Celebrate!

I'm so excited!
I am proud to report that . . . (nope, still have a kidney stone hangin' around). . .

that I am officially DONE with my credential classes. HOORAY!

After four long years of taking classes on and off, I finished my last homework assignment, sent it in and now am waiting for my final grades.

That being said, I don't actually have my credential yet. (curses) Still have to take all those tests - argh! But, I am going to be able to skip over student teaching, which will save me time/money.

School starts tomorrow, which always gives me the butterflies. It is clearly past my bedtime, but here I am, blogging.

Here's to the 2011-2012 school year!

Updates . . .

Curses! Another no picture blog update . . .

So life is chaos again, just when I thought I was out of the woods. So I'm on my very last credential class and I was rocking it, until . . . (dum dum DUMMMM)

Kidney stones.

That's right, I have kidney stones AGAIN. Seriously.

Started having pain last Friday, went into the doctor who told me it was a bladder infection and gave me antibiotics. When I mentioned that I thought it might be kidney stones, judging from the fact that the pain was in my KIDNEY not in my BLADDER, she blew me off. *sigh*

Started feeling better, but Saturday night, I was out for the count. I will post my whole kidney stone story as well as pics of my kidney stone buddy, Sherman. (Yes, my kidney stone has a name . . . doesn't yours?)

As for now, I am currently attempting to:

• get my class ready for school to start on Monday
• get all my paperwork ready for Monday
  
• finish all my assignments (last week's HW that I missed due to THE STONE and this week's HW)
• laundry? Maybe.
• Oh, and blog. Hee hee.

So the story of Noella and Sherman will be coming to you soon, as it is a great tale of determination and destruction ("Sherman's March," if you will).

As for now, let the chaos continue!

Brook & Ryan’s Baby Shower

 

We were so thrilled for Brook and Ryan when they announced they were expecting.  We absolutely adore the Damm-Althoff clan and if anyone needs a grandchild, it is definitely Jack and Barbara.  They spoil Luke and he’s not even theirs :)  So the Bickels were invited to the shower, even Mr. Luke (they would have killed me if I didn’t bring him) and we showed up to the Damm-Althoff Compound in the beautiful Los Altos Hills.

Barbara surprised Luke with a Nascar car that would speak and go when you pushed a button, so Luke was in heaven.  She also had a big ol’ box of blocks and legos that Luke promptly dumped out. (They joys of three year olds . . .)

We enjoyed the gift opening of course.  They were given a lot of really nice AND useful things.

Of course, after gifts it was . . . foosball time. (It’s part of the Damm-Althoff experience)

 

This game (cornhole?) we played at Brook & Ryan’s wedding last summer.  It was very readily brought out to play again.  Luke was pretty good at it, though he wanted to walk up the board. NOT okay.

 

A great shot of the patio where they held the shower – it is so beautiful.  It’s quiet and shaded and super comfortable.

By the end, Luke was done. He was so out of it.  Conveniently, I can take a pic of him when he’s standing still like this.  He was so cute in his argyle polo and his plaidy plaid shorts.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of little baby Wilkinson-Damm!

Day 4 – Hollywood Studios

On Memorial Day, we headed out early to Hollywood Studios, knowing that I had a limited amount of time.  I would have to leave the park by 3:00 to be able to drive to the airport and catch my flight home.  Stay till the very last minute was my plan!

This was the view from our balcony:

We enjoyed coffee before we left – there was a Starbucks right in the hotel! I do love convenience.

I will say that Memorial Day was PACKED. But . . . strangely enough . . . we did not get charged for parking! Don’t know how it happened, but we certainly didn’t complain!

We headed straight over the Pixar Place to get our Toy Story Mania FastPasses.  Clearly, that was a great idea because we stood in line for a half hour. To get a Fast Pass. By 10:30, they were out of Fast Passes for the day. Phew! Linda didn’t quite get the appeal until we got on the ride. And then she annihilated my score.  (Dang those Bickels!)

We went on the Great American Movie Ride which was definitely a ride and talked about movies, but I think that “great” is overstating things a bit . . .

That being said, the had Mary Poppin’s carousel horse! Cool!

I was lovin’ on all the details – including the sign posts that were identical to those at the Disney Animation Studios in LA.

As we waited for our FastPass time, we went into the Animation zone and did our Drawing with Disney lesson, in which we drew Goofy.

I’ll admit it, I teared up when I sat in front of the light box.  It brought back so many good memories and I really ached for Noella in the Days of Animation Yore, where it was all creativity all the time.

At the end of the art lesson, the teacher always asks a question and whoever gets it right gets his drawing.  I swear, I am so ridiculously competitive, especially when it comes to trivia, that I wasn’t even going to let the cute kid next to me win.

Question: At the end of what movie did Goofy briefly appear? (or something like that)

Got it? Do you know it?

I am so smug.  My hand shot up in the air while I was still drawing.

The answer? “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” of course!

So Linda, in her very Linda way, had to point out my drawing when he came over to give me his.  He was really impressed, but I said I went to school for animation, and he laughed.  What was really cool? He put his drawing over mine and they were eerily close, almost identical.  You should have seen me fluff up just as proud as I could be. 

So whose is whose?

(I think mine looks more like Pluto with teeth and a hat instead of Goofy …)

So we “goofed” around for a while – and of course, I had to find more characters to take pictures with! Love Sully!

 

Linda even did some “Singin’ in the Rain”

We had waited a little too long to get FastPasses for Aerosmith’s Rock n Rollercoaster and ended up with a 3:50 pm FastPass time.  Yikes! I really should have been leaving the park by 3:00, 3:30 at the latest.  But I would have been incredibly mad if I didn’t ride it, so the decision was made and we hovered around the return line until the clock struck 3:50.  Aerosmith is one of my favorite bands and a roller coaster with Aerosmith music?? SCORE!

TOTALLY worth it! One of the best rides of the weekend! We had an amazing time and then busted out of there like our pants were on fire.  I made it to the airport in plenty of time, caught my late flight home.

Honestly, getting in at midnight and still having to be at work bright, shiny and cheerful by 7:30 the next morning was rough.  There was absolutely no recovery time for a trip like that and I just had to suck it up and make it happen.  I’m so glad I stayed for literally every minute that I could have.  I have no idea when I will get back to WDW again, so I had to make it count.

I had such an amazing time – it felt like way more than a weekend.  It was incredible.  I cannot begin to thank Linda enough for letting me tag along and share in all of my Disney craziness.  It takes a special person to put up with all of that and she had fun too! She’s a great travel and adventure buddy.  Thank you thank you thank you Linda!

Day 3–Epcot

 

We were both so excited about Epcot, as there is nothing like it at Disneyland.  We got to the park early, but everyone else was clearly excited to be there too!

 

Our “look-there-it-is-if-you-couldn’t-see-it” pictures :)

 

Our first ride was Test Track – which was so much fun! We wanted to go again later in the day, but they ran out of Fast Passes and neither of us were interested in standing in a long line.

Because it is run by GM, there was basically a car dealership after the ride, in addition to the gift shop.  You know, like buy a car, then a t-shirt.

We have been talking about what kind of car we will get after my little Honda is done (10 years already!) and we’ve talked about some GM cars. So I thought I would try them out, take a picture and let Todd see how adorable I am in them!

The guy (okay, KID) trying to talk us into taking one home really tried to steer me away from “MOM-CARS.” Clearly, he doesn’t understand that I think MOM-CARS are super cool.  I always wanted a van . . . especially now. Those vans are tricked out! Anyways, I liked the Chevy Traverse, but it is big and super bucks!! So probably not. :)

 

Me and the Queen of Hearts – one of my all-time favorite villains

Cars 2 still hadn’t come out yet and there was Cars stuff everywhere! So we took a picture together so Luke could see Mommy and Nana with Lightning and Mater.

They finally opened up the World Pavilions and we headed over to Mexico.

 

As a kid, when Todd came to WDW, he said he doesn’t remember much except for Mexico and the “Aztec wallet” he bought there.  So I thought it would be fun to buy him another wallet.  I hunted all over the place for it and finally found it in a leather shop. For $20.  So Todd got a picture of it instead.

 

Heading over to the Vikings – had to take pictures since we study Vikings in 3rd grade.  I was going to buy a Viking shield, but wanted to wait till the end (didn’t want to carry it around) and then completely forgot. DANG.

 

In China . . .

Oh, Mulan . . . did you want to be friends with me? Really? Okay!

(I was by far the oldest person in line to see any of the characters all weekend.)

 

 

“Hug a post, Linda. It will look cute.”

See – I know what I’m talking about!

 

Next stop: Germany! We had been waiting all day (we made it till 11:30) for beer and a pretzel.

 

“I’m just getting the bigger beer because I want the commemorative cup.” Sure.

 

I just like pretzels.

 

We had a great seat to enjoy people watching and coo-coo clock watching.

 

We didn’t spend too much time in Americana-land, you know, since we live there, but we did look at a few of the items they had on display – Lincoln’s top hat, Twain’s writing desk, etc. which was fun.  And they had famous Americans’ quotes up on the walls.  Noella-the-Teacher loved this one:

 

 

Japan was fun … I love me some koi ponds!

 

As a special thank you, I decided to treat Linda to a late lunch in a nice restaurant in the Italy pavilion.  We were so excited!

 

Yummy mozzarella!

 

In France, I decided to be friends with Aurora. Never met an Aurora with a strong Southern accent.  I found that to be terribly funny. (I think she is gasping at how short my hair is . . . I know I am, looking back at these pictures . . .)

 

Stopping in the UK for . . . another beer! They had a live band that was playing some English Rock which was fun to listen to for a while.

 

It was such a great day – we finished the day off with the fireworks/water show around the pavilion.  There were so many new and different things we did at Epcot – probably my favorite day of the whole weekend.