October 20th 2007 Western Magic Part 4

[MomsOf2boys]

Is there a way to mark this thread so I don't have to search for you all?

 

[Scouter]

Wow, Susan, 4 older boys!

Hey, you know the great thing is that since 3 of them are over 13 they are allowed to roam the ship without supervision so you'll get plenty of relaxation time! Or plenty of fun times with the adults in our group, planning nights of dancing, drinking, lounging, comedy shows...etc.

 

[AverysMommy]

Thanks for the great welcome everyone. I was back reading previous posts... I will get through them all at some point.

Our boys will be 11 & 16 at that point since they both have birthdays coming up. They are completly ready for this trip, even deciding who is sleeping where. My nephews have no clue. We are making them do things like wait in line to get pics with princesses so they can at least say they met a girl. hahaha

We just called on Friday to book things etc and we switched to late dining to free up space for younger children.

I am looking forward most to the family time. I am a real estate agent and my phone is always ringing and I am always on the laptop and most of what we do as a family is still a working event. On the cruise I can't. LOL And since my nephews are in college and my boys are getting older, we won't have as many opportunities to spend a week together. I cherish it. Every single other thing on the cruise is PERFECT and I love it all.

Mary and the boys are looking forward to the food mostly. I think they take all you can eat as a personal challenge. They are even trying to figure out with late dining how they will work room service chicken fingers into the schedule.

What is your favorite thing about the cruises? I have not even been on other cruise lines because I am not sure it would even compare to our Disney cruise.

Susan - do your nephews live with you? I have a neice that lives with me right now (well for the last 8 years) and I used to have 2 nephews that lived with me but they are now moved out and on their own (they are 21 and 22). We took them to WDW in January 2000 for a week and they loved it. Minnie Mouse was flirting with the 2 of them and they would get all red in their face - it was hilarious!.

I agree wholeheartedly about spending time with the family - we are together a lot here at home but we are always multi taskign or running to the next activity. It will be nice to slow down and relax

 

[Scouter]

Is there a way to mark this thread so I don't have to search for you all?

Yes, near the top where it says thread tools, click on that and hit the subscribe to thread header.

 

[Scouter]

Nancy, how am I gonna survive for 5 days and not dis?

WHAAAAA

I hope I come home and don't have to catch up to 100 pages or something like that


Maybe today I'll go do a chore and then as I accomplish one I'll dis in between, kind of like a treat or incentive for getting my chores done

 

[MomsOf2boys]

I was looking back through the Navagator's from our last cruise and was so suprised at how much we missed... we left the ship so tired. We were busier dealing with who is where the last cruise so we should have some adult time this cruise. hahaha

I'll get the kids onto the kids thread as soon as I locate it. They will enjoy that. It's always so much more fun when you know a few people.

 

[MomsOf2boys]

Susan - do your nephews live with you? I have a neice that lives with me right now (well for the last 8 years) and I used to have 2 nephews that lived with me but they are now moved out and on their own (they are 21 and 22).

They lived with me for a while and then lived in the same neighborhood for a few years after that. There is a very strong bond between us all. I lived in Jacksonville, FL and we had Disney passes and so this is just kind of the icing on the cake...

Thank you Scouter...I subscribed. I'm official. haha

 

[3pirates&tink]

Robin here...

That's pretty much what happened. I was leaving anyway... he just had to be a smart A**.

11:30 last night... Claude got home. He proceeded to tell me Mom & Dad had dr.'s appointments two days next week. Plus the funeral home people was coming one day, so they could get that all paid.

I told him, I was on the phone this morning at work for 2 1/2 hrs. checking out private duty home for mom & dad while we were away. He said, I can't think about that right now. I said, we really need to. We should have done it 2 wks ago when mom came home from the hospital, because it takes 2 to 3 wks.

I proceeded to say... We're not obligated to use it. At least we'll have a back up. He then started arguing and said "just go home" "get out of here". I said... We need help. We can't do this on our own.

He then said sarcastically... "you don't have to worry about next week. I have it covered. You left it all on my shoulders anyway." I then said, "your in your own little world. I said on Tuesday... We can't continue this pace, we need some outside help!!! Dad's Dr. even told me get some help or you guys will be sick before you know it."

He then said (sarcastically again)... "I was under the impression you weren't going to help anymore." I said..."Well, you're an idiot!!! I never said that! I said we need help. These decisions should be made as a family. Where do you get off making them on your own? You just want to play the martyr... Well have fun handling it all on your own."

And I left.

What a butthead!

Anytime there is a problem my older brother & Older sister always call me.

My older brother doesn't get along with Claude (Claude's the youngest). (they're both bull headed) And my sister is so passive, she won't open her mouth. But, I'm sorry... When I see something is wrong and it's going to harm someone, I'm going to speak up.

I will continue to call Mom on the phone. She has no clue any of this happened. She wouldn't remember it anyway.

One thing about it. I got the next week off. Cassie will be home from Dayton tomorrow and we're going to enjoy the week. We're going down to get her. I could use a road trip. Maybe we'll just keep going south all the way to Florida. No stress.

Robin,

You and Mike are in our thoughts.....please let us know if there is anything we can do to help!

 

[Scouter]

Susan, let me know if you really get any of your teen boys onto a thread to chat.
Then maybe I can convince Sean, right now (and on our last cruise) he thought that was really lame, he's always too busy doing other computer stuff, gaming and researching building his own computer....

Teens

 

[Scouter]

Ok, I'm going out to start my first chore....

cleaning my car before the temperature hits 95 today!

Then I can reward myself by coming back in to DIS for a bit

 

[3pirates&tink]

Good morning everyone!! Hope everyone had a great weekend. We took the boys camping and had a great time. We spent a lot of time swimming.....maybe to much time....Mike and I came home a little on the lobster-looking side if you know what I mean!! All in all it was great fun!! Not too busy here......I was glad I only had about 14 pages to catch up on! Well, I better get some work done. Will check in again soon.

Where is Chris?? Did you get everything booked that you wanted??? Let us know how it went!

 

[Timon]

I just now heard about these message boards and was so suprised to see the cruise we are going on to have a thread! Woohoo! We have been planning for two years now. This is our second cruise. Our first one was Oct 04 on the Wonder.

We are in room 8516 and will be traveling with our two boys as well as my nephews...who are 18 & 20 and need to remember how to be a kid sometimes. We loved our last cruise and hope that with the extra couple of days we can fit everything in this time. hahahahahahaha

Welcome Susan! We are a chatty bunch and sometimes this thread can be a little overwhelming No worries, just jump on in whenever you can and don't worry about catching up.

I am Cass, my hubby sometimes posts on here too, his DIS name is DJ Darkrobe and his name his Rob. We have a 7 month old daughter, whom I am sure you will get to know in the next 3 months as I post a zillion pics of her weekly When I started posting on this thread I was about 5 months pregnant and so these people are my second family and have seen Kira grow up since birth! We have a great group of DISers on here so this cruise is gonna be great!

 

[3pirates&tink]

I just now heard about these message boards and was so suprised to see the cruise we are going on to have a thread! Woohoo! We have been planning for two years now. This is our second cruise. Our first one was Oct 04 on the Wonder.

We are in room 8516 and will be traveling with our two boys as well as my nephews...who are 18 & 20 and need to remember how to be a kid sometimes. We loved our last cruise and hope that with the extra couple of days we can fit everything in this time. hahahahahahaha

WELCOME ABOARD SUSAN!! Good to have you. I was "new" not so long ago but everyone on this thread made me feel like one of the gang right away...I'm sure you will enjoy meeting and talking with everyone here. They are a great bunch of folks!!!

 

[3pirates&tink]

Good morning Cass! How is Kira feeling this a.m.? Better I hope!

 

[MomsOf2boys]

Kira is beautiful. =) I read some of your posts earlier and think she is one lucky little princess to be cruising so early.

On my last cruise I saw doors decorated... and I really didn't know what all that was about. Is it a repeat cruiser kind of thing? What the heck do you put on your door anyway? LOL

You all seem very nice and fun and chatty so I am thinking at least I will be able to find some great laughs and conversation on this cruise. hahaha

And this year I get to go to those Castaway Cay Club gatherings. I also want to find those secret stairs. I got so lost on the ship last time... no, it wasn't just the wine...haha

 

[B9erSteve]

Jeff

Sorry he would like to me post what the options are and see if you have any input.

1) Lite (512 Kbps) $14.95 a month, download 512 Kbps upload 256 Kbps
2) Value (1.5 Mbps) $29.95 a month, download 1.5 Mbps, upload 512 Kbps
3) Preferred (7Mbps) $44.95 a month, dowload 7 Mbps, upload 512 Kbps
4) Premier (12 Mbps) $59.95 a month, dowload 12 Mbps, uplaod 1 Mbps.

So we understand the whold Kbps but don't have a clue how that transfers to Mbps. After the cruise we were going to get option 3, just because we did not think they offered any other ones at the time. I guess if we order online they will do free installation. I wonder if that means running the line to that room also. We shall see.

Of the four, you will probably find that option #2 is pretty reasonable. With one caveat. If you have more that a few computers and a couple of power users online at a time you may find that the network will slow down. If that is the case then go with option #3.

Kbps is Kilobytes per second as opposed to Mbps which is Megabytes per second. 1000 kilobytes in a Megabyte. To give you a reference point the older dial-up modems offered a max of about 56 kbps. (actually it was more like 51-52 because of government restrictions on phone line usage but that's another lecture) So, the plan #1 is aproximately 10x as fast as dial-up. Quite a jump and one that you would be suprised at. The difference between the 512 and the 1.5 is a good jump (3x plan #1 or 30x dial-up) you will see the difference mostly with downloading files. You won't however see a huge jump in performance between #2 and #3, this is because you are already loading so fast that a half second here or there will not matter much. Downloads will be faster but you will also be dependent now on the speed at which the information is fed to your computer. Since the companies that are buying bandwidth are buying speed just as you are, they are apt to only buy the bandwidth which will serve the majority of their customers needs and no more. Thus, if they are feeding you files at 1.5Mbps and you are recieving at 7Mbps you will not recieve the file any faster. The Jump in performance at this rate will be seen when more than one person is accessing your internet connection at a time. (In my family, My son and I may be gaming on the internet at the same time while my wife is building a website. Faster speeds means that none of our computers slow down during all of this activity) Consider option #4 only if you are running more than 3 computers with power users on each one. Or, and this is important, if you are planning on having a static IP adress and you are running your own internet server. I doubt that this is the case so you can safely save yourself the $15/mo.

As far as running the line to another room. I doubt it. The installation usually means that they will come to your house and install a line to the site that you choose, install a cable modem and configure a computer to access it. Some will install a router for multiple computer homes but that is not always an option. You can consider a wireless router to communicate with a computer in another room. Make sure that (1) you secure your connection with encryption and (2) you are not using that computer for online gaming. I was never happy with my wireless connection while gaming the latency was incredible! I finally hardwired everything and only use my wireless for my laptop.

Sorry for the long post and I hope I have helped.

 

[Timon]

Good morning Cass! How is Kira feeling this a.m.? Better I hope!

Morning Missy! Kira is feeling a bit better, though her nose is still running all over the place She seems to be in good spirits this morning though

Kira is beautiful. =) I read some of your posts earlier and think she is one lucky little princess to be cruising so early.

On my last cruise I saw doors decorated... and I really didn't know what all that was about. Is it a repeat cruiser kind of thing? What the heck do you put on your door anyway? LOL

You all seem very nice and fun and chatty so I am thinking at least I will be able to find some great laughs and conversation on this cruise. hahaha

And this year I get to go to those Castaway Cay Club gatherings. I also want to find those secret stairs. I got so lost on the ship last time... no, it wasn't just the wine...haha

Yes, Kira is one lucky duck! SHe will be turning 11 months on the cruise. So before the age of 1, she will have a WDW and DCL trip under her belt!

The door signs are just for fun. A lot of people make a design and then print it on magnetic paper and then it sticks to the door. I've come up with a design for us KKers as we call ourselves so if you have the ability to print and want an easy door sign, let me know and I will personalize the design for you.

I know a few of the KKers have already done their door signs, I still haven't worked on mine yet.

ALso, the image in our signatures is yours for the taking if you want it, just right click save it to your computer and then edit your signature with the image.

 

[AverysMommy]

Thanks for the great welcome everyone. I was back reading previous posts... I will get through them all at some point.

Our boys will be 11 & 16 at that point since they both have birthdays coming up. They are completly ready for this trip, even deciding who is sleeping where. My nephews have no clue. We are making them do things like wait in line to get pics with princesses so they can at least say they met a girl. hahaha

We just called on Friday to book things etc and we switched to late dining to free up space for younger children.

I am looking forward most to the family time. I am a real estate agent and my phone is always ringing and I am always on the laptop and most of what we do as a family is still a working event. On the cruise I can't. LOL And since my nephews are in college and my boys are getting older, we won't have as many opportunities to spend a week together. I cherish it. Every single other thing on the cruise is PERFECT and I love it all.

Mary and the boys are looking forward to the food mostly. I think they take all you can eat as a personal challenge. They are even trying to figure out with late dining how they will work room service chicken fingers into the schedule.

What is your favorite thing about the cruises? I have not even been on other cruise lines because I am not sure it would even compare to our Disney cruise.

When I joined this board back in early April - there was about 300 pages of posts - now we are closing in on 1000 pages. Dont even think about trying to read all of them - some days we add almost 8-10 pages. Just start reading going forward and ask questions - everyone on this group is very helpful and very nice. People will be happy to answer any cruise (on non-cruise) related questions.

Are you guys going to WDW before or after the cruise?

Jessalynn

 

[goofyfreak]

Welcome Susan. Feel free to ask all questions. Everyone here is so sweet to answer anything. I'm sure you will fit right in!
BTW, I'm Lori traveling with DH Scott and DD11 Alex and DD4 Julia. We also have DD1 Harrison that is staying with grandparents for this vacation. He gets to go next time!!!!!!

 

[3pirates&tink]

Good Morning Jessalynn! You changed your avatar!! I like it!