Life as a Leach

Matt and I had been wanting to get away for a few days to celebrate our anniversary.  That is a little more difficult to do now that Abby has night feedings using her feeding pump, but my parents rose to the challenge--with the assistance of Dr. Caleb!  Everything went just fine! While Matt knew we were going away, that was the extent of his knowledge.  I planned the location and everything else as a surprise.  When we got in the car, I gave him an envelope with a letter in it stating the address of our inn, as well as how the rest of the trip would go.  I had created a "Choose Your Own Adventure" trip with lots of envelopes with A or B options in them (where we would eat lunch, how we would view the battlefields, which  museum we would visit, where we would go for our anniversary dinner, etc.)  Just like it is tempting to flip ahead in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, he was allowed two cheats where he could view both options before deciding. ...

So, we had an interesting Spring Break.  Interesting may not be a positive term, in this case! It started out great, with a trip to Gettysburg with Matt to celebrate our anniversary a little early.  I'll post separately on that, so that I can share about our adventures. We got back Tuesday night and we spent the next day unpacking, doing laundry, dealing with lots of frustrating behaviors, and quickly emptying out the kitchen so that we could get a new vinyl floor put in on Thursday. While the installation seemed to go fine (once the A team got there and took charge!) and we love the look of the floor, we noticed that night that all of the chairs were putting indents into the floor--even the ones that no one had sat in!  I realized we truly had a problem when I was sitting on the floor looking at the dents and realized that my ankle had also dented the floor.  So, we called the first thing the next morning, but they were closed for Good Friday. ...

One fun place in Epcot is The Sea.  They have lots of rescued animals, and this is also where you will find the Finding Nemo ride.  Caleb got a "Mine! Mine! Mine!" shirt here, if you know that quote from Finding Nemo! This dolphin did some pretty cool tricks.  He could match pictures his trainer held up with pictures across the tank.  The audience was able to cheer whenever he got one right--which was all of them! After much searching and deliberation while planning for our trip, Caleb decided that he really didn't want a character meal.  He finally chose The Coral Reef, which is a seafood restaurant known for its huge fish tanks, divers, and the occasional underwater visit from Mickey! Sadly, we were as far away from the fish tanks as we could possibly be in the restaurant and there really isn't a place where you can walk up and look at them.  The divers stop being in the tank at 6:00 and our reservation was at 7:30. ...

One of the "must dos" of Disney World is a character meal.  Yes, they are ridiculously overpriced.  Yes, the food is usually mediocre at best.  Yes, children often scream in terror at the sight of their "favorite" Disney character up close and personal.  But it's the experience ...or something like that.  :) We had done two character meals last time we were in Disney World, but this time we just did one that Abby chose (Caleb chose a different kind of meal, which I'll share in another post).  We visited Akershus in Epcot's Norway for a late breakfast/early lunch.  The food was surprisingly pretty good (it's hard to ruin breakfast food), but we felt very rushed.  Nevertheless, Abby got to visit her princesses and there were no characters with heads for her to panic over. Snow White was definitely Abby's favorite.  She was very personable and spent much more time with her than any of the other princesses. Caleb enjo...

Of all of the photo props, the Rock Star prop was their favorite.  Every time I turned around, they were fake-singing into the microphone with the "Rock Star" sign photobombing the picture.  They cracked me up! (the glasses were a close second, probably because they were also quite "rock star"ish....)

These kids L-O-V-E-D the photo booth!  We spent lots of quality time in the basement taking silly pictures! Not sure who she's BFFing...or if she even knew what this sign said..l

13 years ago today, on the beach in front of 72nd Street in Ocean City, I said yes to becoming this man's wife. We were young and ignorant, but we were in love!  We will be married 12 years on April 3rd, and the years have flown by.  I love you, Matt...even more than 13 years ago today!