you assume that I've gone totally off the cliff with the whole "my kid is awesome and everyone should know all about everything he does" mentality so many Moms understandably have, this pictures was different. 

He had colored in our skin...a lovely shade of yellow. It was a first-usually we're stick people or just not colored in. I asked him if he had used the yellow crayon because of what our skin looks like and he replied with a "yeah" that sounded more like a "duh." It lead to an interesting conversation today about the different people we know and why they look the way they do. 

Being a white family living in an area that is very white can make it interesting to have discussions like this one but I'm glad we did. Maybe it's because I'm white and haven't faced the sting of racial prejudice but I don't understand when people say we need to be colorblind-don't misunderstand, I would hope to never judge someone good or bad based on the color of their skin but I also don't want to ignore the obvious beauty in our diversity. 

We ended up talking about different skin colors, eyes and hair but I think my son summed it up best when he said "It's cool that God made people different colors because I have different color crayons and I like to use lots of colors in my pictures." I think God had the same idea little man.

A New First

Last weekend the boy had a first.

We took him shooting for the first time. 

Yes, he's four. Yes, we took our four year old shooting. 

The fact is my husband and I both enjoy shooting whether it's going to the gun range with friends or out to the farm for target practice. Joshua also enjoys hunting every year but I want to be clear, anything he hunts, we eat and if we don't eat it, we donate it to organizations like Hunters Against Hunger which work to bring hunters and meat processing companies together to distribute food to various charities in our area. 

We have multiple guns in our home (properly stored) and one of the things we want to teach our children is proper gun-ownership. We believe that a major part of proper gun-ownership is knowing not only how to use them but also seeing first hand how dangerous they can be. How is a child supposed to understand the difference between a "real gun" and a "toy gun" when you tell them "only play with toy guns, never a real gun" if they've never seen what a real gun looks like and what it does?

If you disagree, that's cool, you don't have to take your children shooting but please respect our choices as we respect yours.

Anyway, the boy had a GREAT time and if I might have a proud Mommy moment, he was pretty good! He listened patiently as Joshua explained "safety procedures" like always assume the gun is loaded, never walk in front of a gun and be sure to put the safety on when you're not shooting. They're rules we'll repeat a thousand times over the years but this was a great start.

He started with Joshua's old BB gun.

 

And because he listened so well, we went ahead and moved on to Joshua's SKS rifle. Since it was sort of a last minute decision to go, we hadn't bought the boy his own ear muffs yet, so he used my pink ones.

First, he watched Joshua shoot so he could get used to the noise.

Then, he laid next to Joshua as Joshua shot and lastly, Joshua held the rifle as Benjamin pulled the trigger (my camera battery died before I could get those pics). 

He only shot off a few rounds before we needed to go because the sun was going down but I'm proud that he did so well and I'm looking forward to our next trip.