Happy Valentine's Day!

This is how my mini Valentine woke me up this morning. Completely done on his own, might I add.

























I feel like I haven't posted in forever because not much has happened and I've been extremely busy but then I was looking back over some pictures and realized some things I have not written about. Like Ava had a field trip to the library. I met them there again. All morning I prepped her about how when she had to get on the bus to go back to school I wouldn't be able to go with her. Well after story time at the library we started walking down to the bus and I could tell she started to panic. She grabbed a hold of my hand and kept begging for me to hold her. I would not hold her and told her I could only hold her hand if she could stay in line with her classmates. The closer we got to the bus the more frantic she became and I started to question my decision of even going on field trips with her. We finally get right up to the bus (all her other friends are on at this point) and she turned around and say' Bye mom" and hopped up the steps onto the bus. I kind of just stood there with my mouth hanging open for a minute. I remembered way too late to get a picture so here is a pic of the bus, but you can't really see her at all.



















We went to Orlando two weekends ago. It was not fun; it was pretty much the opposite. Although there were some fun times, but right now I want to complain so to acknowledge that would be contradictory. So try and separate those two in your mind. We had to go for this pre deployment family conference for the Army. They paid for our flights & hotel. So basically everything except for most of the food which was huge disappointment #2. H.D. #1 was that we were staying at the Hilton Walt Disney World Resort. Well it sounds great right? Here was our schedule.

Friday

1:00 pm- Flight gets into Orlando
3:45 pm- We get to the hotel via too small shuttle and get checked in
4-5:45ish- Andre has to go on a tour
6-9- Mandatory meet & greet

Saturday

7 am to 6 pm- Mandatory meetings (death by PowerPoint)
6:30- We eat dinner, kids exhausted

Sunday

7 am to 12 noon- More mandatory meetings
1 pm- Leave to take our flight back home

So we were literally right across the street to Disneyworld. Downtown disney was right outside our hotel. The kids could see it and hear it, but we could never go. We called disney to see if they did "twilight hour" tickets, but they only do full day (full price) tickets. Downtown disney was free, and the only place to get anything to eat, so we did go over there a little bit. It's really just shops, restaurants, and more shops though.


Kael playing with the daddy-O




















We did let Ava get her face painted for the first time.

We tried to talk her into getting a fairy, or puppy or something cute, but she insisted on the dragon.



I haven't felt like she was old enough before to want to keep it on and everything. She loved it this time until at some point in the evening she decided it was "too scary" and she insisted we take it off.

Clearly she's still in character in the picture.

We did go to this super cool restaurant there. It's just like the rainforest cafe, except with dinosaurs. It was super cool. There were dinosaurs everywhere that moved, and their play area was awesome! The kids got little brushes to dig up bones.









This was right above us







I would say it was fun to get away, but I can only handle so much of the certain kind of company I was in, and forced to listen to jokes (made by chaplains!) about drinking alcohol pretty much non stop. It was fun to take the kids on an airplane though. The schedule was terrible however, and at the end of it all I couldn't believe how much we'd spent on food. We literally had no way to get anywhere though, so we were extremely limited on options.

I know I'm complaining a ton. Maybe I'm just tired of waiting for Andre to leave. I've never felt as lonely in my life as I do when he leaves, so it's going to be a long year. I don't have any goals while he's gone except to make sure we all survive. Sometimes that's just how it goes right?

Reviewing our trip I would say the moral of the story is that the next time the Army requires me to go on a trip I will be out of the country.