Actually Park Hopping!

If you've been reading the blog recently, you might have realized that I haven't actually been doing much park hopping.  Perhaps after 14 years of living in the shadow of Disney, I've had enough "magic."  Actually, I don't think that's true at all.  Life has been pretty busy, and I genuinely enjoy my couch!

That said, I decided that the best way to celebrate my graduation (by the way, "Hi, my name is Jamie. I'm an alum of Penn State University, and a grad student.") was to "hop" to all four Disney parks in one day.  And the only person brave or crazy enough to play with me was my mom.

As you can see, we did it!

AK, Studios, Epcot, and Magic Kingdom: all in one day!

We got into Animal Kingdom around 9:45 (because I left my ticket in the car.  rookie move!), took our selfies, and then headed to our designated ride, Kilimanjaro Safari.  Unfortunately, the wait time was 45 minutes, and that wasn't on my agenda.  We walked through the gorilla viewing instead, and then left AK for the Studios.

At the Studios, our one and only activity was sitting at the bar at Prime Time Cafe and enjoying a peanut butter & jelly shake.

From there, we took the car to the TTC and then the monorail to Epcot.  We got there around 1:00 and bee-lined to the World Showcase.  We split an avocado margarita, had lunch in Japan, and then split a Gran Marnier slush.  Hooray for Epcot!

Our park hopping day ended at the Magic Kingdom, where we finally rode an actual ride (the People Mover), plus enjoyed the air conditioned entertainment of the Carousel of Progress.  It was a lot of fun, though exhausting, and we got a bunch of fun photos.  Plus, the bonus of not riding rides is that we basically waited in no lines all day!

That evening, mom and I had dinner at Red Robin with two of my work friends.  We ate and talked and laughed... It was a wonderful non-conventional way to celebrate my non-conventional graduation.  And then we wrapped up the weekend with Mother's Day brunch at TooJay's.

BONUS: more photos from our weekend-o-fun

Get off My Lawn!

Being childless, I mistakenly assumed that I wouldn't turn into my parents.  After all, why would I?  But alas, it seems God has a sense of humor.  A sick, sick sense of humor.  

Back in September, I had the following exchange with a coworker:

Co-worker: I'm hungry

Me: do you want my applesauce?

Co-worker: Nah

Me: then you're not really hungry!

This was a classic Jamie-Mom exchange through most of my childhood.  You can substitute thirsty or bored as well.  Apparently bedroom cleaning was a valid boredom buster in her eyes... I still disagree with that one!

Last night, I channeled my father and was genuinely mortified.  A small child (6-8 years old, I'd guess) wandered up to my screen door last night and was looking into my house.  He made eye contact with me and a smile started to brighten his face.

Me: Go home.

Him: Why?

Me: Because you don't belong in my doorway.  GO AWAY!

("Why?"??? I'm going to throw a "this is what's wrong with kids today" in at this point, just to increase my crotchety points.  But it did annoy me.)

I know it seems harsh, but it was about 8:45 at night.  It was pitch black behind my house, and there are no children that age living in my building or the buildings on either side.  I don't understand why this boy and the other two he was with felt compelled to play behind my house.  At the time, I thought they were the little unsupervised monsters who live across the street from me - who once stood on top of a construction sand pile and threw rocks and dirt clods at each other.  I went upstairs for bed at 9, and could see a group of adults a few buildings down, also yelling and carrying on, so at least the kids weren't completely unsupervised.  They finally left my backyard a few minutes before I was going to yell out the window.

So anyway, I guess it's official: I am the "get off my lawn" guy of the neighborhood.  Oh well...I guess someone needs to do it!

Double Nickels

Happy Birthday, Mom!



Maybe now that you have matured to 55 you'll stop trying to steal Carol's family.

BWAHAHAHAHA

Who Hasn't Almost Killed Their Kid At Least Once?

I read an interesting story in the Sentinel yesterday. Here's the highlights:

An infant in Pasco County was scalded because his mother reportedly tried to spray a spider off him with hot water...

The sheriff's office reports that the 27-year-old mother saw a spider in the tub as she prepared to give her baby a bath. When she tried to wash it down the drain, it jumped on her son. She then grabbed the baby and put him under the running water to get the spider off.

The water was too hot, the baby got scalded, he was treated and released, and a Deputy came to the house to make sure the water heater was turned down.

When I relayed the story to Scott, and got to the part about them turning the water heater down, he asked "did they turn the stupid down too?" But really, I think this is the kind of thing that every parent has done at least once. Heck, I consider myself lucky to have made it to my third birthday! And actually, I think this mom and my mom have a lot in common. Obviously they're both afraid of bugs!

Scene: mother holding baby while standing on the patio next to their pool. A bee lands on the mother's arm, and her response is to flail her arm (dropping baby), and then run into the house and close the door behind her. The baby? She's still on the patio!

Another scene: parents washing the car decide to place baby's walker on a nice soft pile of sand in their front lawn (since the grass is so itchy). The baby is fussy pretty much from the moment they walk away. Parents discover a while later that the soft pile of sand was a fire ant mound and that the baby's legs are covered in bites.

See? All parents do stupid things. It's part of being a parent. And it gives their adult children something to blog about. C'mon...who else wants to share a "this is how my parents almost killed me" story?

(disclaimer: I'm only looking for funny stories)

Flashback Sunday

To the woman in the giant glasses and the tiny bikini,

Happy Mother's Day!

Love,

The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Baby

Mom

(What can I say? I like that my titles today are a nice little book end)

Mom is flying down from Indianapolis tomorrow night. I feel like I haven't seen her in a million years, and I really miss her. I'm so glad that she's coming.

We're On Vacation!!!

...and my feet already hurt!

I spent my first day of vacation Park Hopping with Mom and Michael all around Epcot... except only in Future World. I can't believe we didn't even get to Mexico for margaritas! Apparently it's spring break somewhere, and the lines were long and the FastPasses were all handed out. We waited 1/2 hour for HISTA and an hour for Soarin'. At least we walked right on to Figment and the Land boat ride and Spaceship Earth! Mom wanted to do Test Track, but the single rider line wait was over an hour. Who has time for that?

Oh well, maybe next time!

I did have an unexpected moment of Disney magic today. The "old folks" stopped to do some survey (ironically, all about food & beverage and we didn't even buy a Coke in the park!) and I wandered over to the Leave a Legacy kiosk. There was no line, and I was able to have the nice lady look up my tile. So here we are in our etched-metal-on-granite-monolith glory: me and Christina. Scott and I had only been dating a month when I got my free tile offer, and rather than immortalize "some guy I was dating," I decided the picture of us daughters would make a great Father's Day gift for my dad.

Really, what are the odds that Scott and I would still be together five years later, and that the sister would have been the short chapter in my autobiography?

Anyway, we did have a good time today, despite the crowds. Michael had never been to WDW before, and while I would have taken him over to MK to do the classic rides, we had fun. The only thing that could have improved it would have been one of those rainbow margaritas with sugar on the rim... but I guess I'll have plenty of time for margaritas in 5 days!!

Note: the Legacy tile photo is courtesy of my mom's camera phone. I'm going to go back and take a picture with my good camera. All I had today was the pocket-size, which took pictures even blurrier than that one! But I did get a decent picture of the grown-ups.

Mail Call

From the ParkHopper Mailbag:



I know it's hard to read, but I had to share this postcard I got from my darling mother. I read the top line and laughed until my stomach hurt. Scott says he doesn't think she was being funny. I know that my mom knows her audience and stopped sending Jesus rhetoric to me long ago. Anyway, the original printing from the postcard says:

Formed millions of years ago by volcanoes, glaciers and other natural forces, the Colorado landscape is an awe-inspiring blend of mountains, lakes, forests, and plains.

And mom changed the first line to read, "Formed thousands of years ago by God..."

...and she sent the Colorado postcard from Texas, which makes it even better!