Alabaster Mom

I'm really disappointed that my daughter doesn't mispronounce the word "festival" anymore. Talking about festibuls all summer long seemed . . . more fun somehow.  She does still mispronounce a few things and we don't always correct her because . . . well, then we couldn't make fun of her behind her back. For example, when P is mowing the lawn, A will ask me if her dad is "mawn lowing."  With our mawn lower.  As in, "Daddy, Mommy almost backed over the mawn lower when she was pulling out of the garage this morning!" (Really, though, he shouldn't put it so close to my car.) She also still pronounces "mustache" like "moostache" so we still have that as well. Anyway, we did kick off our summer festival season last weekend - we attended two. P stayed home because he's no fun. On Saturday we went to a local Memorial Day fair. She insisted on riding a few rides and, since she was too short to ride by herself, I had to...

I'm writing these vacation posts partly just to bore you into a coma but also so that I can look back and remember what the heck we did on our vacation. By Thursday, we had visited all four Disney parks (well, except the water parks, but we weren't planning to visit those regardless). So then it was a matter of which parks we should hit a second time. For Friday, we came up with a consensus: we'd spend the morning at the Magic Kingdom and spend the afternoon swimming at the resort. The challenge with the Magic Kingdom is that you can't just waltz in and out. First you have to take a tram from the parking lot. Then you have to get from the ticket center to the actual park. There are two choices: ferry and monorail. We took the monorail. You think you're almost off the hook at this point, but you still have to stand in the bag checking line (to make sure you're not carrying any contraband). Then you stand in line again to get through the turnstiles (this involve...

(I'm almost done, I promise.) On Wednesday morning, we headed to Animal Kingdom. It rained quite a bit throughout the day, but we had rain gear so we soldiered on. I think my daughter impaled the eyeballs of about fifty strangers while swinging her umbrella around. We hopped on a safari first thing in the morning, as we had heard the animals are more active then. As you know, I really struggle with this sort of thing. I'd rather know that a giraffe is loping freely across some African plains than to be living in Disney World with tourists passing by a thousand times a day. And yet, we've done such a spectacular job of destroying our natural resources and habitats that zoos become sort of essential for conservation. I do know that Disney does not take any animal out of the wild - most come from other zoos. Or at least that is the line they give . . . We saw a couple of shows at Animal Kingdom and also rode a roller coaster called Expedition Everest. My stomach felt a lit...

 . . . I married some guy I picked up in a bar. When I asked our daughter how long she thought we'd been married, she said, "About 35 years."

After spending something like 14 hours at the Magic Kingdom on Sunday, we weren't sure what Monday would hold. We were sort of playing each day "by ear" and waiting to see what the weather would do. Our friends' middle son came down with a painful ear infection (as opposed to the infections that feel good, I guess) and needed to see a doctor right away on Monday morning. Not that we were happy he had an infection, but this gave the rest of us a chance to sleep in a little. We came up with a plan to have an early lunch at the resort and then head to Epcot for the afternoon/evening. I loved Epcot. The first thing I noticed was: they sell beer there (no alcohol is sold at the Magic Kingdom).  I didn't buy anything to drink at Epcot, but wondered if this is why adults seem to love Epcot more than kids do. Speaking of what Disney sells and where, did you know that Disney does not sell gum at any of its properties? I'm assuming it's because they don't want...

(These are the Disney World posts I warned you about.) In addition to the lice trauma/drama, we had one other pre-flight incident. We forgot A's carry-on bag. We realized it when we were about 35 minutes from home and did not want to go back. I pulled over to the side of the road so that we could argue about whose fault it was. I blamed P because he had packed the car and should have known it was missing. He blamed me because I did the packing. A blamed both of us because we are horrible parents.  Anyway, we stopped at a Target and replaced some of the items that had been in the carry-on (markers, paper, stuffed animal, etc.) My daughter chose a Victorious backpack, and let me tell you it is nearly the most hideous thing ever manufactured. She loves it. From there, other than the lice incident, things went pretty smoothly.  We arrived in Orlando on Saturday, May 12th. Our friends had arrived at the resort before we got there (they have a time share; we stayed just a couple...