And They Lived Happily Ever After

Dear Sean: Today is our first anniversary. Since you're at work, I’ve had some time to ponder how awesome our marriage is! I’ve decided as a gift to you I'm going to compile 25 of my favorite moments of the last year (the ones I have photographic evidence of). Each one is a gift you gave to me!

1.       That time we got married…

Prompting my grandpa to do this

2.       That time we improvised living room furniture

3.       That time we unwittingly scared all the neighbor kids

4.       That time we decided to learn all of our family recipes

5.       That time we bought a huge Christmas tree but had to spend hours putting lights on it

6.       That time we went sledding

7.       Ok, ok, Christmas in general.

8.       That time we camped in our living room

9.   That time I aced that test…

Three times.

10.   That time we escaped for Valentine’s day

11. That time we really wanted to believe I had a bump

12.   That time we met our peanut

13.   That time we teamed up and won the best game of “Ticket to Ride” ever

14.   That time we found out Violet had a stem (Grandpa Joke)

and showed the public his cute little profile instead

15.   That time we found out we were moving

16.   That time Mother’s-To-Be day was invented

17.   That time the ice cream truck made our day

18.   That time we drove across the country

19.   That time we ate gator

20.   That time we discovered the hide-a-bed and had a Lord of the Rings marathon on it

21.   That time we went to the beach

22.   That time we time traveled

23.   That time you became a scoutmaster

24.   That time (yesterday) I got HUGE and took a selfie for posterity's sake

25.   That time we made dinner reservations for tonight to celebrate that it NEVER HAS TO END!

Super excited! Come home!

Happy Anniversary

When the Dad enters the Jungle

(There's a shortage of great Disney dad's out there, and Mufasa clearly takes the cake)

If you complain enough about being alone, bored, and homesick, you're bound to attract a parent. Last week we were privileged to receive a week-long visit from my dad! I thought this would be a great opportunity to show him some cool stuff around our new home, but as it turns out my ideas ran out fast, and my dad is experienced in finding things to do wherever he is. As a result, I experienced some new things here that I would definitely recommend.   

Tuesday: The real highlight of my day was learning where the airport is and getting to the pick up zone without getting lost. I felt like an extremely accomplished and broken-in resident. My dad's flight was indirect and over night, so I let him rest for awhile. Later, we decided to catch a movie at Downtown Disney, and since we were still there when Sean got off work, we decided to take him to eat at T-Rex! Which is basically the Rainforest cafe except with Dinosaurs. It's so much more awesome.

This was attempt #1 to bring out the inner child in my dad.

Wednesday: One of the things we really wanted to do was visit the Reptile World Serpentarium in St. Cloud. It's just a dumpy little building but admittance is cheap and it is AWESOME. The man who runs the place is George Van Horn. If you don't know who he is, you don't watch enough Animal Planet or Discovery Channel. Since this is the majority of the population, I'll explain. This guy has been bitten about 15 times, is missing digits on his fingers, and survived what is known as the worst snake bite in recorded history. Basically a king cobra mangled his arm and injected enough venom to kill several people. He died several times in the hospital during this incident, and in times since, he has had to have anti-venom injected directly into his heart to save him. Still, the man is still kicking and you can watch him milk snakes every day at 12 and 3. 

Ok so this picture doesn't show the missing fingers or the mangled left arm, so you're just going to have to trust me here.

It was fun to watch the milking of the snakes, since a few rebels jumped out of their cages in an attempt to kill the guy, landed on the floor, and created some intense moments that we were glad were contained behind glass. If you've ever watched animal planet with my dad and watched his reaction to snakes, you can imagine that watching him was equally as entertaining as watching the snakes. When it was all over, George's wife came out with a harmless milk snake that we could all hold. I kissed the snake, dad didn't hold him. 

Thursday: Disney day! This was the day we designated for Disney world. Gotta love the perks of the job. After dropping poor Sean at work, we headed over to Animal Kingdom, because if I can't ride any roller coasters, this park holds the most entertainment for me. I'm technically not advised to go on the Safari because of the bumpy roads, but that's just ridiculous. So I hopped on, and we saw lots of animals! 

Hippos

Elephants

Flamingos

Rhinos (Amazingly, there was no barrier between the car and the rhinos)

Zebras

We also saw Giraffes, Lions, and plenty of Antelope, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera.

And...here's us standing in front of Everest, trying to forget that the mountain is actually an awesome ride that I can't go on.

After the safari, we made sure to hit up the Bugs Life 4D show, Finding Nemo the Musical, and an extremely entertaining bird show.

And lets not forget about his awesome Monkey just doing his thing at death-defying heights.

After a lunch break, we get Sean from work and headed over to Hollywood Disney, where my Dad took Sean to ride Tower of Terror for the first time. While they were in line for the ride, I explored Hollywood Disney. Unfortunately, all of the shows were over and a lot of stuff was cancelled due to some rain. I really wanted Sean to go on Rockin' Rollercoaster, but the line was unbearably long. So my main men sucked it up and went on the Great Movie Ride with me like good sports.

(If you didn't know, this ride moves slower than I can walk. But it's still entertaining.)

So a day in the parks is tiring for a normal person. For a 7 months pregnant lady who hasn't gotten off her couch in weeks, it was exhausting. This picture sums up how I felt for the next 24 hours.

Friday: By this point I wasn't in the mood to do much of anything, and my Dad happily took the rest. We read books and took intermittent naps until Sean got off work. Then Dad found a magic dinner show in Orlando and we went for it. Easily my favorite thing we did all week. On top of unlimited pizza and soda, we were on the front row watching a Magician/Comedian named Tony Brent blow our minds. As if it couldn't get better, Dad got singled out and was publicly humiliated for most of the hour.

Harmlessly enough, he was first asked to pick a card and write on it, place it back in the deck, put the deck in the box, and give the box to a girl in the audience, where she held it for the rest of the show. (The magician never touched the deck of cards)

 During the hour, Tony kept referencing dad and other audience participators in his jokes. 

At the very end of the show, dad retrieved the deck of cards and was asked to search through the deck for his card. Somehow, the magician ended up with the card on his forehead, and we all had a good laugh while my dad obliviously searched the deck for his missing card. (and ya, the guy is riding a unicorn for some reason)

Then there was this weird secret handshake bit...

And then for some inexplicable reason, he dressed Dad up like Cher and made him sing a song with this weird puppet mouth. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take a video.

Dad loved this guy so much he bought his dvd. He was actually a really nice, surprisingly normal dude, despite the lunatic act he puts on.

Saturday: Another pretty lazy day, but we enjoyed the rest. We started off the day with a breakfast buffet at Ponderosa steakhouse, then relaxed and did whatever we wanted. That night we decided we should probably get out of the house, so we went to see Iron Man 3 at Downtown Disney again. Because the parking was closed off and we were running late, I was surprisingly stressed out and had some hormonal freak outs that I'm sure the guys really enjoyed. The movie was great though!

It was sad to drop Dad off at the airport Sunday morning, knowing he was going home to hang out with my nephews and other family that I miss. But I'm so grateful to him for breaking my boredom for a week! Thanks Dad!