Time Keeps Marching On

I can't believe how fast the summer has gone by and how busy we have been. Since we got back from Disney we have been pretty busy. Beside my normal stuff; Weight Watchers, which has been going very well and walking, I'm up to 7.5 miles for my long walk each week and I walk 23.5 miles a week right now, I have been getting ready for our cruise that we leave on a week from today. Hard to believe we made the reservation 555 days ago.

Riley spent the night with us last weekend and we all had a great time. This car set kept him and Baapa busy for a long time. He really liked that we gave him a shoe box to store everything. The next day we went out to do errands and had some more fun, even stopped at Panera for a bagel.



Today Dan and I went out to Downtown Disney to have breakfast at my new favorite place. Can you guess where that is Andy?


I'm sure you got it right. It was Andy's idea to come here while we were at Pop Century and it is one of his best ideas to date. It is nice getting there early and no one else is around.

We walked around a bit after we ate and then went into a couple of the stores before we headed home with stops at Wal-Mart, Books-a-Million, Lowes, and Publix. Didn't get home until almost noon.

Long Weekend at Disney

Spent five days at Disney and had a great time. This picture pretty much sums up the whole weekend. Riley hadn't wanted to get near the characters the last several times we had visited but this time he was really getting into the whole thing and giving Pluto a hug was just the icing on the cake.


Here is just a quick list of what we did for the five days we were there.

- Checked in on Wednesday at the Pop Century Resort.

- Got rained out so couldn't go swimming.

- Thursday was Blizzard Beach, we ended up leaving just as it was getting very crowded, about 1400.

- Andy and Nikki did the Summit Plummet, 120-foot vertical free-falling slide, can you say wedgie.

- Cross Country Creek (lazy river) was a big hit with the kids, Riley especially liked the cave.

- The bobbing pool, Melt-Away Bay was very crowded but we had a good time.

- Friday I did my 7 mile walk because we didn't have to leave the resort until late.

- Earl of Sandwich has a breakfast menu and the sandwiches are delicious.

- Disney Quest hasn't changed much but Riley was able to do lots more things then we thought he would be able too and he loved them.

- Dinner at Jiko in the Animal Kingdom Lodge was fantastic. I would recommend it to any and everyone. It is pricey so I don't know when we will go back but so glad we got to enjoy it on this trip.

- Typhoon Lagoon - voted the best water park by this group.

- Typhoon Lagoon Surf Pool; be afraid, be very afraid or at least be prepared. No glasses, nothing around your neck, not holding small children, we made all these mistakes and came out in one piece finding everything we lost.

- Shark Reef; swim with the sharks and non-swimmers can watch from the underwater viewing area, this was Riley's favorite thing.

- Character Breakfast at Chef Mickey's is the best I have been too. We saw Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Pluto plus had a good meal.

- Kaleigh has moved into the "I don't like the characters so don't let them near me stage."

All in all this was a great trip and just doing the water parks at this time of year was the way to go. Can't wait for our next visit, Dan and I are going again in October for the Food and Wine Festival and the Race for the Taste 10K.

Tammy's Graduation

I was sorting through stuff before putting it back into the computer after the rearrangement and I happened upon these slides and I just couldn't not scan them. So here you go a trip back through time.

Tammy did wear a dress at least once in her life.


The shed and Dad's motorcycle.


And a couple of the ceremony.


Hope you enjoyed this trip.

Another 10K Down

Today was my second official 10K and everything went pretty well for me. The race itself had some problems starting with getting into the park and parking. We didn't realize we had to pay the day fee for Moss Park and I'm guessing most people didn't know because traffic came to a standstill and it took us 28 minutes to get through the gate. After that it was smooth sailing.

We checked out where everything was located and I got my transponder for the race time and headed over to the 10K start. The race ended up starting about 20 minutes late because of the gate fiasco.

When we first started I was dead last for the 10K because everyone else started out running and as you know I'm a walker and I don't run for anything anymore. The course was two laps and the forerunners in the 10K passed me when I hit 2.13 miles so you know they were moving. I think the overall winner finished in about 32 minutes.

The course was pretty nice, flat, fairly smooth and mostly shaded. The only problem was there were six water stops and by the time I got to stop 4 and 5 they had run out of cups or water so I wasn't able to get water. I was very glad to reach the sixth stop and see cups of water on the table. The finish was only about .2 miles after that so I finished up strong. My overall time was 1:27:14 which is a pace of 13:53 a mile and that is right where I wanted to be. It is a bit faster then my everyday workouts but that is to be expected.

Just so you know, even though I started out last I ended up passing about 6 or 7 other participants because I was doing a steady pace and they were run and walk, run and walk and they just got slower and slower.

After the race Dan and I headed home so I could shower and then it was off to the commissary. It doesn't pay to be three hours later than normal. It was very busy and ended up taking us about two hours to shop. But now shopping is done for another six weeks or so and that is a nice feeling.