4 Years...seems like more...

Aleks and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary yesterday. I think it seems longer because it really has been, we dated for 6 years before we got married. Yes, that said 6 years. So, when I think of our 10 year anniversary coming up in 2 weeks that makes much better sense than this 4 year nonsense.

At Disney last week I was sooooo tired the whole time. I take coffee intravenously now, so I was really needing a fix. We were getting dinner at the Magic Kingdom and I told Aleks I wanted cookies and coffee. You who know Aleks at all know that he is a total health fanatic and would never approve of such a meal. Look what I came home to last night...

DISNEY!!!

We did it, we made it through 3 days in the most magical place on Earth. We saved Animal Kingdom for the last day because it closes early and we wanted to get home at a reasonable hour...yeah, Gabriel was asking to go home by 3 o'clock that day. They were super tired and for good reason.

On Friday morning we set out for Orlando. Allison usually rides the bus and Aleks drives Gabe, neither of them brought up the fact that we all go into the Camry (Aleks in shorts vs. slacks and button-up). Somewhere on 275 N Allison asked if they were driving me to work and we confirmed, she never said anything else about it...for 70 odd miles the girl said nothing. As we got closer I did distract her from the signage by making her take her biography project out. When we got to the All-Star Resorts she asked if I had a field trip, um, yes Laura and I have a field trip. Not "Holy Toledo, we are at Disney and I am getting suspicious", but "Can I see your class?". Okay. Aleks checked in and got our tickets while we waited on the bench along the wall, not even the uber pale Europeans in sandals with socks tipped her off! I made a fake call to Laura asking her to ride the bus with my kids b/c we were running late and in turn "Laura" told me that she couldn't wait any longer and we'd have to meet her there...where ever 'there' was supposed to be. Allison blindly got on the bus that was plastered with the mouse-nothin'. After we got in Magic Kingdom Aleks told her and she was crazy excited.

Uh, some highlights and picture explanations (you'll fully understand when you watch the slide show):
-Gabriel loves princesses and Aleks said that his look in the Belle pic looks like "I'm gonna put you in the trunk..."


-Allison is a total ham and tries to do what the princesses do in the photos

-Gabriel makes friends with random strangers (girls with autograph book waiting to meet Mary Poppins)

-Teacups are gross

-Allison loved the Swiss treehouse, so booyah ( we have been making the kids watch tons of Disney so that they'd recognize everything-Swiss Family Robinson was $13 so I got it and we all watched it Wednesday night and Aleks was saying it was terrible and cheesy, but Allison loved it she was screaming and laughing the whole time, she even said she would love to live there etc. haha so she majorly appreciated the real thing in Adventureland that she would have otherwise not felt particularly attached to)

-after 3 days at Disney we are all ready for a vacation ;)

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Adoption

We got a date, May 28th at 2 p.m. the children will be ours officially. We are going to Disney for the weekend to celebrate so I'll make a good post after we get back...sometime.

It has been awhile...

We have gotten caught up in normal life with Allison and Gabriel. Aleks is working a ton, Allison's science project is due in a few weeks, Gabriel is doing well at school and enjoying our neighbors' friendship. This morning the kids had to find their Easter baskets that the Bunny likes to hide and Gabriel checked on the carrots that we left out to find a messy trail and chunks of chewed on veggies. We are going to start the finalization paperwork on May 4th, so hopefully court will be a few weeks after that, cross your fingers!!

There are also some pictures from the Lightning game we went to on the 7th, darn Penguins won in the end but we played hard and the refs didn't take back a super bogus goal, so....Allison got really into the game, just like when she really got into XiiR. She was makin' some noise when the jumbotron demanded it and she chose a favorite player right away. We had a good time, but didn't really get such great pictures :( Oh well.

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I Need Next Week

I figure that since I haven't really posted much this month I should explain. Grad school, PTA and homework are killing me. We have something to do every single weekend, like "beautifying" Fairmount Park yesterday. Today I am going to be elbow deep in hair b/c there is really no way that we could squeeze another week out of Allison's last do. Friday night I went to sleep at 2:40 (remember that Saturday we went to FPE at 8 a.m.!) because Allison and I went to Hot Topic for the midnight release party of twilight on DVD. That was special because she loves everything Twilight and we bonded early on over the books (unreal she readily reads the 600 page books to herself now b/c she loves them so much). She was caught in the hype and beaming the entire time we were there. Of course we had to watch the movie as soon as we got home. By watch I mean fall asleep on the couch 45 minutes into it, but hey. I tried to get a picture of her in line and donning her new Edward shirt and pillowcase, but the camera was dead and I didn't realize until I already had the perfect shot :( I still might be able to catch her surrounded by Twilight stuff and get a pic to post later.

She was so hyper, it was fun. We are officially Twerds=Twilight nerds, Fanpires= vampire fans and Team Edward players.

Little guy is doing well, but nothing out of the ordinary has been happening. He does say really funny stuff all the time...I hear it and think I should write it down so I don't forget before Aleks gets home.

And I am doing The 3 Day this year!! My family has had many run ins with breast cancer, so I feel strongly about the cause. If you are so inclined you can donate at www.the3day.org/goto/carriepreston . Every little bit helps, I know times are hard.

####################UPDATE###################

OMG, this is so funny! I planned to update this post once I got a few pictures of Allison all Twilighted up and we just got more wild Fanpire news about 2 hours ago. The Hot Topic release party had a drawing to enter to win an autographed picture of Taylor Lautner (Jacob) or a cut out of Rob Pattinson (Edward). We actually won the Jacob picture and got to go claim our prize! Very fun and you should have heard the screams, she is psyched :)

Normal?

I walked in on this and told Aleks to hold on b/c a picture was necessary. He insists that this is an every weekend happening. I explained that Charlotte taught Jen about laundry meatballs and he said this is a laundry meatloaf, I agree. I really loathe folding and hanging, so I am lucky he has resigned himself to being the muscle behind that operation. I do all the other house stuff though, I think it balances out.

Chattavegas!!

I am in my BFFs wedding this summer so I figured that I should get up there and visit before I run out of convenient time to do so (FCAT next week, finalization coming in Mayish, another wedding in May, school getting out...). The kids ended up coming with me and we got to do some touristy stuff. Uh, this feels very improper in the sentence structure/all around grammar department so I am going to a bulleted list.

-first flight for both kids, Gabriel yelled out "Oh my God!" when we sped up for take off
-when we landed at Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (kinda a local joke, they must not have looked up the meaning of 'metropolitan' before they named it) Allison yelled down the concourse "CHATT AN OOOOOGA, hahahaha its so funny!"
-Ruby Falls is touristy, but it is also real geological formations that have been chillin there for over 3 million years...pretty cool
-Mr. Lambert (guy who found Ruby Falls ((wife named Ruby, awww)) had to belly crawl for 6 hours in a space 2X4 before he got to a spot in the cave large enough to stand in!!
-my parents' dogs are crazy
-s'mores are messy and Gabriel would rather just eat raw marshmallows than deal with that stickiness
-my daughter has crazy eyes
-exploring the banks of the TN River in 40 degrees is fun and the scenery looks like Forks (Twilight setting)
-WE LOVED OUR VISIT AND CAN'T WAIT FOR A LONGER STAY

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