Epcot Flower & Garden Show part 1

Two weeks ago Saturday, we went up to Disney's Epcot for the Flower and Garden Festival that they have every year. We got up early that morning and drove up to Orlando and then came back that night so it was a LONG day but it was worth it. The weather was about perfect and the park was absolutely beautiful. Epcot is one of Disney's four amusement parks (that our passes are good for). It's a cool park anyway but it was unbelievable to see all the plants and topiaries and things set up just for the F & G festival. There were topiaries of MANY different Disney characters, both classic and a few more recent ones. I don't know what some of the parts of the topiaries are made from but obviously most of it is plants. There was a special fairies area (based off the newer Tinker Bell movies) complete with a butterfly house filled with plants as well as the butterflies. There were flowers and plants ranging from common plants to ones from different places around the world. There were a couple special play areas brought in for kids just for the festival as well as gardening demonstrations, hands-on projects, etc. It was all so amazing. Of course we did some of the normal rides and saw characters as well.
One of the funniest parts of the day was Kaelyn's "camera". They were giving out seed packets in the fairies garden area for kids to take home and plant . We had just taken a picture of Kaelyn by one of the topiaries and she was trying to get Kevin and I to stand in front of it and then she walked away. We didn't understand what she wanted at first but it finally dawned on us that she was pretending to take our picture. She held the seed packet up in front of her face and said, "Say cheese!" Then she made a clicking noise. She said, "One more" then turned the packet the opposite way and made a clicking noise again. She said, "That's perfect! Good job!" Kevin and I couldn't stop laughing. And so went most of the rest of the day. We tucked the packet in our pockets and tried to make her forget about it but sooner or later, she would beg and beg for it and make Kevin and I "pose" for her. It was funny and a little embarrassing all at once. When she "took a picture" of Kevin and I with Mary Poppins, we sheepishly explained what she was doing and of course, Mary Poppins took it all in stride and told Kaelyn (in her very British accent) that she LOVED her imagination. After we would get pictures of Kaelyn, Kaelyn would say, "Everyone now." So we would all get our picture taken and then she would run in front of us before they could hardly get a picture of all of us so that she could take our picture with her "camera". When she took a picture of Kevin and I with Pooh and Tigger, Kevin could hear Tigger laughing inside the costume (and you NEVER hear the costumed characters make a sound). Kevin muttered, "She's been taking pictures of us like this all day. I can't wait to see how those ones turn out." He said that he could hear Tigger really trying to keep from laughing then. Had I known that was going to happen, I would have taken one of her disposable cameras from home but we weren't about to pay Disney's prices to buy one in the park. At least it wouldn't have looked quite as ridiculous though. We laughed so hard but I could feel myself blushing so many times. Gotta' love her and the way she thinks! Overall it was a great day and we had so much fun having family time and just walking around and having so much fun together!

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Epcot Flower & Garden Show part 2

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Video clips of Kaelyn

I put together a slideshow of some video clips of Kaelyn at Epcot this past Saturday. I still might decide it's a dumb thing to have posted and decide to not leave them but anyway... It was just so funny and cute to see some of the interactions with her and some of the characters. She LOVES seeing the characters and has never been afraid of them but sometimes she's not sure what to say or do (particularly with the uncostumed ones that actually talk to her) because of her lack of conversational skills. So when the characters take extra time to interact with her, it's really special to her. When we went to see Tigger and Pooh, "Tigger" was the funniest one we've ever seen. She wanted to bounce with Tigger because some of the Tiggers have done that with her before but she's not usually sure how to "get them to" bounce with her on her own without coaxing. When Tigger saw her come "bouncing" over, he crouched down and started bouncing all over the place. Thankfully, Kevin was videoing it with the camera. You can hear several other people in the room laughing. I could never bounce around while being crouched on my knees like that, let alone in a big costume. It was great and Kaelyn was definitely amused! The second time she went to see Mickey they had to do a switch out right before it was her turn. The workers say that Mickey "has to go eat some cheesecake and he will be right back." The worker told Kaelyn that he was back eating and that if she called to him, he would come out. So after he had walked back and double checked :), he had her yell for Mickey. When [the new] Mickey came out, he peeked around the corner at her and she thought it was so funny. You'll also a couple other clips with Pluto and K dancing with Minnie. Kaelyn was waiting her turn to see Donald after she had seen Minnie and the next people had not made it to Minnie yet. Minnie was "dancing" to the music in the background so when Kaelyn walked back over to watch her, she took Kaelyn's hands and danced with her. I posted each clip a few slides apart so hopefully each one will be loaded by the time you get to them. There is a lot of background noise in them just because there are so many people around. I'm also guessing that it might take a bit for the smilebox to load since it's videos (depending on the speed of your internet).

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Odds -N- Ends

Back a few weeks ago, Rod did some landscaping work in our front yard and it looks SOOO nice. For some reason I kept forgetting to get pictures of it in the daytime. It's a BEAUTIFUL day outside today and I actually thought about grabbing the camera when I got home from picking Kaelyn up from school. Most of my 6 blog readers probably won't find this interesting but there might be about 3 of you who have been to our house and will be interested to see the difference. Everything you see in the front yard is new with the exception of the two potted plants. It's kind of a pain that the window is not centered but we can't exactly change that so Rod just centered the rest of the stuff around the window rather than the real center of the front. I am very pleased with the way it turned out!


A view of the whole thing.


closer up views

A cute lawn ornament. :)

Ahhh----finally warm enough to wear new

spring/summer clothes.

Mommy's little cutie indeed!

Mommy/Daughter day out

I had several different coupons, gift cards, etc. for different places so today Kaelyn and I went on a little "outing". We actually only ended up with some much needed clothes for Kaelyn and a couple of things for Kevin before I was "shopped out" but we still had a good time. We started out eating a late lunch/early supper at Chili's and then we headed to the mall to go to JC Penney. We only went to Penneys at the mall and then we headed over to Kohl's. By the time we were done there, we were ready to call it a day (other than our regular grocery shopping). :) Here are a few [not very good] pictures:



A couple quick pictures Kevin took of us before
we left.




She thought she was hilarious of course and
wanted me to take a picture of this.





Lunch together.




A fuzzy attempt at a self portrait.

Snapshots

A few pictures taken this month:


I reorganized Kaelyn's room recently and set
up a bunch of her toys in the closet and I have
seen her in there several times happily playing away.


By the way, my intention was not to make her
play in the closet by herself but I guess it's easier
than dragging the toys out (and it IS easier to
clean up).


Kay figured out this past Sunday that
if you play peek-a-boo with Wyatt, he
grins and laughs so she decided to try
it herself - cute!


The first time Kay has ever actually
wanted to hold Wyatt.


It's almost as if she realized for the first
time that he's an actual human and laughs,
smiles, and likes to play. :)


I'm not sure what was going on here - her
father took the pictures and I just saw them...

.
... But I can assure you we do NOT abuse
her or lock her up. :)

Okay, so I'm a little behind

I don't really have any new exciting pictures to post but I have actually had some pictures sitting in a folder on my desktop for a couple weeks that I wanted to post. Some of these I posted on facebook back in December so some of you have seen them.
Back at Christmas time when Kaelyn's class went to their Christmas party, one of the items they each received in their gift bags from "Santa" was a disposable camera. Kaelyn did not initially know what it was but it didn't take her long to not only figure out that it was a camera but also how to use it. She and one of her best buddies that had just gotten moved to a different class had a blast taking pictures of each other. They must have each snapped a dozen [of the same] pictures. There was also $5 in each gift bag to use for developing the pictures. We haven't developed the pictures yet but I'm sure there are all kinds of interesting ones on there. :) She enjoyed it so much that we got her another disposable camera that I just happened to find on sale and we used it as a stocking stuffer for her. I think she took about 10 pictures of the Christmas tree on that one! :)


As soon as she saw the teacher's get the cameras out of
the bags and start taking pictures for the kids, she got
right into it. This is her friend Jett.


They just stood there and kept snapping pictures of
each other. The other little boy was someone from
Jett's class.





Aren't they cute? :)



Then when we got home, Kay took a bunch
of Minnie Mouse. Hopefully I'll get a video
clip of that posted as well.


You had to hear her to get the full benefit of the photo
shoot.


I'm not sure if she ever really could see through the
teeny little viewfinder.


Minnie Mouse is actually quite photogenic. :)

Yeah, she might have a lot of unidentifiable pictures

because half the time her finger covered up the flash. :)

I decided to go ahead and post the videos here rather than
making a new post. Sorry about the slideshow format. I
tried loading the videos directly to my blog but after waiting
for more than an hour, the first one still had not loaded so I
just put them in a slideshow and it was much quicker. There
are 2 video clips with 2 blank slides in between them. The
videos are very similar but they are short.

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A few cute pictures

These pictures of Kaelyn and Buster were taken right before Christmas - Christmas eve I believe. I'm not exactly sure what Kaelyn was doing other than being silly but she kept piling all the pillows on top of Buster and herself.

Rach, John, Wyatt and Kaelyn eating ice cream and

watching "Up" one Sunday afternoon.

Seafood Festival

Saturday, we spent a couple hours at the seafood festival in Port Salerno (just a few minutes up the road from Hobe Sound). The festival was held by some restaurants right near the water. We had never been before but it was free and we knew that there was going to be a "kids area" with some bounce houses "and stuff". We didn't realize what the "and stuff" included. One of the churches in the area that Kevin and Rod do insurance for was sponsoring the kid's area as an outreach. Everything that was in the area was free for kids to do. There were pony rides, sand piles and water tables to play in, 3 bounce houses, a rock wall/slide/tunnel bounce house, a bounce house where they were playing dodge ball, sand art, face painting, and an area to paint on big pieces of plywood they had set up. Kaelyn had the time of her life! She was so thrilled to get to ride a pony and she looked as cute as can be. She LOVED the rock climbing/slide bounce house as well as the regular bounce houses. She used to sit down in the bounce houses and just let everyone around her jump but she has figured out how to bounce now and she did NOT want to get out. She wasn't crazy about the sand pile but then we saw the water tables and she LOVED that! She also painted for a little bit. We walked around and looked at the booths for just a little bit and then we got sno cones (our one expense and little splurge for the afternoon). We really enjoyed just getting to walk around and hang out together and it was really cool that Kaelyn got to do so many fun things.
(Forgive my slideshow music but I just LOVE Broadway music and actually, you're likely to hear a lot more of it) :)

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Montgomery family Christmas

Here is the last slideshow of Christmas pictures. I've had the pictures chosen and sitting in a folder but I just got around to getting them into a slideshow. We had a great time in Massena as usual but it was way too short as usual. The pictures include our Pizza Hut outing, snapshots, opening presents, and playing in the snow. My parents treated ALL OF US to Pizza Hut and my Aunt Rhonda and Uncle Bill sent a gift card to help with it also. We always have such a fun time doing that. To clarify a few things from the slideshow: Leah was NOT really saying what I put in the caption under a picture of her and Net talking - I just made it up to go along with her expression :); my parents did NOT make ANY of us drink water at Pizza Hut (another caption I put) and actually they generously paid for all our individual orders and salads besides appetizers and pizza; I harrassed the "procrastinators" who were wrapping gifts right before we opened them but I was sitting there with them putting bows and nametags on my presents; and... making this slideshow really made me miss all my family!!!
And before the slideshow, this picture is just for Aunt Rhonda. We were discussing that we needed to make sure we got pictures at Pizza Hut and then posted them so that Aunt Rhonda could see them since she helped pay for it. I had been going around getting lots of pictures and since I wasn't in any of them, Kevin took a special one just of me so that Aunt Rhonda could see "me at Pizza Hut too" and believe me, it is special. I look very... special in a special needs sort of way.

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Mosenthin family Christmas 2009

Our Christmas with Kevin's family this year was quite different than normal. Because Kevin's dad was in the hospital waiting for heart bypass surgery due to a heart attack two days before Christmas, we arranged the Christmas activities around that. We took presents and even a delicious turkey dinner to the hospital one evening. It actually was cool because the floor that his dad was on had a very nice lounge area that was not like a normal waiting room area at all. There was a full size Christmas tree in the carpeted lounge along with soft chairs and plenty of space. Of course Kevin just HAD to take a picture when the nurse came in during the middle of the festivities to check his dad's vitals. :) Though it was not exactly a "traditional" Christmas so to speak, Kevin and I both felt that it was enough of a blessing just to still have his dad with us all for Christmas that the change of setting seemed unimportant. All in all, [we thought] it all worked out just fine given the circumstances. While we were in the area, we visited some spots that are special to us. The hospital was just a few blocks away from the motel I and my bridesmaids stayed in the night before my wedding. We stopped by and wandered around for a bit and got a couple pictures out front. We also went to the Desmond, a GORGEOUS motel in Albany, where Kevin and I stayed on our wedding night and then we spent our first two Christmases there. We would spend Christmas eve there and have our own Christmas Christmas morning before going to relatives. The interior is designed beautifully including a fireplace, a gazebo, and a colonial village look in the center. Kaelyn was just a baby the last time we were there so it was fun to go back and walk around. The last picture you'll see is the ski slopes on Whiteface Mountain, the largest mountain in the Adirondacks. Whiteface has the highest vertical drop for a ski slope in the eastern United States. I have never been there before and it is not very far out of the way when driving from Kevin's parents up to my parents. It looked REALLY cold and REALLY high and though we'd like to go to the top someday if we are ever there in the non-winter, I have NO desire to ski down the mountain! We really enjoyed the first "leg" of our trip. The last part of my "Christmas slideshows blogging" is the Montgomery family Christmas and I hope to have that done and posted sometime soon. Ps - You may want to flip manually through the slideshow as there are several pictures per page.

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