Disney World for Dad's 60th

As I said in the long layover post, my dad turned 60 on November 15, and his one dying wish was to get the whole family together. So he and Mary Anne set everything up and flew us all to Orlando. And when I say all, I mean all of us. Me, Christopher, Jason, Jennie, and Emily, and all the spouses and kids. There were 17 of us all together. Dad rented a huge house just 10 minutes from Disney. The house was "rock-and-roll" themed, with pictures of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and other rock legends throughout every room. Very fun, just to go along with the fun-ness of Orlando and Disney.

The first day (Monday) was dad's birthday, so we all surprised him by wearing matching shirts which featured his face wearing his favorite Goofy hat, and a big "Happy 60th Birthday" over it.

Yes. We were that family. With matching shirts. And it was awesome. But mock it as you may - those shirts made it really easy to find the rest of our group. You know how I have a knack for wandering off and losing groups. I found somebody from the family every time. So that first day, we stuck together in the Magic Kingdom and traveled as a herd. Here's all of us on Small World:

You can see Dad in his Goofy hat there on the right. :)

We were so glad we were able to take a week off from work and make it all the way from Australia to be with the family for this. We had a lot of fun and I know it meant a lot to Dad that we made it (and survived it - a 46-hour journey with a 15-hour time change kinda messes with your sleep pattern).

And it would have been really sad to miss stuff like this:

Because that's just priceless. Oh, speaking of Ty, you need to watch this video. Normally I'd just put a link here, but I know you're lazy and you won't click on it and since I really want you to watch this, click play:

I love the slow motion part. Isa made that and we crack up every time we watch it. By the way, this is what happens when you ask us to babysit (Jason and Christy were on the Tower of Terror).

And here's another pic of Ty with Dad on the race cars. Dad never touched the wheel once. Ty drove the entire time.

So overall, super fun trip. Dad, Mary Anne, thank you for putting this all together and for making it possible for all of us to be there with you.

When you wish upon a star...

Honeymoon

We're back from our honeymoon!! It was amazing. Most of the pictures are up on Facebook now, but I'll post a few here to show you all the cool places we went.

Our honeymoon had three parts. The first part was Disney World:


It was so much fun. It was freezing cold, but that kept the lines down in the morning. Big thanks to Isa's friend Tom who works at Animal Kingdom and got us in for free each day. We rode everything from Space Mountain to the Tea Cups. :)

Next stop was Landon and Mel's house in Fort Lauderdale. They're good friends of mine from Del Sol and were kind enough to open their home to us for the weekend. They're awesome. We took out their beach cruisers and rode down to the beach.


And we did a little house shopping.



The last part of the honeymoon was a 12-day cruise. We started in Miami, took two days at sea straight to Aruba (we were next to Haiti when the earthquake hit) and then went to Cartagena (Colombia), Colon (Panama), Limon (Costa Rica), and Grand Cayman. It was pretty darn fantastic. We were excited not only for the itinerary, but one of my friends was the shopping guide on the ship (we had worked together in Alaska last year):



This is us sitting on a Divi Divi Tree on Eagle Beach in Aruba. :) We. Love. Aruba.



Check out the size of this flag in Cartagena! Can you see us below it? We're teeny!!



I still can't believe we went to the Panama Canal! That was so cool to see and so interesting. I HIGHLY recommend it.



We hiked through a rain forest in Costa Rica. We saw monkeys, sloths, and lots of other animals. We ended up on this little beach and we climbed out on this palm tree.



Our last stop was Grand Cayman. If you've been there, you know there's one thing everyone MUST do: Swim with the Stingrays. We went to Stingray City and we loved it! They were so much fun to play with. Apparently, if you kiss a stingray, you get 7 years good luck. With Isa and I just recently married, we thought starting out our life together with 7 years of good luck would be a great start.



That brought us back to Miami and we hopped on a flight back to New York. Now we're getting back into real life, with Isa in school and me getting a temporary job here in the City. (We have a surprise plan for the Summer!) :)

Thanks for reading! See you again soon.