Castaway Cay (Disney's private island)-9/11/09

Emerson

Let me just say that this was the absolute BEST day of our whole vacation. Disney really pulls out all the stops when it comes to their private island. They have an awesome beach loaded with beach chairs and umbrellas for everyone. They offer all sorts of water activities (snorkeling, jet skiing, boating, stingray adventures, etc.) but the kiddos weren't old enough to do anything. It didn't matter though. We had a blast chilling by the waterfront. The water was beautiful and the weather was perfect. We had lunch on the island at Cookie's BBQ. It was pretty good. I wish we could have been at Castaway Cay everyday! Our next Disney cruise will be a double dip. That means it will stop in CC twice during the cruise.

Me floating on the water (Clayton was too cheap to rent me a float :P)

Jason and Hayden

Jasmine, me and Emerson

More from Castaway Cay

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Jasmine

Hayden

Natascha and Jason (I wonder what Clayton said to get this reaction, lol)

Me enjoying a tropical drink on the beach. Several guys were walking around with trays of drinks. All I had to do was give them my room key to get it. Talk about convenient!

Random Pics of Family from August

Christine and Clayton-CO

Mom, Sheila, Judy, Rachel, me & the kiddos-SD

Mom, Rachel, Sheila, Judy and me-Mount Rushmore (SD)

Rachel-Mount Rushmore (SD)

More Random Family Pics from August

Sheila, Christine and Me-Silver Plume, CO

Hayden and the most pathetic looking horse ever, lol-Keystone, SD

Rachel holding the boys while riding the Silver Plume train (yes, they were both asleep, lol)

If you ever find yourself hungry while visiting downtown Denver...

head on over to Duffy's Cherry Cricket. It is in the Cherry Creek district near the mall. Trust me, you won't regret it! I ate there way back when I was working with my first surrobaby's parents. They treated me to lunch and I was hooked. The onion rings are to-die-for (and I don't even normally care for them) and their burgers are phenomenal. If you ever watch Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel, you may have seen this place featured. I took my family to eat here when they were visiting last month. Everyone agreed that it was awesome.

BTW-We had a marvelous time on our Disney cruise. It was the best vacation ever! I have tons of new photos to upload but I am stuck editing almost 500 photos from my family visit right now. As soon as I get all of those finished, I will begin uploading our cruise stuff. ;)

A few of my favorite people :)

My Mom, Aunt Judy, Cousin Rachel, Cousin Sheila and Cousin Christine

Just in case you are wondering:
Judy is my Mom's sister
Sheila and Christine are Judy's daughters
Rachel is Sheila's daughter

I know I haven't been around lately but I have had a lot on my plate and I had to take a hiatus from the computer. My family came out and visited in August and that kept me pretty busy. We had a great time (with the exception of crappy Elitch Gardens, lol). I drove them around in a huge Suburban and we had a blast catching up with one another. We went up to Breckenridge to ride the alpine slide, Silver Plume for a train ride, Denver for Elitch Gardens and Duffy's Cherry Cricket (the best burger joint anywhere-it was featured on Man vs. Food-if you go, get the legendary onion rings) and through Wyoming to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We were amazed at how gorgeous South Dakota was. I imagined it to be pretty drab and boring but that better describes the desolate areas of Wyoming.

School has began for Hayden and he loves it. As a 1st grader, he finally gets to go all day long. His teacher and school are amazing.

Tomorrow we are heading out to Orlando for our 2 day stay at the Wilderness Lodge and then our 7 day Disney cruise to the Western Caribbean. I cannot wait!! We are going to have such a blast. What makes it even better is sharing the fun with our best friends, the Barnes'. They are meeting us down there. I look forward to sharing pics and stories when I get back. Hopefully I will be recovered from my long blog hiatus and will be able to jump right back in. Our bags are packed, the house sitter is taken care of, the car is gassed up and we are ready to roll out at 5am tomorrow morning. I hope you all have a great week as I know we will!

Hi, Remember Me?

I am so ready for summer to be over with. It has been annoyingly long and the kiddos are ready to go back to school. I have been too lazy to update my blog. Here's a list of some of the things that we have done over the past month and what is in store for August:

July

2-Clayton's brother flew in from PA (my kiddos adored Uncle Cole)

3-had my boobies did, lol

4-drove up to Cheyenne, WY to visit Steph, Tom and Cole

6-Hayden had a fun playdate with his friend Colton

8-Hayden had his final tball game and pizza party, I had my first post-op appt. & laser hair removal (fun, fun)

12-Clayton began playing rec basketball

15?-middle of month-my family in NC decide to visit and I must make all the arrangements

19-Clayton had a bball game today and pulled his groin in the 1st 5 seconds, lol

31-Boys are going to Grandma Christie's until the 4th in Wyoming

August

1-Happy Birthday to my dear friend Natascha!

2-Happy Birthday to me! I have no idea where I am going or what I will be doing but it will something, dang it. No kiddos means we better take advantage of it.

3-helping my friend Johnna clean her house before she moves

4-drive to Casper, WY to pick up my kiddos halfway from Grandma's

5-I have my second laser treatment (it really is an awesome procedure and will be WELL worth it in the end to not have to shave)

8-10-Boys will be going to Aunt Steph's for a few days

14-My family arrives [Mom, Aunt Judy, Cousins-Chrisine, Sheila & Rachel (Sheila's daughter)]

15-alpine slide/ski lift in Winter Park

16-Elitch Gardens (used to be Six Flags)/Denver or Estes Park for the older folk, lol

17-18-South Dakota trip to see Mt. Rushmore and to do some other fun things

19-Denver Aquarium, Hayden begins 1st grade

20-Rachel's birthday (can't reveal the plans here)

21-Estes Park if we didn't do it earlier

22-My family leaves :(

I know I am forgetting a bunch of stuff but that's just what I could remember off the top of my head this morning. My family's trip has been incredibly time consuming in the planning department. I had to find all their tickets, get a rental SUV and plan out all their time here. They want to see CO and a few surrounding states. I love planning vacations (my major at NCSU was parks, recreation and tourism mgmt. with a concentration in commercial tourism so this is right up my alley) but it takes alot of time to put it all together. I have a basic outline of everything we want to do and I also have started a menu for the times we will be at home. I am a bit OCD so everything must be planned to the last detail before they arrive.

I also have our cruise coming up and we cannot wait!! We have been looking forward to it for a long time now. Our friends, the Barnes', are just as excited. We are going to have a blast. This trip took a lot of planning and I am so glad to be done with that part. We have paid for everything except souvenirs, food off the ship, rental cars and taxis while in port. That means that we have paid off the cruise, cruise tips (we paid up-front), airfare, hotel accomodations at the Wilderness Lodge for 2 nights before the cruise and Halloween party tickets for the Magic Kingdom. We are definitely ready at this point. Clayton won't let me spend money for the time being so that we can have plenty of spending money for our vacation. That's really beginning to suck, lol. Oh well, I will appreciate it later.

To help save money I just bought about $400 worth of groceries this past Sunday and saved $220. The checker almost passed out when she saw my savings. Considering that almost everything I buy is brand name it is shocking to find that I can save so much. I had to take the whole fam shopping with me because it took 2 cart fulls to get everything on my list. Thank you Grocery Game!

I have had people ask about how I am recovering from my recent surgery. I gotta say that it all went pretty easily and I am doing great. The 1st couple of days was a little bit uncomfortable but I was fine as long as I stayed on top of the muscle relaxers and pain meds. I quit the pain meds after 3 days and stopped the muscle relaxer around day 10. Heck, I travelled to WY on day 2 to celebrate the 4th of July. It really wasn't bad. On day 15, I woke up to something magical. They were soft! Up until that day they were hard as rocks and didn't look right. They were so tight and uncomfortable. On the morning of day 15, I realized that they could finally move and they felt real. It's amazing how natural the silicone feels. You cannot feel the implant at all. That day was the first time that I let Clayton touch them, lol. He was amazed at how soft they were too. Thank the Lord that I don't have rock-hard boobies any more.

Boom Boom Pow, lol

After Sugery

Well, I am now on day 8 after my surgery and things are going well. My scars will take forever to heal but that's okay because no one should be able to see them (other than Clayton and myself, lol). It will take some time for the implants to drop but they already look better than they did a few days ago. I ended up getting 450cc high profile silicone implants. They were placed behind the muscle (called submuscular). I wanted to have the incisions in my armpit but my surgeon recommended under the breast. The scars are just far up enough that you can't see them under my top if I stretched upward. He did a great job and I am extremely happy. When asked if I had any problems, I told him that I just wish that they were bigger, lol. He laughed because about 90% of patients say the same thing. It didn't help that he told his assistant that he knew he should have went up to 550cc when I was in surgery. I really wish he had! Oh well, at least I now look like a woman rather than a child. That's what really matters. If any of you are interested in cosmetic surgery, you can go to my surgeon's website at: http://www.drgonyon.com/. Doctor Gonyon was fabulous and I highly recommend him. BTW-I am also getting laser treatments to permanently remove hair from my underarms and bikini line. He gave me that for free. :)

Before Surgery-34A

A Fun Day at Coors Field-Rockies vs. Mariners (from 6/14)

Hayden and me sitting in the stands

My gal pal Melissa and her son Braeden (who refused to partake in the picture taking, lol)

The boys got to walk around the baseball field before the game started. It was a special day for little league teams. I believe that the boys enjoyed seeing the field from that perspective. Hayden is #6 and Braeden is #13.

The As team with their coaches

This was Hayden's first professional sporting event and he seemed to enjoy it somewhat. He didn't really care to keep up with the game but he loved getting junk food in the stands. Who can go to a baseball game and not get a hot dog? We ended up leaving halfway through the game and boy was it a good thing that we did. After our long walk back to the car it started to rain. Once we hit 25 to go home we we got pounded by a hail storm. Melissa's husband called and told us there was a tornado running along 25. Ugh!! We detoured and parked under an awning at Sonic. It was insane. We couldn't see hardly at all. Thank the Lord that the storm passed and we were able to make it home safely. The tornado supposedly was near the baseball stadium. Everyone there had to cram into the stairwells for safety. Boy am I glad that we didn't have to go through that.

Today is the Day

Well, it is 5am here and I am ready to go. I have to be at the doctor's office by 6am and the surgery is scheduled for 7am. I am totally excited and quite nervous also. It's so weird to finally be doing this procedure. I have wanted it since I was 10, lol. All my friends seemed to have Ds by the time we hit middle school so I have always been self-conscious of my small chest. My body has always been skinny though so I can't totally complain. Now that I will finally have a womanly figure, I can't wait to buy new clothes and bras. I took some photos for you guys yesterday for my "before" pics. I decided to wear 2 different bikini tops and boy is it sad how I didn't fill either one out. Hopefully that is all about to change. ;-)

I will be home recovering over the weekend and I will update as soon as I feel up to it. I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

New Swim Suits for the Girls, lol

One thing that totally excites me lately is bathing suit shopping. I am so excited to finally be able to look feminine in one. My new girls (aka-the boobies) will make such a difference. Check out this awesome suit I snagged from Victoria's Secret on sale:And yes, in case you are wondering, I do expect my boobies to be that spectacular, lol.

I also snagged an awesome bikini from Athleta (they are owned by Gap) on clearance. They have bathing suits specifically made for gals with big boobs. I love the styles and patterns that they offer. If you are in the market for a new suit, be sure to check them out. Just go to gap.com and you will see a tab for Athleta.

Tomorrow is my breast augmentation consultation and pre-op appt. Both appointments got rolled into one since my surgery is already scheduled for next week. I am really excited but nervous also. I hope the surgery goes well and that I am not dying in pain afterwards. Someone mentioned to me that a pain pump isn't a bad idea but I am not so sure if that is really necessary. It is an option offered by my surgeon so I will be sure to ask him about it tomorrow. Anyone out there have advice?

A New Me, The Rockies, Bad Teeth

I have been going crazy with anticipation over the past month. I have elected to do the breast augmentation surgery in early July. Yay!! I have been thin my whole life so that area of my body has never been all that impressive. It really sucks that I was a nice D last month and this month I am back down to an A. How unfair is mother nature?! I really thought that I would be able to keep some of the boobage I gained while pumping milk for my second surrobaby but that didn't happen. My whole life has been spent trying to find bras and bathing suits that flattered being small up top. I am so sick of that! I can't wait to be able to buy cute bathing suits and bras that have little or no padding. The decision to have this surgery has been a long time coming. If I could have done it at 12, I would have, lol. My nickname as "the wall" in middle school really affected me and it didn't help that 2 of my closest friends were D cups by the 5th grade. Everything is about to change for me and I will feel more confident in my clothes. I can't wait!! The consult is going to be next Wednesday and the surgery is now set for July 3rd (I moved it from the 10th this morning).

Yesterday, Hayden and I went to the Rockies game with Melissa and Braeden. We had a lot of fun. The boys got to walk around the whole field in a parade with their tball team. I got some pics but haven't uploaded them yet. I will post those soon. We ended up leaving the game early and it was a good thing we did. It started to rain as we got into the car. On our way up 25, it began to hail horribly. It was insane how bad it was coming down. I thought that it was going to bust the windshield out. Ugh. What is with our weather lately? Last week was full of tornadoes and hail storms. I am so tired of it all. Hopefully this week will be better.

Poor Hayden got 3 teeth filled last week. We were so worried about how he was going to do but he was a superstar. He was lucky in that they didn't have to use a local anesthetic at all. We chose to have him gassed with nitrous though as that made it all that much easier on him. I now know why they call it laughing gas. Hayden was so funny! He talked about feeling like he was turning and some of the things he said were simply hilarious. It definitely help relax him during the procedure. Now we have a problem because he thinks that getting cavities filled is "fun". Ugh.

Playing Catcher

Last weekend, Hayden got to play the position of catcher. He didn't really like the position but he sure looked cute in all the catcher garb. Look closely in the first pic and you can see him smiling as we were cheering him on, lol.

Setting the ball on the tee (Why won't he tuck his shirt in???)

Mrs. H & Hayden (5/22)

What is it that makes a kindergarten teacher so special? I still remember mine from back in the day and I will never forget her. She was absolutely awesome and I loved being in her class. Hayden's teacher made me think of her so much. Both were pretty with blonde hair, had fun personalities and the ability to make a kid feel special. I hope Hayden always remembers this woman because she helped start his school career off with a bang. Thanks to her, he is well prepared for the education that lies in front of him. Thanks Mrs. H for all that you have done for Hayden and thanks Mrs. Davis for all that you did for me. :)

Field Day (from 5/22)

I am a little bit behind on my photos. These were taken last Friday at Hayden's field day and it was the last day of school for him. I can't believe that I now have a first grader on my hands. Wow! Time sure does fly.

H cheesing it up for the camera

Emerson spent the morning playing with his preschool buddy, Riley, while Hayden participated in the events. Unfortunately the weather stunk that morning so they were both cold. They had to run around just to keep warm, lol. Both of my kiddos were in swim trunks because the field day theme was "Beach Bash". What a joke! They froze their patooties off but had fun regardless.

New Stuff

Ok, I am not much of a girly girl when it comes to clothes and accessories but I have been rather naughty lately. I just bought the shoes shown above from shoebuy.com. They are so adorable. Because they are made by Born (style-Lucie), they are also somewhat comfortable. I had them in brown also but ultimately decided to send them back to purchase the black Soho Coach bag/wallet below (I got the brown bag and wallet for Mother's Day):

Now I am broke but at least I have a few new goodies. :)

If it ain't one thing it's another, I have strep throat. Any lactation experts out there?

Dang it. I have had a sore throat for the past 3 days accomodated by a mild fever. I finally decided to go to a doctor yesterday and learned that I have strep throat. Why in the world am I the only one in this household that gets sick all the dang time? It's so weird. I have kissed everyone around here and shared food/drink over the past week and still no one else has caught it. Isn't strep supposed to be highly contagious? Don't get me wrong, I am glad that no one else has it but it is so strange how I seem to be the only target. So now I have had a uterine infection, mastitis, numerous colds and strep throat over the past 9 weeks. What's next-swine flu? I am now at a breaking point and I cannot take it any more. I need to get healthy again. Could lactating keep my immune system down just like during pregnancy? It sure seems that I have been on tons of antibiotics since having baby girl. My milk has taken a hit each time that I have to take meds so I am really frustrated at this point. Yesterday's pumping sessions ended with a noticeable drop in production. I am beginning to think that I need to wean but I hate to do that to baby girl. It's just getting too hard to keep up an acceptable amount of milk when I keep getting sick. Is there anything I should be doing to keep my immune system up or will I just have to stop lactating to build my immunity back up? Any advice??

Catching Up-Zoo, Kidlet Updates, Boobies, etc.

Back in April, we headed to the Denver Zoo with Johnna and her kiddos. We had a good time picnicing on one of the lawns. There seemed to be a ton of Canadian geese nesting and that was pretty cool. See Emerson above? He is looking at the goose from afar because he was afraid of being pecked to death if he got too close, lol.

Here's Talan trying to make Emerson smile for the camera. He was being a pain and just scowled at me until Talan stepped in to help.

A family of geese that we saw near a water fountain

My Mom flew in on April 25th to keep me company while Clayton went away on business. He was gone to Cinncinati for 2 weeks to take some kind of classes for work. I could never be alone at night that long because I get too scared so that is why Mom came to the rescue. It definitely helped having her here. We went out to eat a million times and had fun shopping. I introduced her to the legendary Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish and now she is hooked. The funny thing is that she doesn't even like shrimp all that much but loved these. Hubby was the same way too until he had them. They are totally addictive.

Emerson finished school last week. His school sponsored a fun picnic and then had a program later that evening. My last post on here has a pic of him in his cute outfit. Little boys look so adorable in ties (he calls it his ribbon, lol).

Hayden took his first field trip with his school to the zoo last week. He was so excited to ride the bus and eat a sack lunch. This Thursday is his official last day as a kindergartner and he will have a field day/beach bash party on Friday morning. He has been playing t-ball and played his first game last night. He did great! I love watching his team and he seems to really enjoy playing the sport. Thank God he has some interest in athletics. Last year he lolligagged on the fields as everyone else played soccer. He was so not interested, lol. Now he actually wants to play soccer again so we will register him for fall soccer soon. It just took him another year to want to play sports. Yay!! I love being a sports mama.

Both kiddos should be getting their passports soon. We applied for them last week. Once they arrive we will officially have all of our documents for the upcoming Disney cruise in September. Now we just need to get them swimming. Both boys are signed up for swim lessons starting in early June.

Now on to me. Check out the blurry photo below. Do you see that large mound that seems to be growing out of Hayden's cheek? That would be my new boobies, lol. Right now I am in a 34D bra which is just insane. I have lost all of my pregnancy weight but my boobies don't seem to be going anywhere. I am still pumping 3-4 times a day for the baby so that is why they haven't disappeared as of yet. I would love to be able to keep them but I know that they will shrivel after I wean. If I could just keep them I wouldn't need that surgery in July. Sheesh. That would save me a ton of money. Ahhh, but Mother Nature is so stinkin' cruel. She makes me blossom and then takes it all back later. Sigh....

My Sweet Boy

Emerson (4)

Here's a recent pic of big E in the front yard before his pre-k program for the end of the year. Isn't he adorable?