Vacation and recovery

You have to love it when someone says she's going to post more often, then takes another month-long hiatus. It probably wasn't so bright to say that 3 days before leaving for a 10-day Florida/Disney vacation extravaganza. We had a great time, though!

Learned a few things about our kids. Lilly's petrified of fireworks and pretty much any dark ride, especially if it includes loud noises. That kid is really sensitive to noise. Even Mickey's "Philharmagic" 3D movie scared the crap out of her, as did "Winnie The Pooh's adventures," and pretty much every other indoor ride. Let's not even talk about "Pirates of the Caribbean." She did love "It's a Small World" enough that we rode it twice and if you ask, that's her favorite thing at Disney.

We also learned that both of them love shrimp. That took some of the sting out of paying something like 13 bucks apiece at a buffet meal. They probably almost ate enough shrimp each to break even.

All the conventional Disney wisdom says that the kids will be more intimidated by the animal characters, because they don't have a human face to look at, but we found the opposite. They were totally at ease with Tigger and Pooh, but got tongue-tied around their Princess idols. Well, not so tongue-tied that Lilly didn't ask Princess Ariel if she poops in the water. Yes, she did. She had asked about that a few days prior, so I said she could ask Ariel when she meets her. And then I reminded her about it that day, not thinking she'd have the temerity to do so. Apparently, I misjudged my daughter. Ariel was entirely flustered and I let her off the hook by suggesting that they have special mermaid toilets for that.

Prior to Disney we spent several days in Fort Lauderdale and Miami visiting with Ryan's father and his sister's family. It was a blast to see the girls playing with their cousin Conner again, and they all had such a great time together. We're talking about getting together somewhere down South the first week in August, maybe renting a house on the beach somewhere within a reasonable drive of Atlanta, where my mother-in-law lives. We'll see what we manage.

I took 600 pictures in Florida. It's really hard to just pick a representative few. But here they are, anyway.

Kate in white, Lilly in pink (not to be confused with Piglet in pink)



Kate on Daddy's lap, Lilly on mine, on the Jungle Cruise



Kate's dressed as Sleeping Beauty (in pink), Lilly as Cinderella (blue). Belle's dressed as Belle.



With Cinderella.



Lilly on the beach.



Kate on the beach.