Please oh Please

I am patiently waiting to see if they can be recovered. My computer has crashed, burned and then been partially revived. However, after noticing iTunes music is not at full force and if I try to synch iPod music it wants to erase everything, I noticed something even more disturbing.

My pictures are MIA - well at least half of them are gone and most of the Christmas pictures have gone to the black hole of computer land. It makes me very, very sad. I have memories here to share with you, share with very special people and to keep for the next for the future years.

Please, oh please, let me be smart enough to figure out how to retrieve the pictures. I will (somewhat) happily repurchase music for iTunes. I will be more diligent about backing up my computer.

Please, please let me be smart enough to hire the right person for the job if it turns out to be bigger than anything Big Poppy can handle. I am already smart enough to know this is beyond my capabilities.

Until then, I have this one to share.

And after some genius, Big Poppy or otherwise, recovers my pictures, I can finish my 2010 picture book and let you know how the month of December turned out for us.

Here's a hint, there were bouts of the stomach flu, pouting lips for non-exist fudge (a clear sign my family no longer loves me) and lots of family fun whether in the Frozen Tundra or the Icy Plains.

Wishing You A Magical Christmas

NYC

I don't know how to say this.

I love New York.

I loath New York airports.

The mobs of rude people, and I know you are not all from New York but seem to think you should take the stereo type of the New Yorker attitude to the extreme, are enough to drive me to a drink. Heavily. Ok, maybe it did drive me to a drink but not heavily - just one glass of wine.

What was I doing in New York? Flying home from our Orlando vacation of course!

No, I was not insane and tried to save a few bucks by not having a direct flight, however you probably heard on the news, the Frozen Tundra was hit with a rather large snowstorm. There were even roof collapses from the weight of the snow.

We were all set for a Saturday departure. Mother nature had other plans. We had a change to Sunday flights via Atlanta and Milwaukee. Those were cancelled. Monday comes and our 7 am flight was delayed to 9:15 and we were flying via New York.

Have you ever entertained a kid at an airport for way too long? I am not talking hours. I am talking days. There is a hotel located in the Orlando. For convenience sake we staid there. We thought we had a one day delay.

In reality, our extra stay at the airport was not all that bad. We had good food, a comfortable bed and plenty of moving walk ways which kept Little Guy highly entertained. He was also a big fan of the glass elevator and watching us mover closer or farther from the people outside. Weeeee. This can be said even before stepping into the elevator. The anticipation is that great.

Really, it was just the NYC airport that made our delayed trip home bad. Work may think not being there to get items done is bad and when I am up early and home late catching up from today, then I may agree. But, we did get see Little Guy for his first trip to NYC. Maybe next time he can even venture out of the airport.

NOTE: I'll wrap up vacation this week.

Baby, It's Cold Outside - II

Day two of vacation (or is it really day one since Saturday was a travel day?) started off cool and cloudy. I went for a quick wog -- somewhere between a walk and a jog -- and returned back to our place just as it started to rain. Now a little rain does not make me melt, I am not made of sugar nor am I green, but this did dampen my mood. Vacation rain does not make me happy. In fact it makes me very sad.

AuntJ and Big T were set to travel over to spend the day with us. While our place is larger than a hotel room, a two bedroom condo unit, it would feel very small if three adults and two young, energetic boys were forced to stay inside and play all day. One thing Big Poppy has told me about Florida, it may rain every day but it will not rain all day. I admit, I doubted this because of the cloud coverage and how cold it was outside. Fortunately, Big Poppy was correct. By the time AuntJ and Big T made their way over, the sun was out and while it was not warm it was no longer cold.

Big T and AuntJ were great little hosts for the day at Sea World and helped us plan out a good day.

It started with the dolphins.

As you can see, despite seeing the dolphins more often Big T was still happy to see them again. Little Guy's mouth and eyes are opened up in wonder and awe. What is hard to capture on camera (darn you point and shoot) is the pointing fingers and the "oohhh!" and smiles and laughter and the trying to jump into the pool with the dolphins. Little Guy could have stayed watching much longer, we stayed here for 15 minutes, and he was displeased when we moved on to see what else there was to see at Sea World.

About two weeks ago I was speaking with a client who has two year old twins. She told me we could talk more the next day because she was on her way out the door to take the twins to Sesame Street Live. We laughed about her exciting life and how jealous I was not be going to Sesame Street Live. As I hung up the phone I thought to myself how lucky I was Little Guy has not shown interest in some childhood characters - yet.

Well there are Sesame Street shows at Sea World. We decided to go. I thought it would be a good introduction for Little Guy. Boy do I feel like a bad mommy now. Little Guy loved it. He stood on the bench in amazement, watching everything. Big Poppy and I have done plenty of things with Little Guy and have introduced him to many parts of life. However, Sesame Street or other characters have not been around us all that much (I may have a fear of create a couch potato that misses out on the activities of life).

I need to realize a little show here and there is not going to harm Little Guy. He deserves a little entertainment too.

Afterall, if Little Guy sees puppets every now and then, he may not be afraid of Shamu...or maybe a whale is something to be a little scared of.
 
AuntJ and I swapped kiddo's, Big T was a big fan of this aunt (yeah!). The Christmas tree light show held their attention (and ours) for the entire time. Little Guy is young enough that he was amazed every time the lights came back on or changed colors.
 

 
We stayed until the park closed to see the fireworks. It was cold. COLD. While walking around to find a good vantage point for the fireworks I spotted heaters. We found our spot. Big Poppy walked back a short ways to get himself a hot chocolate and a hot toddy for AuntJ and me. Between the heater, hot toddy and snuggling boys I was able to keep my blood circulation circulating.

Baby, It's Cold Outside - I

Big Poppy and I like to go on vacation. I cannot think of very many people who do not like vacation but I'm sure there are some out there. Living in the Frozen Tundra, when winter comes or after it has been dragging on a little too long we like to head to Cabo for a few days of S&R (sun and relaxing). While I am a big believer in trying new things, going to different places and having new experiences we fell in love with Cabo and decided if we could only vacation one place a year Cabo really isn't that bad of a place to be.

In reality, we normally have a couple mini-vacations (think long weekends) and a one week long vacation. I cannot wait to introduce Little Guy to Cabo but it just did not work out to fly off to Mexico this year. Yes, I am sad about this but poor us, instead of vacationing in Cabo for a week we decided to visit the Orlando, Florida area. We are fortunate and if at any time I sound a little whining about our vacation, I am not. What I may be is a little upset with a few things that have happened. However, rest assured, there are more smiles and laughs than anything else. I know we are blessed on so many levels... it all comes down to Little Guy.

Big Poppy, Little Guy and I were picked up by GrandB and GrandC on December 4 to head to the airport. The night before it had snowed. Alot. After Little Guy went to bed Big Poppy shoveled the driveway while I snoozed on the couch (Hey, at least I am honest about what I was doing and, in my defense, I had traveled for work Thursday morning and returned home on Friday. Traveling can be very tiring.). The snow was still falling as Big Poppy shoveled although it had slowed down quite a bit. By morning there was a fine layer of snow on the driveway but we had other items to attend to. Mainly getting to the airport.

We traveled to the main hub without incident and made it through security after a short wait or at least a short wait by today's security standards. There is this wonderful little thing with having a young child, sometimes the airport personnel pull you out of line and have you go through a separate line because they understand it takes longer to do things with a stroller, toddler and a carry on bag for his entertainment pleasure. Lucky us, we had one of those kind airport personnel pulled us aside. For anyone screaming unfair treatment, I have a few stories where we were not so lucky. This just helped even out some of the not-so-nice treatment's I have received (Lincoln, NE - you know who you are and that I can point a finger at one person in particular on more than one occasion -- yes, that does mean I have flown to Lincoln, NE more than once in my life -- but I digress).

The airport music is filled with holiday cheer and one of the songs I heard has been stuck in my head ever since - Baby, It's Cold Outside. The Frozen Tundra was just that as we left - Frozen. As a text message I received from a friend said:

It's freezing cold. FREEZING. COLD.

And so, as I boarded the plane I am thinking a little smugly to myself "in a few short hours I will be in Florida, the sunshine state." As I was seated on the plane, talking to Big Poppy and entertaining Little Guy I was under the illusion that while Orlando has off season and winter months that low 70's would feel like a little piece of heaven (more to come on this false illusion). After all, Baby, It's Cold Outside here in the Frozen Tundra not the sunshine state which will give us the warmth and sun we desire.

The ice was so thick at the airport we were delayed, after everyone had boarded, 15 minutes in order for a larger truck to make it's way over to our plane to help push us back from the gate. Then it was time to de-ice the plane which was another 45 minutes, again after everyone had boarded the plane. Then we were off! (QUESTION: Does anyone else find it humorous and frustrating that even though our flight took off just about exactly one hour after the scheduled departure time the flight was considered an on-time departure because the airplane door was pushed away from the gate on-time? I wonder if I could pass that kind of customer service onto my clients and set my own prices.)

We landed safely, always a good thing, collected our bags and retrieved our car rental with ease. Finding our hotel was also relatively painless and our vacation had started.

Sunday (December 5) brought a new day. Big Poppy made us breakfast (tasty!) and Big T and AuntJ drove over for the day. After a bite to eat for lunch we headed over to Sea World. Fantastic! Little Guy was so excited to see everything....stay tuned...I have to get dressed to start our next day. The boys are waiting on me. :)

Millionaire Drawbacks?

This morning I was checking on my nephew (I both hate and like Facebook. I like that I can see pictures of those far away but hate how it the means of communication for some people - which is why I log in every 4 months and ignore "friend" requests people who would ignore me on at the party or on the street and this means, in my haste I have probably ignored real friends because I just don't look at the requests...but I digress), he had tubes put in his ears yesterday. Our homepage is MSN which is probably fairly common.

Now what do you think I saw as one of the scrolling headlines?

8 drawbacks of being a millionaire

Seriously!?!

Well MSN and Katie Adams, I think if given the opportunity, I would take on those drawbacks.