2006 DVC Member Cruise - SSMC06 - October 22, 2006 Part 6

[Diana Lyn]

I have finally caught up and have enjoyed reading everyone's escapades over the last few weeks. I am glad everyone is safe after the weather that has gone through the past week or so. We were frozen here last Thursday and Friday, but everything is pretty much back to normal now. It was great to hear that Chery's surgery went well and that she is back home. That is a great holiday treat!

Happy birthday to all those who have celebrated since I was on last and congrats to all the kids who have done well at school and their other activities.

I have to brag on my 2 daughters. We found out last weekend that my oldest daughter (19) was accepted into Texas A&M for the spring semester. This is a big deal because, as I posted before the cruise, she had a massive stroke at age 17 in 2004. She is still impaired on her right side and had to start out her college career slowly at a local junior college to see if she could handle the course load, which put her behind in credit hours. At TAMU you must have 24 transfer credits to be accepted, but she only has 18. Well, one of the counselors suggested she try anyway so she did. The college considered her situation and saw that she was doing well academically and decided to accept her for the spring. She is very excited and we are so proud of her. So I guess now I am officially an Aggie Mom! My younger daughter (15) is in the advance placement art class at her high school. Their class has painted a large mural for our public safety department which will be dedicated this week. She also did a piece for the PTA Reflections contest that was selected to go to the state level. We are waiting to hear if she made it past state to the national level.

I have my CJ ready to go! I wanted to do it now because the holidays are crazy and we will be gone from Christmas to New Years. When we get back we have to go to TAMU for a transfer student orientation for a couple of days, then when I get back from that its time for my 15 year olds 16th birthday party! I knew I would be stressed and wanted this to be a fun project so I went ahead and did it before it gets too crazy around here. My theme is an alphabet book. I took the letter "A" so you can get an idea of what to do. My "A" page is "All Aboard" and it is the picture that was taken before we boarded the boat.

Well we are off to do some Christmas shopping this afternoon. Happy holidays everyone!!

First of all the alphabet CJ idea is an awesome one!! How cool! I'm already excited to get it!

Congrats to you on raising two smart talented daughters! You should be so proud of them, they both have some amazing accomplishments at such young ages.

 

[cgcw]

I have to brag on my 2 daughters. We found out last weekend that my oldest daughter (19) was accepted into Texas A&M for the spring semester. This is a big deal because, as I posted before the cruise, she had a massive stroke at age 17 in 2004. She is still impaired on her right side and had to start out her college career slowly at a local junior college to see if she could handle the course load, which put her behind in credit hours. At TAMU you must have 24 transfer credits to be accepted, but she only has 18. Well, one of the counselors suggested she try anyway so she did. The college considered her situation and saw that she was doing well academically and decided to accept her for the spring. She is very excited and we are so proud of her. So I guess now I am officially an Aggie Mom! My younger daughter (15) is in the advance placement art class at her high school. Their class has painted a large mural for our public safety department which will be dedicated this week. She also did a piece for the PTA Reflections contest that was selected to go to the state level. We are waiting to hear if she made it past state to the national level.

Brag away!!!! Congratulations to both of them!!!

 

[Diana Lyn]

I just got back from doing a little Christmas shopping....for myself! Every year my MIL gives us money on Thanksgiving and tells us to buy something for ourselves, wrap it up, and bring it to her house to open when we're all together for Christmas. She also gave me some money for my birthday last month which I hadn't spent yet.

Sooooo, today I went to Wal-Mart and combined the money to buy a Cricut! After hearing everyone here sing its praises, I decided to take the plunge. Ken got a Wal-Mart Gift Card at work for Thanksgiving, so I used that to bring down the price from $179 to $129! The hard part is leaving it in the box!

I told Ken that extra cartidges would make good Christmas presents.

Congrats on the Cricut Mary! You're gonna love the cool things you can make with it! I suggest when you get into it go to the cricut website, theres a great message board will all sorts of tips and some awesome pics of other peoples work with each cartridge.

 

[Diana Lyn]

I'm with Julie. Not that I have a lot of options but if I can't find it my local Scrapbook store lady may be able to order it for me or maybe I can just order it from Archivers.

ETA: Never mind. I should have kept on reading before I posted.

Let me know if your local scrapbook lady can get it.

 

[Diana Lyn]

Well I'm glad to hear that everyone was having a good time at the Chicago meet! Our weekend was a little bit different then that.

Yesterday we just vegged out and I worked on our Christmas cards. Getting them addressed, stamped and ready to be mailed.

Today we went to the city of Troy. They were doing a Victorian Stroll today, it's an annual event. We didn't stay long, just long enough for me to bring the Christmas cards that I did have ready to be mailed to the Post Office for the Special Cancellation stamp that they do.

From there we headed to Albany to got to the New York State Museum. They were doing a famly fun weekend. They had different business' that set up tables thru out the museum selling there products and giving out free samples. The best part was in honor of the Chocolate exhibit they have at the museum currently they had alot of vendors giving out chocolate!!
They even had a couple of Chocolate Fountains set up.
One of the Business' that had a Chocolate Fountain was Saratoga Sweets, they are famous for the Peppermint Pig (the one sold at SSR).
Needless to say we came home with some yummy stuff for desert. Some chocolate, a small pumpkin tart and a small apple tart. Yummy!!

So was that your cell number on my cell? I didn't answer the phone because we were at the Chocolate exhibit! We went outside and watched the ice skating for a while too. Then we stayed for the tree lighting and fireworks. It was COLD!!!

 

[WDWLVR]

Anyone going to chat tonight? Here is the link click here to enter chat

 

[Diana Lyn]

Well just got home. We are unpacked and doing laundry .We all had a great time! Can't wait until the next meet. Amy and Chris thanks for the tour of Chicago!
I'm going to start calling Cedar Point this week. Going to see if they will do a group booking of the cabins.

Mike and I are going to look at places for another meet in Feb-07 and maybe May of 07. What do you think? Any ideas let me know!

Glad to hear everyone had a great time!

How about everyone just coming here in February! I'm tired of missing out on these meets and we have plenty of room!

 

[sanddune]

Glad to hear everyone had a great time!

How about everyone just coming here in February! I'm tired of missing out on these meets and we have plenty of room!

I'm ok with that for the May meet Diana. I think Feb might be a hike for some in the winter.If the Chicago people want too,I could be talked into Feb.

 

[cgcw]

Well just got home. We are unpacked and doing laundry .We all had a great time! Can't wait until the next meet. Amy and Chris thanks for the tour of Chicago!
I'm going to start calling Cedar Point this week. Going to see if they will do a group booking of the cabins.

Mike and I are going to look at places for another meet in Feb-07 and maybe May of 07. What do you think? Any ideas let me know!

I'm glad you made it home safely. I heard you ran into an area with some pretty significant snow. By now, Curt & Karen and Gail, John & Deanna are past that area as well as far as I know, traveling safely.

We are definatley in for Cedar Point!!

And, we are definately in for anything in between.




And, I love the fact that you come to our home town and thank Chris & Amy from FL for the tour. Are you trying to say that my family also looked like we were from out of town even though we were born and raised here?



A quick trip to the dentist tonight proved what my weekend companions said about Walker's mouth pain not being the result of his 6 year molar coming in. Turns out that he had an abscess. A couple shots of novicane & having it drained has made it feel SO much better. A weeks worth of antibiotics and he'll be good as new. I'm very glad that everyone said they didn't think it was normal or I may have put off calling our dentist until tomorrow. By then, the dentist said, it would have been really bad as it was already pretty bad by the time we went in this evening.

We had a blast this weekend. We were talking about how cool it was that we were all together and how we are looking forward to next time. As Mary said, all of the kids get along so well it's really amazing.

And, the best part? No knock on the door from management Saturday night that we were disturbing our neighbors. Although by then Chris had a back up plan for us, we didn't need to exercise it. One of our crabby neighbors put a complaint in Friday night that we were being too noise, so we had to change rooms and move down the hall to Amy & Chris' room.





Now it's time for us to call it a night. Two late, 1 a.m. nights are enough to do me in (just ask anyone, I was trying to sneak a cat nap in last night ) so it's early to bed in our house tonight.

 

[sanddune]

Cindy,glad to see that Walker's on the way to feeling better!

I beleive you did a great job leading the group too!Thanks!

 

[cgcw]

Cindy,glad to see that Walker's on the way to feeling better!

I beleive you did a great job leading the group too!Thanks!

Thanks, Chris.

And, to just get this straight, Gary & I did absolutely no leading on our trip to Chicago. We have never been on the el before, we have no idea of the landmarks downtown, we never could have done it without the help of our Florida and Michigan friends.

If we do it again, let's just plan it for a little milder weather. It wasn't bad when we first got downtown but by the time we were heading back, it was a bit chilly. And, we need to plan our stops a little better along the way.

 

[sanddune]

Thanks, Chris.

And, to just get this straight, Gary & I did absolutely no leading on our trip to Chicago. We have never been on the el before, we have no idea of the landmarks downtown, we never could have done it without the help of our Florida and Michigan friends.

If we do it again, let's just plan it for a little milder weather. It wasn't bad when we first got downtown but by the time we were heading back, it was a bit chilly. And, we need to plan our stops a little better along the way.

Well, you did a great job getting me to the store and to the food!

 

[sanddune]

I can't get into chat tonight.My computer locks up.

 

[Stitch#1]

So was that your cell number on my cell? I didn't answer the phone because we were at the Chocolate exhibit! We went outside and watched the ice skating for a while too. Then we stayed for the tree lighting and fireworks. It was COLD!!!

I was in line for the Chocolate Fountain in the lobby when I called!

 

[#1Mouse]

We got in about 9:40 (EST). It was a quick drive home, only 5 hrs. We had one bad spot where it was snowing so bad that you couldn't see the lines on the road - but we were expecting it since Chris and Mike called Curt & Karen and they then called us.

We had a great time going to Archivers, Gino's for lunch and then downtown. The city is so beautiful and riding the El was an experience. We took the blue line from downtown to O'Hare. On the El we were discussing how and where we needed to go to get a bus back to the hotel. There was a guy that was headed to work at O'Hare and when we got off the El he walked us over to the exact spot where the bus was going to pick us up. So now we can add talking to strangers on the EL to our list of meeting strangers on the internet and cruising with them

Tina, tell Tim that the crate of alochol is with Gary and Cindy and they will bring it to the next get together! We left it with them since they aren't big drinkers

Glad to hear that Walker is feeling a whole lot better now. After he kept complaining after having the tylenol, I figured it had to be something more than cutting teeth. Nice of your dentist to come in on a Sunday evening for him.

Deanna's in bed, we rebandaged her leg, gave her some motrin and I'm sure she will be really stiff and sore tomorrow when she gets up. Deanna got in a fight with a treadmill this morning and lost. The kids were walking on the treadmills, Deanna got off her's and was walking behind another in motion treadmill and tripped. The treadmill was sanding some skin off her left arm and thigh. Now the funniest sight was Ryan running down to the restaurant to get her some ice. I wish we had a picture of it - he was in his bathing suit, no shirt and had 1 tennis shoe on. Thanks Ryan for getting the ice for her!
Can't wait for the next get together

 

[curtdennis]

Karen and I are home, safe and sound. I'll prob be on the desk tomorrow so I'll put in my 2cents worth on this weekend and post a gazillion pics (or at least the link to some).

I'd like to thank Cindy & Gary, the unofficial hosts, (and chauffeur - REALLY RYAN THAT WAS A BURRITO!!!)

Amy, Chris, and her brother and sil for the expert guidance of the CTA.

John, Gail, Chris, Mike, (und kinder), Tina, Tim, Mark & Mary for making another trip "home" a rousing success!!

I'd also like to thank my agent, my third grade teacher.... oh nevermind


Karen and I are in for a NY meet IN MAY we are done driving for the winter, not that this trip was bad (compared to some trips in the past this was NOTHING) but we've reached the driving cutoff date. No more long trips till the snow melts. Conditions get too ugly, too fast.

Nite all....

 

[RRBB]

Now I know I've joined the ranks of the frequent flyers. I'm a Continental OnePass member and with planned trips in December, I will be 4,400 miles short of reaching Platinum Elite. Anyone who travels a lot, can appreciate the advantages being at the top level provides. So, to make sure I get there, I booked a flight next Saturday to LAX that leaves NY at 4:45pm, gets me in at 8:08pm and then a return flight that leaves 7:00am the next morning and gets me home by 3:000pm. I called the airline to explore what my alternatives were and this was the best choice. They told me that what I am doing is far from unusual. Many business travelers spend the last week of the year just making up miles. All just to be a privileged flyer

Good for you Sandy!

I did that once. I was 11,000 miles short of Executive Platinum on AA. I was just gonna let it go, but David encouraged me to find someplace to go to get those miles. The problem was my passport was expired and being that it was Y2K celebrations everywhere I didn't think Hawaii was an option. After a quick 1/2 day trip down to Houston to renew my passport, David and I hopped on a plane Christmas day and flew to Frankfurt, Germany. We had 3 hours to catch a breath of fresh air (walk outside for a minute), power shop in duty-free, and send a stack of postcards before getting back on the same plane for the return trip. Twenty-four hours later we landed back at DFW and I'd reached Executive Platinum!!!

 

[RRBB]

I have to brag on my 2 daughters. We found out last weekend that my oldest daughter (19) was accepted into Texas A&M for the spring semester. This is a big deal because, as I posted before the cruise, she had a massive stroke at age 17 in 2004. She is still impaired on her right side and had to start out her college career slowly at a local junior college to see if she could handle the course load, which put her behind in credit hours. At TAMU you must have 24 transfer credits to be accepted, but she only has 18. Well, one of the counselors suggested she try anyway so she did. The college considered her situation and saw that she was doing well academically and decided to accept her for the spring. She is very excited and we are so proud of her. So I guess now I am officially an Aggie Mom! My younger daughter (15) is in the advance placement art class at her high school. Their class has painted a large mural for our public safety department which will be dedicated this week. She also did a piece for the PTA Reflections contest that was selected to go to the state level. We are waiting to hear if she made it past state to the national level.

I have my CJ ready to go! I wanted to do it now because the holidays are crazy and we will be gone from Christmas to New Years. When we get back we have to go to TAMU for a transfer student orientation for a couple of days, then when I get back from that its time for my 15 year olds 16th birthday party! I knew I would be stressed and wanted this to be a fun project so I went ahead and did it before it gets too crazy around here. My theme is an alphabet book. I took the letter "A" so you can get an idea of what to do. My "A" page is "All Aboard" and it is the picture that was taken before we boarded the boat.

Congrats to your daughters. What great accomplishements for both of them.

Wow, I can't believe you're ready to pass on your CJ. I've been working on my a little bit, but with everything else going on right now it's far from ready to go.

 

[RRBB]

Julie - the pages are from KOLO www.kolo.com . It is item # 300-2201. They are 8 1/2 x 11 landscape pages. The holes are not in the exact same spot but new ones can be punched. They are are cream color that matches up nice to the cream color pages in the front of the book. They come in a pack of 10.

Speaking of the book - one sheet of stickers says something about a map but we have no map in our book. Amy said she thought they did. Anyone else? Map or no map?

Thanks for the info Mary. Ours are still sitting in a suitcase upstairs waiting for me to find a "home" for them, along with all the other goodies we brought back from the cruise. But it's good to know there are "good" pages available to replace the "bad" ones whe I do get around to pulling out those bricks.

 

[alikat99]

HI everyone!!! A quick post tonight and I'm off to bed!! We're home and we had a GREAT time in Chicago seeing everyone!!! Despite the snowstorm delaying our arrival into the Windy City, we had a BLAST and wish that it could have been longer.

I'm so sorry to hear that poor Walker was going through SO much pain, but I'm glad to hear that it's on the mend.

And, poor Deanna, I'm sad to hear that she hurt herself!!! I hope that she's better soon.

Well, off to bed because it's 12:45am and I need to be up at 6:30am. I'm with Cindy that I've had too many late nights and early mornings and I need my sleep. I'm sure that tomorrow night (or I guess that is tonight), I'll be going to bed VERY early!!