Life’s too short...to never sleep in a treehouse! 8/27 TR is up! Link in siggie

[Diamondintheruff]

We love Great Wolf Lodge and MagicQuest. We have to travel about 2.5 hours to get to Great Wolf lodge and about 18 hours to get to magicQuest. My boys would go nuts if our Great Wolf Lodge had a magicquest in it. What a great combination.

Hope you enjoyed your stay with "us". Okay so I'm like a 5 day drive from BC but it's still part of Canada so I use the term "us" loosely.

 

[eandesmom]

hope you have a super wonderful time!!!

Thanks, we did! Well mostly lol. These getaway weekends are really important as a couple for us, some good things happen, some bad but ultimately it is ALL good for us and for our marriage

Update coming and a mini TR.

h

Your projects are sooooo amazing!! I love them!! I LOVE that paper! Have you ever thought about designing digital scrapbook kits and selling them online?!

I hope your having a fabulous time in Canada!

Aww thanks, on the paper! It has occurred to me (selling paper) but I think I'm a ways away on the skill set to do that and on the creativity side lol. I worry I don't have enough ideas on my own.

It gets a little complicated once you get into resale, I'd have to create more on my own for some of the elements or pay higher licensing fees but it is something I may play around with someday.

It has potential, more probably in the custom area like this one is what I'm thinking as that might be a nice "niche". Not to mention offsetting the licensing fees! I do have a domain name registered but haven't done much with it lol.

hope you had a good time!

Thanks! We did. Mostly. Mini-TR later this morning. I should do work (and will) but need to wake up first! Besides, I have exciting news that could create the potential for a DISmeet....

We love Great Wolf Lodge and MagicQuest. We have to travel about 2.5 hours to get to Great Wolf lodge and about 18 hours to get to magicQuest. My boys would go nuts if our Great Wolf Lodge had a magicquest in it. What a great combination.

Hope you enjoyed your stay with "us". Okay so I'm like a 5 day drive from BC but it's still part of Canada so I use the term "us" loosely.

Oh wow, I didn't know they were (or could be) 2 separate things! We enjoyed Great Wolf Lodge but after about 4 hours in the park we needed a break and MQ was perfect, I think it would be a little hard to really fill your time without it especially with the crazy overpriced food. 2.5 hours is one thing but 18 hours...we'd never get to go!

We did enjoy our stay with "you". It was very different crossing the border on the train and for the most part it was a great way to go. We had a lot of fun checking out all the preparation for the Olympics. It was a little bit sad though, we'd really considered, a couple of years ago, a fractional ownership up at Whistler. We Whistler, especially in the summer. It would be nice to have that now! Oh well. We are hoping the market is flooded after the Olympics and its something we can seriously look at again maybe in 2011.

I hope to have a little mini TR later today. I have a ton of work to do but need to wake up first. A TR sounds like a really good way to do that.

 

[jordanyosh]

Possible DISmeet? I wonder who the lucky DISers will be?

 

[cjackearl]

Cynthia, you have an amazing talent. I need some this week. Could you please send your Muse over? TIA!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend with your husband.

 

[winkers]

would the dismeet be in feb?

 

[All7OfUs]

No, I"m sure she said Sept.- in Orlando- around the 5th or so at POR.

 

[eandesmom]

Possible DISmeet? I wonder who the lucky DISers will be?

Cynthia, you have an amazing talent. I need some this week. Could you please send your Muse over? TIA!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend with your husband.

I wish I had any to spare this week. Right now my talent is avoiding my "real" work. I need to get busy!

would the dismeet be in feb?

Nope. Although I'd love that!

No, I"m sure she said Sept.- in Orlando- around the 5th or so at POR.

Nope. But I'd love that too!

 

[GreatBiscuit]

Love the T-Shirts! Hope your trip was nifty.

 

[eandesmom]

First of all

Happy Belated Thanksgiving everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful Turkey day. We did. I cooked. And cleaned. And cooked.

Requisite food porn.

And all was well with my world. Yummy food, happy kids, thanksgiving “plays” and a lazy day after with the start of Christmas decorations. Happy happy days! One of my VERY favourite moments each year first thing on the day after Thanksgiving. I get up (kitchen still full of dishes and wineglasses that have yet to be handwashed, since turkey day is always at my house) and do an immediate mug swap.

Yep. Every single coffee mug gets swapped out for Christmas mug! And I have my first cup of coffee on Black Friday, in a Christmas mug with some Jim Brickman in the background. Then I putter. For hours. Putting up just about everything but the tree and the fresh evergreens. After four hours of doing dishes I figure I’m allowed to putter!

Kind of fun side note. A friend of mine and her family are at WDW right now. Her hubby did AI! He didn’t make it to the finale (which she was happy about, it was eating up her park day) but had a lot of fun doing it. And got recognized in the parks later, people were yelling at him “There’s the AI!” And he’d yell back…”No, my family is the AI! Which apparently confused his “fans”. LOL!

Mary Ellen I really think you need to consider it one of your trips!

Now. Prior to our getaway I did have something on my mind.

It’s not trip planning blahs. Not exactly.

I am really dying to be planning something, anything, for the 4 of us for either the kids mid winter break (President’s Day week) or Spring Break (April 19th). K&T have TOTALLY different break schedules, not to mention soccer/volleyball so they couldn’t go anyways.

I want to get away! Somewhere, Anywhere. Something to plan.

Preferably somewhere warm. Financially April is just far more doable for us but of course better deals seem to be out there for Feb.

My challenge was…I had no good ideas of where to go, to do something different, interesting and relatively cheap. On our getaway we came up with a plan. A plan that surprised ME!

But first, a mini TR.

We handed off the kids Friday night, got take out Indian (YUM!) and packed for our trip. Early Sat we headed to the train station, thankfully able to catch it in a town nearby and not have to go all the way to downtown Seattle). Where we made a rookie mistake. While waiting, we each decided to use the facilities. When I came out, train had arrived and folks were boarding. You don’t get your seat assignment until boarding. Conductor tells us he doesn’t have any seats together!!!!!!!!!

Whaaaaaaa??? We paid for business class, got there on time and we were going to be split up for the next 4 hours?
Fortunately the conductor offered up the wheelchair jump seat combo to us. Not ideal but at least we were next to each other. It was a pleasant ride, very pretty at times and rather depressing at times. It is amazing how much junk just gets left next to the tracks and you can see signs of changing times, abandoned buildings as local industry has evolved. It was however broken up by a lot of spectacular coastline that we could view through the grey mist. It was lovely not to have to be stuck in our car for that long, to be able to get up and walk around, buy a cup of coffee, stretch our legs and not sit at the border in our car. Upon arrival we did have to go through immigration. Which seemed pretty normal to me but Jeff really felt like for the first time, he was entering a different country. Maybe it was because we were standing there instead of in our car, maybe b/c it seemed like she asked a lot more questions than usual, I don’t know but it was a very different experience for Jeff. We made it to the hotel and were pleased to be given an upgrade for our anniversary! Our room had a lovely view of the harbor and Christ Church and the room itself was just lovely (though thin walls….old building I guess!).

Our Hotel.

We had a lovely day, crepes for lunch, strolling along Robson mostly window shopping, determining what we’d want to go back and see and just meandering. Our meandering was cut a bit short due to…RAIN. It POURED the first day. And I mean poured. Cold and windy too. Which made for a nice, lovely indoor late afternoon anniversary celebration for us! We’d brought a lovely bottle of wine we’d saved from our Italy trip with us and enjoyed that in the room and also enjoyed some complimentary chocolate covered strawberries that the hotel sent up (though they really didn’t go with the wine at all!)

I don’t usually make a note of things like anniversaries when I make our reservations anywhere and it definitely made a different at the hotel! For dinner we went to a nearby steakhouse that had been reccomneded by Lisalonglash. It is a Canadian Steakhouse chain, about 5 or 6 locations I think. The interior was marvelous! All decorated for Christmas is was cozy and intimate and just fabulous. They had a framed glass “window” into the kitchen where you could see the chef cooking the steaks, it was pretty cool! The food was…good. I will be honest. I’ve had better steaks. I’ve had worse steaks. It was good and it was fairly priced so we were fine with it and the atmosphere more than made up for it. I made the mistake of ordering their signature steak, which comes with their signature steak sauce. I’m not a sauce girl. I like the flavor of the steak itself. So my mistake. It was good. Just not exactly my thing! Still it was a lovely anniversary dinner. We were too full for dessert so they treated us to cheese toast instead! Which was darn good, all the sides were very yummy, especially the French onion soup.

So…not LeCellier (not that I’ve been!) but darn good and just lovely. The rest of the weekend we basically spent eating, sleeping and shopping. We slept in on Sunday like we haven’t since….our last weekend getaway! So lovely to just go back to sleep and not worry about kids getting up, needing to be fed, etc. A killer brunch followed by more strolling, checking out the Olympic countdown clock and then….

A trip to the OLYMPIC SUPERSTORE!

Holy moly. This thing was HUGE! Mind boggling even. Jeff started going crazy with the camera here (which I found really funny). We shopped, until literally, we dropped. A lot. Of money. Except Visa was the official sponser and we wanted to use our debit card. Which is a mastercard. So we had to put our stuff on hold, go get cash and come back. The machine ran out of cash after we hit it. Which we found hysterical.

yes, those are cans and cans of maple syrup with the mascots on them.

The important thing is…Our Christmas Shopping is DONE! Well except for Taylor and a couple of small things here like teacher gifts and the kids cousin gift exchange. But all the major stuff? DONE! We started small. With the kids. And then it grew from there! What about this for your brother? Your mom? Oh wait we have everyone except your stepmom….LOL! It was funny. But the selection was SO vast it was easy to find things that were unique and everyone would like.

All that shopping wore us out, so after a stop by Tiffanys (to pick up our rings, we had them cleaned…and hey we can say we spent money there on the trip lol) we headed out for a well earned beer. And then just decided to stay out and do dinner.

Which was a bit of a mistake. We are late eaters at home. 8:30 on average. We were done with dinner by 7:50. It was a lovely dinner but then we found ourselves going….what do we do now? Which is kind of pathetic. We watched Amazing Race and then twiddled our thumbs. It was a Sunday night so it’s not like there were really any options, especially without a car. Which led of course to grumpy people and an argument. Which, while it wasn’t how either of us wanted to spend an iota of time on our anniversary weekend is sometimes good to clear the air on a myriad of things and painful as it was (we haven’t had one in a LONGGGGGG time) it was good. I think we needed the communication practice! I also think that while our plan was deliberately to not have a plan…we should have planned things better for that second night and there would not have been issues. Talking about mutual expectations before, instead of after the fact is something we both need to remember.

Our last day was lovely. The sun came out and while it was cold and windy, it was lovely. We checked out the Olympic Ticket situation and confirmed all we could get right now was some early Hockey, or Curling and decided that the price was too high, for now, for what was available.

We are going to keep our eyes and ears out though as it would be SO cool to just drive up for the day and see an event. We then took the train out to check out the Vancouver Olympic Village.

The whole village is Green and on Solar power, we were able to see the new solar plant they have for it, kind of cool! Lots of construction so we could'nt really go "in" and the pictures are a bit dark but it really was cool to see.

A lovely lunch, a little more shopping and we headed back to the train.

All in all a very good trip!

Back to my no- immediate-trip-planning blahs! While our Sunday night may have been communication breakdown and repair, Saturday was exactly the opposite! We had one of those great couple nights were you just talk about everything and the stars are aligned, angels sing…you get the idea. Bear in mind that I’d planned to bring this up on the train, had hinted at it but was really expecting to get shot down. For many reasons, not the least of which financial, but also because I just couldn’t think of anything that fit the bill. Inexpensive (relatively), warm, far enough away that it felt away. I had dismissed California entirely thinking Jeff would never go for it. I could find a cruise that fit the bill but really didn’t have any desire to do that prior to the Magic next Feb. Hawaii would be ideal but out of our price range.
What to my wondering ears did my husband suggest?

California.

Orange County to be specific!

In a million years I didn’t think he’d consider it due to WDW in August. I was partially right. He won’t consider the Magic Kingdom given our August trip…but has no such issues with California Adventure. And Knott’s Berry Farm. And the beach.

Financially it’s a very doable trip. Probably just 3 nights although I wouldn’t mind more. Leaning towards staying at the beach although GCV is darn tempting!

So, no DISmeet in FL. But you SCal folks, if anyone wanted to happen to meet up at CA….that would be pretty darn cool! Right now we are looking at 4-17-4/20. Guess I need another Ticker! I'm excited (though it will be interesting to see if we REALLY skip the MK while we are there). I haven't been to DLR since 2001! CA has changed a lot since thing I think so I'm going to need to do a little homework.

WDW trip related stuff.

I did get some Mickey Mail last week, my “custom” maps. I admit I’m a little disappointed. Last year I got the old style design and went for the characters this time instead and it just looks so much cheaper for some reason. Oh well, the kids won’t care!

Jeff has informed me he’d like to eat at the Lone Palm (Margaritaville airport) every night we are at US. And has informed me what seaplane or plane related shirts he is packing. So don’t tell me I’m the only planner in the family! Good thing I’m making him a new one for xmas!

Jeff and I are both leaning towards a general feeling that it would be better, if we can, to move the trip earlier and avoid the Free Dining crowds. I need to do some research on crowd comparison but with the PIN it seems like that might be better. I think our preference would be to actually BE in WDW on K’s bday if we can (8/1). We will get an update on her San Diego tournament later this week but suffice to say, the team didn't do well.

 

[All7OfUs]

Looks like you had a lovely time together! The hotel is beautiful!

That's pretty weird about the seating on the train, though. Glad it worked out, but that would have stressed me out! Eeegads!

Yes, communication does need to happen; glad the air was cleared, and things were normal again-- or dare I say even better!?

Welcome back!

 

[glennbo123]

So, were those Olympic gold medals that you could buy? That'd be so much easier than exercising, practicing, and competing in events.

Your date night sounded like how most of ours turn out. One time, probably about 10 years ago, we got a sitter and went to the movies, but all of the good ones were sold out. We ended up walking around Home Depot! Good thing my wife loves me.

 

[creativeamanda]

You know, I agree that the newer maps aren't as nice. I noticed that myself.

 

[winkers]

I LOVE Jim Brickman!

Your trip to Vancouver looks like alot of fun! We took the ferry from port angeles to Victoria a few years ago. It was gorgeous.


I had my hopes up for you going to wdw in feb, but your new plan sounds good! Since we're only about 3 hours apart, there's really no need to fly cross country to meet up!

 

[eandesmom]

Love the T-Shirts! Hope your trip was nifty.

It truly was, thank you!

Looks like you had a lovely time together! The hotel is beautiful!

That's pretty weird about the seating on the train, though. Glad it worked out, but that would have stressed me out! Eeegads!

Yes, communication does need to happen; glad the air was cleared, and things were normal again-- or dare I say even better!?

Welcome back!

Even better

So, were those Olympic gold medals that you could buy? That'd be so much easier than exercising, practicing, and competing in events.

Your date night sounded like how most of ours turn out. One time, probably about 10 years ago, we got a sitter and went to the movies, but all of the good ones were sold out. We ended up walking around Home Depot! Good thing my wife loves me.

Walking around Home Depot?

Oh dear.

They were souvenir coins actually. The Canadian mint is going to have an exhibit showing actual medals and how they are made but sadly, it doesn't open until the Olympics start.

You know, I agree that the newer maps aren't as nice. I noticed that myself.

Did you get the white character ones or the more old fashioned kind? I'm really surprised at the difference in quality in just one year. I could have just printed out the ones they sent.

I LOVE Jim Brickman!

Your trip to Vancouver looks like alot of fun! We took the ferry from port angeles to Victoria a few years ago. It was gorgeous.


I had my hopes up for you going to wdw in feb, but your new plan sounds good! Since we're only about 3 hours apart, there's really no need to fly cross country to meet up!

Oh I would LOVE to go in Feb. And one never knows...not really...at least not in my world. But yes, no need to fly for us to meet. In fact next summer I am quite sure I'll be passing through your neck of the woods. Then again....we have CHEESECAKE FACTORY over here.



I love Victoria. I have a lot of fond memories of band trips there (of all things). Boys have never been! Hope to fix that sometime but I think they actually need passports now to go over, didn't used to.

 

[jordanyosh]

All that work on an update and all I remember?

You're comin out to Cali, you're comin out to Cali, yeah, i think so.....

Of course I'd be up for a meet. It might just be me unless you have other SoCal folks on your PTR...

 

[PracPerfPatricia]

Wow...nice couple's break...(you cracked me up about Le Cellier...)...I think the restaurant looks cozy and romantic...

I love that you did Christmas shopping...must multi task right...

BTW Which one of those little characters is the Olympic mascot...or all of them...

I'm always up for a trip to CA...can you really resist the Disney Temptation?
(I probably couldn't......I'd have to go further down to San Diego (which you just were...or up to Santa Barbara to keep my self out of Disney trouble...

but there is meeting Jordan...

not to say that will keep you out of trouble...

 

[Happydog]

Oh I understand your desire to plan a trip closer than your summer trip! But it does look like you had a wonderful time in Victoria! I loved visiting there -- in the summer I have been a few times, but the set up for the Olympics looks soooo cool!

California would be great fun! Plenty to do and see without MK, though I am with you in terms of wondering for nostalgia's sake! I would want to go to see... I have not been to Disneyland for over a decade!

 

[MAGICFOR2]

Wow! Great Wolf Lodge looks great. I was thinking I should see if my DSIS in Seattle wants to meet us there with her kids some time and share a suite!

Thanks for the great pics of Vancouver! It looks so beautiful and I can't wait to see it after our cruise in 2011. It would be really exciting if you could pop in during the olympics! I'm glad you had an overall wonderful weekend. How was the train ride? We are planning to take the train from Vancouver to Seattle and fly down from there, unless DSIS wants to pick us up and come home for a week or something.

Yeah for DL in Feb!!!!

 

[MEK]

Cynthia,

I am finally catching up on all the neglected P/TRs. Your anniversary weekend sounds so enjoyable and I am looking forward to getting home to see the pics. Sorry you had a bit of a tiff, but hey - that's normal, Right?

Anyway - you must be so excited about your mini trip to Orange County. That sounds like a blast!

So looking forward to getting home and seeing your pics.

Sorry to hear that K's team did not do well. Brian's team did not do well either - tied their first game, lost the next two 3:0 and 4:0. Won the last one 2:0 (the Sunday one that I missed). One team was AMAZInG - they were from Ontario and could really, really play. WOW! Anyway, we had a fun time - stopped at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, shopped a bit, had a home cooked meal at my friend's bother's house, and froze our butts off on the soccer field. Then I drove home through traffic jams on 95. My son's coach suggested they join a winter league that plays at the same field. 2 hour drive on I 95. I hope not!

Looking forward to your pics!!!!!!

 

[mickeysmyboy]

Sounds like you had a great time on your get away!!! Nice and relaxing! Aside for the fight. I really think your right about it though, you really need to have one from time to time!!! It kinda clears the air and gets the lines of communication open! DH and I fight a lot less then we used to but you need to from time to time!!

Yipeee for another trip!! It sounds like that will be a lot of fun!! Happy planning!!