New Disney Countdown–137 More Sleeps!!

Unfortunately I had to make the very difficult decision to cancel our Disney vacation last Thursday evening.  We were scheduled to leave for the airport in less than 12 hours and I’d held off making this decision as long as possible.  Hurricane Irma was still a frightening Category 5 and the word ‘catastrophic’ was in almost every newscasters vocabulary.  Nobody really knew where she would make land but since she was wider than the entire state of FL I knew it wouldn’t be a wise decision to continue with our trip.  While millions where trying to get out of FL, why would I take my daughter and willingly enter this frightening situation?

Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the easy thing to do.  Poor Hannah cried and cried when I shared the news with her as I’d sheltered her from news and pictures of Irma so she was blindsided by my news.  Oh the tears….from both of us!

She was a trooper though and I know she handled the news better than Mommy!!  The following morning when we woke up and Irma had been downgraded to ‘only’ a Category 4 I was suddenly second guessing my decision.  (What was I thinking second guessing???  D’oh!!!)

When I took Hannah to school Friday morning and then continued on to work, over and over again teachers, friends and co-workers were thrilled to see us and expressed how thankful they were that we hadn’t gone.  Me too!

Anyway, Disney gave us a 100% refund for our trip and Southwest gave us a travel credit for 100% of our flight costs as they hadn’t actually cancelled our flight.

The great news is that Hannah and I have already rebooked our trip and will be heading to Disney late next January for an awesome Mommy-Daughter trip….without Irma!!

Thanks to all who have checked in after noticing our countdown in the sidebar.

I’ve never posted about our Disney Cruise from earlier this year so my new goal is to get a Disney fix by working on those posts soon.

Enough Already!!!

(I pause from the cruise posts to share this with you.)

This morning as we drove to Ange’s I glanced in my rear-view mirror and started to howl!  This is what I saw!

Yes, the date on this post is correct.  It’s March 26th but we’re still in ‘deep, deep, deep, deep snow!’  (Couldn’t resist the ‘Frozen’ reference!)

The good news is that temps are supposed to begin climbing tomorrow and I’ve convinced myself that we’ve seen the tail end of winter and spring is on it’s way!  (Yes, I’m in denial!) 

Anyway, Hannah and I will soon have an extra 10 minutes to ourselves each morning when she doesn’t have to put on: snow pants, her winter coat, hat, 2 scarves (the second is a Hannah addition as it’s really windy where she waits for her bus with Ange) and mitts.

So long winter.  Don’t hurry back!

Castaway Cay

(Friday, February 28, 2014)

Friday morning we woke to our first cloudy day since our trip began.  Thankfully it was still dry as today was our day at Castaway Cay (pronounced Castaway ‘Key’), Disney’s private island.  After breakfast we prepared for a day of beach fun!  I’ve heard a lot about this beautiful island and was excited to see and experience for myself!

We popped back to the room to get our beach stuff and Hannah took the opportunity to hide on Miss Gisele so she came in and found her.  I love that my clever little girl still thinks she’s ‘hiding’ when she’s under the covers.  So sweet!

We met up with Tonya’s family and made our way off the ship ready for a day of beach fun.

The characters headed off the ship too!

We stopped for a few pictures with our beautiful ship in the background.  We are so thankful for the friendships that were formed this cruise and we continue to keep in touch.

When we arrived at the beach I asked Hannah if she wanted to try out Pelican’s Plunge and she was all for it!  That’s my girl!!

Go Hannah!  Go Hannah!!

Our ship from the top of Pelican’s Plunge. I still love the look of the Disney ships!

After Pelican’s Plunge Hannah and I headed into the water to play with Jacob and his parents.

Unfortunately soon after that the skies opened and the rain didn’t stop for a long time.

We decided to head to Cookies to enjoy a BBQ lunch and hope that the rain would pass.  Lunch was delicious but the rain continued so we, like many others, chose to return to the ship.  Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to return to Castaway Cay someday and enjoy all that it has to offer!

A quick shower for our feet and then we got in line. 

This was one time that there was longer lines to board the ship but it only made sense as hundreds of people decided to board at the same time.   After we’d been in line for a few minutes Hannah told me she had to go to the washroom so we left the line and quickly headed towards some buildings I could see close by.  Unfortunately when we got there there weren’t any washrooms.  Uh oh!  One of the crew members took a look at Hannah’s little potty dance and quickly ushered us up the gangplank reserved for crew members only.  After scanning our Key to the World cards we went through security and the kind crew member ushered us to the nearest washroom.  Thank you!! 

As we were in the washroom I could hear Cruise Director Clayton announcing a number of changes they were making on the spur of the moment to accommodate the extra passengers onboard.  ‘Frozen’ would play in the main theatre (yes, we were tempted!) and characters would be appearing around the ship greeting guests. 

Hannah and I were walking to our stateroom when suddenly Goofy was there with nobody but his companion with him.  Hannah was thrilled as Goofy is her favourite character!!  He immediately began interacting with her as you can see here.  A wonderful moment for sure!!

‘Hannah Red Riding Hood’ with ‘Wolf Goofy’!

Yes, these are the moments that make our Disney time so special and truly they happen often to us and to others!  It’s these little, unexpected moments that cause me to fall in love with Disney over and over again!

Ice Storm 2013

Hannah and I went to a friend’s Christmas Open House on Saturday, December 21st.  We go each year and often there are 20+ families who come and go.  This year….3.  The reason was they were calling for freezing rain and freezing rain is one of those rare weather predictions that will keep even we hardy Canadians indoors!  The party wrapped up much earlier than normal and Hannah and I slowly made our way home.  We carefully shuffled down their driveway that now imitated an ice rink and slid to our car that was parked on the road.  Slow and steady was our motto going home. 

Freezing rain isn’t something we get a lot of and especially in the quantity that they were predicting.  We made it home safely and went to bed, not really sure what the night would hold.  I made sure we had flashlights at the ready and woke a few times in the middle of the night as sleep was fleeting due to the storm.

When we woke up Sunday morning it was a whole new world outside!  It was beautiful and yet sad all at the same time.

Trees like this were everywhere.

When I opened the blinds in front of our sliding door I noticed it was brighter than normal.  A glance to my right quickly showed me why.  The normally 2 stories tall cedars of my neighbours were bent at a 90o angle and now resting against the back wall of the house behind us! (Sadly they’re still that way now even though the ice is gone.  More victims to the ice storm that will need to be cut down.)

I was thankful that we had power although we lost it as soon as we arrived at church.    We’re on the same grid as the church so I knew our home was in darkness too.  It was a quick service and then Hannah and I headed to Nana and Papa’s to check on them as I knew they’d been without power for a while.  They were fine and warm as a gas fireplace was keeping their home warm.  As Hannah and I left the power came back on at their place (not our home yet) so I filled the car with gas (thankful to find a station with power) and we headed to Walmart.  Their power had also just come back on there so once they opened we did what every good Canadian does who has been without power for a number of hours:

Hannah and I had dressed up to go to church a couple of hours earlier so since we were at Walmart and nothing was as normal we did what every family does in the middle of a blackout – we had a family photo shoot done!  LOL!!  I had an appointment booked for us for a couple of weeks later but we just moved it up spur of the moment and it went really well!  (A few that I didn’t choose)

We wandered the store, had lunch and then did some grocery shopping, hoping by the time we returned home that the power would be back on.  I kept calling home to check our answering machine but it wasn’t picking up so I wasn’t sure if we had power or not.  Thankfully we did and it had been on long enough to make our home toasty warm.

The challenge with an ice storm is that the slightest breeze can bring down wires again so I was at the ready for it to go out again.  Sure enough, shortly after midnight it went off again.  Since I have sleep apnoea I sleep with a CPAP machine so no power is not a good thing.  At 2am I was on my iPhone, looking into batter back up options for CPAP machines.  Thankfully I eventually fell asleep and slept okay. 

The power was still off when we woke up in the morning so our adventure began again.  Our house was warm which I was thankful for.  Hannah quickly found out that Mommy doesn’t do too well dressing her without lights as she ended up with 2 socks on the same foot and her pants over her head!    Lots and lots of giggles during our adventure!

It was make-up by candlelight with Hannah being mommy’s big helper.

We were finally ready and it was time for mommy to go to work and Hannah to go to Ange’s.  Thankfully she had power.   Unfortunately so did my office as we have our own generators.  The entire downtown area where I work was in blackness….except for my building.    Two days before Christmas, you know I had a ton of things I could have done but alas it was a normal work day.

In the end our power was out at home for 11 hours that day and flickered for a bit again that night but then it came back for good.

I am so thankful for the many, many men and women who worked days and nights on end trying to get power back for everyone.  Our outage was mild compared to those who were out for 10 days!!!  I can’t imagine!

One of the neat things about this storm was the way the trees changed each day as the weather changed.  The first day it was this:

Then changed to this on a day when the sun came out

and things changed once again when the snow fell.  One time I looked in the back seat and Hannah was blinking and blinking.  I asked what she was doing and her response was, ‘Oh Mommy!  It’s so beautiful it makes me want to cry happy tears!’  LOL!!  It truly was beautiful though!!

The ice has now melted so the threat of power failures is behind us.  Phew!!  Now it’s crazy low freezing temps and a snowstorm headed our way that will be keeping us on our toes.

All I can ask is, ‘When does spring arrive??’  This has been one crazy winter already and it’s only January!!

Phew! Now That Was Some Crazy Driving!!!

Saturday afternoon Hannah and I headed to visit friends who live about and hour from us.  There were flurries in the air at home and nothing was really forecasted but whoooeee….what blew in was freaky and BEAUTIFUL!! I think this may have been the worst storm I’ve ever driven in although I will say due to the slow speed we were driving and it being daytime I never felt in danger or frightened.  We just took our time and enjoyed the beauty of the snow and laughed a lot!  For about 30 mins of our drive we were moving between 8 and 12 kms/hour (6-10 mph) according to the GPS!

This is what we were seeing as we drove along.  Beyond beautiful!  Along this stretch of highway there are tall buildings lining each side of the highway but we couldn’t see them even though there were only about 200’ away!  Only the GPS gave me any idea of where we were.

I called the friend we were going to visit to tell her we’d be delayed (normally about a 15 min drive from where we were at the time) and can you believe it wasn’t snowing a flake there?!!  This was a weird snow band being brought in over a lake so one moment you’re in the sun and the next moment you’re in the midst of a blizzard!

It was one of those storms when I had to do the ‘Wiper Snap.’  I’m guessing most Canadians have experienced that little dance at least once or twice during their driving years.  The Wiper Snap is when you reach out while the wipers are going and try to grab hold of one when you can reach it and quickly lift it away from the window, allowing it to snap back onto the window to break off the accumulated snow and ice.  It was a must as this was what our window looked like and there was no way I was stopping! 

Our car was quickly becoming covered in snow so Hannah and I played with the snow in the car. 

We drove out of the storm as quickly as we drove into it and it was clear sailing after that.  Our normal 60 min drive took about 2 3/4 hours but we arrived having had a fun time together and with stories to share!  Our car in turn arrived with a coat of ice and snow, telling it’s own tale of our blizzard adventure!

Thank you Lord for keeping us safe during this crazy drive!

A Glorious Long Weekend!

The weather for May has been ah-ma-zing!!!  The long weekend was no exception and Hannah and I enjoyed spending as much of it outdoors as we could!  Saturday was a picnic with Hannah’s best friend Ben and his mommy. 
(The friendship these two share warms my heart!  They love, love, love to be together and even though we live more an an hour apart from one another we still see one another often.  We recently had a time when our two families were together 4 weekends in a row.  Yay!  On the 5th weekend I asked Hannah what she wanted to do for something special and she immediately shouted with a huge smile, ‘Go to Ben’s house!!  Love that.) 
We went to a local conservation area with the plan of enjoying a picnic lunch together, running and playing fun in the big open space and then finally beach time playing in the sand.  On the way there the kids heard us say, ‘beach’ and they immediately began to cheer and yell, ‘Yay!  Swimming!’  We quickly told them that we’d have fun in the sand but would not be going in the water.  It’s only May and the water would be freezing! 
After eating the kids enjoyed running around and we chased them a bit.  A tickle fest ensued and it was giggles for everyone!!
As you can see, with the exception of one other family a ways off, we had this entire picnic area to ourselves and it was perfect!  Lots of room for the kids to explore and have fun!
‘I’m ready to catch the ball Ben!’
Ben’s daddy had bought some cool glider style planes for the kids and we all had a ton of fun playing with them.
Bubbles are always a hit.

It was the perfect opportunity to grab some pictures of Mommy and her girl together!
My little love and I.  Yes, no better way to spend a day!!
You may remember from the beginning of the post about our beach chat and how it would be sand play only.  After the picnic we hopped into the car and made our way to the beach area while reminding them that this was not a water time.  We unloaded kiddos and toys and Hannah, Ben and Auntie headed towards the beach while I finished something up at the car.  I was about 3 mins behind them and I laughed so hard when I arrived at the beach and saw this:
LOL!!  Auntie quickly confided that it was far too hot on the beach not to go into the water.  I asked her how her humble pie was tasting as I knew I’d be eating my share soon too!  Heh!!  The temperature on the beach was 30oC which is pushing 86oF.  Yup….definitely water weather!  We were shocked at how crowded the beach was and how many people were in the water.  This is about 6 weeks earlier than most of us even consider going into the water as 6 weeks earlier this lake would still have bits of ice floating on it!

And, what better way to end a day of picnic and beach fun than with ice cream?

Hannah and I spent the night at our home-away-from-home, Ben’s house and then Sunday afternoon hopped in the car and headed 3 hours north to Nana and Papa’s trailer.  The long weekend fun was continuing!  (By this point in the weekend the battery in my camera was toast so these pics were taken with my iPod Touch.)
Once again the weather, especially for nothern Ontario was ah-ma-zing!  As we arrived the thermostat was reading even higher than the day before at 33oC/91oF…in mid MAY!!!  We unpacked the car, changed and headed to the beach!  Heh…twice in one weekend!  Tor Tor was at the trailer for the weekend too and she was happy to play in the water with Hannah.

We stayed with Nana and Papa overnight enjoying quiet family times together and it was perfect! 


Monday was a day outdoors with beautiful walks buy by then the camera was away.
It was one of those weekends that felt like we’d had a real rest and enjoyed so much time together as well as with family.  Add the glorious weather to that and well, we couldn’t ask for more!