Disney World--Days 1 and 2 (You don't have to read it, just enjoy the pictures!)

Day 1--Our family left for a fun trip to Disney World in Orlando on Saturday October 27th.  We had a 10am flight out of Denver airport with a 2 hour lay-over in Indianapolis.  The boys were pretty good travelers.  This was our first time flying in 5 years without dragging strollers and car seats.  It was so nice to only have to worry about our carry-ons, Finn's vest, and the boys.  I will admit that by the end of the day I wished we had a stroller for Finn, as we had a hard time finding the Magical Express at the airport and were walking quite a bit.  But, we did come up with an interesting solution that made many around us chuckle.  We found that we could sit Finn on top of our suitcases and wheel them all together.  He LOVED the ride and it helped a bit!  Poor kid was exhausted but was so excited to finally be on the Magical Express that he didn't fall asleep until we actually made it all the way to our room at the resort.  Miracle!  One other thing I learned this day is to never, ever have a lay-over in Indianapolis.  There is NOTHING in that airport.....nothing.  The best we could find for lunch was a place called King David's HotDogs and man they were bad.  My hotdog came only 20% cooked and I couldn't stomach it all.  I didn't blame the boys for their less than enthusiastic response as well.  We ate our buns and my chili from the top of the dog and left the rest for the trash.  It was a LONG day of travel and we were happy to make it to our resort.  We even grabbed a bell hop and paid him for a ride on his golf cart because we were just done walking.  But we had made it and we were excited for the days ahead!

On the plane--this may be the only picture from our whole trip where he has his mouth closed.

Finn was pretty well-behaved on the plane....for the most part.

Playing race cars at our layover

FINALLY!  The Magical Express

Kai's excitement!  And then the moment our bus drove under the sign that glowed
 "Welcome to Disney World" was awesome!

Day 2--The Magic Kingdom--Sunday October 28th we let the boys sleep in as long as they could.  I was quite impressed that it was a quarter 'til 9 before they started stirring for the day.  That worked out according to plan as we were able to make it to the Magic Kingdom right around 11am (which was my goal for the day).  Of course, right as we walked in there was a parade in full-swing that blocked most of Town Square and so we were stuck right there just taking it all in.  Once we were able to move up Main Street we took a hard right and headed straight for Tomorowland.  As you enter that part of the park there's a sign over head declaring "Tomorrowland" and it was at that point that Kai's feet began to slow down.  We didn't make it all that far into the land before Kai just stopped and refused to keep on going.  And then there were tears.  Poor kid was just so overwhelmed by everything.  And he was scared of what the rides were going to be.  The line for the Buzz Lightyear ride was quite short but he wouldn't budge.  So, we decided to pull a Fast Pass for that ride and head on over to the People Mover, where he could see that there were no seat belts required and nice, slow moving cars.  So, our very first ride was the People Mover.  Ha!  From there we ventured over to the Tomorrowland Speedway and then back to the Carousel of Progress before finally heading back to the Buzz Lightyear ride.  Along the way that morning I made a mistake that left me upset with myself.  I dropped Finn's Guest Assistance card.  See, on our way in we had stopped at Guest Relations and explained that Finn was more likely to wear down and dehydrate faster and that he needed to stay out of the sun.  So, they gave us a guest card that when presented would allow us to use an alternate entrance.  We hadn't even used it once and I had lost it.  Turns out that I wouldn't stay mad at myself for too long because the next day we got an even better deal, but that's for my next post!

Now, back to Buzz Lightyear.  Kai was finally less apprehensive and Finn had taken a downward spiral.  We made it through the line with Finn crying and having to be dragged and carried the whole way.  I thought that once we made it on the ride it would get better, and it did, but not much.  He wanted nothing to do with it and was more than happy to run right out of there.  So, we knew our time in Tomorrowland was done and decided to head to the slower world of Fantastyland.

I don't remember exactly the order of things from here but I do know that the boys rode the carousel and "It's a Small World" and then we took in Mickey's PhilharMagic.  It was at this show that we saw something that would be repeated for our entire trip--Finn does NOT like 3D/4D movies.  He screamed as Donald fell and cried when things jumped out at him.  It was not good.  Finally it was time for our lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern.  We grabbed Fast Passes for Peter Pan and took off to the restaurant.

Ok, for my friends who are reading this and trying to plan their own Disney journey, here are my two cents on the Dining Plan.  It's AWESOME!  And worth it if you don't pay full-price for the plan (we got it "free").  However, I don't know that I would book sit down meals in the middle of day like that again.  Your "reservation" seems to be taken a little loosely and you still end up waiting a bit for a table.  And then the meal takes an hour or so.  So, if you do have a sit-down lunch like we did this day, make sure to plan at least an hour and half for it.  That being said, the food was AWESOME and worth it.  I got the Pilgrim's Feast, which is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and it was so good that even pregnant I could it eat (and I normally can't do meat during a pregnancy).

Anyway, after lunch it was back to Fantasyland to ride Peter Pan, the Mad Tea Party, Winnie the Pooh, and then Dumbo.  After our spin on the teacups we saw the White Rabbit just taking a stroll.  We were able to race up to him and be just the second or third ones in line for his autograph and pictures.  It was our first character autograph and Kai later said it was his favorite part of the day.  Finn on the other hand wanted to be NO WHERE near the large furry animal.  This fear of his actually intensified throughout our trip and never, ever got better.  Drats!

Once we were done in Fantastyland we hopped on the train and took a ride over to Adventureland.  There we took rides on the Jungle Cruise, the Magic Carpets, and finally Pirates of the Caribbean.  The line was so short at that point (less than 5 minutes) that we walked the boys right through it without telling them what we were doing.  Finn, however, freaked the minute the waiting line got dark (which is right at the door pretty much) and Kai got nervous as we approached the ride.  In the end, Kai LOVED the ride and Finn sat next to me the entire time trembling.  The poor little guy was shaking for the whole ride.  I shouldn't have taken him on it, but you don't know until you try, right?  Hindsight is always 20/20, though.

At that point we felt good about our day and were ready to head back to the hotel.  The crowd at the park was starting to pick up for the night's Halloween party and the temps were dropping a bit.  However, both boys wanted to ride the Astro Orbiter, so we headed back to Tomorrowland for that.  We met our longest line of the day there (about 20 minutes or more) but the boys enjoyed the ride.  (My insight, waiting 20 minutes for a ride that lasts no more than 60 seconds is a bit of a let-down, but my boys don't agree, so that's good.)  And then we headed back to the resort.

That night we had dinner at the quick-service restaurant in our hotel and headed back to bed.  The boys were still on Colorado time and so we were running with that as much as we could.  On the agenda for the next day:  Epcot.

Waiting for the bus at the resort

Arriving at the Magic Kingdom

Ahhhh...the safety of the People Mover

Finn was HAPPY!

Finn got to drive his own race car!

Behind us (making sure we didn't get bumped)

It's a Small World (forever known as the "Happy Boat Ride")

Possibly Finn's favorite ride of the whole park--the carousel

My favorite picture of the day--trying to pull the sword out of the stone.  Reid just happened to take the picture at the right moment where it looks like even Finn is trying to help instead of just trying to climb up, which is what he was really doing!

Tea Cups!

Our first of many autographs!

Dumbo!

On the choo-choo

Aladdin's Magic Carpet

Can you believe it?

It's been a bit over 5 years since I started this blog and can you believe that while I was trying to get our Disney stuff up I discovered that we've run out of storage space?  Well, at least photo storage space.  And I can't post about Disney without pictures, so now I have to figure out what to do.  I'm hoping Reid has some suggestions for me.  I've turned the first 2.25 years into a family book already, so maybe we take that down???  I don't know, we'll see what we come up with and then I'll get Disney up as soon as I can!

Snow

It pretty much always snows here before Halloween.  And normally, it's a pretty decent storm.  The day before Boo at the Zoo, we got our snow.  It wasn't a huge storm, but it was enough that the boys spent the morning begging to go out.  So, before school I let them get a little time in the snow.  The both ended up with wet shoes and socks.  Note to mom:  Put their boots on!

Halloween 2012

Since we were going to be at Disney World for Halloween this year, we decided to take the boys to "Boo at the Zoo" for trick-or-treating.  We had originally planned to go the Saturday before we left for Disney, but Finn's costume didn't arrive in time.  Finn was insistent that he was going to be an elephant this year, and after not wanting to wear a costume at all last year, I wasn't sure what to do.  I was concerned that he wouldn't put the elephant on at all and that we would have wasted the day and the money on the costume.  But we decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and made plans to go the Friday night before Saturday morning's departure.

The day was very cold and I was worried.  In the morning I explained how cold it would be to the boys and gave them the choice.  And the both really wanted to go.  So, before Kai got home from school I got Finn layered up in long johns, shirts, sweaters and sweatpants.  After picking Kai up at the bus stop we got him equally layered.  Then I threw some snacks in our bags and off we headed to the zoo.  We put the final costumes on in the parking lot of the zoo and then headed in for trick or treating.  It was cold--but the boys did well.  I was surprised that only about half of the zoo was open, so it didn't take long to cover all of the candy stations, and then we snuck into a building for an animal show that was fun.

Finn was terrified for the first 45 minutes.  Any costume that involved a full mask (where you can't see the person's face) had him totally freaked out.  I ended up carrying him for quite a bit of our trek.  He finally calmed down with the armadillo from Texas Roadhouse gave him some candy.  For some reason, that seemed to be ok.  Since it worked, the armadillo was nice enough to repeat the act all while avoiding actually looking at Finn, and that seemed to be our biggest turning point.  Funny, huh?

On our way out we heard another family discussing making another round of the booths.  If we weren't hungry and cold, that would most certainly be the best way to get your money's worth out of the event.  But for us, it was fun and the kids got to trick-or-treat.  So, win-win!

I wish I had taken more pictures, but I spent a good part of the time holding a screaming Finn and the other part of the time herding and trying to keep the three of us together.  So, I guess this is it this year!

Spider-Man and our cute Elephant  (note the open-mouth smile....that's Kai's new thing)

Trick-or-treat

There was one building you could go through and learn about recycling and meet some animals.  Kai almost touched this snake!

At the animal show

He's 3!

Finn turned 3 years-old last week.  I can't believe how fast he is growing up!  It's funny how when Kai turned 3 how he seemed so much older, though.  Maybe it's because Finn is the youngest for the time being. I don't know.  But anyway....we celebrated his birthday rather simply.  I had won a gift certificate from our local CF chapter for fundraising for Great Strides that just happened to be for a bakery.  Since it was won through our CF fundraising, I felt it was appropriate to use if for Finn's birthday cake.  The bakery actually turned out to be really nice and the cake was quite yummy.  Admittedly, I was nervous when the lady taking my order didn't even know who Mater was, so I was pleasantly surprised with the results.  We started our "party" with dinner from Arby's (I wasn't up for cooking that night), and then we topped it off with our yummy cake.  After that, Finn had a few presents to open.  We kept it really simple, and yet everything was a big hit.  Finn is in love with his police car, as well as his Mickey Mouse microphone and Cars drawing book.  For such a low-key event, I was happy that it was such a big hit.

I love this look of pure excitement!

Singing for Daddy

This week Finn had his 3 year well-child visit.  He measured in at 36 1/2 inches and weighed 27.5 pounds.  Geez, he feels a lot heavier than that these days!  :)

Happy Birthday little man.  We sure do love you!

Difficult Decisions

After Finn's diagnosis with Cystic Fibrosis it seemed as if all of our plans for our family had been shattered and thrown out the window.  While we had never intended for Finn to be our final pregnancy, it seemed that our hands had been forced.  The knowledge that all of our children had the potential to struggle through life with a difficult, progressive disease was enough to make us question every plan and dream we had ever discussed.

Over the years we have had several conversations about expanding our family, and yet we had never come to a solid, definitive conclusion.  It often seemed that we were on different pages, and the timing never felt right.  In some ways, it felt as if we were gambling with our children's genetics--and we're not gamblers.  I've heard many CF parents say that they feel the decisions regarding future children have been decided for them the minute they receive a CF diagnosis.  In that instant you feel that you lose your agency and the decision has been made for you.  After Finn's diagnosis, that's how I felt.  And while I've never struggled with infertility, I all of sudden could understand to a small degree what that must feel like.  Every friend that announced a new pregnancy (facebook or real) left me heartbroken for days at a time.  Sometimes I regret to admit that I'd even cry (heck, I still do).  As time passed and all of my friends with babies Finn's age continued to expand their families, I decided that every "congratulations" I shared was going to be heartfelt, or not shared at all.  So, sometimes it took me days to absorb and process and then be able to honestly say "congratulations".  I'll admit, even then I wanted to say something like "You don't know how blessed you are not to have to deal with a life-threatening genetic illness."  Or "I wish I could get pregnant and not worry about the outcome, and just know that it will turn out well, but I can't.  You don't know how lucky you are."  I grew to realize that I am no longer naive.  Not every pregnancy ends with a healthy, happy baby.  And every time I heard someone say, "I don't care what it is, I just want a healthy baby," I thought to myself, "You're just saying that because you're supposed to, not because you really mean it."  Because honestly, I said it and I didn't mean it.  Of course my babies were going to be healthy, I was never worried about that.  And I don't think that anyone truly can be, until they have an unhealthy baby.  I'm not saying that there can't be a level of concern or that they haven't thought about the what-ifs, but worry at the levels and depths of a CF parent?  Nope, no one can know what that feels like until they've had a pregnancy of their own end poorly.

The first year after Finn's diagnosis I remember experiencing a near-constant, somewhat frantic feeling of "I need to have another baby now or I'll never get another chance."  Some other CF moms have shared those same feelings, and in hindsight I think it was my way of wanting to do it over to prove that I could do it right.  Not that I had done anything wrong that resulted in Finn's disease, but I still wanted to correct it.  And it wasn't that I wanted to replace Finn.  There is no replacing Finn.  I think it's just normal to want to experience "normal" baby-dom.  Whatever "normal" is these days.

Over the last year I've heard several opinions from moms of CFers and there are as different and varied as they can be.  There are some who feel that they will not let CF control their lives and they will push ahead and deal with whatever may come.  There are others who adamantly state that to bring another child into this world, knowing that they have a 25% chance of CF is "selfish".  I've thought a lot about this statement and while I can see where it's coming from, I see it coming from a place that does not acknowledge the hand of the Lord in our lives.  See, what causes CF are known as genetic mutations.  But I KNOW that the Lord makes no mutations.  Every thing the Lord makes is perfect and just the way He intended it to be.  Finn has CF because that's a challenge that will help both him and our family become more Christ-like and learn the things that we need to learn in order to return to live with our Heavenly Father.  End of story.  But still, where did that leave me on future family planning?

Slowly, but surely, my heart began to change.  I clearly remember thinking at one point that this was it.  We were done.  Two kids was manageable (remembering that one has a progressive disease and requires more time and work than your "average" child) and even could make the financial side of life relatively easy (once again, whatever that means these days!).  I began to think of all the things we could do now that we were out of the baby stage.  There were trips to take, areas to explore, concerts to attend, and family camping trips to be had.  Somewhere along the way, though, my heart began to seriously yearn for another little tiny baby to hold.  I know most women get baby-fever at some point, but this was really intense baby fever.  This was the kind that would leave me crying at night because I knew it was just beyond the reach of my fingertips and yet was something that seemed impossible to grasp.

Slowly this yearning turned into a feeling that there was another baby out there for us, but that the time wasn't right.  I knew that there were things we needed to work on in our family first.  Over this past year, I feel that we have made good progress on some important issues, and that without that progress we would never have gotten the answers we needed.  After months of fasting and prayer it seemed we were both finally on the same page and we were both ready to put some serious trust in the Lord and what may come.

So, I guess without any further ramblings, we introduce baby Jones #3.  Our own little miracle baby of sorts.  We are anticipating an arrival sometime around May 4th and we couldn't be more excited!  This pregnancy can't go fast enough if you ask me.  I can't wait to meet this little one and hold him/her in my arms.  I'm already so grateful to Heavenly Father for the many blessings that He has sent us, with Kai and Finn being two of the biggest, that I feel entirely inadequate to receive this wonderful blessing from Him.  I guess that's why I've struggled to announce this publicly.   Saying, "I'm pregnant" just doesn't seem to do this any justice.  This is so much more than that to me.  And I'm so incredibly grateful and excited!

10 week ultrasound done 3 weeks ago
 (sorry it's blurry--our scanner is down so I had to take a picture of it instead)

Kai and Kindergarten

This past week Kai had his first class field trip.  He was excited to go with his teacher's morning class to Wishing Star Farm.  They seriously spent 3 hours at the farm!  Kai had a great time and was so proud of the pumpkin he picked out.  He is so anxious to carve it into a jack-o-lantern that I just don't have the heart to tell him that it's a tad soft and a bit on the lighter side for a pumpkin (I'm guessing it's not too fresh on the inside. :()  He loves it and that's what matters!

Also this week was our first round of parent-teacher conferences.  I'll admit that I wasn't sure what to expect, but I came out very impressed with what he is learning and what is going on in the classroom. I have volunteered in his class twice over the last month, and so I think his teacher is feeling more comfortable with me (she is super-shy and  has a hard time talking to adults) and that makes me feel better.  I'm hoping that by the end of the year she'll feel free to share with me anything that she needs to.  Anyway, she started the conference by pulling out Kai's work.  She showed me a one-inch binder that she keeps especially for Kai (with his name printed on cute paper on the spine) for a sampling of his work and art throughout the year that she will then gift to the parents at the end of the school-year. How awesome is that!  She also pulled out his journal to show me handwriting samples from the first day of school through to the present, and I was really impressed with just how far he has come in a short two months.  Finally, she pulled out his assessments.  When I was in the classroom last week I noticed that they were pulling kids out on an individual level to do assessments, and so I was very curious about this.  The first thing she noted was that in terms of reading, reading comprehension, and math Kai scored a 0.8.  Ummm....that number didn't look good to me.  She went on to explain that meant that when the school year started Kai was on the same level as a kid in their 8th month of Kindergarten.  Ok, I thought.....not so bad.  Then she told me that he scored the highest out of all 31 kids from her 2 classes.  Ok, not going to lie, it was a proud mommy moment!  She went on to talk about watching his progression throughout the year to see if he would qualify for gifted testing at year's end.  She did warn me that it's awfully hard for a kindergartner to get into the program and that in order to even qualify for the test he would need to score a 2.5 on his assessments.  Yikes!  He has a ways to go, but I'm sure we can get him there.  And if not, that's ok, too.  I'm awfully proud of my little guy and he sure doesn't need a label for us to all know that he's a "smart cookie" (Ms. Korte's words, not mine).  After that we ended up flipping through the remainder of his assessments.  Kai scored 100% on every.single.section.  Well, he struggled with only one section--segmentation--but that is one that we've never really introduced to him, so that's understandable.  We talked about it and agreed that we would work on it at home with him, and she also said that they just started working on this in the classroom and she didn't think he would have a hard time picking up on it.  We'll see.  I HATED phonics as a kid and always struggled with it.  I never understood the rules.  I just memorized my words--just like Kai.  So, we'll see!  :)  We finished with talking about his assessments for the first trimester (which ends right before Thanksgiving) and she said that since he has already demonstrated mastery of the requirements she's not even going to reassess him.  Fantastic!

I also wanted to mention that last week the school had a program called "Kindergarten Preview".  Kai was so excited about this evening as it was a chance for him to bring me to school and rotate around to all of the different specials so I could see what he was learning in art, technology, counseling, PE, library, and music.  It was a fun night and I was impressed with all of the teachers, especially the ones that knew the kids' names right off.  (which most of them did)  I had another proud-mommy moment when the librarian found me and asked if I was Kai's mom.  When I answered in the affirmative she told me that Kai had told her he was going to be an astro-physicist and that she believed him because he was really that smart.  She also told me that she has a son in middle school who takes the bus over every day to help her out in the library and that Kai is his favorite kid.  This made me smile, and also helped to explain who this "Cameron" was that Kai has come home talking about.  So, not only does Cameron enjoy Kai, Kai really enjoys Cameron.  Her comments made me proud and watching Kai in his specials "classes" that night made me realize just what a good kid he is.  He has his moments, and I think Ms. Korte deals with them more, but for the most part he just loves school and everything that includes.  He says his favorite class is PE.  I'm sure one day in the not too distant future that will change but, at least for this week, that's his favorite.

We sure do love this little man!