I put up three photos to give you an idea of the new house layout. The living room is a tough room to photograph so it's photo sucks. The view into the dining room is from the kitchen.

#MyLife #Photos

As you may know we went to Disney World last week. We were there for about six days and did a ton. Amazingly, we still didn't do everything and we only rode two rides more than once (both of those were during "extended hours" we paid extra for); however, we did have a lot of fun - especially Shannon. This image of Shannon links to about fifty of the 400 plus images from the week.

The trip started out smoothly with a flight from Charleston, WV to Atlanta where we caught our connector and headed south to Orlando. We actually had a delay in leaving Charleston (about 30-45 minutes) but it wasn't important because it just reduced our layover in Atlanta. Emily slept on both flights but Shannon had some issues going into Orlando and suffered some inner ear pain. She dealt with it pretty well (though I'm sure the guy right in front of her probably disagrees. We then shuffled through the airport to baggage claim (where Disney had already claimed our bags) and then loaded on a shuttle bus we had to wait about five minutes for. The bus (a rather nice one) took us to the hotel (All Star Music) at which point we unloaded, checked in, and then had our first meal at the All Star Music Cafe.

The food was barely passable. I had spaghetti and, while it was decent, it was barely enough and made me nervous about our dining plans for the trip. Lisa had done her homework and had bought our park tickets in a package that included a meal plan, hotel accommodations, and park tickets. It was a great deal but I wasn't really thrilled with the meal plan. Each day, on the plan, we had a "counter service", a "sit down service", and a snack. We used our "counter service" for lunch (except that first meal and our "sit down" for dinner. A counter service meal consisted of a main course, a dessert, and a drink. You must select all three before you go to the checkout (you can't get the meal piece-meal) or else you miss out on whichever parts you had not decided on. Of course, I didn't know this when I arrived. I was taking care of Emily and our meals. I grabbed some food for her and my spaghetti, a chocolate milk for her, and planned on getting a fountain drink. I didn't bother with dessert selection because I was hoping to have ice cream and didn't want it to melt while I ate my dinner. The cashier, William, was less than friendly and basically told me I was out of luck on the dessert plan. Had I had dessert the amount of food would have been fine (as it was the rest of the week) but that night I wasn't very happy. Fortunately, my later experiences with the food plan were better.

After dinner we headed to our room which was a family suite; a new concept on the Disney properties that took what was formerly two separate rooms and combined them into one. The room was nicely sized. Half consisted of a living room and a bathroom while the other half held the bedroom, a small kitchenette, and another bathroom. The living room had a couch, a large chair/love seat, and a very large ottoman. Each of those three pieces folded out into beds (a queen, and two singles respectively). There was also a 27" tv and a small "bistro" table with two chairs. The kitchenette had a microwave, a dorm fridge, a small sink, and some paper dishes (Disney themed of course). Considering the room was barely more expensive than two rooms and we had the kitchenette I was pretty happy with the accommodations. However, our bags hadn't arrived from the airport yet and the girls pj's and all of our toiletries were in them. We waited up until nearly 10 with the girls before we gave up. Lisa and I stayed awake until 11:30 but the bags still didn't arrive so we decided to go to sleep. Lisa had called the front desk earlier and told them to deliver the bags regardless of the hour which, unfortunately, meant I was awoken at 3am by the guy with our luggage. He had knocked a couple times before I got out of bed then tried to open the door to the room (which we had latched) so, for a second, I thought someone was trying to break in. The door to the room enters into the living room and, amazingly, once all the bags were in and the bellboy was gone, the girls were still asleep. I took their cue and went back to bed myself.

The next morning we got up, got dressed, and headed to the Magic Kingdom. Shannon and Emily were very excited! We got into the main gate and immediately found some characters who were signing autographs and getting their photos taken; starting with Chip and Dale. At this first stand there was a professional photographer who handed out a "photo pass" card which you could use all over all of the parks. Basically, all of the Disney photographers would scan your card and then the photos they took would be connected to your account; later you can view those photos online and decide if you want to buy the whole package ($99 for up to 300 different photos on one CD). We then went around the first building, rented a stroller (about $100 for the entire trip; but well worth it for reasons I will explain later) and then got in line so the girls could meat Pluto and Daisy. Once we were done with that we headed down main street, checked out a couple stores, saw a small "Oklahoma" type rendition on a street car, and then saw a neat musical thing involving dreams and nightmares on the patio in front of Cinderella's castle. Once that was over we called Ted (my older brother) who was also coming to Disney with his family. They were nearly at the front gate so we headed back up main street and joined up with them for the start of a fun filled week.

Now that we were all together (Lisa, Me, Shannon, Emily, Ted, Cyndy , Austin (11), and Heather (7)) we headed for the first set of rides which included "It's a Small World" and "Dumbo". The girls (Shannon, Emily, and Heather) really liked all of the rides in that part of the park. Then we headed off toward "tomorrowland" where we rode a ride just like "Dumbo" but with Rockets and then Space Mountain!

Shannon is a little timid about rides and had, earlier in the day, waited in line for the haunted house before backing out at the last second so I was pretty sure she wouldn't want to go on Space Mountain. Heather, on the other hand, wanted to go on every ride and had no hesitation about the Haunted House or Space Mountain. If you haven't been there before Space Mountain is a roller-coaster, but it is inside and isn't an obviously "scary ride" so Shannon wanted to go with Heather. I looked at her surprised but didn't disillusion her - I wanted her to go on as many rides as possible. We waited in line (for about 10-20 minutes) listening to very mellow mood music and looking at peaceful holograms. Finally, when it was almost our turn on the ride I saw that Shannon would have to sit alone (I had thought it would be like the rest of the Disney rides were you sit two in a row). Shannon decided the order of seating would be Austin, her, Heather, me, Ted, and Cyndy. We piled in (I was pretty nervous for her) and the ride took off. The first few turns were cool and you could hear Shannon saying "Wee!!!". By the way, this ride is mostly in the dark so you can't see what is coming. Shortly after those first two turns we hit the first "drop" and the wee turned into a paniced scream for me. I yelled back that she was alright, I was there, and that the ride is fun. I repeated my mantra "This is fun Shannon, I'm right here" until the ride stopped. After I unloaded she staggered out of the ride and walked/stumbled with her arms outstretched in, what appeared to be, a state of shock, until I picked her up. Then she cried briefly until I told her how brave she was and that she did something even her mom wouldn't do. That perked her up and she seemed to recover well. She wasn't interested in going on it again but she spoke positively about the ride the rest of the week.

Later that night we headed to the Contemporary Hotel via the monorail and had our first "character dinner" at Chef Mickey's diner. There we ate from a decent buffet and the girls got the chance to meet Mickey, Minny, Donald, Pluto, and Goofy. Shannon really enjoyed it and Emily started to warm up to the idea of giant stuffed animals wanting to hug her. She still wouldn't do it without me holding her but you could tell she was loosening up. Shannon, on the other hand, needed no encouragement and would run and hug the various characters. She also took a book with her that she used as an autograph book. Over the course of the week she must have gotten close to fifty different signatures from various characters (some of them more than once). She really, really, enjoyed meeting the characters.

The second day we went to the Animal Kingdom where we saw some cool creatures, dinosaur bones, and shows including a 3-d movie involving "Flick" from "Ants." At some point during the day we had to split up so that Ted, Austin, and I could go on the Mt. Everest roller coaster while the girls went to see Rafiki and another show. At the show Shannon and Heather were pretty outspoken and drew the attention of the singer/songwriter who was leading things. He then changed up a song to be all about how the two of them Invented Everything! From that point on if you asked Shannon she invented whatever you had in your hand ranging from the stroller to the chicken we ate for lunch. We also went on a safari ride were we saw a bunch of animals roaming around including a pride of Lions. At some point during this day Emily started to feel a little funky and didn't really have much energy. At this point the stroller came in very handy.

We had considered bringing our own stroller to Disney with us but it had a couple drawbacks. First we would have to lug it around on the buses between parks and secondly it could only hold one of the girls. The strollers at Disney are pretty low to the ground and you can get a double wide that both girls could share. Even better the foot area was so big we were able to push all three (including Heather) at times. However, the best part of this stroller became evident once Emily started getting sick and wanted to sleep. We had Heather and Shannon get up and walk and Emily could sprawl out and crash. For the next 2 days she was either sleeping in the stroller, on my shoulder, or in a high chair with her head on the table. On the second day I stayed back at the hotel with her until her temp (which seemed very high) broke and she regained some of her energy. She was never 100% on the trip but she still had plenty of fun.

After Emily started to bounce back we met the crew back at the Magic Kingdom where we went to "Frontierland" and "Adventureland" were we hit a few more rides and then had to cut out so the girls could get dressed for their dinner at Cinderella's castle. Emily dressed as Snow White and Shannon dressed as Tinkerbell for the meal. Earlier in the day they had gotten their photos taken with Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Belle. At the enterence to dinner they got to meet Cinderella again who assured them she remembered them from earlier in the day (a nice touch) and they had another professional photo taken (this one was delivered at dinner as part of the meal package). We then headed upstairs to the main dining room of the palace (I wasn't sure there was an upstairs). We had a decent meal (though the prime rib was overcooked) and the girls got to meet two of Cinderella's mice and her Fairy Godmother. At the end of the meal the nights fireworks (Disney does them every night) started to go off. It turns out they use Cinderella's castle for a launching point for many so we had a good view out the window for the lights. Emily really digs fireworks so she fully enjoyed that part of the meal.

The next day found us at MGM Studios were we saw two really cool stunt shows (Raiders of the Lost Ark and a Car Stunt Show that even had a few tricks that impressed Ted (who has been trained to do a lot of wild driving stuff). Ted, Ausin, and I went on the Tower of Terror and the Aerosmith Roller coaster. The Roller coaster is cool simply because of how fast you start the ride. I also had a really good strawberry Ice Cream snack over near the Tower/Rollercoaster part of the park. Overall I think my favorite part of Disney to walk around is MGM Studio's because each part is so well done you really feel like in your different areas/time periods. It's pretty cool.

Honestly, the days are blurring together in my mind so I may be messing the order of things up a bit - so I apologize for any inaccuracies at this point.

We ate a late dinner at MGM at a 50's style "Mom-n-Pop" type place. The food was OK (we almost all had fried chicken) but the price was crazy. OUr food was covered on the meal plan but Ted and his group had to pay over $100 for a fried chicken dinner. I was pretty disgusted at how expensive it was. I was feeling pretty wierd that night so I gave Austin my dessert which was a brownie sundae that looked really, really, good. I'm still partially regretting that bit of generosity on my part!

The next day we were at Epcot where, I have to say, I was the most disappointed with the entire park system. Epcot has some cool stuff (including my favorite ride Mission: Space) but it is also the most blatantly commercial part of Disney. I know Disney is a big commercial for Disney - but Epcot is more than that. Everything we did was sponsored by one company or another. In the imagination place there was thing sponsored by IBM, another by HP, and another by Microsoft XBoxs. You could rent a Segway there (which I was tempted to try) but I decided against because I figured it would be exorbitantly priced. We went on a ride with Lisa's favorite Epcot character "figment" which was kind of neat but then when we got off we were injected into a live infomercial for Kodak digital camera's and printers. Even the end of Mission: Space had a room filled with activities that were sponsored, once again, by Hewlett Packard (I think). I understand people need to advertise but I thought the gross commercialization cheapened the Epcot experience.

Not all of Epcot was bad. In fact two of my favorite parts of the trip took place there. The first was the ride Mission: Space. I really wanted to go on the ride and I was not disappointed. It simulated a couple g's of force as you take off in your X-2 rocket, slingshot around the moon, avoid asteroids, and then perform a crazy landing on the surface of mars. I would have gone on that one again if I had the time. The second thing we did was go to a German BeirGarten for dinner in the German part of Epcot's walk of nations. Our waitress was from Germany (as were most of them) and she had lived about 30 miles north of where Ted was stationed when he was there. Ted and I each had a huge stein of Franziskaner Hefeweizen (one of Ted's favorites and our waitress's favorite). The glass was huge and had to hold close to half a gallon of beer. There was live music performed including two guys who played the bells (that was very cool) and they both played the alphorn (a really long horn made famous in the states in Riccola commercials). I had a huge plate of Schnitzel (I love Schnitzel) and a bounty of desserts. We had a blast but had to end the night early.

That night we had to cut out and head back to the Magic Kingdom for our night of extended hours which was part of a Christmas party. Mostly the party consisted of free hot cocoa and a parade. I'm not much of a parade person but Lisa, Shannon, and Emily all really enjoyed the parade. The weather at this point also took a turn south and dropped from the mid 70's to the low 50's (wind chill into the low 40's). We, of course, weren't dressed for the weather so I bought the girls a really nice soft Tinkerbell blanket. After the parade we went on Dumbo and "It's a Small World" again before deciding we were all too tired to hang out any longer. We headed back to the bus for the hotel where we ran into a huge group of young (7-15 year old) cheerleaders from Dracut Mass. My father is from Dracut and his part of my family still lives out there. One of the girls (an older high school aged "chaperon") actually dated my cousin Joey Huntress (a WR for the Dracut High football team). It was pretty crazy. It really is a small world? On a similar note Ted ran into his across-the-street neighbor at every park we visited and they didn't even know they would be at Disney at all before the trip.

On Friday the temp stayed cold so we headed to downtown Disney to do some shopping. Earlier in the week Lisa put Emily's hair in pigtails for the first time ever and I commented that I thought she looked a lot like Boo from Monster's Inc. At an art store at Downtown Disney we found a small statue of Boo that captures Emily nicely so we bought it along with four small Tinkerbell lithograph's for Shannon's room. They paintings are really pretty and Shannon is very excited about hanging them in her room. They are about 8x11 in size so it should be cheap for us to frame them for her.

That night was our final character breakfast, back at the Magic kingdom, this time with Pooh and company. We were joined by Pooh, Tigger, Eyeore, and Piglet. Emily, at this point, was fully comfortable with the big characters and hugged each of them when they came up. Shannon, of course, continued to enjoy herself. After dinner we walked around the park a bit before heading back to the hotel to meet up with Ted and Cyndy for a final night's hangout. They had spent that day relaxing back at their condo. The next day was our flight home.

The flight home was even smoother than the one down there but the temperature was much colder here in WV than it was in Orlando. Both girls were great and had a fantastic time. Amazingly, with everything we did, we didn't see everything. We didn't go to portions of the Magic Kingdom, we didn't go to either water park (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon), and I'm sure we missed a bunch of the Epcot bits as we went through so fast. I am not sure how much the trip, in total, cost but it was not cheap. However, based on Shannon's and Emily's reactions to everything it was worth every penny. We will probably end up going back again one more time when Emily is close to 6 but I'm not sure when we will do it considering school etc kind of gets in the way.

#Family #FunStuff #MyLife #Travel #Photos

I have uploaded some new photos starting with some pretty neat ones that were taken by Shannon on this past Saturday while she was helping Lisa decorate the upper balcony for Christmas. I particularly like the picture of the tree - it is pretty stark and is a perspective I never would have thought to photograph.

The second set of photos are from Emily's birthday party. She had a blast and was really cute throughout the day. This is the first year she was really aware the day was all about her and she ate it up. Shannon was great with her and did a fantastic job of not trying to draw the attention to herself. A bunch of her friends (and their families) were at the party and she had a lot of fun running around the house with them chasing Joe. It is amazing how loud a stampede of 2-4 year olds can be.

Her party was "Dora the Explorer" themed and featured a cake from our local cake shop. Emily was really excited about the cake and her Dora balloon. At one point, when the balloon first came home, she ran around the house jumping and smiling she was so happy. It was really cool to see her enjoy the day so much.

#Family #Photos

I have finally gotten the Halloween photos up. There are just three of them; one of Shannon, Emily, and Me. I thought I had taken photos of our carved pumpkins this year but it seems I didn't. I'm a little disappointed in that. They were pretty good.

#Family #MyLife #Photos

I put seven new photos up on the families online photo album. The are from this past weekend. Shannon went to the pumpkin festival on her first fieldtrip (she even rode the school bus, which she found very exciting). She is with her pumpkin. Everyone in her class decorated a pumpkin and then they were on display for all of the other people who came to the festival. Suprisingly enough the pumpkin festival is a big deal around here with traffic backed up a few miles to get in. I don't understand the interest; but it is huge here.

The other photos are from an event called "Sally's Apple Butter Days". Are we sounding country enough for you yet? A co-workers wife grew up on a farm and her parents have a get-together every year where 40+ people come to the farm and make apple butter. Riviting isn't it? We went along with some other friends from work and our children all played with each other in the big fields. Plus the girls got to see some chickens, collect some eggs, meet some cows, pet some horses, and sit on an idle tractor. Each family that came to the event also brought at least one food dish and everyone ate a huge potluck dinner/lunch. After about six hours the apple butter was done and Lisa and some other people jarred it up and handed it out to everyone. I spent most of the day as a tackle/play toy for the kids; it is amazing how much energy they had.

#Family #Photos

Today is Shannon's first day of kindergarten. She is attending Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School right here in Huntington. Over the previous two days I spent about 6 hours at the school for various orientation activities. Monday was a kindergarten orientation for parents only. Yesterday was the whole school's orientation for students and parents; Shannon and I were there for about 3-4 hours. We signed up for some volunteer activities, she met her teachers, got used to her classroom, setup her wall-locker and her desk, and met some of her classmates. With all of this already under her belt it was no wonder that this morning, once she arrived, she was basically pushing Lisa out the door with goodbyes so she could get to business. Lisa, undoubtedly, was more distraught than Shannon was about this milestone in her young life. In commemoration Lisa took some photo's which I have uploaded for your viewing pleasure.

#Family #Photos

Piglet is a star. OK well, maybe not a star, but she is featured on CatsinBoxes.com. CatsInBoxes is a website that is hosted on TextDrive (our new webhost). The day I signed up for their hosting I was exploring to see what other sites were being hosted. I found CatsInBoxes and chuckled but moved on. Then, that night, as soon as I got home what did I see? Piglet lying in a box. I felt compelled to take a photo and send it in and today I was notified the image was accepted and is now on display. Let's here it for Piglet and her moment in the limelight.

#FunStuff #Geekiness #Photos

I just uploaded some new photos. The first set are of Shannon and Emily playing with some friends who were just in town for a visit. The second set are photos that were taken by Shannon. She did a really cool job - I particularly like the one of the hopscotch court with the picket fence shadows; it's a neat perspective on Americana.

#Family #Photos

I have updated the website again. I'm just never content I guess. Today I changed the way the thumbnails show up on the home page (they are bigger and crisper now). Plus the "photos" link on the top of the site now points to our picasaWeb album instead of the old photo album I had built into the webpage. I am doing this for a couple reasons but primarilly becuase I want to just store photos in one place.

#ThisSite #Photos

Yesterday I heard about a neat new feature in the next version of Picasa (the photo management feature from Google) - photo albums. Sure, every photo management program supports photo albums. However, Picasa takes it a step further than most and has an online mode. So now I can save photos onto the web photo album from right inside Picasa. It comes with 250megs of space, which arguably isn't much, but you can upgrade to an additional 6 Gigs if you want to pay $25/year (comparable to Flickr).

Right off the bat, let me say, Flickr is better for finding neat and new photos to look at. However, so far, Picasa Web is better for the shear simplicity of uploading my photos. I just pick the ones I want to upload, click a button, and I can add them to an existing album or create a new one on the fly. Another nice bonus is that Picasa web keeps them at a much larger resolution than Flickr does in the free version. I don't know what the max space you can fill on Flickr is but you can only upload 10megs a month with the free account - so it would take me 2.5 years to fill up my Picasa account at that rate. Today alone I uploaded 15MB of photos to Picasa Web.

You may be wondering how I'm using this feature since it is for an upcoming release of Picasa. Well, you can sign up now and if you are lucky and get picked you can start using the new version now (in Beta or test condition). So far I haven't encountered any bugs so it seems pretty stable. Plus there are some User Interface enhancements.

Finally, if you want you can check out my online photo album at Picasa. http://picasaweb.google.com/bill.rawlinson

#Geekiness #Photos