Saturday, November 24, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!   Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving....yummy food, friends, family and showing our gratitude.   This year we kept it pretty simple.  We had a few friends over which was great!  It was fun visiting with them and Matt loved having someone else to watch football with.  :)

One of my family's (Minetto's) traditions is to have an array of dips for lunch and just snack all afternoon.   So I'm keeping that tradition alive!   I think Matt and kids liked it!


Briella and Connor especially loved the clam dip!  (As do I!)

Then we began the festivities after naps and quiet time.  Before dinner we had everyone fill out their 'grateful sheet' - 'What I'm grateful for', then we put them up on the wall for everyone to see.  It's nice seeing what others are grateful for.   
Connor drew a picture at school of his family to show what he is grateful for.  Let me just explain everyone in  the pic (because as you can see it's more than our immediate family).  In the blue are (left to right) Daddy, Mommy (with her big tummy!), Connor and Briella.  Then in red we have Grandpa and Grandma.  Then up top in red (from left to right) are Uncle Neil, Aunt Mo, Lincoln and Roman (sorry Sienna).  It was cute!!  He loves his cousins!! :)   
Some of my favorites on the 'grateful wall' are peanut butter, technology, stars, fruit snacks, the USA, and friends and family.

For dinner this year a friend suggested a new recipe for the turkey.  We did a brine - I've never done it before because I'm always afraid it will come out too salty.   This recipe was FANTASTIC!!!!  And the turkey was delicious!!  (It's from Ourbestbites.com  Kate's Thanksgiving Turkey)
 This is the rest of the yummy food!

Our Thanksgiving Dinner!  
with Linda Kuck, Lance, Rosie and Alaren Lucero.  We love them!!!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Trip to Florida - Disney World and Sea World

Oh the drama!  Matt wrote a paper and got selected to present it at a conference in Orlando Florida.  'Sweet, we can make a family vacation out of it', we thought.  :)   So we bought our airline tickets together, the conference was at a resort so the hotel was taken care of and they were going to get us a rental car.  Awesome, this is working out well..........oh how life likes to throw curve balls!  :)

We were set to leave Monday about 11am, well Sunday night at around 7:30pm we found out via email that the conference was cancelled because 40% of the people suppose to attend would not be able to because of 'Hurricane' Sandy that hit the east coast.  AAHHH!  I got this sick feeling in my stomach and became stressed.  :)   We spent the next couple hours searching and securing a new hotel (thank you awesome sister Melissa!) and new rental car.  Because the conference was cancelled so was Matt's hotel and rental car (and the reimbursement for his plane tickets - bummer).  

Honestly it worked out so well!  We got to spend a lot of time together as a family and enjoy the parks together.   We all had a really good time - I'm so glad we went (it was an option to bag all of it).  The weather was great, so much warmer than Ohio, and the parks were a lot of fun.  

I'll warn you there are a lot of pics.  :)   Enjoy!!  :)

Monday- we got to our hotel and got settled.  Prepared for the upcoming fun!

Tuesday - we spent the day at Magic Kingdom in Disney World



 The castle is so cool!
 Connor did a lot of this.  There was a lot of walking.
 One of the shows outside the castle.
 Going on the Dumbo ride.

 Going on the Tea Cup ride.


 Going on Aladdin's carpet ride
 Mid afternoon parade through Magic Kingdom

 Briella wanted to be like her brother. :)
 Riding the merry go round.

Wednesday - we spent the day at Epcot in Disney World






 We did a fun clam-mobile ride in Nemo and Friends
 We got to meet Mary Poppins.  (Connor has yet to see that movie.) 
 Wednesday was Halloween so the hotel had a trick or treating event there.  Where we stayed there were 3 hotels together so we went to each hotel and got treats.  It was fun!  

Thursday - we spent the day at Sea World (it was AWESOME! You'll see why.)

 Dolphin Show - it was amazing!  We loved it!


 We got to pet Sting Rays (all of us did it, even Briella!)
 Shamu Show - it was cool!


 This flamingo was loving Matt.  He just kept 'nuzzling' his arm.  :)
 We fed the sea lions.  
The birds were crazy there.  You would throw a fish to the sea lion and the birds would swoop in and try to snatch it. Many were successful.  
 Then the best part of all.......We got to feed the dolphins!!!  Can you tell this was the highlight of the trip for me!  :)   It was soooooo cool.  
 The trainers taught us to hold up the fish with one hand and then with your free hand reach down and pet the under side of the their chin and then when you're done petting them drop the fish in they mouth.   It was so neat!!!  They have such soft skin.

 Connor did it too!  He just fed them, he wasn't to sure about petting them.  
 There's Matt enjoying the fun!

 We went on a few rides after that.  Matt and Connor did the Shamu express (rollercoaster).


Friday - we spent the morning and part of the afternoon at Hollywood Studios then that evening we flew back home to Ohio. 






 We went to a live Disney Junior Show.  

 Connor enjoying the show!

 Good job making it through all those pics.  :)  It was a fun filled trip!