Happy 4th of July!

Dan & Sandi

I can't believe I've let it go for so long before putting up a post to congratulate our friends, Dan and Sandi, on their nuptials! They got married at Bass Lake near Yosemite almost a month ago and it was beautiful. Everything from the weather to the scenery to the gorgeous bride. It was a great day and night!

Here are some of the girls hitching a ride to the ceremony from our cabins.

The view of the lake from where Rusty and I sat.
Beautiful bride...Smooch!

Centerpieces

Yummy cake

Us in front of the lake

Congrats and Best Wishes to the happy couple!

Mas, por favor!

What's that? You want more? Okay, okay. Twist my arm... ;)

We've been to Epcot and the Magic Kingdom so far. We went to both parks a second time later in the week because we didn't get to see and do everything on our list the first time around. However, there is way too much to document here, so I'm going to try and only hit the highlights. Alright! Next stop? Animal Kingdom where, among other things, we went on a jungle cruise, a safari ride to see some beautiful, exotic animals and a petting zoo for your run-of-the-mill sheep and goats.

Kylah wanted to brush every single one of them. She was so sweet and gentle with them.

Brothers!

The family in front of the Tree of Life. It's hard to see in this picture, but there are different wild animals carved out and sort of blend together. It is pretty amazing.

Next it was back to Epcot! This time, we focused on wandering through the countries and I tried to get some good pictures.

This is my favorite from the whole trip... I love the reflection of the clouds in the glass.

Me and my love in..."France." Can I just take a moment to comment on the fact that I HATE humidity. Every day I had to wear my hair back. Its making for some boring pictures...

We ended the night by staying at the park to watch the Epcot fireworks. We had great seats, right on the lake. Very cool.... particularly because they came with an ice cold margarita. :)

Lets just round this out with some of my favorite pictures to sum up the rest of the week...

Kylah loved her Crush doll we gave her.

::Sigh::

That was fun... So uh, when are we getting together again??! :)

Wish Upon A Star

We had a fantastic time with our family at Disney World. However, this was not an endeavor for the faint of heart! We braved rain, wind, blisters, ponchos that smelled like a tacklebox, mosquitoes and some wicked sunburns that will no doubt drain the world of its supply of aloe. All kidding aside, these were just tiny bits of our trip that just gave us more to laugh about, because who has ever been on a vacation where everything goes perfectly? (If you are raising your hand right now, you can just go ahead and slap yourself for me. ;))

I will now try to sum up our vacation with more pictures than anything else. Lets just put it this way, I think between all of us we have more than 600 pictures. I went through them and pulled 81 out that are must haves for our album (luckily it fits 200 photos, so I get to pick more!! mwa ha ha ha!) . But I am obviously not going to put up 81 pictures because, as awesome as we are... no one wants to wade through that many pictures on someone's blog. And I don't have the patience to upload that many either.

So here we go...

Rusty and I arrived to Orlando on Friday, June 13. We had a fantastic crab dinner (crab cakes for me... yummy!) to kick things off right. We were all excited and wound up but knew we had a big day ahead of us at Epcot, so we hit the sack relatively early. But first, Kylah helped me check out our new digs for the next week.

The parks we covered during our stay were Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios (some twice!). All were ridiculously fun and provided an unimaginable amount of walking. I wonder how many miles we walked overall...? I had to keep reminding myself not to complain out loud because my wonderful sister-in-law held up just fine and she's 6 months pregnant! What a trooper. :)

Anyway, I'll be up front with you all right now and say I honestly do not remember everything we did. Occasionally I'd write notes in my cell phone to remind me, but not often enough to remember what we did each day. Let's start with Epcot, shall we?

View of Epcot from our balcony. This was especially awesome because we could watch the fireworks from here every night!

First family picture of the trip...
We had heard Donald Duck was hard to spot. He was the first character we met!
Rusty and I in front of a waterfall in Norway...

Kylah got to meet almost all of the Disney princesses at her princess lunch. She met Cinderella, Sleeping Pooty (she can't say "Beauty" yet...), Ariel and a host of others but Belle was everyone's favorite. She was gorgeous and so sweet.

While Kylah got autographs from some other characters, Goofy gave me a big hug :)


Beautiful family... outside the Finding Nemo ride.

Most important picture of all: the family with Mickey!

The next day we headed to Magic Kingdom.

Sheesh! Only been here an hour and we're in trouble already! Haha!

"Can I see??"

You thought I was kidding about the ponchos. Seriously, they're making a comeback! In any case, when its raining as hard as it was, you'll wear ANYTHING to stay dry!

Uncle Rusty holding Sleepy Kylah... this makes my uterus ache... ;)

Kylah and I settle in after a looong day to watch Ratatouille.

That about wraps up the first couple days. I have more that I'd like to share with everyone, so stay tuned!

Bueller? ... Bueller?

Is anyone here??

Fear not, for I am back! I just got home from a 10 day vacation to Disney World with the in-laws and I.Am.Beat. Right now I'm working on going through the hundreds and hundreds of pictures we all took while we were there. As soon I've managed to whittle them down to a reasonable number, I'll put up a proper post.

For now, please entertain yourselves with a little clip of the inspiration for the title of my blog. Our beautiful - and funny - niece, Kylah. God, I love this kid.


Inspiration from meghan johnson on Vimeo.

I can see clearly now

Well, now that my pupils aren't dilated to the size of saucers and I'm wearing new contacts. Yay for being able to see!

For the past week I've noticed that my vision has been kind of blurry - for things near and far - even with my contacts. I'm 27! I shouldn't have to worry about reading glasses! In any case, yesterday was the last straw. I could hardly see my computer screen and had the worst migraine from squinting all day. I wasn't sure if it was just my allergies or if my prescription had changed. I went ahead and made an appointment with a new eye doctor since I got new vision insurance. At the time the appointment was made, no one mentioned they'd be dilating my eyes since I'm a new patient and that just maybe I should have someone there to drive me home. Thank god I brought my old glasses with me, because I couldn't wear my contacts after the eye exam and subsequent burning eye drops that opened them up so big I'm sure they could see into the deepest recesses of my brain. If I thought the headache I had during the day was bad, the one I got at the eye doctor was that times about a million. So bad it literally made me sick. The bright California sun I usually adore became my worst enemy. Somehow I got myself home safely, although I wouldn't have been surprised if I ended up at the other end of California with all the signs I could read.

Learn from my mistake: If you go in for an eye exam, ALWAYS ask if they'll be dilating your pupils. And if they are going to, make sure you have a ride home. I'm so pissed I had to drive like that. Not only was it painful and I felt like puking the entire way home, but it was dangerous too. There is your PSA for the day. :)

La la la

What to write, what to write...

As I mentioned in my previous post, life has been all sorts of topsy-turvy these days. In addition to the two major occurrences of last week, work is totally crazy, my very last class for school has been super hard and we've got something going on every weekend for the next month. There just doesn't seem to be any time to get things done or god forbid, relax. We've got our family vacation to Florida coming up next week, so I've been trying to prep my pasty, pudgy self by working out a little more (and by "a little more," I mean "at all"), getting some sun and trying to find some affordable, new clothes to get me more excited and get my mind off everything else. While a little retail therapy is usually a cure-all for what ails me, I should always remember that bathing suit shopping has the exact opposite effect. Dear Lord in heaven, it ain't pretty.

Unfortunately, no matter how much I hate it - and we all do - my ass feels like it has grown to epic proportions lately (at least for me), and last year's suit now resembles more of an overstuffed sausage casing than a sexy bathing suit. Icky. After trying on about 30 different styles and sizes, I finally found a cute little number at Old Navy. I'm completely over spending lots of money on swimsuits. I figured that by going the cheaper route it won't matter if it doesn't fit next year! Who cares? Go ahead, eat that box of cookies! Wooo! ahem Not that I'd ever do that.... (uncomfortably looking away...) Back to my point. Cute, huh? Lets hope it looks good on, too...

Pink Paisley String Bikini, Old Navy

For the record, I just want to say that as I stood in those horrific dressing rooms with terrible lighting, I realized how much I hate all those lucky ladies with long legs, tiny waists and long torsos who look so good in a bikini. You all suck. There. I said it. I (of the stubby-legged, hipless, short torso'd variety) am really trying to be "comfortable" in my own skin, but I'll tell ya, with every new dimple of cellulite it gets that much harder!

Hmmm.... TMI, perhaps?