Disney Trip 2009

The early morning ride to the airport was too exciting for words.

Garth Lee's first airplane ride. Ms. K, the music teacher from his preschool, made him a CD with several of his favorite songs on it and he thoroughly enjoyed it. It was too funny because he doesn't exactly understand the concept behind headphones and that he doesn't have to hear himself for us to hear him. He was singing along with the songs at the top of his lungs and laughing. He kept looking at us like we should be laughing and singing too. Thankfully the people around us on the plane thought it was cute too.

This is where we waited for the shuttle to the Disney parks everyday.

Waiting for the ferry to Magic Kingdom, we were already having to make sure we stayed hydrated with their $2.50 bottles of water.

The fam at the entrance to Magic Kingdom

Out of order picture of Garth Lee sleeping the whole flight from Houston to Orlando.

Papa and Garth Lee at Magic Kingdom

Our first show and sighting of Mickey Mouse, there was a whole "wishes come true" theme and Garth Lee kept asking me "Mommy, do wishes really come true", it was very cute!

The Thomas' on the obligatory "It's a Small World" ride

Playing at the Winnie the Pooh playground

Walt Disney and Mickey

This was pretty much the theme of the whole trip-get wet anytime and anyway you possibly can. There were little surprise water springs coming from the ground at the Winnie the Pooh playground.

When shooting fireworks shots, unless you have a really quick shutter, or are a lot better at photography than I am, you just have to get lucky to get a good shot, and I so got lucky here.

And here

Pirate goofy ears...so cool

Mickey ears...with shade

The outside of the resort check-in.

Hollywood Studios Fantasia hat

Our Mickey pic with the family...Garth Lee was so proud

Russell and Dog from "Up". We haven't seen it yet, but Garth Lee was excited all the same to get pictures with them and to get their autographs.

The Incredibles

Frozone

Passing the time waiting in line for something

Our little jedi

Lighting McQueen and Mater

Quincy from Little Einsteins

Oh look...another fountain, this time Miss Piggy

The luau with cousins Reese and Rachel

The kids learning to hula, he warmed up to it I promise.

I just thought this was a neato ornament

more hula

oh yea, he is the hula king by this point

K, so this is so not a girl, and it was kind of hard to concentrate on the luau with it dancing

These dancers were also distracting ;)

Fire Dancer

Animal Kingdom Safari

Feeding the dolphins at SeaWorld. This was pretty amazing to me, and probably my favorite part.

Goofy and Pluto at Animal Kingdom

Mommy and Garth Lee at the Shamu show "Believe"

MiMi and Little G

Garth Lee and the whale trainer

A real shark swimming over us at SeaWorld

The little seal was only one day old

Our last day at Bonnet Creek, one of the activities was face painting. The lady that did it was amazing, she did this in less than a minute and he was very concerned that it stay on and kept asking every 5 minutes if it was all still on his face.

Daytona Beach. I thought he may be afraid of the water, but he absolutely loved it and ran out into it until I yelled at him to come back until Daddy went out with him.

A pretty cute grandpa, Garth and Garth Lee picture.

Our first sunset at Daytona

My cousin Jeni and her husband Bryan

Building sand castles

My boys

The view from our room...seriously

Coming home, Garth Lee enjoyed a little light reading

My little beach comber

We had a blast! And if you got all the way to the end of this post, congratulations.

Graduation Pictures

The Thomas Family with their guns up

Garth, his mom and Gigi

Garth and my mom

Garth and his mom

TTUHSC graduates 2009...look at all the seats of people who skipped out...crazy

Passing the time at the hooding ceremony (probably if we could all bend that way, we would have been doing the same thing

The happily graduated family

See how much fun I'm having mommy! Way to go Daddy!

Weeeeeeeeee're Baaaaack

And you know what that means, only a week or so of waiting for the actual posts from the trip. Hopefully I will download the pictures tonight and I want to blog about it before I forget everything. We had a great time. It truly was a magical time with our family. It was very sad to leave Daddy in Dallas for work, Garth Lee cried for about an hour while we waited for our plane. I can't wait to get everything together and blogged on here. Thanks to everyone for holding down the fort back home and to those of you who joined us, we can't wait to do it again!

Congratulations!

I am so happy to announce the graduation of my wonderful husband. Like I always do, I will have to post pictures later because they are still being held captive on the camera. The Friday before graduation was the hooding ceremony. They have also added a new alumni banquet to the list of festivities since my graduation and that was pretty fun too. The hooding was very emotional, until it got the the slide show presentation and while we had all been waiting for hours through banquet and speeches and the hooding of his entire class, it got to him and whoever put the slide show together did not put one of the pictures that we sent into the slide show, it had Garth's school picture and a big picture of the health sciences center on it...what a rip off. It made me madder than it should have, but it really kind of sucked. Oh well. After the hooding, I had to run to work (since I had been paged 5 times during Garth's festivities) and so I took my mom with me and she got to see a little of what I do, then we went to a reception in the club seats at the stadium and it was pretty great. The food was good and unfortunately the view was really good, so Garth was already picking out our $30,000 football seats. Saturday was the actual graduation and it went flawlessly, Garth's brothers both made it to see their big brother receive his Doctor of Pharmacy degree. It was pretty moving. I seriously cannot believe that we are here, finished, done.

Thinking back, we have never been together when we were not in school full time. NEVER. When we started dating, I was a Freshman in college and we were engaged for both of our Sophomore years of school. We both worked full time and went to school full time for 3 years while we were finishing up school at Tech before we moved to Amarillo for my first year of Pharmacy School. When I started in Amarillo, I stopped working full time and I was just going to school full time, but Garth finished his studies at WT and worked full time too so we could pay the bills. When he got into Pharmacy School the following year, he started school full time and 'only' worked part-time (slacker), oh and he also became a dad that year. Since then, he has always worked at least part time while getting through a doctorate program to support his family. We may have had some bumps in the road, but we got here and we are so happy to be here. This Tuesday, I was working at CVS and so was Garth and I kind of got choked up a little thinking about how in the 9 years we have been together, 8 of them married, this was the first day that we were both working full-time jobs that were not interim, or intern, or tech jobs, that neither of us had to run to class after this, that we were both making a paycheck. It was a pretty amazing thought. We have worked hard to get here, so now all he has to do is pass the boards, then I quit ;) Kidding...sort of.

Anyways, congrats to my husband. Even though he doesn't even know what a blog is and he will most likely never read these words, I know he knows how proud of him that I am and how grateful we are to have such a loving father and husband in our home to protect us and to provide for us. Thanks for all the work you have done for us, and I hope that the $400 football tickets are enough for this year, and maybe next year I will let you even get a seat with a back on it. Love you forever!

More Garth Leeisms

Although I haven't had much blogworthy happen lately, there have been a few cute things that I would like to record for my posterity:

#1: My parents save aluminum cans and they have for as long as I can remember. They are not environmentalists, mind you, I think it has continued out of habit since I went on a save the earth kick in the fourth grade. They also drive an 8 mpg "shaggin' wagon" just to even things out. Anyways, you can get more cans in a bag if they are crushed, something I 'joyfully' did as a youngster and that my son apparently enjoys now. My dad walked up on him with a can in the crusher just as he asked the can "Any last words?", I swear the can let out a whimper.

#2: The other day we were sitting together having dinner as a family, which is sadly a rarity for us. I was eating some veggies with ranch dip and I wanted Garth Lee to try the broccoli. We talked to him about how he needs to eat his veggies to grow big and strong, and the rest of the conversation went something like this:

Garth Lee: "Don't worry mommy, I am going to grow up straight, not fat like you and daddy."
Me: "But mommy isn't fat anymore, is she?"
Garth Lee: "Ummm, yeah, you are still a little fat."
Me: "Where am I still fat, I thought I was not fat anymore."
Garth Lee: "Sorry mommy, but you are still a little fat, kind of everywhere, but don't worry, I will stay straight, not fat."
Me: "But daddy is a lot fatter than mommy, right." (Classy, I know)
Garth Lee: "I'm sorry mommy, daddy is only a little fatter, it's OK mommy, you are just still a little fat, but I still love you."
Me: "I love you too." (but I loved you more 15 minutes ago)

Yes, we still had the people come in all shapes, sizes and colors discussion, this was just the best part of it. He was seriously not trying to be mean at all, he was just being very honest and serious. I also like that the opposite of 'fat' to him is 'straight'. I guess it isn't so bad to not be 'straight' I just wish there was an in between...well I guess I am just a little fat, I can take that.

#3: My mom took Garth Lee shopping this week and he wanted to get me something for Mother's Day. When he came home, he told me "We do NOT have anything in the car for you, BUT if we do, you are not getting it until St. Mommy's Day." Gosh, I hope that is sometime close to Mother's Day.

I love my little boy. It makes me sad to see him growing up. It wasn't that long ago when I was just hoping and praying he would sleep through the night. I love to see him change and grow, but I do still mourn the baby I had that is now my little boy.