Almost First Anniversary of Trip & Album almost done

My niece, age 9 at the time, and I went to WDW last July. We had a great time and between us and the park PhotoPass people, I had a lot of photos of our trip. I’ve been sifting thru all those photos and making album pages in PhotoShop. Since I want the album to be as perfect as the trip was, it’s taken me all this time to create. Now I have a deadline. My niece is coming for a visit THIS July and I want to have the book to give her. (Picaboo.com is a great thing!) (Like the trip being almost a year ago wasn’t enough of a deadline! Okay, I procrastinated just a bit!)

I had read all sorts of blogs before we left that because of travel discounts, there were huge crowds. And lines for all the major rides were several hours.
We were lucky and had no more than 25 minute waits for most every ride in the mornings.
Many mornings, rides waits were less than 5 minutes.

Disney had PhotoPass photographers throughout the park to take photos in front of special places like the castle. It was a great way for both of us to be in the picture.
Nicolette got a bit tired of stopping every time I saw a photographer. But I could have as many photos taken as I wanted since I prepaid. And I got a lot of great photos.

So with the album pages three-quarters of the way done, here is our trip.


(if photos are clipped off on right, click on photo to see whole picture)


Since my niece & I don’t live in the same state, I had to plan extra time to pick her up. But within 24 hours of leaving home, I was at WDW. Yeah!

I have a timeshare thru RCI, I noticed back in January of last year that Disney timeshares would be available thru RCI.

Afraid that they would disappear fast, I called my sister immediately and asked to have Nikki 4th of July week.

I was very happy with Old Key West resort. We ate breakfast in the room. The bus system is great between airport, resort and park so didn’t have the expense or bother of renting a car.

Nikki couldn’t understand why I was telling her to stand in the middle of the walkway and hold her arms above her head. Then when I showed her the photo she thought it was “cool”.


The quiche at the France Pavilion was soooooo good. When I got home I started searching and experimenting with recipes until I found one that was close.



FastPass was great for avoiding lines in the afternoon.






We only saw fireworks one night. We were too exhausted everyday to stay that long.

I didn’t know if we’d be able to meet any of the characters on our trip so I book breakfast with Mickey & friends at the Contemporary hotel. This was so worth it. We got to meet who I feel is the “Fab Five” and the food was good too.



Donald was reluctant to take a photo with me in my mouse ears. So after the first photo I took them off.

You never know who you’ll find hanging out in a back corner.



I’d been told about the Tinkerbell photo but it took a few tries to find someone who did them. Not all the photopass photographers have the camera set up for it.

An hour and a half line! For Tinkerbell! Mickey was only 20 minutes!
But TB was a must-see on her list so we waited.



The Buzz Lightyear ride was so much fun. And both mornings we were at the park, there was no line to speak of until about 11am.





On Stitch’s Great Escape there is a point where everything goes pitch black for about 2-3 minutes. This scared Nikki so bad I thought I was going to have to interrupt everything to take her out of there. Luckily at about the time I was thinking of doing just that, the lights came on and she was okay.



The race cars was good old fashioned fun. And some whiplash for me!





We had to go on the tea cup ride. I had fond memories of making my parents dizzy on this ride.
Nikki & I tried to see how fast we could get the tea cup spinning.




Mickey & Minnie!





Lots of princesses. Nikki wanted an autograph from everyone.






There were so many parades


Next to meeting Mickey, happening upon Pooh, Tigger & Eeyore unexpectedly and with no line was fantastic and so typical of our week at WDW.



I guess it was me but I didn’t find all that much interesting to see at Animal Kingdom. I much preferred the Magic Kingdom.



Although I did enjoy the safari. And as several sources suggested, we went straight there when we got to the park minutes after opening. The line was less that 20 minutes and all the animals were up ad about.
One of the photos (top left) I took caught us in the driver’s rear view mirror. I enlarged that mirror like a “zoom in” so it could be seen.






Next to meeting all the characters, Nikki’s other favorite thing was the Mt Everest rollercoaster.
We got a fastpass for it and wandered around so the wait wasn’t bad. On the ride, it was a lot of slow long ups and short downs. Not too bad for someone who barely tolerates roller coasters. Then we got to the top and went back down in reverse.
What! No way!
All those slow ups were now fast downs and backward!!!!
I was holding onto the bar for dear life and Nikki was laughing having a good time!
I didn’t kiss the ground when we got off but I felt like it!
And of course Nikki’s response was “Can we go again?”
“NO!!!!”
“Awww, why not?”
“Because Auntie Ann was screaming like a little girl, that’s why!”
So we went on the raft ride and got soaked instead.

We had a lot of rain that week but it was better than the extreme heat they’d had before we got there.

The one thing I wanted to make sure we did in Epcot was take the behind the scenes tour of the hydroponics garden. For me, that was so interesting and well worth the extra cost of the tour.

Disney Trip -some photos

I took my 9-year old niece, Nicolette, to Disney World earlier this month.
I'm still sorting through all the photos we took.
Here are a few.

More from last weekend

Here is a photo of me dancing with Luke, one of our instructors.



I love the way the mass of sequins reflects the light.

And another of John & I dancing the West Coast Swing.

Notice the "John face" aka Mr Cool.

John dancing West Coast Swing

From the yesterday's Showcase...
Here's John dancing with our instructor, Julia.
John is being cool, funky and making lots of "John Faces".

2009 Spring Showcase -sneak peak

John & I were in an all-day dance competition/show yesterday.
Here's a quick peak. More photos to come as I sort them out.

This is one of 3 dresses I made for the event. I think this one is my favorite.
And in typlical Ann style, I was finishing up the dresses at 11:30p the night before!

Oakland & San Fran

This year for our “I need a break from Chicago winters” trip in late January, we went to visit friends in Oakland & San Francisco. We coordinated this trip with a national children’s art contest that Ann was asked to juror.


Here we are on a hill overlooking San Fran.

We were there for a long weekend. So on one of the days, John spent the day with his friend, Wes.

While I spent the day with my friend, Rob.

Then we all got together that night for dinner. The restaurant was packed with a long wait time for a table. But Wes managed to talk the hostess into letting us have the “chef’s table” that they were holding for later that night. We just had to be out in less than 2 hours. Easy enough to do and we had the best table in the house.

We also went out to dinner with a number of people from Sakura who put on the art contest.

While waiting for Rob to pick me up for our day of sightseeing, I wandered around near the hotel. I happened upon a farmers market. The market was in the city’s “China Town”. This street musician was playing 2-string, bowed instrument that made hauntingly beautiful music. As I was standing there listening, he stopped and motioned for me to sit down and try it. I couldn’t make the beautiful clear notes that he did (okay so dogs were howling two towns away) but it was fun sitting there in the middle of a street market in a strange city being shown how to play by someone who I didn’t speak a common language with.

The Museum of Children’s Art where I was asked to juror the art contest was on the same street as the farmers market.
During a break between the judging and the reception, another juror and I walked around Chinatown.

We found 2 sets of Chinese dragons roaming the neighborhood. It appeared that they were “blessing” the doorways of the local businesses. At each doorway was a dance to loud drumbeats followed by the dropping of a large handful of very loud fireworks. We learned quickly to back away before the deafening fireworks were dropped!

Video from January's Dancing with the Stars

I just got this photo and video from Gail.
These are the couples from our dance studio that competed at the Dancing with the Stars roadshow in Januay.
(John, Ben, Ann, Nancy, Francois, Ben, Gail & Staci)



Gail's friend was taking a video of her & Fancois dancing and also happened to catch us dancing.
So here is a video of us at the event.

Too Cold

This was the thermometer on the back porch this morning when I let the dog out.

That's 10 degress BELOW zero! The wind chill temperature was 15 degrees colder!

And it never warmed up!

It's weeks like this that I can't remember why I like living in Chicago.

We had fun & watched a great show

We danced at the Arena in front of 12,000 people last Friday.
We thought we did a lot better than last year. But we still didn't make it past the first round.
Oh well, it was fun to do and we got free tickets to a great show so it was still worth it.
This years road show for Dancing with the Stars was so much better than last year's show.
It was great fun.

I'm waiting to see if friends have any photos of us dancing. We were on the opposite side of the stage so they had trouble getting photos.

I did miss a bit of the dancing in the professional show because I was staring at the dresses to see how they were made! Nancy, the other woman in the group who makes dance dresses, had the same problem!

More tryout details

The tryouts were held in Jill's downtown Arthur Murray studio. In the new space next door that she's recently aquired. A nicely done space and although she said the square footage was the same, it felt roomier.
John & I both left work a little early. We drove down in about a hour which for that time of day wasn't bad. The tryouts started late because a lot of people we calling: stuck in traffic. So getting downtown a bit early was a good choice.
We danced a song of swing and one of Cha Cha.
For the swing, they played the song with the chorus "Chihuahua!" from the commerical for the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua (where there's a large chorus line of dogs in Aztec headresses singing.) Dancing to that, John was singing along to the chorus, we were laughing.
Between that song and the next, one of the judges (a sportscaster) swatted John on the butt saying we're not supposed to be havng that much fun!
So we had a inkling that we might be picked...

Dancing with the Stars -2009 Road Show Tryouts

Wahoo! We made it. We're dancing at the All State Arena in January in the contest before the show starts.

Those who are in from the Schaumburg Arthur Murray:

Ben, Gail, Nancy, me, Francois, John, Staci & Ben.

Office Christmas Party

Last night, we went to my office Christmas party.

I had put the woman in charge of the party in touch with Julia, our dance instructor at Arthur Murray Studios. They arranged to have Charles and Natalie come to the party, give a demo and a mini lesson. There was about a third of the room on the dance floor for the Hustle mini lesson, a surprisingly large number!

During the demo, Charles and Natalie pulled John & I out to dance West Coast Swing with them. We’ve danced in front of large crowds before but this was a group of my co-workers and bosses. Hopefully, showing that we can dance was not considered making a spectacle of ourselves. We did get a lot of complements afterwards and we had a lot of fun.

Then we dance about every other song for the next 2 hours!
The best office Christmas party I’ve been to!

Lesson Notes

That's a lot to remember!


Foxtrot:
Jr Walks to Quarter Turn (stay close together) to Promenade to one Jr Walk to Grapevine (S S QQQQQQ) to Inside Turn (on 7, get arm up away from John’s face) , John: in turn, arm to back to lead in rest of rotation, Ann: step fwd and follow rotation.
Fwd with heal leads and back peeling foot up. Ann keep face left. Make sure when bringing feet together they are even; if off, throws off balance.

Lesson Notes

Triple Swing
Keep a strong connection. Upper arm muscles should not be moving. Practice basic step and Sweetheart with palm to palm connection to be reminded how connection needs to feel.

Hammer Lock & Sweetheart in Triple Swing
Two turns. First is a tuck turn. On second turn, lead from the core. This gives most control. John’s hand at waist needs to give a good tug lead for this turn, helps me do fast turn on first triple.

Rumba
Hold slows longer. No. Longer! Don’t brush feet.

Banquera in Rumba
Cross-body with S-Q-Q.
Slow is spiral turn. (Fwd on R, L stays on floor and twists around.)
Then unwind and close on Q-Q.
Walk S-Q-Q.
S with fast turn in and slink fwd on Q-Q.

50th Anniversary Present

30x40", Acrylic

This Fall is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. I decided to paint a portrait for them of John & I with my sister and her daughters.
Do you know how hard it is to get good reference photos with a camera on timer and 2 of the 5 people not liking to get their photo taken? And then everyone looked their best in a different photo. So I had to merge together several photos. Despite that and the tight time schedule for this painting, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.