The Plane Ride

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about Lilly Belle, her sister, and her Mama.

I get that it can be rough to travel with little kids. I've done it a few times myself. So I thought I might offer a few suggestions.

1) Don't feed your child and yourself chocolate covered chocolate donuts and then expect your child to sit quietly for 3 hours. That's not fair.

2) If you say you're going to turn off the movie if they screech at super high pitched levels, then do it! Don't just keep lying to your child. Or, buy the rest of the plane ear plugs.

3) Wipe your child's nose on a tissue. My sweater, no matter how soft and furry it may look, is really NOT a tissue for your child's runny nose. The first time was cute. The 2nd & 3rd time ... well, it became gross. Please, take the offered tissues.

Obviously, my suggestions might not work for everyone. They are just my suggestions.... :) I'm sure glad it's just one flight... and it's a good thing that Lilly Belle had beautiful eyes ... and my sweater is washable.

We Made It!

Well, we are finally in Orlando. Dwight dropped us off at the airport this morning nice and early, but not too early. Did I mention that Jessica is with us? It was a tough decision, but after the last 2 years and all of her help I decided she needed a break. I hope it was the right decision.

Anyway ...

We are staying at a beautiful Marriott resort near the parks in a sweet 2-bedroom suite. Since David is the star of this vacation, I gave him the choice of the rooms. He choose the master bedroom with its beautiful master bath and king size bed, huge flat screen tv and desk. He's loving it! I offered to share the 2nd bedroom with Jessica but she's opted to take the family room, which has a nice pull out bed. Since it has other chairs, I suspect it will just stay a bed all week. I think everyone loves that we all have our own rooms, tv, and privacy.

We have a full kitchen: full-size refrigerator, microwave, and oven. I know Dwight would cook if he were here. But we stocked the refrigerator and cabinets with ramen, Lean Cuisines, sandwich meats, soda, water, and some other good munchies. Who wants to cook while on vacation? I don't even like cooking when I'm not on vacation. haha...

Anyway ... thanks Dwight for sharing all your loyalty points with us and hooking us up with such a beautiful place! Yes, it's definitely your turn next. ;)

We are off to Downtown Disney. Ya'll have a good weekend!

Disney World ... We're Coming...

Several years ago, it seemed like our kids were always getting a bunch of money for the holidays and for their birthdays, but they NEVER saved a dime. As a way to motivate them to save some money, we wrote out a family budget for a week long fantastic trip to Walt Disney World. Each kid had an amount to save.

We even came up with a "Help Wanted" board where I would post jobs that I was willing to pay to have done. We don't pay our kids for the standard chores ... cleaning their rooms, the kitchen and their bathrooms is part of being a member of our family. But, doing Mom's neurotic cleaning list ... like the baseboards, wiping the window sills, cleaning behind the toilet seats, vacuuming the edges of the room ... well, those things are paid jobs. When they finished a job, they could get their time stamp (a Mickey Mouse of course) which was worth a set amount of money. At the end of the week, each kid turned in their time card & I settled up with each of them. They paid their tithing, put money in the savings and kept what they wanted for spending.

As you can imagine with 6 kids we have some that are savers and some that are spenders. Our oldest is definitely a saver. Once she got the idea of Walt Disney World, she really became focused and soon she had her money saved. The others weren't even close! Dwight and I decided that she shouldn't have to wait for the others. So in 2008 Dwight and Jessica made the first trip to Disney World. It was reported to be fabulous!

Jessica motivated her brother David to start saving his money and he finally did it! So, tomorrow morning David and I will be making our first trip to Walt Disney World. We're super excited. David calls it "geek-ing out." Hmmm.... I wonder if you ever become too old to geek out? :)

Yay, Ryan!

Tonight I walked downstairs to see Ryan holding his own bottle. Nelda has been working with him a lot on opening his hands and apparently it is working! She propped his elbows up to support them and he held his own bottle the entire time. It was so sweet! I'm so proud of him and so appreciative of all that Nelda does to help us. She really goes above and beyond the duties of a nurse. I feel so blessed to have her in our home!

Seriously. Today I was clipping my 12 year old son's toe nails. Yes, I agree. It is something he should be able to do for himself. The problem is that he doesn't do it. Then he reminds me of the bag lady with the long, straggly fingernails that followed me through Central Park when I was 18. Creepy. Anyway ... While I was doing that, I noticed that he has HUGE toes. Just thought I'd share. Weird, huh?

No!

Saturday night Dwight was scheduled to arrive home late. 10.30. Ryan and I had talked about Daddy get home. All day we had talked about it. Ryan was really missing Daddy. Around 9 pm I tucked Ryan into bed, swaddled in his fleece blanket and gave him a kiss. I said, "Daddy will give you kisses when he gets home. You go to sleep till then." That's when he did it. Ryan shook his head No. Over and over and over. Very clearly telling me, "No." No vocal sounds, but most definitely telling me No.

So, I kissed him (with a huge smile of course), pleased to see him communicating and so obviously understanding. I turned on his music and started to shut his door as I left the room, like I do every other night. He squawked at me to let me know that he did not want his door left. I went back over and repeated basically the same conversation, and the same actions, until I finally realized: He wanted his door left open.

An hour and half later when Daddy arrived home, Ryan was lying awake waiting for him. As soon as the door opened, Ryan called out to Daddy with his own vocal sounds that mean Daddy. Of course, Daddy rushed right to his side to give him the promised kisses.

I'm so thankful that Daddy is so responsive to Ryan and understands Ryan's language so well. It was so sweet to listen through the monitor to the two of them communicating in a way that only a boy and his Daddy can talk.