Castaway Cay

Our last day was spent at Castaway Cay which is Disney's private island. To be honest with you, I wasn't overly excited about a beach day since we have all the beach here that we need. (I know - spoiled rotten. I'm aware.) I was however, looking forward to a very chill day that we could actually relax.

Of course, the kids were up before the break of dawn and we ate before most people were even up. We decided to explore the island a little bit before we even got dressed. Callie got to meet Chip & Dale and Goofy without waiting in line. Wyatt met a Johnny Depp pirate guy since they dumped the ship from Pirates of the Caribbean right off of the beach.

While we were scoping out the perfect chairs to creep, Callie and Wyatt started getting upset as it was dawning on them that this day was going to be nothing more than hanging out at the beach. This was girlfriend's reaction:



Oh, yes. She's for real. Divalicious!

We met Mickey Mouse on the path on our way back to the ship to get our beach stuff. He grabbed Wyatt's hand like they were old pals and they walked together for awhile. It was too cute and one of my favorite moments of the whole trip.

Basically, we ate lunch and snorkled before meltdown mania got too overwhelming and we were forced to plunk the little suckers down for a nap. We hung out on the balcony, had lunch, and drank while they snoozed. Before dinner, we dropped the kids off again at the Oceaneer's Club to learn a dance routine that they later performed onstage in one of the auditoriums with Minnie and Mickey. It was the coolest thing ever! Brent and I met them in the theater to watch the performance. We were those proud parents with the video camera and everything. So cute!

We were sad going to bed that night, knowing we were going to wake back up in Florida again. It was heartbreaking to leave and the kids didn't want to go either. Luckily, we have another one planned already for next year so it's kind of a crutch when we feel bummed about wanting to go again. No doubt, we're addicted!

Bahamian Nuggets

We woke up and ate breakfast on the back deck which is one of my favorite parts of cruising. It's an awesome way to start the day for sure! We arrived in the Bahamas shortly after breakfast and headed to Atlantis for the day!

I was so excited to be back and anxious for Brent to see Atlantis too. We toured the Dig first which completely creeped the kids out because it's so dark and cave-like in there. The first room was a domed area full of lobsters and Callie freaked out like her hair was on fire ensuing a chain reaction in the monkey dude to also scream in hysterics. People stared. We ran away.

We had a really fun and lazy day enjoying the waterpark. It was taunting to see all the fun big slides and having to bench it next to the kiddie puddles. But, we were able to take them around the very non-lazy river in our tubes which was awesome. They loved the class 3 rapids which was ridiculous since a few lobsters scared the peep right out of them.

That night, we had dinner at the Animator's Palate on the boat which starts out as a black and white restaurant and changes to color by the end of the evening. Callie was in girlfriend heaven because it was kind of like eating dinner inside of a coloring book. She still hasn't stopped talking about it.

After dinner, the kids went to the Oceaneer's Club for awhile (woot! woot!) before we all headed to the Toy Story musical. It was really the cutest show ever. The costumes were amazing, as was the set, and the fact that it was able to hold the attention span of all the toddlers (and their dads) completely floored me. It was good.

We never made it to the pirate party because it didn't start until 10 and after such a long day, there was no way the kids were going to make it. We were able to pull them out of bed to watch the late night fireworks from our porch though. It was so pretty over the open ocean!

So fun, So fun, So fun!

Girlfriend is totally addicted to the "aqua water!" just like her momma now. I'm not sure how healthy it was to introduce her to crack at such a young age. The monkey dude whispered, "Bye bye, Mickey Mouse boat. I love you!", as we drove away from the port yesterday. Their verdict was hands down Disney Boat over Disney World. No hesitation. No twinado disagreement.

The nuggets started shrieking when they first saw the boat as we drove in to the port. Both of them were so well behaved during and after the road trip, sans nap, and sans food that I was fully prepared to see anal dwelling monkeys spray forth from Mickey's butt once we boarded. It was not the case and we actually didn't experience a single meltdown until the last day. They did awesome!

We boarded at 3:00 and hauled booty to the dining room since none of us had eaten anything all day. (We were afraid we were going to be late and avoided all pygmy complaints with gum.) Then, we went to explore our room and staying true to nugget form, Thing 1 and Thing 2 dropped trow and made themselves comfortable.

Then, we had to do the life boat drill which always feels like the biggest chore on the planet. It's the thing that stands in the way of letting go of all responsibility and starting your vacation. The mother of all thorns in our Bahamas-bound sides.

Then, we headed to the top deck for the sail away party which was so cute. Up until that point, Wyatt was still saying, "I want to go on the Mickey Mouse boat!" He couldn't grasp that we were already on the boat (probably because it was so big) and had yet to see Mickey Mouse so he was nearing the tail end of his patience. They cheered and danced, and celebrated by downing a virgin daiquiri in less than 3 minutes. I did too although mine was laced with rum.

They were so excited and hyped up after that, there was no way we were going to make it through a seated dinner. Although he tried, Wyatt couldn't contain himself any longer after the appetizer and started wallowing around and complaining of fake belly aches so he could get up and walk around to explore the ship. Callie caught on to his jig and mimicked the same phony tummy moans. So, we left and had dinner sent to our room instead. Little turds.

Triangle face at Triton's

We ended up tooling around the boat for a little while and testing out the Oceaneer's Club. Brent and I were definitely overcautious at first. Dropping our kids off with random strangers on a boat and just walking away is not something that ranks up there on the warm and fuzzy scale. But, they put special bracelets on the kids and gave us a pager just in case they needed to contact us. We gave it 30 anal-clenching minutes before going back to pick them up. Honestly, we had to drag them away. They were having so much fun! There were so many different activities and plenty of supervisors there to make it feel safe and comfortable. Aside from the characters, it's the facet of the ship that sets Disney apart from other cruise lines and was a great way for the nuggets to burn of that extra hyper and sugar-induced energy.

On our way back to the room, we took them to the lobby to meet Mickey Mouse. Wyatt wasn't interested because he said Mickey was too scary but Callie was in love and rubbed her stalker cheek all over Mickey's face. She gave him a page she had colored up at the Oceaneers club and Mickey drew a heart in the air for her. She was in heaven. It was so stinkin precious!

Some updatage...

We have successfully completed the first two weeks of homeschooling and it is awesome! Seriously, I never thought homeschooling would be this fulfilling, but the kids are rockin' it and I'm loving having a hand in teaching them stuff. I definitely miss the few hours of freedom that I would have gotten from dropping them off somewhere, but at home, I know what they are doing, I know how they are doing, and I can move each one along at their own pace! So far, I couldn't be happier with the way things have worked out! I never thought we would all enjoy it this much!

Bible school is so super precious too! Last week, I was really anxious about leaving them in their classroom and was nervous they would be upset when I walked away. It helped me out a lot knowing I was just going to be down the hall, but both of them couldn't have cared less about me leaving. When I picked them up, the stinkers pretended not to know me so they could play longer! Wyatt even started crying when it was time to go. They made a little craft, went to music class, and had free time to play with other sticky half pints. Their teacher is super sweet too. I can't believe how much the preschool situation was stressing me out and how well it all seemed to have worked itself out! It's been such a relief!

Anyway, our Labor Day weekend was fabulicious! The weather was perfect too! We wallowed in football heaven for the entire day on Saturday. Sunday, we packed up the kids and headed down to Jacksonville. We marinated ourselves in chlorine and infused ourselves with Red Stripe. We let the kids pool party til they puked which led to some very late night pool partyage. Good times, good eats, good music, and good hookahing! So fun!

Here's a little video of their color changing pool that Callie won't stop talking about. When she first saw it, her eyes were huge as if she had never imagined something so cool! She was in rainbow heaven! It was adorbs!

Ghost Hunters

I hope you all enjoyed your nice long Labor Day weekend as much as we did! I'll post some pictures in a minute but first I wanted to share something ultra creeptacular!

I have always thought our bonus room was haunted (even though our house was built brand new about a month after we got married). A few months after the kids were born, I headed upstairs to check on them in the middle of the night. Brent had left the TV on in the bonus room so I walked in there to turn it off and was met with this bone-chilling presence. Moonlight was pouring in through one of the windows and all of a sudden, a black figure stood before the window shielding 100% of the moonlight. It took everything in my power not to scream in fear but I was so shaken up that I didn't sleep well for the better part of a year.

It wasn't just me either. The same kinds of things were happening to Brent too. I felt like it was an older gentleman who was kind of pissed off and Brent felt the same way too. One night, when there was a baby staying up in that room, I jolted awake to the intensely loud and angry screaming of a old man. The room would also, on occasion, trigger the hairs on the back of your neck to stand on end without any reason. Pictures we took up there showed "orbs" which are supposedly indicators of lingering spirits. All of it scared the crap out of me. It got to the point that I would start talking to the ghost if I had to walk into the bonus room at night and tell him that I was sorry for disturbing him.

I swear I'm sane.

Luckily for me, I have an uncle who is completely fascinated with ghost hunting and paranormal stuff and last Christmas he debunked our bonus room ghost. It turned out that he was able to pinpoint an extremely high EMF field in our bonus room near the window where the figure appeared, that was just the result of an area of very thick electric wiring within the walls and floor of that room. Strong EMF fields can actually trigger hallucinations and uncomfortable sensations in people who are sensitive to those energies. We happen to be sensitive, I guess.

It's been great knowing that our "ghost" was nothing more than spot-specific, heavy wiring and it's definitely been easier to sleep at night and walk into the bonus room during dark hours. My uncle though, is continuously on the hunt for paranormal activities and a few weekends ago, on a ghost tour in a St. Augustine cemetery, he caught something on camera as he was casually taking pictures hoping to pick something up that he couldn't see with his own eyes. (The second picture is one that he took a second or two right after the first shot.)


Oogie Boogie.

And on a similar note, here is a precious picture of my nuggets all dressed up in their Halloween costumes for this year! They are ready already! I can't believe that this will already be their fourth Halloween! It's their favorite holiday and these spooky babies have been waiting for Halloween to get here all year! They are so excited!

Happy Little Things

It's always the little things that make everyday worth while and the other day, when the kids brought me this little bouquet...

...it made me want to blog about happy little things.

However, I will begin with a BIG happy thing! (I can already hear Big and Rich singing in the background.) I'm soooo gonna be all up in the middle of a Desmond and Kirk sandwich on Saturday with some beer and wangs, foaming at the mouth waiting for college football to start! Are you kidding me!?!? So pumped!!!! And I will be kicking Brent's ass for the 8th year in a row! Please believe! Pops, you are going down too so hard that you'll be nothing but an oily stain on the ground beneath my spit. It's true. PS - Citadel sucks!

Om. Namaste. Moving on. (So excited though.)

Last week, we were having some gooood thunderstorms, and even on the days without storms, we typically get thunder in the evenings. Anyway, my Kiddie boy has been telling the the thunder who's boss. When it starts to rumble, he gives it an angry low-pitched growl bark right back - kinda like he's telling the clouds to piss off. I love it. He never had any issues with storms before and I'm curious to know what the new change in attitude is about. Regardless, that hyena makes me laugh.

Callie helped me make deviled eggs the other day and both runts loved them so much that when we had them with dinner, they both saved it for the very last. This was the first thing that I ever saw either of them wait for and savor. So cute. They were such a hit though in both the making and eating departments that we've made them several times since and I've had a constant flow of deviled eggs stinking up my refrigerator for the last few weeks. I need to put the kibosh down on them now especially since Brent thought it was fine to feed them to the kids for breakfast. Men are from Mars and mine is possibly from Uranus.

THIS is Wyatt's favorite video right now (it won't let me embed). He calls it the hippo song and sings it all the time. Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" is still his favorite, but this is coming in a close second. He likes to point out that his favorite part is when the dog smacks his own booty. A Uranus baby.

And while we are talking about videos, my friend Heather directed me to this "Wrinkled Ladies" video after listening to me go off on a tangent about being in our 30s and getting ugly. I love it. (You know you are getting old when you can relate to stuff like this. So. Stinkin. Sad.)



I'm putting this one last since it's not necessarily a happy little thing but definitely a tiny thing. We saw this wasp hanging out on the outside of our sliding glass door and it didn't fly away when I got up close and personal with it. I was shocked to see what a wasp looked like up close. It didn't look at all what I thought a wasp's face should look like. Infact, the dumb thing kinda looked like a dog in the face and may have even bordered on being cute.


Please, don't get me wrong - I can't stand wasps. They are scary, emergency-room-senders and they all need to be eliminated. (As one of my friends would say, "If it doesn't have ears and feet, then it's a problem!") But behind glass, they are kind of mesmerizing with their canine-ish mugs and candy cane antennas. I still wish they were on the endangered species list, but for a split-second, I was intrigued.

Happy Anniversary BH!

Saturday was our 6th Anniversary! I want credit for 10 though because this last year has by far been the hardest part of our journey so far and it shouldn't count for just one. To be honest with you, I used to be scared of the "7-year-itch", but now I say bring it on because there is no way in hell that some wimpy ass "itch" is gonna have anything on our year six.

(Knock on wood. Knock on wood. Knock on wood. Amen.)

I have to say that most of it was circumstantial. Brent traveled too much last year. Period. It was hard on him, it was way harder on me, and most importantly, it was hard on the kids. We are slowly healing and getting back to normal, but I would just assume that this dude scoop poop, than ever have to travel that much again. Anyway, cheers to the hairy ball n' chain and the six official years we've completed together. We shall now rejoice and celebrate Harbin style!!!!