Sweet home alabama

we are in or near burmingham, im not sure which. This trip has def been a very interesting one. With several wrong turns, a little bit of yelling at eachother (lol) and one driving down the off ramp on the wrong way, i predict this trip is only going to get more interesting. We stopped for the night in Tupelo MS. We got about six hours of sleep, which was nice. I drove as far as I could last night until my eyes gave out on me near the end of memphis. That was an interesting town. We started off in west memphis, which was nerve racking. Anyone that knows me knows im in no way racist, actually very opposite, but being the only white people in a part of town that has very poor black people was a little scary. We got a lot of stares, and some people were even yelling at us. Me and derek will def. never forget that experience. I think we drove through west memphis only looking straight ahead, and derek kept whispering in the car.....it was wierd, but so funny.  Hopefully today wont be as interesting.

WE LEAVE TOMORROW

It's finally here. The car is loaded, the house is clean....well almost clean. All the cameras are charged, laptop, dvd player...everything is done. I think. I always feel like im forgetting something. Today has been an amazingly busy day. And when I say busy I mean I got up at around 8 and haven't stopped, and still even writting this know that I have more to do. But the most important is done. I took lucy today and we headed to fort smith to buy a few very important things. Thanks to a friend of mine, who gave us a great idea, lucy and I headed to Michaels and got some supplies to make her an autograph book. I had planned on her helping me, but thankfully a friend of mine called to see if she could stay the night....

OF COURSE!! So as soon as we got back to fort smith and ate a very late lunch, we had to head back to Alma to drop her off. Poor thing is so tired, but she has two days to sleep. So then I got back, talked to a couple of my neighbors, which is my way of procrastinating..and then got to work. I made lucy the cutest little autograph book. Though she hasn't seen it yet, I really think that she is going to love it. I have her little part of the car all set up so she can't get bored. Her bag of movies, and toys. Her pillow and special blanky, and of course her dora doll..and her tv all set up for her. I wish I had that nice of a set up. So after we got the supplies for this, we headed over to best buy and got something I have been waiting forever to get. I decided that I better get this now since this will be the best time to use it.

Yep..its the Nikon D3000 DSLR...I never thought I would spend this kind of money, only hoped, but I finally did. And I LOVE it...I spent a good part of the afternoon taking pics and trying to get all of it figured out in my head. Its amazing. I can't wait to see what I can come up with at the beach with this. Anyways, thats my day..Im exhausted, I need a shower, and I need some relaxing time...so night.

2 days to go

Well today was the last day that i work before our trip. It's gonna be so weird not to see *L* for two weeks. And its even more strange to think that by the time that we are back in arkansas it will be only a couple weeks before Derek and Lucy start back to school....ugh...that means sleeping in and by myself mid morning walks :D...But, as for the trip. Today we finished getting the car ready to go, we finished cleaning the entire house and getting the puppies set up for their time without us.. Thank God for my neighbors who have agreed to care for the puppies and dogs. Im very worried because that is a long time to leave three week old puppies and an even longer time to be away from a dog that is as old as tiny. My biggest fear is that she passes away when we are gone. There are so many things here to worry about, ugh....i really hope that i can relax. Anyways, this was my day.. Pretty boring and uneventful. I am really praying that the next day and a half go by super fast.....

3 days til disney

3 days til disney.....

Oh wow...what a long day, but I am so thankful that it went by so fast. This was one of the most relaxing days that I have ever had. Just exactly what I needed. It kind of started off a little rough but its ending nice. I havent been able to sleep lately, and of course last night was no exception. But about five this morning I was able to get to bed. Less than three hours later was when i was supposed to get up. And I woke up in such a bad way. Ugh..I dont even really want to think about it again. I will just say this, nightmares suck.

Okay so first thing this morning I had an apt to get my hair done, so I went and dropped off lucy with her grandparents and headed that way for three hours of coloring, cutting and waxing. I have to say that my hair girl is the best. I wont allow anyone else touch my hair. She is great. Its great finding a hair stylist that you can trust. I know she will never disappoint me. If anyone lives local they much go to her. I do have to say this, I hate having my hair done. I am the most tender headed person I knw, and im sure that my Julie will agree.  next up was home for a very brief nap..lol..and then off to the nail shop. A trip to the beach would never be complete without a mani pedi...and I decided

to treat lucy to a nice little mani as well. She wasn't totally digging it too much. She was more interested in coming home to play with her little friend next door. But after some hot pink nail polish and a cute little design she was happy again, tho I did bring her back home in the middle of my manicure. KIDS!! But the pedi was so great. And the lady that did my nails had her six month old baby there for me to play with and coo over. makes me want another..lol. And now i finished making the most amazing spaghetti dinner, and ate it.......alone. Lucy is more interested in playing with her friend and derek is working on the car....still...so now after a day by myself I can't believe im going to say this, but im sorta lonely...oh well. I think I might go lay on my bed and watch a movie until thye3 rest of my family shows themselves....another busy day tomorrow.

4 days til disney

4 days til disney.....

So since I am going to have such a busy weekend with hair appointments and manis, and pedis, and lord knows what else I have to do to get packed and going, so im not really going to do much today to get readdy for the trip. Lucy is at the next door neighbors house playing, so I have some time free, and I really just want to relax....espeically since I haven't been sleeping well at night. So today I logged onto disneyworld.com and started to kind of plan our itenirary. And I was going to share today the rides that I am most excited to take Lou on. She is right at the 40 inch mark, which means that she is tall enough to ride most rides. The only one she realy can't ride is Space Mountain, but I think that is okay...I dont know that I would have taken her on that ride anyways. So here is the list of the rides I am most excited about.....

So your first trip to disneyworld would NOT be complete without a ride on

 ITS A SMALL WORLD

I remember going on this ride as a child with my dad at DisneyLand.

So this is another ride that I remember from my childhood.

CAPTAIN EO

Unfortunately I dont know for sure if I will get to relive my experience because this ride is at the epcot section of the park and it seems that those going with me only want to go to the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom but im still hopeful.

When I showed lucy this ride a few weeks ago she wasn't totally thrilled, but again you can't go to disneyworld without going on this ride.

Pirates of the Carribean

I love this ride....man i can't believe how cool this was when i was a kid

I am really excited about this ride, mainly because we not only get wet, but I cant wait to see lucy's face on the photo that you get to see afterwards.

SPLASH MOUNTAIN

I know that is gonna be scared, and im a little scared for her to go on it because if I remember correctly there is nothing holding you in, but im sure if it werent safe then she wouldn't be able to go.

Well these arent the only rides that I want to go on, but I think that if we went on these rides that our disneyworld experience would be satisfactory to me.

These are the rides that defined my disnelyland part of my childhood if that makes sense. I think more than anything about our trip, what im excited about the most is my daughters getting to experience this. We are so fortunate to have the life that we have, and often take it for granted. There are a lot of children in this country that can only dream of going to disneyworld, and im so glad that I am able to take mine. This is a trip that I have dreamed of for so long. I know that sounds way too emotional but those reasons are for another blog. Which explains why I can't sleep...lol

5 days til disney.....


My new netbook that I ordered a while ago finally came yesterday. I am so excited. I am so glad that that it came in before we left for our trip.

I supposed that I would have had it before now, but I wanted a purple one, which of course was on back order....lol. Im one of those girls that buys the car because its pretty, not because its a good car. Thats why derek wont let me go shopping for anything important alone. So I got it in and of course derek wanted to play around with it before I could. And we both stayed up until around one this morning playing around on it.

Its really a neat little gadget. I am still trying to get used to the keys. This is the picture we took last night with the webcam. I know it looks really weird. Derek looks super weird, and i look like im super fat with a huge gigantic head...but it was still neat to see how everything works. Well as for the trip goes, I really don't have much planned today. I already went to the post office to stop our mail, I am in the middle of finishing up all of lucy's bows. of course she has to have a bow for every outfit, including the bathing suites. Lucy has also decided that we need a different hairbow for each day, and we need two of each in case she wants piggies.Isnt that nice?? lol. Its so much working raising a diva. I think tomorrow we might make a special shirt and bow for lucy to wear to the Magic Kingdom. We have a really busy weekend, so hopefully it will go by fast. Anyways, so this is all i am really doing today. Nothing really special to do to get ready. Think I will go take a nap.... LoL.

6 days til disney.......

            todays adventure in packing.......

Truth be told, I started packing last month. I am obsessed with making sure I have everything that I need and want. Whether it be a specific outfit that I don't want to chance lucy getting stained up, or just something that I dont want to forget like the little fans that I got for the parks. But today im going to actually pack everything (other than my toiletries) and have it ready to go. This is an adventure because besides trying to find everything that I need, I also have three children to look after which makes this near impossible to do and keep sane. Especially since Lucy sees what I am doing and decides that she wants to wear that now, and I have to try and calmly tell her why she cant while she screams her head off at me. So I fear that im in for a super fun day. Is it nap time yet????

                  My favorite thing about packing has to be hands down my luggage. I love my luggage. I know that probably seems weird, but I really do. And I rarely get to use it, so I always love when I can fill it up and get it to ready to go. I almost feel bad for my husband because like our house, me and lucy's stuff just takes over. The picture to the right is a picture of just me and lucy's stuff. And poor derek has one little bag for his stuff. But really he doesn't need much ;)

So today im going to be going through all the luggage to make sure that I have enough outfits for us, I have all our extras, that i have all our shoes packed...its just going to be a very stressful event. But I really do love it. So...wish me luck that by the end of the day everything is ready and im still at least a little bit sane.              

7 days to disney.

7 days til disney.....

     Well since everyone in the world has decided that they are going to blog, i decided that maybe its time for me to do this as well. Though I have never been one of those people who actually thought my life was interesting enough to write about, let alone interesting enough for people to read about. But I thought it would be a fun way to track things in my life.  I really wasn't sure what I wanted my first blog to be about. I think maybe your first blog is the most important, but I could be wrong. So I decided to just jump right in and start where my life is at this point. So here goes......

All year long, I work my ass off, and I mean i work hard, to save up enough money to take my little family on vacation. Last year was the first year we took a real vacation. You know not to Branson, or to the zoo, but an actual vacation. We went to Pensacola Florida. It was heaven from the moment we got there. I loved it. But my then three year old daughter loved it even more. The picture to the right is here stepping into the ocean for the very first time. We had planned on being in Pensacola for a week and a half, but because of my grandmothers passing, after only a day and a half, my daughter and I had to drive 12 hours back to Little Rock, get on a flight to California. Talk about an exhausting time. But this year I really wanted this vacation to be amazing. One that my daughter will hopefully remember. So for her 4th birthday I decided that I was going to take my daughter to Disney World. And we leave in SEVEN days. Lucy is so exciting. I started planning this vacation over seven months ago, and its finally here. So i thought what better way to really show how excited we are I decided to do a  countdown to the days until we leave. And tell and show all of you what we did on that specific day to get 

ready. That way the time will go by faster for us maybe. So today I finally bought more ink for my printer. I had planned on buying ink months ago but those of you that know me know that I'm the most forgetful person alive. Seriously!! So I finally got ink and started to print away everything we need. I'm one of those people who is ocd about being organized in certain areas. So I printed out our sea world tickets, I printed our directions. I labeled everything i thought we would have fun doing in Daytona, I made lists of things we needed to pack, and of things not to forget. I did it all. lol. And of course, a week before we leave I still have a weird feeling that I'm forgetting something. But thankfully its nothing we can't live without. Though we don't leave for a week, I'm already feeling very overwhelmed. Hopefully that will pass as soon as we get on the road.

Well that is my blog for today. Hope my first one was good...lol.