Better Late then Never, I Reckon.

Okay… So here is my run down of Week one of “ 365 Days of Making Mandi Happy”.  I just finished week two and hope to post those pictures tomorrow sometime.

I know I’ve already posted Day one in my last post.  But I’m going to post it again just so all 7 days are in each post.

1/365 – Gray Rainy Fall Day

My favorite kind of Day.

2/365 – Surprise Dr Pepper

Was having a bad day with an even worse headache. Hubby surprised me with Dr Pepper because he knew I had none at home. It’s a horrible addiction I should probably kick…. but in the midst of a caffeine withdrawal headache it made me beyond happy.

3/365 – 5 Minutes of Silence

What made me happy today. Taking 5 extra minutes in the shower to just enjoy the silence and the cool water.

4/365 – These are a few of my favorite things.

Time spent with Gilmore Girls, a sweet treat, a soda and knitting.

5/365 – Putting on my face.

No matter how badly I feel or how bad things are I always feel better once I put my makeup on.
Today was one of those days where I felt like crud. With my face on I feel a little bit better.

 

6/365 – Happy Smiling Children

Fall Festival at church.  My two children with beaming faces.  I think they made it like a whole hour and a half without fighting.  How can you not smile looking at them?

7/365 – Getting it Done.

Time spent doing crafts that I love, even if it was just weaving in ends… Which I hate doing.

 

So my first week went well.  I remembered to take a photo each day.  Some days that meant I had to think hard and look hard for something that had made me happy.  So I suppose my little project is doing what I intended for it to do.

Choosing to be Happy…

Do you think it could really be that simple? That you just choose to be happy and you are? I’ve been seeing segment after segment on several different TV shows about how women today are more unhappy then ever. Even the “oppressed” 50’s era housewife was happier then today’s woman. Or so they say.

I’ve spent most of my life waiting to be happy. Blaming everyone around me for my unhappiness. Hoping that someone or something would come along and I would magically be happy.

I just turned 29 and realized I have wasted a lot of time waiting.

I’m tired of being unhappy and I’m tired of waiting for “happy” to show up.

So I’m looking for it instead. I’ve always wanted to do the 365 photo project. I want to take better pictures and figure out how to really work my camera well. I also want to find all the little places that “happy” has been hiding in my daily life.

So I’m starting my own 365 days of Happy project. I probably won’t get around to uploading the pictures every day and I don’t expect to post each days photo on this blog. My hope is to do a look back on the week type post with all the pictures in it.

My first picture isn’t that great. But it makes me smile, and the day itself made me happy and that is the point in this project!!

The high here never left the lower 60’s today. For the majority of the day there was a fine mist of rain, sometimes it would get heavy enough to hear it through all the open windows in my house. The gray skies and the bright colors of the leaves turning around town made me smile many times over. I am convinced that this is how my corner of heaven will be all the time.

I wanted to add that I got the original idea for the 365 days of happy from Mindi’s blog the simple life, she did 52 weeks of happy. Which would be a much more reasonable goal for myself, but when have I ever set reasonable goals? lol

Trying to get back in the Swing…

I miss my blog. I miss posting on here. So I’m starting slow and trying to get back in the swing of this.

First off Friday Fill-ins.

1. The crickets sing, a haunting song.

2. Be happy wherever you are.

3. I want to get far away from the drama.

4. It would be great if this was a dream.

5. But as for me life is what you choose to make it.

6. Alabama is where I come from

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to watching Dr Who with the family, tomorrow my plans include working on Christmas gifts and Sunday, I want to take a nap!

It’s 3:36am……

I can’t sleep. My life is beyond stressful right now and most of it I’ve felt like I couldn’t share online. That stinks. I miss blogging. Even though I rarely had many comments it always felt good to just get it all out there.

So because I can’t sleep I am writing to you. My dear Internet (and some real life) friends.

The economy sucks. Let’s just be honest. When you have a husband who works in retail it sucks even more. It means added stress while you worry and fret over what is going to happen. After all that worrying it means pay-cuts and then embarrassment when bills aren’t getting paid. It means making tough decisions about what is important in life.

In the past two weeks we have had to cancel DirecTV which shouldn’t be a big deal. Life without TV… plenty of people do that. Only I’m not one of those people. I love TV. I would have it on from the moment I woke up in the morning up until I fell asleep at night. I cried, I admit it. Rationally I know it’s silly, but it’s true. I have since moved on and found ways to get my tv fix without spending much money. I’ll share those soon.
Tuesday I got in my car to run to Michaels and I noticed that things seemed “off”. I was right. After paying attention and questioning the hubby we discovered that our car had been broken in to. The thief made off with our GPS unit, a 120mb Zune that we had put all of our movies on so the kids wouldn’t drag DVDs with us on trips back and forth to Alabama, my daughter’s Kodak Digital Camera and my Ipod/Radio Converter.
Today (well yesterday at this point) we became a one car family.

The economy sucks, job hunting sucks, being a grown-up sucks.

I’m the type of person who could easily wallow around in that. Trust me I am a great wallower. The problem is that I have two little munchkin’s that are watching me and I can’t. That sucks too. I want to wallow. I really really do. Instead I have to be thankful.

Thankful for my family.
Thankful for a husband who busts his butt trying to provide for us.
Thankful for two awesome kids who point out the silver lining in every dark cloud. After all not having satellite TV will give us more time to read library books so we can get better prizes in the summer reading program. Having dad take our only car to work each day also frees up the drive way for basketball and riding bikes.
Thankful for the roof over our head.
Thankful that due to our using coupons we have more then enough food to eat.
Thankful for the job that hubby does have.
Thankful for my puppy who makes me smile, and gives me awesome hugs.
Thankful for a hobby that keeps my hands busy.
Thankful for friends I can’t see but I know are there reading the things I write and sending my family prayers and positive thoughts.

At the end of this crappy crappy day I am also thankful for a very active imagination.  It has kept me sane today.

So I ask you dear friends, if you could be anything for a day what would you be? Real or fictional? If you could have a daydream and escape from real life for just one day where would you go? Please share it with me. I’ll share my imaginary trip with you tomorrow.

Nahum 1:7 esv The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.

Disney Day 3 (Part Two-Photo Heavy)

Finally getting the rest of the Disney trip finished up. I’m typing these and saving them as drafts, then I will post them all pretty quickly so I can move on with things.

Our first stop in Epcot was to take some pictures of Nana with her grandbabies.

Then we headed into the World Showcase. My baby girl is obsessed with Paris right now for some reason. In fact my mom has just finished re-doing her room in a black and pink Paris theme. So Kat was beyond excited to “visit” the France section of the World Showcase. Since everyone was starving at this point all we could do at first was walk through on our search for food. lol

Everyone wanted something different for lunch so we all split up.
My dad and I headed to Morocco to the Tangierine Café. Mostly because I wanted to try something I had never had before. I had a Falafel wrap with cous cous and lentil salad. There aren’t even words for how good it was!

My mom and my two kids ended up eating at Nine Dragons Restaurant. Probably just because it was something they all could agree on, they got to sit down, and they were inside where there was air conditioning. It ended up being one of the highlights of the day for my kids just because they got to try and eat with chopsticks. My brother and his family also ended up getting their lunch in Morocco. Or at least him and his wife did, I think my nephew had McDonalds.

After everyone had eaten lunch we met back up near/in China. All of us except my mom and my nephew Matty walked over to Norway to ride the Maelstrom adventure cruise. Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful ride? I mean seriously the name is exciting, and there are statues and paintings of fearsome Vikings all over the place. It was horrible. A waste of time. Although there was a tourist in the gift shop after it was all over who could have been Masi Oka’s Doppelganger (Hiro from NBC’s Heroes). Same glasses, same hair and I had to fight really hard not to yell out “Yatta!”.

After our grand adventure in Norway we walked back over to mom. Matty was sound asleep and she was pleased as punch to be sitting on a bench. So while she sat and he slept, my dad, my son, my brother and my sister-in-law headed out to ride some rides. I’m honestly clueless as to what all they rode. It’s one of the reasons that this post has taken me so long to write. I kept meaning to sit down with Caedmon and find out, but I would forget. So… they rode a few rides. While the Kitty Kat and I strolled through the World Showcase.

Our main objective was to get Kat back to France. We had hopes that Marie the cat from Aristocats would be there and she could have her picture taken with her. We also had money to shop with. So we strolled and we looked.

We talked about running away and living in a tiny cottage with cute windows.

We made it to France and we took our time walking around. We shopped and tried on berets. We smelled parfumes. We giggled and joked. We talked with silly French accents. We had a blast.

Kathryn ended up buying a hand painted umbrella (which I had to go back and pick up two hours later.).

After we walked through France Kat humored me in Morocco. It was just so pretty. The colors, the music, *sigh*. I couldn’t come up with a good fake Moroccan accent. So instead we discussed running away to live our lives as Belly Dancers, or selling trinkets from little carts in crowded marketplaces.

After I exhausted my poor child we decided to walk back to China to find the rest of our family. However as we started to leave my beloved Morocco, I spied a woman in costume off the side. I started pointing out birds and strange things to get Kathryn to stop and wait. Then my suspicions were confirmed when the lady in costume walked over to the musicians that were playing and began to dance. My little dancer was thrilled to stand there and watch, and it only helped the “magic” of it all that the belly dancer looked like Princess Jasmine. lol

We strolled back to China and found my nephew wide awake.

Not too long afterwards it was time for me to go get Kat’s umbrella, then time for the fireworks show. Which we all enjoyed and declared that it was the best fireworks show we had ever seen and nothing could top it. lol And so ended Day 3 in Disney.

Disney Day 3 (Part One- Photo Heavy)

Day 3 at Disney World. You can see the rest of the pictures here.

We started Day 3 off at Animal Kingdom. My mom, Heather and I took the kids off in the direction of Camp Minnie Mickey in hopes of seeing some characters while my Dad and Cass went to gather fast passes.

We had barely started walking towards Camp Minnie Mickey when I saw Pocahontas!!!!!!!!!! The whole reason I wanted to even go to Animal Kingdom was because I had read online that it was where you could find Pocahontas and see her show with Grandmother Willow. Sadly the show has been closed. However I did get to force Kat to meet Pocahontas. Caedmon wouldn’t humor me and refused.

Pocahontas is my favorite “Princess”. I love the cartoon even though it’s not Historical, and even though it came out while I was a teenager I had the movie poster up in my room, t-shirts the whole works. Mostly because I was happy to have Disney character who looked like me. Not now, since I avoid the sun at all costs because I don’t want to get wrinkles, but when I was a child/teenager and would be out in the sun my skin tone was a few shades darker then it is now year round. My heritage is Native American and for that reason this movie thrilled me. Anyways…

After we ran into Pocahontas we kept walking and happened to walk up as they were seating people for the Lion King Show. I was so excited! Kathryn was excited. Caedmon was mad. *insert eye roll* In the end he ended up loving the show just as much as the “girls” did. It was amazing! Of course I’m a sucker for anything that involved singing and dancing.
These are just a few of the pictures. You can head to my Flickr page to see the rest.

That guy was Caedmon’s favorite. I was so excited to see I got this picture. If you pull it up larger on Flickr you can see the flames in his mouth! So cool!!

The bird lady that would “fly” around was mine and Kat’s favorite.

By the time the show was over my dad and brother were back with fast passes for Expedition Everest. So off we all headed.

My mom and I sat with Matty while everyone else rode. I was planning on riding but woke up that morning feeling bad and spent the whole day fighting headaches and vertigo. Not a good idea to ride roller coasters with Vertigo.

I caught a picture of them as they came out of the mountain.

After Expedition Everest they all wanted to ride the Kali River Rapids. I went to Six Flags over Georgia a lot as a young teenager, and I would stupidly ride the water rides in the morning and then have to walk around all day wet. I wasn’t taking my chances so I hung out with my mom and Matty instead. lol

After they got off the River ride Cass and Heather wanted to go explore for a while, so I went with my parents and all the kids to get the kids some Ice Cream.

I wasn’t feeling good and Matty was sleepy. So we let my dad take my two kids over to DinoLand while I waited with Mom and Matty for Cass and Heather to come back.

Dad and the Kids rode Dinosaur, Primeval Whirl, and TriceraTop Spin. Once Cass and Heather met back up with Mom, Matty and me we decided to get on The Wildlife Express Train. We thought that it was like the train in the Magic Kingdom. We didn’t realize that it took you to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. So we rode it there and then sat on the train until they loaded back up again and then rode it back.

After that we met back up with Dad and my kids and headed to It’s Tough to be a Bug. To get to it you go all around through the big Tree of Life.

Walking around and finding all the different animals hidden in the “bark” was so much fun!

I have to say though that It’s Tough to be a Bug was probably my favorite “ride” of the whole Disney visit. Matty got a little scared during it. But it was so much fun, and so funny. At the end of the show my brother actually ended up jumping out of his seat. If you have been you know why, if you haven’t been I don’t want to ruin it for you.

We had decided that we wanted to eat lunch at the World Showcase in Epcot. So after the Bug show it was time to head out. Part two of this day is coming soon.

Disney Day Two – Part Two (Still Photo Heavy)

Okay, both kids are now well. Easter is over and I can get back to getting these Disney posts finish so I can share exciting crafty news. New regarding a certain unfinished craft project that had hung around my house for almost 2 years. News about a certain craft project that I secretly wanted to set on fire just to make it go away.

But first…. Disney Pictures! Aren’t you excited?

Okay I left off with us leaving the Magic Kingdom for the day. We left a little later then we had planned on, yet still we were shocked when we got to Animal Kingdom and found out that they close at 5. It was 4:35 when we walked through the gate!

(For some reason I had a need to snap a photo of my kids together as we entered every park. You can see they got sucked in to the whole pin trading thing.)

Since our main goal was just to ride the Safari, and we were already there we trucked it through the park.

Please notice that everyone else was heading in the opposite direction from us. lol It made it rather difficult to get through. But we made it. I was amazed just walking through the park at how it felt like we had traveled somewhere else. It didn’t feel like we were still at Disney at all.

We made it to the Safari and got on. There wasn’t really much of a line so we didn’t have to wait long at all. I loved it, even though I was convinced I was going to get bounced out of the truck/jeep. We saw tons of animals, the lions were sleeping so I couldn’t get a good picture of them. I did fall in love with the trees though. I have a serious thing for trees, not sure why. These were lovely though.

After the Safari Ride the park was closed and we had to scoot. So we hoped on a bus and headed to Epcot.

We split up here again. Me, my mom, Heather, Kathryn and Matty headed over to The Seas with Nemo and Friends. My dad, brother and son headed for Spaceship Earth and Test Track. The girls and Matty had a really good time at the Nemo ride. Personally I just enjoyed it because it was really cool temperature wise in there. lol

After we came out we wandered through their aquarium area before heading in for the Turtle Talk with Crush show. The show as a lot of fun, and really funny.

When we finished with Nemo we met back up with the guys. The kids wanted to buy more Pins and then we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Sick Day…

I had plans tonight. For the first time a few months I actually had plans to leave the house. I was heading over to a friend’s house for a girls movie night in. I was excited about it.

Instead I wake up this morning to continuous coughing. I go to give the kids cough medicine only to find them both running fevers. I won’t go into the more disgusting issues of the sickness we are dealing with today.

So no girl’s night out for me. I know the hubby could take care of the kids if I left, but by the end of this day I will be too tired to make it through a movie night. On top of that with the kids running fevers I assume I would just carry along and pass around whatever it is they have.

Sometimes, being a Mommie is just no fun. Especially when this is your view all day.

Disney Day Two – (Photo Heavy)

I’m trying to keep the amount of photos I put on here slim. If you want to see all the other you can check them out on my flickr page.

Day Two of Disney we decided to start out at the Magic Kingdom. Instead of taking the mono-rail we decided to head over on the ferry, which was a lot of fun for the kids.

Our first planned stop was the Teacups, but on the way there my SIL Heather spotted the show going on in front of the castle. Not only did she spy it but she managed to get us up fairly close in a good location to watch from. If you know anything about my family then you know that we are all a bunch of saps. I am not embarrassed to admit that I got a little overly excited when I saw just what characters were up on the stage in front of the castle.

Come on.. you know that Milificent is the coolest Disney character! I love the villains, I can’t help it. The “bad” guy in most movies and TV shows ends up being my favorite. It made my day to see Milificent up on the stage. In fact if we could have ran into the actual character somewhere it would probably be the only character I would have to have my picture taken with. As much as I dislike photos of myself that says a lot!

Anyway here are a few more pictures from the show.

After we left the castle we split up. Caedmon decided he was too old to go on “baby” rides like the teacups or go check out Toonland. So him and my dad headed to Tommorrowland where they rode the Astro Orbiter, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, the Carousel of Progress, the Monster Inc Laugh Floor, Space Mountain, and Stitch’s Great Escape.
My mom and Kat rode the teacups first and then my brother, Heather and Matty got to ride.

After the teacups everyone but me went to ride The Many Adventures of Pooh. I walked around through a few shops. Once that ride was over it was time for Kat and me to head over to Storytime with Belle. She is totally my daughter and was just as excited for these types of things as she was for the rides.

This got over and we walked up right as my nephew Matty was getting to meet Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.

Our next stop was Minnie Mouse’s house. Honestly I think I was more excited about it then anyone else was. lol

Kathryn was very excited that on Minnie’s sewing table she had a basket of yarn. She must be a knitter too! lol

After Minnie’s House we went on the train ride around the park.
Once we got back in Toontown we went to Mickey’s house which was very disappointing, especially to the kids. All the rooms are roped off so you can’t touch anything. In Minnie’s house you could touch everything and some stuff was interactive.

After Mickey’s House we walked over to Donald’s and quickly turned around once I saw that it was a water park. I did not want to deal with a wet child the rest of the day. By that time everyone was hungry so we all met back up and started hunting food. It ended up being timed perfectly. When we came out of the place we ate at the afternoon parade was coming by. We got to stand in the shade and watch the whole thing with no problems.

My nephew’s face is a magnet to my camera… Seriously. I can’t help myself.

That look was “Okay Auntie M, that’s enough with the pictures.”. Seriously, can you blame me?

The kids really enjoyed watching the parade. Being the child I am I got really excited to see….

and

The most entertaining character in the parade was Cruella. She was so much fun to watch!

Just look at her face!
Okay that’s the first half of Day 2. I’ll post the second half soon.

Disney Day One – (Photo Heavy)

Yes… I’m still going to do this. I got sick, then my parents came up for a visit on top of Caedmon’s birthday this past weekend. One day I will get caught up on everything.

Okay our first day in Disney.
We spent the first half of the day in our hotel room. My dad had found a deal that got us all free tickets if him and my mom went to a time share meeting. The meeting was supposed to just take a few hours. Instead they held my parents hostage until well after 1 o’clock. But we finally got there.

I wasn’t really prepared for just how long it takes you to get to the actual park. We parked the car, then you have to take the tram from the parking lot to the mono-rail. Then you have to take the mono-rail to the park. I felt like it took forever!

Our first stop was to get the kids hats. Kathryn found a cute pink hat with Minnie Mouse ears, Caedmon choose a Donald Duck hat (because apparently Donald is his favorite), and my nephew Matty got a Tigger hat complete with a tail on the back. Then we headed straight for Adventureland to get the kids on a ride.

Our next stop was Pirates of the Caribbean. While we were in line though my brother spotted then gathering people up for the appearance of…..

Where my daughter pledged her life as a pirate to the service of Captain Jack Sparrow.

That’s her in the sunglasses and pink hat with the grin on her face. lol

Then we finally made it on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So fun! Then all the rest of the family headed off to Splash Mountain while my mom and I hung out with Matty. I was fighting vertigo the whole time so there weren’t many rides that I could be on.

While they waited in line forever my nephew and I walked around. He desperately wanted to go back to the Pirate ride. It was so cute, he kept saying “Argh” to everyone we passed.

Once they all got off Splash Mountain we set off to head for Small World. On our way there we ran into Donald Duck. It was the only time that Caedmon happily got in line for a character. lol

We finally made it to the It’s a Small World ride. You can look at the pictures and tell which of my children was not happy to be there.

After Small World we split up. My dad and Caedmon went to ride the Big Thundermountain Railroad, while the rest of us headed for Dumbo the Flying Elephant.

The kids actually wanted to leave out fairly early (7ish) so they could go to the water park at the hotel. So we decided to split up again. I took my nephew Matty and we went back and road Small World again because he loved it so much. Everyone else went to the Haunted Mansion.
Matty and I had a ball on Small World. Then we walked around over close the the Haunted Mansion and watched the boats until everyone else was done.

Gosh I love that kid. He’s such a hoot!

After all that it was time to head out of the park.

Once we made it back to the hotel dad ordered in pizza. Everyone else went to the water park while I walked over to the outlet store by our hotel in search of shorts. Yes seriously I bought and worse shorts the rest of the time we were there. I didn’t expect it to be that HOT!

The other days I might need to split up some just to keep the posts from getting so long.