Happy Monday

Happy Monday everyone!  I am sitting here with my eggnog latte from Starbucks!  Matt has to go in early on Monday's and does not make a pot of coffee.  We were dragging a bit this morning after being out of school for a week and a half with the cruise and Thanksgiving.  We had a nice Thanksgiving and have just been packing and packing.  Closing is tomorrow and moving trucks will be here between 8 and 8:30 on Wed.  Matt is cyber-Monday shopping for a deal on a trampoline.  Any suggestions?  The trampoline is the reward for the boys giving up their playset that they love so much. 

Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving.  Matt decided that he would make bread pudding for Thanksgiving.  It turned out yummy!  Matt's dad fried turkey!  We had Mimi's dressing and our BIL made his family's sausage stuffing.

Here is Matt's bread pudding with rum soaked raisins.  He added a cream sause at the end.

Hello Mr. Fried Turkey

Matt holding the platter while his dad carved

And Happy Thanksgiving to you to Luigi!  While we were preparing to eat bread pudding, Matt's mom let Luigi lick the platter!

Cousins

And this is what eating 1/2 a turkey and playing with cousins will do to you

Here are the boys making box submarine's.  They packed stuff from their room's in the boxes they decorated.  Playing inside boxes has not gotten old yet.  Our neighbor's are back in town and they have plans to play with the boxes after school today.  Whatever keeps them occupied! 

Picture's of the new house will be coming as soon as we get moved in and have the computer hooked up.

Disney Cruise

This was our home away from home from Thursday-Sunday morning!

This is the Disney Wonder.  We went with my sister and her family on a Disney Cruise to the Bahamas and Disney's private island called Castaway Cay.  It was so much fun.  I am so glad we went at this age.  Brady and my neice Kendall were the perfect age to still be so excited to meet all the characters.  The cruise made it so easy to go and meet the characters.  They give you a list of when each character will be making an appearance.  Cal was only interested in Peter Pan, Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Hook.  He did stand in line for Mickey and Pluto and almost stood in line for Chip and Dale.

We started off Thursday by boarding and changing into our swim suites.  There was a fun slide that looked like Mickey's hand was holding up the slide.  Both boys were tall enough to do it.

Sitting on one of Mickey Mouses ears

Then it was time for the safety exercise and the "Sailaway" Party

We sailed away into the sunset and it was time for dinner.

This night we ate dinner then took Cal and the older boys to a show called the Golden Mickey's while Kendall and Brady went to the kids club room.  We were all exausted and had a busy day planned for Friday, so we were off to bed.  This is what we found when we got to our room..............

Bunk beds!!!!!!  We just thought the sofa (bottom bunk) turned into the boys bed, but no, there was a bed that came out of the ceiling and they slept on bunk beds.  This did not get old.  When we left for breakfast the room guy put the beds away and when we got back each night, we had bunk beds, chocolates, and towel animals!  This is the boys having a late night snack the first night.

Friday morning we ate breakfast then went to see Peter Pan.

The boys decided to go to the kids club room while Matt and I packed our day bag for our Atlantis, Bahama's adventure.  We were dropped off at Atlantis to sign in for our Dolphin Experience and eat lunch.  All our Dolphin photo's are on a USB drive, so they will be loaded later (we were not allowed to take our camera near the dolphin's). They had 2 trainers per group and a photgrapher.  This was the coolest thing I have ever done by far.  We kissed dolphin's, we fed them fish, we took lots of pictures.  The boys loved it.  How cute are they in their wet suits???????

After our dolphin experience, one of our trainers asked if we would like to go see the sea lions also.  Normally an extra charge, but he took us for free.  How nice, since we spent a small forture for the photos!

I have a TON of pictures from Atlantis.........pictures of the grounds, the water slides, the buildings, the glass sculptures, the aquarium........I'll just pick a few.................

This is the water slide that goes straight down.  We didn't do the water park, but my sister and her family did.

This is not the best picture, but that fish behind Cal was the biggest, fattest fish I had ever seen.

Here is Cal with Pirate Mickey.  He has wet hair along with the rest of us because we barely made it back from Atlantis in time to make dinner.  After dinner they saw Captin Jack Sparrow then we went to see the Toy Story Show, which was fabulous!!!!

After the show, I took Brady back to go to bed and Matt took Cal to the Pirate Party. Matt then brought Cal to me and I took him to watch the fireworks and get a piece of cake off the desert buffet.  Sidenote: Disney is the only cruise ship that does fireworks.  It appears the Disney Cruise is designed to be as tiring as the Disney Parks!

Saturday we woke up and were docked at Castaway Cay.  We ate breakfast and headed to the island.

I think he looks really big boy here :(

Hanging out in the hammocks

Cal feeding a sting ray a shrimp

This is Matt holding Brady who had already taken his swimsuit off because he and Kendall had played in the sand all day.  That is Morgan and Marshall to the left of Cal.  They had a blast just playing in the ocean and sand, so we didn't do any of the kids activities on the island.

We ate dinner at a cool restaurant called Animaters.  The restaurant is all black and white pictures from the Disney movies then the pictures turn to color then they do a whole show for the whole restaurant to change to color and the wait staff who has been in black and white comes back out in color outfits.  Brady slept through most of this, but woke up to leave.

This is us after dinner.  Ignore that Brady has his eyes closed and is dressed like Indiana Jones.  I tried to get him to take a pirate costume, but he wanted to take his Halloween costume, so here he is.......

Cal and the older boys went to see a movie while(one of Cal's favorite parts of the cruise, other than eating cake every night).   Matt went to look at all our pictures and I started getting our stuff together.  At 10:00 there was a farwell party where they characters did a little show and they you could go meet any that you had not been able to see before.  Please note that Brady is now in a p.j. top and shorts because I had packed our bags and was under the impression it was only a show to watch, not a character meet/photo opp!

A perfect way to end the day and end the cruise! 

Gratitude

I am feeling so thankful as we come upon Thanksgiving next week.  We are still trucking along with all this house business.  The inspection's have been done on both houses and both passed with no major problems.  The apraisal has been done on the house we are buying, we are waiting on the apraisal to be done on our house tomorrow and praying it comes back strong.  Once we get that done, I think we will be safe to say we will be closing on the 30th!  WOW!!!!  I am waiting on the estimate from one moving company then we will book the movers. 

We leave tomorrow for our Disney Cruise and will be back on Sunday.  Once we get back from the cruise, all I will be doing is PACKING, PACKING, PACKING........take a break to eat Thanksgiving lunch......then more PACKING, PACKING, PACKING! 

We are so excited about the Disney Cruise (thankful to be getting to take the kids on what Cal calls our "traveling vacation")!  Hoping to get a Christmas card picture while on the cruise.  Going to have to take a break from packing to do Christmas cards with our new address included?????

Here is my little toothless 6 year old.  He lost the 2nd top tooth in the middle of the night.  Woke Matt up to help him find it. 

Here is a tree in our neighborhood that I like because it is green at the bottom and has started changing colors at the top

Here are 3 beautiful red trees that are in a yard of a house that will hopefully be on our new street

I will leave you with a verse of Gratitude/Thanksgiving:

"Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17

Happy and Sad

As the boys were swinging in the backyard today, I had a little moment where I was sad to be leaving our first little house and our fun backyard/playset.  Matt built the playset when Cal was 2.  There have been a lot of good times had on that playset, but the new family asked if we would leave the playset for them and their little 2 year old.  They have a little boy which makes me super happy that another little boy will be having fun in our house and in our backyard.

Both boys are swinging on their own.  Brady still wants you there to get him started and give the occasional push, but he is doing it by himself!  They spent a good hour swinging today.

Cal has spent many an hour in our backyard playing superhero's all by himself. :)

Down they go

Up they go!

Good times have been had on that porch and in the kitchen behind those windows

This is a small look at what Matt comes home to everyday.......toys in the driveway

Matt doing a little work on the house before the inspection on Tuesday.  Our new house had its inspection on Friday and it passed!  Yeah!  Praying for a good report on Tuesday too!

Good thing he is so cute.....the family didn't ask for him, so I guess we will take him with us! 

We had a good restful weekend.  Cal had a late afternoon birthday party on Friday, then I had a girl's night out.  We did some work around the house on Saturday then took the boys to see Mega Mind.  It was good.  Didn't keep Brady's attention like some movies do, but Cal really liked it.  We went to church today then finished up the little "to do" list and played outside a lot.  It was really cold yesterday, but warmed up today.  Hope everyone else had a nice weekend too!