Alright people, hold onto your britches... IT'S TIME FOR AN UPDATE!!!!! I have been so busy lately. Summer is in full force down here and we're enjoying every second of it. Our neighborhood pool opened this past weekend and we have been spending every waking second there. Aubrey actually learned how to swim today

And I mean REALLY swim! She went from not putting her face in the water and wearing a swim vest to jumping off of the side of the pool and swimming to the other side in all of about 30 minutes. Seriously! It's been great but extremely tiring. I seem to pass out way too early these days which means no updates from me

But not tonight. I am determined to share some more of our wonderful trip with you. Thanks for your patience!
Oh, another side note. We are officially 29 days away from our beach trip this summer. We'll be spending 7 glorious nights in Destin, Fl at the
Baytowne Wharf. I just cannot wait!!! Here is a picture of the kids playing on the beach from last year.
Look how blue that water is!!!!! Here's hoping it stays that way, stupid BP.
Anywho, when I last left you, we had just thoroughly traumatized Aubrey on The Barnstormer. The weather was not looking good so we decided to duck into the judge's tent to see the princesses. We waited in this line last time and it didnt' take long at all even though the wait said 30 minutes, it only took about 10 if that long. As we were standing there in line, I heard the rain start. Part of the room in the line for the princesses is metal and the rain hitting it sounded SO loud!!! It was POURING and our strollers were outside getting soaked

Wanna know why they were getting soaked? Because we had left our stroller covers back in the room thinking surely we would not need them. Yeah, good times. So, I tried not to worry about the weather as we walked into the room with all the girls. The photo pass people did a great job getting some cute shots. And here they are...
As you can see, Brendan is nowhere to be found. He's only 3 and already has decided that he wants nothing to do with princesses. He and dad were wandering around the store killing time until we were done. Also note that I had been carrying around our pillow cases and having each character carefully sign them. They were coming out so cute. I just could not have been happier. When we handed it to Belle to sign, she politely pointed out that she had already signed it. She said "don't you remember, I already signed your pillowcase?" I was so embarassed but so grateful that she caught that. Those girls are good!
After we were done with all of that, Aubrey and I headed out into a now very crowded store to find dad and Brendan. Everyone had ducked inside to escape the monsoon that was going on outside. What a place to get trapped. The kids were going crazy and wanted to buy everything in sight. We HAD to get out of there. If only we had our handy stroller covers to put over the kids. More specifically, over Aubrey's diva hair, then we would be fine. We stood at the door contemplating what to do. We came up with a plan to just haul it over to the train station and get a ride back to the front of the park. At least it would be under cover. We got some plastic bags from the store and lined the stroller seats with them since they were soaked. I put the autographed pillowcases in the back MESH carrying bags on the back of the strollers and off we went. We ran as fast as we could through the pouring rain and finally made it to the train station. There was a pretty long line which I expected. I'm surewe weren't the only ones with this brilliant idea. As we approached, a very scary looking woman (or man, honestly I'm really not sure what he or she was) yelled at the top of her lungs "The train's closed. Turn around!" I totally thought she/he was kidding so we just kept walking towards her (she was at the end of the line so we needed to get behind her). Well, aparantly she/he was right. They close the train when it rains



WHAAAAAT? You mean we have to run back to the gift shop and get even more soaked than we are now??? Um, ok. So off we went back to the shop. It was getting kind of comical at this point. I mean, it's just water but the kids were getting a little freaked out. The only option that I saw was to buy ponchos and walk back to the front of the park. Yes, back at the room along with those handy stroller covers were brand new LSU ponchos that I had brought from home. Jason did not see the point in spending more $$ on new ponchos. Well, I quickly made my point when I said we are buying them and that's that. So we did and we all put on our new purchase and headed out into the crazy wet Magic Kingdom. It was insane. At one point, I peeked through my plastic hood and almost ran smack into a very large woman wearing, get this, a spaghetti strap WHITE tank top. Really? This is what you choose to wear. And how I'm about to run face first into it. It was not pleasant. After doing what felt like the breast stroke down Main Street, we made it to the boat. We sat outside since we were already soaked. There was a cover so it wasn't that bad. By this time we were all laughing about it and it ended up being kind of fun. Got to find the good in everything right? I know I have pictures of us on the boat but I think they're on my phone. I remember I didn't want to take out my camera in the rain. I'll have to try and upload that later.
So we get back up to the room, drenched down to our undies. Everyone changed their clothes and snuggled down in the bed to rest and watch a movie. It was still pouring outside so it was the perfect weather for this. Jason and I popped a bottle of our wine and sat on the balcony enjoying the rain. Just then, I realized the pillowcases. I needed to check on them and see how they faired the storm. Well, let's just say that permament marker must not mean permanent when it comes to RAIN. Both of them ran terribly. I was devastated. All of our hard work ruined. I just couldn't bring myself to take a picture of them but I'm ok with it now. I'll take one and post it tomorrow. I wish I had a before pic to compare it to but you'll definitely get the point. Uhhhhh, what a day!