May 10, 2008 Ship of Thieves! Stealing the Magic..AGAIN!!! Panama Canal FL to CA!!! Part 4

[Jhalkias]

Vanessa --I love the picture of John walking with the two girls holding Samantha's hand. It is a picture taken from the back. I also like the one of him shaking Haley's hand in front of the Walt and Mickey statue.

As always you look great in every picture!!

Well look at that!

My DW does a drive-by posting - only because I told her about the pictures!

 

[HollyTyler]

Sorry, another long one, but that's because it has pictures! I only managed to take 8 pictures of the whole party and completely missed the chance to get any pinata whacking pics. I wish my dad or stepmom would have grabbed my camera and did pics, but I didn't even have time to think of asking them. I was so busy....but it was lots of fun too!

Here's Tyler in front of his party sign, waiting for guests to arrive:

Next is Tyler sporting the Crocs (crocklings) I gave him. That was a present he got to open before the party as a reward for being so helpful this morning cleaning and decorating:

Pic of his cake taken before anybody arrived:

Kids playing after eating pizza, just before cake. Playing in the back yard seemed to be everybody's favorite part of the

Blowing out the candles:

After cake we did the pinata. After 3 rounds of everybody having a chance to give it a good whack, it finally started to break. We could see an opening, and the kids could see the candy just hovering on the edge. Their excitement at that point went to a whole new level and I felt like a body guard at a concert trying to hold them all back ! Needless to say, not able to stop and snap pics at that point. After the pinata we did goody bags for all the other kids while Tyler opened his presents. I felt like I was in a little mob with them all crowding around us, wanting to see what he got! So no chance for me to take pics then either because I was trying to prevent a brawl when the kids wanted to see his new stuff and of course he didn't want to let anybody touch the new stuff.

One last pic. This is after everybody left, he was sitting on the couch hugging his Build-A-Bear he received as a gift. It was dressed as a pirate, but he took all its clothes off (the clothes are scattered on the couch) so it would be ready for bed:

 

[Jhalkias]

Macbook question PJ . . .

My Macbook is a year old now . . .

All updates, including battery updates are installed.

The battery seems like it is going wacko on me. For awhile now, once it got to about 34% the computer would just go off! No sleep, just OFF! Tonight it did it at 50%! When I press the button on the battery, I get 3 out of 5 lights.

Any ideas? Have you heard of anyone having similar issues?

I started it up again, and it booted and then died right after boot again. I am right now plugged in and running fine. I uploaded a program called "coconut battery" that shows me that my battery has lost about 500 MA of charging capacity, but what is up with this?

 

[fourmcds]

I think that would work perfectly! Thanks so much, you take an awesome fireworks shot.

Thank you. I love trying to get a great shot, reason why I came home for my 2 week trip with over 800 pictures!

John, what wonderful pictures!

V, I can see you all had a blast!

Kim, Savannah and Steve, have a safe trip home!

Angie & Dennis, have a fun time tonight!

Kaylee, the links worked perfectly.

Glad it worked!

Kaylee - I would love those two! I was checking out the suites at the Biltmore...wow! To me, a hotel can be a destination in itself.
Lisa

I loved the Biltmore. I was there by myself for a seminar and was able to relax and just enjoy! I am heading to Palm Springs this August for another seminar and am hoping it is a great hotel as well. I agree that the hotel can be the destination as well!

 

[Jhalkias]

Great photos Holly!

I like the last one with the bear the best!

 

[fourmcds]

Well look at that!

My DW does a drive-by posting - only because I told her about the pictures!

love that phrase!!!!

 

[HollyTyler]

I have to tell you Holly, doing this all on your own must be a real challenge. It is tough to raise a child with two parents - can't imagine doing it all on my own. My SIL (Amy's sister) who never married adopted two children on her own, and I don't know how she does it!

Kudos to you!

No kudos deserved here because he's only one kid. I can't imagine raising more than one by myself! I'm in awe of women who do that. However, times like today make me really wish (even more than usual) his dad were here to help. I was exhausted before the party even started, and can't even describe how tired I am now after the event and post-cleaning. So I'll admit, I had a short temper when getting things ready before guests started arriving. But just before the first guest showed up, I grabbed Tyler, put my arms around him and told him I was sorry I was acting grumpy but that I just wanted everything to work out nicely for his party. We had a big hug and went on with our day.

Then after everything was cleaned up, Tyler wanted to take all his new stuff out of the packages to play. Can't blame him, but I just cringed at a new mess after I had just cleaned up. But he was good about putting all the packaging pieces and parts in garbage bags for me, so it wasn't a big deal.

 

[Jhalkias]

My son just told me about this today, because we finally put together Sophia's telescope that she got for Christmas. She has shown a HUGE interest in the planets and stars lately, so this was the right time to get this started.

Anyway, there is a GREAT free program available called Stellarium. Even if you don't have kids who are interested, if you are, it is a lot of fun and very interesting and the best part - FREE!

Mac, and even Windoze. Also a Linux version.

http://www.stellarium.org/

 

[fourmcds]

Sorry, another long one, but that's because it has pictures! ]

WOW! Sounds like in the end it was a great day despite the usual party stress! Kudos to you for doing it all Great pictures, he looks so happy and cute. Bummer no one grabbed a camera, but at least you got a few. Now, you can relax until next year

 

[fourmcds]

No kudos deserved here because he's only one kid. I can't imagine raising more than one by myself! I'm in awe of women who do that. However, times like today make me really wish (even more than usual) his dad were here to help. I was exhausted before the party even started, and can't even describe how tired I am now after the event and post-cleaning. So I'll admit, I had a short temper when getting things ready before guests started arriving. But just before the first guest showed up, I grabbed Tyler, put my arms around him and told him I was sorry I was acting grumpy but that I just wanted everything to work out nicely for his party. We had a big hug and went on with our day.

Then after everything was cleaned up, Tyler wanted to take all his new stuff out of the packages to play. Can't blame him, but I just cringed at a new mess after I had just cleaned up. But he was good about putting all the packaging pieces and parts in garbage bags for me, so it wasn't a big deal.

Holly you really do deserve the kudos!!

 

[Jhalkias]

OK, bedtime.

After all, tomorrow is MONDAY . . .

 

[fourmcds]

http://www.stellarium.org/

Thanks for sharing that link....Jaide will love it. She loves to sit in the planetarium at the science center.

 

[Jhalkias]

Thanks for sharing that link....Jaide will love it. She loves to sit in the planetarium at the science center.

You will LOVE this then . . .We hooked up the computer to the new widescreen HD tv, and boy was it cool! You can actually use the software to run a telescope that takes commands from a computer (not ours) and to run a planetarium.

Have fun playing with it, it is really cool. You can do all kinds of what if's with it, and see the night sky in all kinds of different and neat ways.

 

[HollyTyler]

Great photos Holly!

I like the last one with the bear the best!

Me too. He was just so tired at that point! I put him to bed at 7 and he was asleep in about 10 minutes. I'm surprised he made it until 7 because he had been up until almost 10pm last night -- his party at his dad's house was yesterday afternoon and I think he was overtired because he just couldn't fall asleep, and was up at 6am today! I can tell he's REALLY overtired tonight because he's talking in his sleep, actually, yelling in his sleep. Seems pretty ticked off at whoever he's dreaming about. Probably dreaming about those pesky kids trying to mess with his new toys!

 

[HollyTyler]

My son just told me about this today, because we finally put together Sophia's telescope that she got for Christmas. She has shown a HUGE interest in the planets and stars lately, so this was the right time to get this started.

Anyway, there is a GREAT free program available called Stellarium. Even if you don't have kids who are interested, if you are, it is a lot of fun and very interesting and the best part - FREE!

Mac, and even Windoze. Also a Linux version.

http://www.stellarium.org/

That looks so cool! I'm definitely going to show that to Tyler because I've recently started talking to him about constellations and trying to point some out to him, but we can't see much here in the city.

 

[HollyTyler]

OK, bedtime.

After all, tomorrow is MONDAY . . .

Goodnight John. I should have gone to bed a couple hours ago, but just needed to unwind first. Now I'm headed that way myself in a few minutes.

 

[HollyTyler]

You will LOVE this then . . .We hooked up the computer to the new widescreen HD tv, and boy was it cool! You can actually use the software to run a telescope that takes commands from a computer (not ours) and to run a planetarium.

Have fun playing with it, it is really cool. You can do all kinds of what if's with it, and see the night sky in all kinds of different and neat ways.

Sounds so cool! I can't wait to play with it tomorrow after work and class....or maybe during class.

 

[HollyTyler]

Well, the furnace kicked on and I'm all warm & toasty after freezing my you know what off all day today. It was supposed to get up to 61 degrees, but I don't think it got out of the 50s. BRRRRRR! Never saw the sun either. At least the rain held off. It started sprinkling this morning, but that's about it, fortunately.

Goodnight everybody!

 

[LiserAnn]

Just got home from the meet and it was wonderful to meet everyone. Everyone was so nice...it was like we were all old friends! We had a great time and I will post pics soon...as will many others I'm sure. DH commented he almost felt like he was on the cruise already...except we weren't moving!! The kids also enjoyed meeting the other children! Great fun!!!

 

[nskjerven]

Ok - newbie question: Do you guys wear special name tags? Do you wear them anytime you go to Disney regardless if there is a meet? Is it a similar thing as the Door signs are for cruises?? Thanks! Lisa

yup...we have our name tags from a trip and people always ask us for directions or advice. The advice of course comes easy, ok directions too...we know our way around Dland.

ok last ones!

is that a little bunny rabbit I see????

We had a great day today. We travelled up to Mill Valley (over the Golden Gate Bridge)

We (my co-leader & I) took our troop to Save A Bunny http://www.saveabunny.com/
and had the pleasure of actually saving some bunnies on the way.

I'll upload pics tomorrow to show you our new furry friends.

Looks like lots of you guys have been having great fun. Thanks for sharing the pics.

One more Hotel to add to the list....

Grand Wailea Maui http://www.grandwailea.com/ fabulous lazy river, I have to say better than the one at BB imho