Disney Cruisin'

Well who knew that three days could fly by so fast!? We had so much fun on our Disney Cruise this past weekend. It was a lot more relaxing than I thought it would be. I think Steve and I were gearing up for the possibility of a stressful vacation, all in the name of "family time". But I'm happy to report that it was actually relaxing! With no cooking, no cleaning, no cell phones, I should have known better. We had a lot of fun hanging out by the pool, enjoying good hospitality, lots of food, and Disney characters around every corner. The Disney cruise is really the way to go for family cruising! The kids were in wonderland. Brooke got so many autographs and pictures with princesses and Mickey and Minnie and the gang. The shows were really great and the girls were up until 10 pm each night with so many things to do. I could go on and on.. but bottom line, it was time and money well spent. God was so good to us with beautiful weather and no rain! And today when I asked Brooke what her favorite part was, she made me smile when she said, "Spending time with you!" Such a sweetie! If you'd like you can look at all 140+ pictures from the cruise at this link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lmdemoor/DisneyCruise0409?feat=directlink

But here are a few of my favorites..

Pirate night on the ship
Playing in the kiddie pool


Steve and I took a cab to the Nassau fish market for conch salad.

Bunk buddies

Ali's Static Head

This is a hilarious video of Ali on the trampoline. She was having so much fun and her hair was just going nuts with static. Notice she's in her bathing suit. Not because she was swimming that day.. but because that is one of her favorite things to wear these days. She is rarely in regular clothes when we're at home. It is either a costume or a bathing suit.

And here's a cute snapshot of her crazy hair.. she had no idea what we were laughing at!

Hoppity Easter!

Here are some of the highlights to our 2009 Easter Celebrations!!!

We made Easter Story Cookies! You assemble these cookies while reading the Easter story
from the Bible. Each ingredient has a special biblical significance (eg. Vinegar because the gave Jesus vinegar to drink at His crucifixion, sugar for the sweet gift or forgiveness, and so on). The kids did great paying attention and asking a lot of great questions. Brooke even said at one point, "Mommy, you sound like a church teacher!"

Here they come down the stairs! When I was a kid, mom and dad always hid our Easter baskets and we had to go and find them on Easter morning. I love continuing this tradition with our girls.

The girls and I after church.

My Easter Bunny Bread!

Chowin' down on the Easter feast!

Time to hunt eggs!

Such sweet sisters!!

Our youngest little egg hunter, Carson!

Hanging out down by the river...

Proof that we had a great time: Ali passed out cold in the living room in just her tights!

Grandpa Schmitz is 99!!!!!

We celebrated Grandpa Schmitz's 99th birthday this past weekend! And we did it in true Grandpa Schmitz style at a German restaurant. We each had interesting dishes for dinner (Note to self: East Prussian dumplings are nothing like chicken and dumplings). After dinner we serenaded him with the birthday song and an accordion accompaniment. They brought shots for all the adults, and some delicious-looking desserts! Happy birthday Grandpa! Can't wait for 100!

Down the hatch!

Marie and Grandpa

Beach Day!

I've been eagerly awaiting the warm weather so I could take the girls to the beach! This spring break week turned out to be the perfect opportunity to do that! So we loaded up the car and headed to New Smyrna.

Getting ready to start castle construction!

Here's my cutie pie running on the beach!

Brooke, Sarah and Ali playing off in the distance. They had so much fun and just entertained each other for hours!

Ali and Sarah hop onto their island they created (okay, actually I did most of the digging, but it was Sarah's idea to give her castle a moat)

Ali got a kick out of sticking her hands in the icy cold water and then running over to mommy and watching me squeal when she put her cold hands on my back. This eventually turned into her sticking her head in the bucket, getting her hair wet and then flinging cold ocean water on mommy.

Now she's ready to chase mommy down!

And of course, we had to stop and get ice cream on the way home!

Easter Eggs and Dinosaurs

This morning we had our annual Moms4Moms Easter playgroup egg hunt and picnic! The Moloneys are in town and staying with us so Sarah got to come along with us. Our April community outreach project was to fill 20 Easter baskets with goodies for homeless kids. The moms came through like they always do and we ended up filling 27 until they were literally overflowing. The baskets will go to the kids at the women and children's shelter at the Sanford Rescue Mission.

The kids got to hunt for eggs (which took about 1 minute for my two to find their quota). They had sweetly agreed to donate their Easter baskets to the community outreach project at the last minute (we had more basket fillers than we did baskets) so they were sporting these fashionable ziplocks as their Easter baskets!

And as if that wasn't enough excitement for one day, we then zipped over to Disney to celebrate Michael who turned 6 today! We had lunch at the T-Rex restaurant in the Disney village. It's days like today that I love my nephews because they give me an excuse to do the cute boy-ish activities out there. I don't think my girls would be begging to go to a dino-themed restaurant.
T-Rex was awesome, with mechanical dinos watching you eat, a meteor shower every few minutes, and different themed rooms decorated with dinos, dinos and more dinos!! Happy Birthday Michael!!

Notice Brooke's dinosaur impression

Sea World Day

Steve had to work most of the day this Saturday, so the kids and I headed off to Sea World to use our annual passes. It was a fun laid back day for us. The nice thing about having the passes is not having to cram so much into one day. I let each of the girls pick one thing they really wanted to do, and then anything we do beyond that is just icing on the cake for them. We saw a few shows, visited my favorite, the penguins (it's such a happy place in there!), and then we got them changed into their swim suits for fun on the splash pad. As we were heading out of the park, I decided to make a quick detour for the Shamu viewing area. Right as we got there, two trainers showed up with some play dough and asked the kids to make a shape and stick it to the glass. Shamu came right over and pressed his nose right up to their shapes. It was so cool!! They got to lead him in a few tricks like spinning around in a circle and nodding yes. It was definitely the highlight of the day for me. Watching them experience such a HUGE creature up close was awesome!

This is Ali on the left and Brooke on the right.

This is Brooke standing to the left of the trainer.
Thanks Shamu!

The things I do for love...

Brooke had her class Easter party on wednesday. The had a hopathon for the MDA and then the Easter bunny was going to hop by and lead them to their egg hunt. Only problem.. no one wanted to wear the bunny costume! So it came down to myself and another mother who did not want the kids to go without the Easter bunny, and unfortunately, the bunny costume was made for someone tall. So I climbed into the furry suit and hopped on over to Brooke's class. Brooke knew I was going to be there for the egg hunt, so when I didn't show, she started wandering arounf the room saying, "where's mommy??". Her teacher told her mommy was in the suit and then she was fine. I love that I have this picture of the two of us together!

Goodbye Kotomi!

Sadly, Kotomi left us on Tuesday to return to her home in Osaka, Japan. It was a very sad morning. She did not want to leave and we didn't want her to either! We had an amazing time getting to know her. She was so kind and polite, she tolerated my kids who can be quite obnoxious at times, and she was thankful and gracious. We will miss her so much! I highly recommend this program to anyone who wants to host a Japanese student. There is a bit of commitment required on your end (feeding them three meals a day, driving them to the church every weekday, entertaining them on the weekends), but it is soooo worth it! It was an amazing experience for our girls to be exposed to another culture. Kotomi spent so much time with Brooke, teaching her origami, and there were so many teachable moments to share with the girls about life on the other side of the world. I can totally see us doing this again in the future!
http://www.missiontojapan.org/

Kotomi and Toko in the van, getting ready to leave for the airport.