Saturday, April 26, 2008

My Oriole

I was out today doing some weeding and saw a flash of bright orange. Grabbed my binoculars and sure enough, we have an oriole in the neighborhood! They're quite striking...and while I didn't have my camera handy, here's a picture from the internet... my oriole looked just like this one!


Sunday, April 20, 2008

Birthday Plants

Here are some of the plants my folks got me for my birthday....I love new plant babies:

Here's some lettuce and parsley for the pigs:

A Chinese Lilac - I can't wait for it to bloom

A rambler rose I got with some birthday money from my grandma....I'm hoping it will want to grow over the arbor:

Monday, April 14, 2008

Disney Photos

Finally some Disney pictures:

My newly learned trick -- take a digital picture of where you parked:

On the tram to the main entrance:



Our "enchanted moment"


Me and my honey at the Happiest Place on Earth...



Eric & Leah outside Pirates of the Caribbean:


Two manly-men....Derek & Captain Jack Sparrow:


"Dance the Magic" - a mini pre-parade of dance troupes dancing down Main Street to the song "Footloose"


Parade Time:


Some Disney characters:


Here are the princesses...thinking of you, Aubrey!



Disneyland

Saturday, Derek and I got to go to the Magic Kingdom, the Happiest Place on Earth....yep, Disneyland. This was a dream come true for me as I realized I had never ridden an actual roller coaster with my husband (if you don't count almost 2 years of marriage).

So Saturday morning, we woke up early (amazing how easy it is when you want to go where you're going), and met up with Eric and Leah in Santa Clarita. Then we all carpooled down to Anaheim where Jenna treated us to some free entry tickets (THANK YOU, JENNA!)

We headed straight for Space Mountain and from there, it was a blast! I will hopefully post a couple of pictures when I can pull them off of our camera (our computer is being a pain in the backside by promptly shutting down everytime I turn the camera on when it's plugged into the USB -- so I'm looking for my card reader, but heaven only knows where I last put it!) But truth be told, it was pretty hot during the day and so we aren't missing much seeing Michelyn all hot and sweaty.

The four of us did get treated to an "Enchanted Moment"....we had lined up for lunch at the Tomorrowland Terrace and got offered a 'reserved' table where servers would bring us our food - complete with a linen tablecloth, linen napkins and condiments inside of little glass sealed jars. It didn't cost any extra so we were game! Apparently this year's theme is "Year of a Million Dreams" so they do fun little stuff that they call "enchanted moments" throughout the day and throughout the park with random people.

The rides as always were fun. I noticed that because of the fastpass system, most of the waiting is done outside - which wasn't so bad when there was shade. But for a couple of lines, there was no shade just folded up umbrellas that they wouldn't open because of some 'wind advisory.' We mostly didn't have to wait more than 30-40 minutes even without fastpass. The only 'bad' line was for Indiana Jones as it was the end of the day and for a couple of hours it was shut down, so they were trying to jam tons of people through the ride when it re-opened. One of the rides I really enjoyed, surprisingly, was the new Finding Nemo Submarine ride. Granted, I haven't been on the subs for ages, but I thought they did a great re-imagining of that ride!

After 11 hours of walking, our poor little feet were tired. So after some shopping (Michelyn got a great new sweatshirt) we all decided to head home...humming various themes from the rides. Can't wait to go back!