Epcot & Hollywood Studios

We took a "one last hurrah" trip to Disney the weekend before school started.  3 of my friends and I took our kids down to Orlando (16 of us total!) and went to Epcot and Hollywood Studios.  We all stayed together in a 2-bedroom condo, which was huge and worked out really well, but it was a pretty crazy 2 days!

The girls loved the "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" play area.  Unfortunately, they hadn't seen the movie when we went so they couldn't fully appreciate what it was.  I did just have them watch it a couple days ago... have you seen that movie lately?  It's on Netflix.  I hadn't seen it in probably 20 years.... Classic.

Here's our whole group waiting for the "Frozen" parade to start!

I took the girls on "Tower of Terror".  In my defense... I had never been on it, so I couldn't exactly warn them about how scary it might be.  I mean, of course I knew it would be scary (heck, I was a little nervous!), but I didn't really know too many details.  Also, all their friends had been on it and loved it, so I knew it couldn't be THAT bad.  Well.... yes they were both sobbing at the end, but within 5 minutes of that bottom picture being taken, Ellie was already saying she wanted to go on it again "when we come back with Daddy someday".  I'm not sure if she really will or not, but we'll see!

Hollywood Studios has a really fun "Frozen" program going on right now.  There was Frozen stuff everywhere!  There was a place to go ice skating, play in snow, the parade was Frozen-themed, etc.  The girls were in heaven.  Probably the most fun thing we did at Hollywood was go to the "Frozen Singalong".  It was in a big auditorium and Anna and Elsa were there, and other people on the stage telling the "Frozen" story, and then when it got to be the song parts, they would blast the music and everyone would sing along.  It sounds cheesy but it was SO much fun, even I had a great time.  By the end of "Let it Go", there was "snow" coming down from the ceiling, and purple and blue lights flashing everywhere, and Elsa was there.... it was so neat.  Disney does such a great job making things magical!

Olivia is a great little traveler: 

Meeting Mickey:

Abbie and her friend Addy giving Mickey a hug:

Abbie and Jack waiting for the Epcot fireworks to start:

And... after two days of chaos, I needed this baby (Diet Coke) to get me home.  I know I "gave up" soda last year, but I do drink it maybe a couple times a year when I need it.  Ha!

Random Summer Pictures

Since I didn't blog at all over the summer, here's a bunch of random things that happened this summer! :)

Garrett brought home a fish for dinner and the girls watched intently as he filleted it:

Abbie & Ellie did swim team this summer, which was awesome.  It was 4 days a week, for an hour each day, and it was a lot of fun!  There were probably around 15 kids in their session time and about 12 of them were friends from church.

Abbie had her dance recital on a Saturday in June.  Garrett was originally scheduled to work, and I was so happy that he was able to switch with someone else.  It worked out perfectly because he ended up making up the work day when the girls & I were out of town in July.  Abbie did a wonderful job in her recital.  I was so proud of her!  I love to see her dance; she is very talented.

Olivia playing in the splash pad at a neighborhood pool:

Helping me make Garrett's birthday cake:

Most evenings, we go walking in our neighborhood with some friends who live two doors down.  We do a 1.5-ish mile loop, it's fun.  One night, our friends' baby wouldn't sit in her stroller so Ellie was more than happy to fill the seat.

Is there anything cuter than a toddler in scrubs??

Another swim team shot.  Olivia had her own swim cap so she felt included, also:

Early in the summer, Abbie wanted to have a "baby doll tea party".  She wrote out all the invitations and everything.  Everyone brought their favorite doll and stuffed animal.  We had homemade bread and lemonade, painted fingernails and toes, and played in the sprinklers.

One evening when we were on our walk, we looked behind us and saw a wall of rain moving rapidly towards us down the street!  We ran home as fast as we could, but the rain won!  That's life in Florida, though.  It can be bright and sunny outside, but still pouring!  I also frequently see rain out one window, but it's not raining on the other side of the house... or I can see it raining over my neighbor's house, but not ours.  It's crazy!  I love rain but I really hate driving in it.  Also, being a homeowner makes me a little anxious about roof leaks and other damage it can do. Other than that, it's great!

In mid-July, Garrett presented a poster at a conference in Orlando.  It was at the Ritz-Carlton, so that's where we stayed for two nights.  It was very fancy, of course.  Olivia was hoping this would be her bed!

The girls struck a pose while we were walking around the grounds:

Playing in the kids' splash pad area.  They were just as excited about the shower.  We also spent some time in the fun lazy river and several swimming pools around the resort.

And we definitely took advantage of the free ice cream in the lobby:

I have mixed feelings about staying in nice hotels.  I really do like them, but I hate that they don't ever include anything like free parking and free internet like cheaper hotels do.  Also, we had to leave the resort to eat our meals because we never would have been able to feed our family of 5 for under $100 for dinner.  It actually turned out really well though, because both nights we met up for dinner with some good friends who just moved back to Orlando for a job (he was a resident here with Garrett for a few years, and just finished his fellowship across the country).  It was so fun to catch up with them.

The girls did a little "Chinese brush art" class one day at the library.

Spent an afternoon at the Natural History Museum - they have a butterfly exhibit also.

Keeping busy while the girls are at swim team:

It rained on our walk again one night, but stayed sunny and bright so we got a great rainbow!

The Kona Slushie truck came through our neighborhood so we took advantage of it:

The girls did "makeovers" one day:

We put together our own little end-of-season swim meet/party at a neighborhood pool.  Abbie really is a great swimmer!  I would love to put her in year-round swim team but it's very time intensive (and expensive).  A lot of Olympic swimmers got their start here in our town, though!

Ellie got a hold of my phone one evening during our walk.... these were the good pictures I kept.  She also had some pictures of random strangers from the neighborhood, standing in their driveway!!  I guess I wasn't paying much attention on our walk, haha (she was riding in the stroller for a few minutes and that's when she was clicking away, I guess).

Ellie turns 5

For Ellie's birthday, all she wanted to do was go to Cedar Key and play at the beach, and eat shrimp at a seafood restaurant.  So, that's what we did (a few days early)!  First we stopped for lunch at a little place on the water, then we played at the beach for a few hours.

Garrett brought his net and a bucket so he could catch bait to take fishing the next day.  The girls had a great time picking up all the fish from the net and putting them in a bucket.  Olivia got really good at reaching into the bucket and pulling the fish out, too! It was so funny.

Abbie found a jellyfish, too:

Ellie also requested breakfast in bed (on her actual birthday).  She said she wanted scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes with a square of butter on top "just like in the commercials".

She also wanted sushi for dinner, so we picked some up at the grocery store.

We LOVE having Ellie in our family.  She brings a lot of joy to our home and she is so funny - always making us laugh.

We love you, Ellie Bean!

Quilting

I typed up a whole post about the quilts I'm making and my progress that I've made with my little quilting "business", but I deleted it.  I feel really uncomfortable sharing pictures of my quilts here on the blog.  I don't want them to be "pinned" to pinterest and then a ton of people finding my personal blog.  

If you'd like to see my quilts, you can follow me on Instagram @riseandshinequilts .  If you don't have a smartphone, you can also see my posts here: http://instagram.com/riseandshinequilts

I've been really happy with how things are going.  I don't want to get too "big", because I don't want it to take up too much of my time.  Ideally, I'd love to make 1 quilt per week or so.

Anyway, it's been very rewarding so far and I'm just loving it!  Instagram has definitely changed the quilting world, I feel like.  I could never have gotten this kind of exposure on Etsy.  I get mostly custom orders, and it has been fun to challenge myself and to make other people happy by making their ideas come to life.  I'm also in the middle of a "collaboration" with another "small" business and that has been a huge boost for me.

Olivia's cast

I never really blogged about what happened to Olivia's arm earlier this summer.

It's not really an exciting story; Abbie was playing with her in the bedroom and must have pulled on her arms a little too hard when she was pulling her up.  Olivia came out of the bedroom crying but I didn't pay too much attention to it because she never cries for more than 30 seconds about anything.  However, a few minutes later she was still crying, and not swinging her arm as she was walking around.  Abbie also seemed pretty quiet and worried, so I asked about what happened.  Turns out that Abbie heard a little "pop" noise when she lifted Olivia up.  Thankfully Garrett was home, and he said that it was probably "nursemaid's elbow", meaning that her elbow popped out of place and just needed to pop back in.  He fixed it once as an intern (4 years ago), so first he brushed up on his knowledge about it (thanks, YouTube - ha!).

Just as Garrett was about to manipulate her arm back, there was a knock at the door.  It was our neighbors asking if we wanted to go for a walk, and thankfully the wife was a current intern!  Unfortunately though, she also hadn't ever really fixed nursemaid's elbow, but it was really nice to have HER hold Olivia so I didn't have to.

Garrett did a few manipulations but Olivia didn't stop whimpering.  Normally if it's nursemaid's elbow, the kid is fine immediately after the elbow is put back into place.  We called a few friends who live in our neighborhood (a pediatrician, and a physician's assistant), and they both recommended we take her in to get looked at.

Garrett took her to the pediatric ER (pretty much the best thing EVER - you call ahead and they are ready for you when you show up, plus we only have to pay the $25 copay instead of a normal ER visit).  They sent him home, though, and said to come back the next day if she was still in pain.

The first thing I heard Olivia say the next morning when she woke up was "ow! ow! ow!" Poor little thing.  I took her to get some x-rays.  Thankfully Garrett knew when we were there so he had one of his colleagues pull up the film and read it right away, and he texted me with the results before we even left the x-ray room.  No break, but there might have been a fracture that couldn't be detected.  They told me to take her to her pediatrician to see what she recommended.  I'm still not really sure why we had to do this, I don't remember... seemed like an unnecessary step but I really don't want to be one of "those" people.

The pediatrician told us the results of the x-rays (she didn't know i already knew them), and then she recommended we go to an orthopedist and see what they recommended.

So, back to the hospital ortho center!  They ended up casting it, obviously. Normally they would just splint it, but babies/toddlers don't do well with splints apparently.  They told me to come back in a week for more x-rays.  The whole thing was precautionary anyway, since nothing really showed up on the xray.  Olivia was just in pain though.

A week later, more x-rays.  Nothing was different, so they recommended two more weeks with a cast (they said that after 3 weeks total, anything that could have been wrong would be as good as new, even if we couldn't exactly see if anything was wrong.).  That was frustrating because I would have rather been told 3 weeks from the beginning so I didn't have to bring my 3 kids to the ortho center for 3 hours, plus pay a $30 copay, if they knew they were going to say 2 more weeks anyway!  I also didn't like the second cast that they put on her - it seemed a lot bulkier than the first one.  Oh well.  I really liked her orthopedic surgeon.  Turns out he did his residency in Madison a few years ago and couldn't stop raving about it!  He was really excited that we are moving there.

So anyway, that's the LONG story of Olivia getting her cast.  She did a great job with it and only complained a few times.  She also was VERY aware that she was not allowed to get her cast wet, and every time she saw water she said "cast wet, cast wet!" and backed away.  It also added a bit to the adorable-ness factor, not that she needed it.  It was definitely a conversation-starter with strangers.

Early summer trips

We took two trips to Savannah earlier this summer... once for my brother-in-law's graduation from SCAD, and a second time for the 4th of July.  Both were a great time!

My in-laws' house is across the street from a river, and the neighborhood has a gazebo and dock for members' use.  We like the take walks down there when the gnats aren't too bad.

Garrett usually likes to bring his fishing pole and helps the cousins fish.

Jared & I accidentally matched for church one day

Sucking up mice that we found... thank goodness for huge vacuums, right?  We found two of them already stuck in that big black box, and they couldn't get out.

The kids were fascinated.

Out for a "walk"

Ellie's birthday was just a couple days before July 4, so she decided she wanted to wait and celebrate with the whole family. So, I asked my sister-in-law to make her a cake and she did an awesome job.

Ellie also got her first-ever haircut... just a few scraggly inches off the bottom.

Floating on the river

All the cousins & Uncle Rylan

Haha I couldn't resist!

Little cutie pie