I'm famous!

If you watched the Ellen show today, you would have seen my picture in the bad photos segment......

Year of a million youtube blogs!

So I never really blogged about our vacation, other than Night of Joy. So here we go!

We spent the first few days at my dad's house. The kids pretty much lived in the pool. My dad pretty much spoiled them.....but not in a bad way, I guess ;-)

Then we headed over to Disney World for our 5 day magical adventure. Tuesday we checked into our hotel and then headed to Downtown Disney. We shopped and ate at Rainforest Cafe and played with Legos and potato heads 'n stuff.

The next day we visited Hollywood Studios. I had a few videos but they're not that interesting. We had a great time, though! Our first ride was the Tower of Terror. The twins were not thrilled, to say the least. But they like to brag about it now :-) Xavier got to see the "real" Lightning McQueen. Zoe met some of her favorite Playhouse Disney characters. I got to cry once again at the Little Mermaid show. It never fails. I do it every time. I'm so weird. Then for the first time I got to see Fantasmic. It was awesome!

The next day we went to Magic Kingdom. We hung out with Christa, Adam and Jack and had a great time :-)  We pretty much rode everything. There was never really a wait for any of the rides. It was nice. The twins don't remember their first 2 trips to Disney, so it was fun showing them Magic Kingdom again. It was all new to them.

The next morning we had breakfast at Chef Mickey's. It was so fun, and the food was delicious. Zoe says that "Mickey is a good food-cooker." I agree!

The next day I went to Epcot with Christa and Adam while Craig took the kids back to my dad's house. I hadn't seen Epcot since I was a kid and was really excited to go. I can't wait to go back and see more. I didn't see everything because I had to get back to Hollywood Studios to see the first Night of Joy. Craig ended up driving all over FL, getting lost. He ended up in Ocala. My dad lives in Brooksville. He's a dork. Then he passed up the road again on his way back down and made us late for the first concert. That was not the highlight of my trip, fo sho.

We spent our last day in Florida at Clearwater Beach. The kids loved the ocean. The girls loved finding shells!

The next morning we started our journey back to Michigan. It was the best vacation evah!

The end.

Big day!

Yesterday was Zoe and Xavier's first day of kindergarten, and Daphne's first day of 3rd grade.

They all had a GREAT first day. The twins love school. They got to play with "real" computers! Daphne got the teacher she wanted. The house was so quiet. It was nice. I only had to make lunch for myself, and not for 3-4 other people. I was able to shower and get ready for the day without three rounds of "MOMMMM..... ____________ did this to me!!!!!"I was also a little sad. I couldn't wait for them to get home so I could kiss their chubby little cheeks.

Joy is an understatement!

For years now I've always wanted to attend the Night of Joy at Disney World. It's actually TWO nights of joy.....two nights of awesome Christian bands from about 7pm-1am. This year I went and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life! I went expecting concerts, and left after having some of the best worship times I've ever had. I uploaded some pictures in the pic section. Here are some videos, but I'm sad to say that it was just too loud for my poor little camera's mic to handle, so the audio is horrible. But you can still hear what they're singing. It's just distorted. Anyway, here are some vids!

Here is Barlow Girl. These chicks rock. When I grow up, I want to be just like them. And I loved the words they spoke between songs.

Here is Casting Crowns! I've always been a fan, and I love their music...but Saturday night was indescribable while they were on stage. I can't even begin to explain it. Anyway, we decided to miss out on some other bands and stay for Casting Crowns again.

Chris Tomlin was actually the first one we saw. We were fortunate enough to be able to stand right in front of the stage. After that concert though, the powers that be made everyone go back into the stands...but this was also an awesome time of worship.

I was soooo excited to see MercyMe. But this is when the security people decided that we could no longer stand by the stage. They made people go sit. The only seats left were the ones on the very end. You couldn't even see the whole stage :-( So we stood by the exit and watched as best as we could....

Tobymac was last, but certainly not least! This man is crazy, in a good way. It was like one giant dance party in the stands while they were up there. I didn't want it to end. We would have stayed for the 2nd show, but it didn't start til 12:30am and we had a 90 minute drive back to my dad's house.(turn your speakers down for this one. The bass turned out awful.)

I would have liked to see more bands, but it was hard to plan. We wanted good seats for the people we really liked, so we had to miss some other ones. Oh well. It was totally worth it. I want to go every year!