Happy Halloween!

What I Did On Vacation, Part Two

Okay. So. I promised pictures. But let me say first, I adore Disney. I do. It's a magical place. And frankly, it is the only place where I am allowed to walk around in my light-up tiara and people will bow to me for doing so. I do. I love it.

It's just. You know. You see stuff. Stuff that you wish you hadn't seen. Stuff like...

this...


or this...



(Um, yeah. And she meant it too. She had six kids with her. Yeah. All under the age of maybe 8.)

or this...





(But then, I could have just been jealous too. His tiara was pretty sweet, even if it didn't blink like mine.)

or especially this...




(Now don't get me wrong. Two grown men want to dress as superheroes, fine. It's the fact that their costumes WERE NOT LINED. Go. Look. Especially the one on the right. You could see...stuff. It's just, I don't want to be exposed to intimate views of their dangly stuff, even the dangly stuff of complete strangers. I just don't.)

And of course, you see really freaky stuff like this...



and this...



(I know. Freaky.)

and, Heaven help us all, this...



and this...



(Wait. That's just my mom. Sorry.)

Anyway. That was it. Our vacation photos. It all ended okay. Like I said, the same number of people returned home as left and no one had to be bailed out of any jails. (Though I will say, that sheriff that works for Osceola county-rude. He was very, very rude. If you're out there somewhere and you ever read this, Mr. Sheriff, I just want to say that while YOU might not have thought pondering the possible legalities of skywritten profanities was worthwhile, or sane, we obviously did. A simple admittance that you just didn't know would have sufficed. You ended up looking ignorant anyway, didn't you? Very rude, you were. Very.) And TSA let my mom go finally. I'm not sure they bought her story that it was my sister who planted the bottles in her bag, but whatever. All's well that ends well, right?

Sure.

*snort*

What I Did On Vacation, Part One

Okay. So. I promised pictures.

As I wrote previously, this whole vacation was my mom's doing. Not only was it Hubby and I's anniversary and Bob's birthday, but we must remember--my mom insisted on this trip because she said all she wanted was one normal family vacation before she died. I'd like to write she got her wish, but some people just insist on always learning things the hard way.

Anyway. As I said previously, our plane did not get the memo about leaving on time. Here's my mom. Right after she told me to write a disclaimer to my blog post that she never said we could do this. That she actually said she thought we could do this. That she thought we'd all matured enough. Sure she did.



That's my mom, already pondering choking us one by one. And the plane hadn't even pulled in yet.

So, we did do one thing smart. One. But it was smart. We sent my dad ahead to check-in at the villa and pick up some supplies before we got in. Which turned out to be round midnight. Like I said, smart. Until he picked us up. At midnight, in a white van, windows down, blasting latin music as high as it would go. Yes.

You'd be shocked how loud you can crank those Kia speakers. Really.



As you can see, my dad has a penchant for parking sideways. He enjoys freaking out the neighbors.

Anyway. We did something differently this time-we rented a house. No wussy hotels fo us. And it was nice. (You know there's a but here, right?)

Remember that movie? Where the little girl gets sucked into the t.v. screen? Carol Ann? We stayed in her neighborhood, I shit you not. Just look.



It was the single creepiest thing you've ever seen. Miles and miles and miles of the same exact houses, all in shades of off-white and tan, all with white rental vans out front. I kept expecting tennis balls to come whipping out of the t.v.s.

But don't get me wrong. We loved the house. Except. The owners had this odd obsession with monkeys. They were everywhere, (except my sister's room. Hers had a bizarre horse theme, complete with a skin on the wall. Go figure.)Bob tried counting them all and after an hour, gave up. Please note the coffee table, which was this 500 lb metal drum held up by monkeys.



Yes. That's a leopard rug. And a bonus? The walls were salmon too.





That's the ceiling in the foyer. I have no idea how the hell they got the damn monkey stuff up there.



Just a sampling of the monkeys for you.

Our first day there we decided to sleep in and hang by the pool. The pool boy got pissed. Probably because...





Caddyshack, anyone? The best part was when Bob blamed it on my mom and then Bob's Big Brother asked if he could eat it.



And for some reason the hot tub stopped working. Wasn't our fault. Just because we were the last one's in it doesn't mean we broke it. Probably.

Then, Hubby was too cheap to buy the kids pool toys. So my dad, who only wants his grandchildren to be happy after all, compensated. Threw all the pots...coasters...water bottles...flip flops...into the water. "There you go," he said. "All the pool toys you could want."

Like I said, the pool guy wasn't happy with us. Bob, however, was thrilled. Especially when my dad wrapped one of the pots up and gave it to him on his birthday. "Here," he told him. "It's a new pool toy. Just what you really wanted and your father is too cheap to buy you."



But whatever. We just hid in the house every time the guy came around after that. Despite all that, it was gorgeous. Warm, sunny, and the wildlife was amazing. Huge hawks flew over. Cranes hung out by the lanai.



Ones, just like this one. Who then ran up to the pool screen, snatched a gecko off it and left half its guts behind. And of course couldn't be bothered to eat it promptly. No. The bird just hung around, letting the poor gecko squirm in its beak. Until finally it devoured it. And then promptly pooped on the grass. (fyi-gecko guts do not wash off screen so easily.)

So. Yes. It was beautiful.

Normal? Not so much.

Anyway. Tomorrow. The parks.

Well...

Okay. Let's just say I'm alive.

The good news? No one is dead. Or in jail. And we didn't even get kicked out the Magic Kingdom today. Not even a little bit.

The bad news?

*sigh*

We're in trouble with the pool guy.

Wasn't me. I swear. The pots and coasters were my dad's idea.

More later. Pictures to come.

Hi Ho Hi Ho...It's Off To Hell I Go

Oops. I mean Disney. I'm off to Disney.

It's a typo, I swear. But anyway, I have just entered the first ring of Hell. Oops. I mean the airport. I'm at the airport.

But no, I am not on a plane. Nope. The plane didn't get the memo supposedly, so here we sit. My entire family. Taking bets over who kills who first. The only one who isn't in on the pool is my mom.

"No one is killing anyone," she just said over my shoulder. "This is going to be a good vacation. A normal vacation. You've all matured enough we can DO this."

*sigh*

It's a shame she feels this way. The pool is getting pretty high-there's some serious cash to be made...

I'm Thinking It's Genetic...

So, my sister-in-law left this comment for me on the previous post:

You know we discuss this over dinner "so how is your brother doing, let's look at the blog" "It's not his blog it's Kelley's blog and it is all made up" This from my husband who has such a thin grasp on reality that he is building a brick pizza /bread oven in the back yard assuming that pizza and homemade bread will come out of it...

Here's what Hubby and I said immediately after reading it:

Me: It is not all made up.

Hubby: He hasn't finished building that damn pizza oven yet? Didn't he start that like two years ago?


For the record. My SIL does actually have a partly, sort-of-finished pizza/bread oven in her backyard that her hubby is building. I don't know whether he truly thinks food will magically appear from it. I do know it's totally something Hubby would do and think, and while I do love him so and mean this in the most loving manner, his own grasp on reality is so thin one could read a newspaper through it, so perhaps it's genetic?

Anyway, let me just say 1. there exists no other person on this planet who understands my life quite the way my sister-in-law does and 2. this is why exactly why God invented wine in a box. Seeing about shipping her some now.



:)


*Disclaimer-Hubby said I needed to add a disclaimer, something about me and being a kettle or pot or something like that. Whatever. No clue what he's talking about.

I Has...

Because I was given a deadline. A very important deadline. Like, a really very important deadline. Yeah. It's that important.



to finish by this deadline, I has. But self-confidence? Not so much.



Hubby got tough. "You can do it," he said. "I know you'll do it." I'm suspecting he believes this strictly because he took away all my frozen M&M's and told me I couldn't have them back until I finished. I give him props for his plan's sheer geniosity. It's just annoying how he emails every few hours demanding my most recent word count.



My secret goal is to finish so I can have my M&M's back. Don't tell anyone. But my main goal is to write something someone will find worth reading. My concern is I'm actually creating something that's merely worthy of being printed on a roll of toilet paper. This main goal? It's a lofty goal and it's getting to me.

I'm having a hard time believing I can do this.

The good news is I don't have to. It seems there are people out there who say they'll believe enough for me. People like my mom. Who went out and bought me more Acceptance Celebration Twinkies. Banana-flavored. Just because she loves me and knows how much I want this.



And, she wrapped them in DANGER tape as a warning to Hubby.

(Touch them and die, big boy.)

People like Miss Frango, who sent me a box of magic, so I could do this.



Remember Dorothy's magic red shoes? How she never really needed them to get home? Because she had the ability to do it, all by herself, all along? Make her wish come true? That's sort of what she sent me. Only, it wasn't a pair of sparkly shoes.

It was even better than that. But I can't tell you what it was, because it's magic...

So. Hubby snapped these of me when I wasn't paying attention. (As you can see, I seem to be at a very important and perplexing scene...when in reality I was horrified because he'd just informed me of his confiscation of my M&M's.)

Thanks to Miss Frango, I don't need to worry anymore. I can do it. I have magic.


That's me, donning my magic, making my wish come true. The Twinkies are in my kitchen cabinet waiting. And my M&M's are twenty pages from being mine again.

I'm a lucky girl, eh?

:)

Yes.

How beautiful.


*The link to these gorgeous photos at Emerald Blue Studio was brought to us courtesy of Ethel.

He's Given Up Margaritas

and abandoned the Chi Chi's box.




He's moved on to straight vodka. Good for him.

No.

NO.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


sniff...

No.

*today's bad news that my world is coming to an end brought to us courtesy of a very-sad-to-have-to-share Miss Frango.