Little update and some more Florida trip.

We are back to duking it out with Dylan's school as they lost another para this week. I think they have gone through three? Or is it four? It's is no bueno and it doesn't bode well for a special education department that is not already meeting the goals and agreements that we outlined. So here I am, sending emails to like... the world... to get Dylan what she needs. Ugh. This is CRAZY!

Ultimately, what is comes down to, is that our original concerns about Dylan being in the same room as people but playing and doing her own thing have not been addressed. We are not getting the information promised to us for the time that we were concerned about initially. So while the paras have really stepped up, and have been completing their portion of the tracking form, there is still a significant amount of time that is unaccounted for. I cannot imagine if I had a more demanding child! Or wait... would that make this problem less likely?

The therapists were outstanding and provided additional ideas and activities to try with Dylan and I have seen that the paras have been trying news things and really making an effort. I am just not sure it goes beyond the paras... and I will have to leave it at that for now.

All the district has said is to watch for another meeting with the Super, which is what I went to before the school year started. Oh I will be watching, believe me. She is NOT getting the support that I was promised at the neighborhood school and the Special Education teacher is not only not doing what she committed too, but it appears as if she isn't even doing her job. Is it a resource issue? I don't know but we need to figure it out.

Though she was sweet this week and agreed to make the changes to our tracking form that I had requested. She showed me the new form today. Action, not words lady, we need action!

Duncan is about to lose a tooth and it's been on the edge for like days, and its gross. really gross. And the big old bad boy adult tooth is just popping right on in behind it. Gross. Even thinking about it gives me the heebie geebies. Wharf. Can someone come and just yank the sucker out? He is a big wimp though, so good luck at getting near it since his dad traumatized him over the weekend. We have how many of these left? Meh.

Ian has been full of them lately. He is all into number like Duncan was at his age so "I love you one hundred eight ten!" and "That's a big number right?" but also "You made my heart hurt 100!" between tears and today "You made my heart crack!" So yea, glad he still loves me that much even though I crack his heart. (Don't feel too bad for him, he had fair warning and all I did was make him go take a nap 4 minutes earlier for not listening!)

Duncan has also taken to called pistachios mustachios and I am not correcting him because I think it's cute and funny. Yes, you may have more mustachios!

I took the big boys to Disney on Ice and really should have taken them to the monster truck show instead. We got awesome seats because there were three of us (10th row!) and the liked it alright, they really liked the first half, but then I made a critical error at intermission and didn't take them to walk around so when the show started I had a bored Duncan and a pouting Ian. Seriously. I may never take them anywhere fun again. When we were walking back to the car (Across the street!) Duncan complained about how tired he was. Really?! I told him I was sorry, he would never make it at Disneyland if we ever go because you have to walk all day. He perked up after that.

Over the last week I finalized my next Disney race plan. Oh sure, I did just say that it wasn't exactly my thing and I didn't see me ever doing another one and yea well... I have not one, but two in the works. Oooops. They first is the newly announced Disney Avenger's half marathon in November. Disney announced it as a way to complete the Coast to Coast Challenge (completing a race at Disney Land and Disney World in the same calendar year) where previously the only other opportunity to do this challenge was gone in January (doing either Disney Marathon or Tinker Bell). Oye. Well.. could I possibly bring the fam?

Yes!

Over my yummy birthday dinner (thanks for watching the kids mom!) Matthew and I got to talking and decided the way to wrap my head around a family Disney trip is to leave a couple behind. You have Greyson, who would be in a stroller all day with not much to do and Dylan who would (also be in a stroller all day) be completely over-stimulated, sleep all day and eat anything not nailed down in the hotel room all night. Soooo... Yep! They get to stay home. It's practically a plan.

I originally thought about going with my mom and leaving Matthew home but this dinner revealed he wanted to go. But so did mom. Dilemma. Oh yea, it's just going to be a party and that's all there is to it. everyone who wants to go (or cares) is going to go. Not only that, but with mom going it frees up Matthew to run the Avenger's race with me. It will be his first half, and I think my constant teasing him about the Spartan (which he did last year and will again this year) being "only" 12+ miles might have nudged him the "official" half marathon direction.

The race officially went on sale this week this week but I had previously secured myself and Matthew a bib through and agent. Now we just need to work out the logistics. November will come before you know it!

Oh, and keep this on the d/l, it's a surprise for the kiddos.

My next race is the first weekend of April and it's a 10 miler I am doing with Sara. It's 300 feet up for about a mile and half and then 1,000 down for the rest. The downhill part is Sara and I's favorite run, it's just that uphill part I am not so sure about...

To finish off my Disney trip - The last day we went to Universal Islands of Adventure because I was ITCHING to see Harry Potter World and I had some great friends willing to go with. We only had like 6 hours in the park which wasn't enough for me to get to do everything I wanted to do but it was enough for me to know that I needed to go back. I LOVED it there. It is for a more teen audience and they are not wheelchair friendly. There is nothing there for my kids. But for meeeee....

We went on some very scary roller coaster adult rides and then some great 4D rides. People complain that all of Universal rides are the same... but who cares when they are this cool. Really. For our very last ride Suzanne and I went on some water log ride and got drenched. It was a perfect close to the day.

We missed out on all of the Jurassic Park themes rides and a lot of rest of the park due to time restrictions.

This year Universal is opening Daigon Alley at Universal Studios to sucker people like me into paying the extra for a multi-park ticket. It will work. I cannot wait to go back and spend more time there and Daigon Alley will be a bonus. I am not sure when it will happen though... we shall see.

Patty picked us back up after dropping Julie off at the airport and prior to returning the car she dropped us right off at Animal Kingdom (for my first time there) for the last hour of the park day. Not enough time to see Animal Kingdom but plenty of time to go on Everest... what? six times? 8? maybe ten? A lot. We kept doing the loop like teenagers. We wanted to hit Safari too and were under the understanding we just had to be in line prior to the park closing but little did we know they closed the line at 5:30. So our continuous loop of what is what I think is the best Disney roller coaster cost me safari but dang, not knowing what I missed it was totally worth it.

We closed the night at Epcot where we wanted to eat but it was the extra magic hours and there was no where with food open. Nada. We settled for a pretzel and nachos at some lonely little stand. Whatever.

I will share lots of the pictures that Disney took for us in my next post. We got the PhotoPass but we shared it and I haven't gotten my CD yet but I know it's coming. There is a great parting shot with Suzanne, Patty and I at Epcot. After that we went to bed and saw each other on the Magic Express again at 3:30 in the morning. (oye)

Inside, inside... where was this. It's where we ate and it was awesome ambiance for a quick lunch. And I do mean quick, I ordered it at one counter and didn't even walk to the other and it was done. YUM

 The engineer of Hogwarts Express, Phone photo fail because unbeknownst to me it was on square so no train. Wah waaaaaah. 

 I like to say that this is me photobombing Suzanne's photobomb of my picture of the castle.

Needed more time in Jurassic Park.

One of the highlights, this fountain talks and interacts with the kiddos, he is quite witty. I could have watched him all day. We stood there for a while and every once and a while a squirt would come our direction acknowledging that he knew we were there. Very very cool. 

Birthday dinner selfie

Not bored yet... 

My new favorite Disney Princess. That story is coming as soon as I get the park pics. It's good stuff! 

He just wanted some pretzels. 

Happy St. Patty's! Our enthusiastic leprechaun left twice as many gold coins as this, he tends to over do just about everything. Good thing they were still in the package. Duncan's teacher was pretty happy about this because he class leprechaun couldn't find coins. Yay us. 

Lunch

Disney - Part two - The Princess!

More more more! 

After the 10k we just walked around at the park. We switch hotels at some point and ended up at the Contemporary for a night. The hotel was nice, I liked the ambiance of the POR better... but the location of the Contemporary can't be beat. Of course, it's on the monorail... that was the idea. You take the monorail to Epcot where the race starts. We splurged one night. There was definitely more space to spread all of our stuff out, desk space, shelf space, more space. The idea was to go to bed a little bit earlier for our race tomorrow. Of course I can't remember how well we did. I tell you, it's all getting mixed up! I think we did okay?

We got up at three again to get ready and since we had been pretty good at laying all of our "flat me's" out the night before it went smoothly. We were out the door. In case you are wondering, this is what Epcot looks like at 4:00 am on princess weekend. It's pretty isn't it?

With a group our size you kind of feel out to see if anyone is running your same pace (we have runners who run sub 10 min miles and others who will be pushing the 16 minute mile with photo stops. A few girls were also nursing injuries. I am about in the lower middle. Bonnie and I had traded texts the day before and decided to run together and I was pleased that her nemesis was planning on running with us (I likely crashed their party!). Of course her nemesis in costume only, Kristen was Mother Gothel to Bonnie's Rapunzel. 

Thank you Bonnie for a lot of these photos! 

My downhill first half positioned my quite nicely in the group. I originally qualified for corral D but moved back to F to start with most of my friends. Of course, it wasn't an accurate representation of my actual time on a NOT net-downhill run, but you know... 

Somehow we were running behind the rest of the group so we hurried past the bag check where we were supposed to meet them and started the hike to the corrals. It is quite the walk. I wonder if anyone actually kept track of how far it was, it has to be at least a mile, maybe more. Somehow we ran into the rest of us on this walk! 

My girls: Bonnie, Patty, Julie, Tania, Amy, me, Kristen, Wendy and Suzanne. 

We lined up and move over to the edge and I took these pictures of my and 23,999 of my closest friends. 

This is facing forward (That bright light is the starting gate).

And this was behind me. Al the way to corral P.

I was one of approximately 5,382 Snow Whites. But their mama didn't make their costume...

A couple of my roomies. We are awesome.

One of the first major photo stops was the Pirate ship with Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbosa. The line was HUGE. This is a very popular stop and not a surprise. We went right by that. Up ahead there were the boy heros, also a long line. We opted out and decided to stick with whatever intervals we were doing, I think it was run 9 minutes walk one? But it was all willy nilly as no one was tracking time. It was whenever we felt like it. 

Before Magic Kingdom we saw the big draw, the villains. The line was predictably long but we chose to wait in it and luckily enough our friends found us in the line! Yes! They jumped in and we assured everyone behind us we were all one group and only two or so cel phones so it wouldn't add to their time. It's not terribly uncommon for runners to run ahead and hold the line so it wasn't a big deal to the princesses behind us. We chose to fuel at this point because we were within a half mile of when we would fuel anyway. The line really picked up from there and we were out in a flash and back on our way. 

I would have to really look at other people's pictures to see which characters were out and about because I don't really recall all of them We decided to get Tiana's picture taken today. 

Somewhere around here we got our picture taken with Buzz, we marveled at how short the line was! This cast member was ON IT. He was so fast! But... maybe too fast because my picture was blurry. Wah wahhhh. If I do get discounted Marathonfoto pics, this will be one I choose because it it cute, but I am too cheap to pay as much as they want for it. Silly cast member. 

There was line for the royal Mickey and Minnie that wrapped along the new Snow White Mine ride's wall, it was LONG. It didn't look that long from the end, I mean, it looked long, but the girls had me run ahead to take a peek and the line kind of went in to a curve and then wrapped the wall which added maybe an additional third to what we thought it was. At that point, we hopped out of line. C-ya Mickey and Minnie, we have a price and that ain't it.

We had to take a picture with this mile marker. Kristen and Bonnie took one alone and then I crashed for my photo op. (To our credit, this time is the time the FIRST corral started, and not when our corral started. We were slow, but we need all the credit we can get!)

In the stretch back to Epcot we were able to hit a few of the stops that we had passed up on the way out. The men folk (Isn't Flynn a dead ringer?) 

The pirates - When were about fifth from them Jack Sparrow went off for a break? Wahhhh... we waited for about five minutes and settled for Captain Barbosa. (Poor guy, when people saw it was just him they were dropping like flies...) He was HUGE! We also fueled at this point while we were at a stand still anyway. 

I made Bonnie take this picture while we were waiting... get it? Get it? Poor girl, I made her get down on her knees, after running ten miles. It was not the nicest friend thing for me to do...

I am not sure where Mrs. Incredible was... but this was fun.

Sophia the first was when we rounded into... someone help me here? Epcot? I clearly have no idea where we ran all weekend... but you know. You tell me to go, I follow the tutus. (Bonnie knows her stuff and she has a far more accurate timeline as to where the characters were on her blog.)

And our super awesome finish picture. Great running partners! We ate the hills for breakfast! Woohooo!

Bonnie's official picture. 

The bling!

After the half I was alone, Bonnie and Kristen had their families and the others weren't done yet so I grabbed my stuff. Including my glass slipper challenge medal and hopped on the bus back to the Contemporary by myself, which was great. I showered and stretched and took a breather and then hit the parks again with Dr. Laura for a minute. This is when I had my most fabulous tuna salad that I mentioned the other day. Yum.

Thoughts on the Princess? It was fun, but there were a lot of walkers. The beauty of this race is that while runners are welcome, interval trainers, walkers and first-timers are more so. It's a great environment to foster camaraderie, there is a "You can do it!" attitude. With that...

The race etiquette says to keep to the right if you are walking but what do you do if there are 25 other walkers around you? There were points we couldn't get over to walk when it came to our walking minute. It was CROWDED. We would bob and weave in between the slower racers and then count off "1, 2, 3" to make sure we didn't lose each other. And we weren't going that fast. Our counting actually worked amazingly well the one time we misplaced Kristen around a fueling station!

Will I do it again? Not likely, not the Princess. It was fun, I am so glad I did it, I am so glad I got to spend the weekend with my friends. It's just one of the races I check off my list. I might consider a smaller Disney race but this princess is OUT. Too many people, too many walkers, too much wasted time (even when we were going slow ourselves!).

The best part about the race was being able to do it with my friends, and well... we can do that anywhere right?

Where to start, where to start... Disney post #1

Back home and back to real life! I was so excited to get home! Five nights is far too long to be away from my little family and I was exhausted. With the time change and the Disney early races I needed some SLEEP. Thank goodness for an awesome husband who takes care of me and early bed times! Took me a few days but I did get caught up. 

Where to start, where to start... 

I got dropped off at the hotel, the first hotel was the Port Orleans Riverside and I was lost, there were no rooms to be seen! I wandered around forever looking for our room (Julie had text me with the room number) and finally gave up and stood in the line to ask. I should have saved myself a little exercise and asked to begin with because our room was probably the single furthest room away from the lobby. It was quite the hike! Right next to the pool and one of the bus pick ups it was very quiet and peaceful, perfect for the four of us! Dr. Laura, a mystery roomie, had already been there and made her mark, there were cute Princess movable stickers all over the door and the mirror. So fun. 

I got on the bus to the Magic Kingdom to head over to The Wave at the Contemporary where we were supposed to be having a meet up. I was late at this point, but it was all good. As I was passing by MK I heard the 'choo-choo' of the train and knew I must come back with the kids, I missed them already! 

Imaginary friends... Some of whom I have "known" for what? Seven years? Crazy! 

After The Wave we went with a travel agent to way high up on the Contemporary to see the Wishes firework show. It was a stunning view. We then head back to the hotel and Julie and I split a deli sandwich from the hotel cafe. They willingly split it down the middle for us and it came with home made chips which were the best part! YUM! Over priced? Maybe, but totally within reason and there were all kinds of food options right at the hotel. LOVE. 

I have no idea what we did the next day. We went to Magic Kingdom? It's all mixing together... in the afternoon I was the only on left to have to go pick up my race packet so I did that solo. Rode the bus over to the ESPN sports complex and took care of business and then met up with the girls again. 

The 10k saw us all getting up at 3:30 in the morning (1:30 here!) and rushing to get dressed and out the door. We were all going as characters from Mary Poppins and we were to meet the rest of our crew. It. Was. Awesome. People loved our costumes and it made for a lot of pictures and shout outs just getting to the corral! It was a sure sign of all the attention the race would bring us (it did not let down...) At one point we had to get to the corrals and we snaked through the crown of people and the people waiting actually cheered and clapped for us! What? Fun! It would have been fun to be there anyway but this was really the icing on the cake. 

This was the whole "Poppin's posse" and Tania wins, she is on the right. She was wearing that dress (which had a slip, a mens dress shirt, the apron the sash and that thing on her head) all in 97% humidity (yes, at the 5:00 start time that's what it was!). I am not going to lie, I was a little worried about her! She said she was fine and she did have on legit running clothes under so if push came to shove, she did have an out. She is a gal who is dedicated to her costumes! 

And we were off! Shortly after we left we had to go under a bridge and there was Elsa on top waving to everyone with "Let it Go" blaring. It was snowing too, Disney snow. So fun and what a great touch. I am sure they knew that if they put elsa as a photo stop the race would come to a screeching halt (the wait to see Elsa in the park was 5.5 hours one day!). The snow was a great touch, good job Disney. 

We passed the first picture stop which was the white rabbit. I was not so much all about the pictures and I was with the right group because a lot of them had gotten pictures with the characters before so it wasn't a big deal to skip some. We skipped Jiminy Cricket and Tiana and the crocodile but we did stop for a couple once we had gotten to MK though. 

And way early, random toy soldiers... (and from what I hear a rare photo op!)

I thought I didn't care how fast I did these races but a couple people in our group were taking it a little more easy than I wanted too. (I was channeling Sara and thinking if I ran up the hills they would go away sooner, and a lot of people walk hills.) Smart though, some had under-trained (I think we almost all had!) and we did have the half the following day. We did want to mostly stick together but we left a Mary and a chimney sweep to go together and just kept going. The support from the people watching was great, we would here "A chimney sweep!" and then "Votes for women!" a lot as we were running by crowd. So fun. 

The course was crowded but fun, we had a lot of fun sticking together and we weren't pushing to get to the end so the crowds didn't bother too much. (unlike the half, which was a LOT more crowded, that's coming...) I had my watch going and it was set to stop when we did but we went in a "real" bathroom in Magic Kingdom and lost the GPS. Wah wahhhh, so I only have the first four miles recorded. We were at a 14 minute mile until I lost my GPS. Easy right? My Garmin says it was 70 degrees and 100% humidity. 

Here is a fun picture of some of us after with our medals. The sun is now out and Tania is obviously alive. 

The night before the 10k we chartered a specialty boat from the Contemporary to celebrate Patty's 40th birthday. That was fun. They took us all around the lake and told us about that old Animal Kingdom island and the old water park that is there but now abandoned. Who let's some crazy amoeba stop them anyway? We watched the Wishes firework show from the lake and it was the best view EVER. 

When I got home I weighed a full 4-6 lbs more than when I left, I am sure it was the long hours, all the walking and the racing. Your muscles need water to heal themselves and I was sure this was a big part of it. It was, not even a week later (and lots of water drinking!) I am back to normal. It's a good thing, I ate pretty well down there. It's amazing how when you are hydrating like you should, not drinking soda and getting a lot of exercise in your body craves more healthy foods. I didn't have any of the delicious Disney junk food I was supposed to try! They day of the half I even had a $10 sized ice cream scoop of tuna salad. To their credit, it was the best tuna salad I had ever eaten in my life! (Could be the race could be the tuna...)

I am also looking forward to starting to work out with Matthew again at night. I took a break for a while for fear of injuring myself again and missing out on the race. My BRF Sara talked me into a ten miler the first week of April and I registered for another half in June and on in September but without tacking on the travel, if I get hurt I can skip it and it's not as big of a deal. I like it when I get going so it's time! (And this booty needs it!)

I have run a couple times since I have been home and it's going very well. Hooray! 

Matthew was fine with the kids, I think he actually loved it. It was good for him to spend a lot of time with them and have the time off work. When I talked to him on the phone he said the hardest part was not being able to run for a soda and just pick up something little at Lowe's so he could work on a project. YEP! Not so easy. Other than that though, he was good. He said I make it look easy, and I think he is just throwing me a bone. 

I came home to a clean house and all the laundry was caught up and it was so nice! I could just pick up where I left off and not feel like I needed to play catch up around here. I kind of consider this an okay to go on another girl's trip... I am not sure that's the message he meant to send. 

Here are a few random photos I had on the camera from before I left. Every kid accounted for in pics, that rarely happens!