Where A Kid Can Be A Kid

On Friday night our family was invited to Chuck E. Cheese's in Bel Air for Tasha's birthday party. Tasha is Kinzie's friend from school. Here is a picture of Kinzie and Tasha at Kinzie's birthday party, back in October. We had a great time at the party!
And of course, what is a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's without a stop at the photo booth... it only costs one token.

... a small price to pay for an original piece of artwork drawn by Mr. Chuck E. Cheese himself!
We last visited Chuck E. Cheese's and his photo booth back in December of 2007.

Kinzie was just two years old and we were still seven months away from getting married... (not even engaged yet!)
Here are a couple more shots from the photo booth:

Our big girl!

Kinzie and mommy!

I Heard I Was In Town

Laura and I made a "long-weekend" trip to Nashville, Tennessee a couple of weeks ago (sans kids) to visit some old friends from college. I attended Belmont University from the Fall of 1998 through the Spring of 2001 and continued to live in Nashville until early 2004. Over five years later, I still have a lot of good friends down there - mostly Phi Delta Theta fraternity brothers. As soon as we got off the airplane and got our rental car, we headed over to my friend, Garth's, house. He and his wife, Laura, would be our hosts for the weekend - for which we were very grateful! After briefly settling in, we hit the town to meet up with friends.

On Friday night, we had a great time at the Varsity Grille and the Red Door Saloon. It was quite a switch for us to be out till almost 4:30am!
After some Saturday afternoon recovery time, we hit up the Embassy Suites hotel bar (where Blair was staying), Pie In The Sky for dinner, followed by a visit to the Riverfront Tavern... capped off with a final stop to the "World Famous" Lonnie's Western Room in Printer's Alley. It was great to share with Laura some of my old stomping grounds from my college days.... and another post-4:00am night!

Here I am with Garth, who has been one of my closest friends in Nashville since we were both Freshman at Belmont back in 1998.

It was great to have Blair in town to hang out with us too! He is a big fan of Laura's. "You look just like Sara Evans!", he always says.
Sunday morning included a trip to Sam's Sports Bar & Grill to watch the Ravens lose to the Vikings (I used to watch every Ravens game at Sam's), a trip to Sonic!, and some relaxation at Garth & Laura's house after two straight long nights out.
I'd just like to, once again, thank Garth and Laura Click for opening their home to us while we were in town.... also, to Laura, thanks for taking some great pictures and sharing them with us!
Check out their blog too!

-Bert

Kinzie's 4th Birthday!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... So the blog has been on hiatus for a while now. Even today's post is about an event that took place over a month ago! Better late than never.
For those of you who were unable to join us for Mackinzie's 4th birthday party, these photos are for you!
Each year, Laura strives to make Kinzie as cute as humanly possible on her birthday. Many people still talk about the shiny, sparkly silver dress from her 2nd birthday. This year, Laura really outdid herself and made this puffy, colorful tutu all by herself. It was pretty awesome!
We celebrated Kinzie's birthday at the Bounce Party N' Play in White Marsh.
Kinzie had previously attended her friend, Ava's, birthday party there back in January - in fact we blogged about it way back then.
This was the first year that Kinzie was able to invite some of her friends from school and we were very happy to have them join us.

Of course, the usual family members were in attendance... including Uncle Play-Doh!

The Bounce Party N' Play is a really fun place. Its basically a small warehouse painted in bright colors and housing some of the largest moon-bounces you've ever seen!

Most of them require a lot of climbing, crawling and maneuvering to get through them.

The kids really enjoy it... almost as much as the adults, who are also welcome to join in the jumping fun!

Baby Maeby was such a good baby all day! We were at no shortage of people willing to hold her throughout the party so that me and Laura could participate in the jumping fun.
Here our friend Tana is taking her turn with Maeby.

Kinzie's friend, Tristan, from church, had a great time!

This was probably my favorite moon-bounce there: the giant slide!

.... at the top of the large staircase was two huge slides... as Kinzie demonstrates in these photos.

For the bigger kids, there was an over-sized boxing ring. Me and Will duked it out like we did when we were kids.

Grandpop had a great time too, although he may have wore himself out a bit!

After almost 2 hours of jumping fun, we were treated to some snacks and cake.

... it was a pretty packed little room, but all the kids were hungry and thirsty after all of that excitement.

After eating, Kinzie opened her gifts.

Here are Kinzie and her cousin, Emma.

It was a really great party! I think that everyone had a great time and we brought Kinzie into her fourth year with style.
-Bert

Maeby's First Ravens Game

Our little baby Maeby turned four months old yesterday (August 13th). Her big sister, Kinzie, was in Virginia for the week, so she got a special treat....
... a trip to M&T Bank Stadium to watch the Ravens first preseason game of the year! The official Ravens photographer came through our section and snapped this picture. Its then made available online for purchase with a Ravens frame to put on a shirt, or mug, or whatever. I chose to rip the picture from the website - gotta love the 'print-screen' option! - and post it here on our blog for free!
Maeby was a good baby all evening. She was really interested in the game and all the excitement for the first hour or so, but then she eventually got a little tired and cranky. She slept for about 30 minutes and by the time the 3rd and 4th string players were scrubbing it up in the fourth quarter we were all about ready to head home.
Great win - by the way. Any time, preseason or not, when we get to stick it to the Redskins is a good time. Hopefully the 23-0 win will precede another great season for the Ravens.
I love being able to take my girls to Ravens games - but it is strictly a pre-season thing. The regular season games are a little too intense for my little girls.
Laura took a lot more pictures, so maybe she'll post them later.
We leave this evening to pick up Kinzie. We're very excited to have our big girl back soon!

The last Disney Park & the last Character breakfast

We picked MiMi up from the airport on Wednesday evening. (yayy!) Then Thursday for dinner we headed back to (you guessed it....) Margaritaville! We aren't sure who got more of our money during this trip Disney or Buffett haha...
Here's daddy and his two girls waiting outside...

daddy in his glory...and the brainfreeze that came with it haha...

And here's daddy with his youngest in front of Jimmy's plane...

Then Friday we did our last day at the Disney parks! We started off at Holleywood Studios where Bert auditioned for Aerican idol.....

He didn't make it, but thats because the lady was a crazy woman (enough said ;)) ....

We went to playhouse disney and as you can see Kinzie liked this alot!

It was a really cute show and Kinzie had a front row seat

We got to meet Buzz LightYear and Woody... in the line to wait there were many photo-ops!

Oh no, Kinzie! Look out!!

Of course daddy thought he could do it better than kinzie... haha

She was not very excited about being attached to a rocket and flying all over the neighborhood

then we met Woody!

and Buzz...

heres the whole gang

outside was a green army man (geez, he had to be hot!)

Then we took a long hot boatride over to epcot... we walked around the world and met a few lovely friends... such as belle in france :)

Mackinzie LOVED her! "She is soooo beautiful"

In Germany we had to make Grandpop jealous by stopping for the best soft pretzels EVER!

The whole walk around the world, Kinzie kept saying "when are we gonna get to China" because she reaaaalllly wanted to meet Mulan. When we got there...there was no Mulan, but we bought a beautiful umbrella to match Kinzies fan (see previous charleston posts). The ladies working there told us Mulan would be out shortly. Here is the umbrella and they write her name in chinese on it....well.... at least we hope it says her name haha...

Then Mulan came out!

Mulan was fun :) She was showing Kinzie how to peek out of it like they do in the movie

After a few rides, we wanted to head back to Morocco to try to meet Aladdin...on the way in Germany we got to meet Snow White!

When we got to Morocco we waited 20 minutes for Aladdin and jasmine to come out and then the photographer told us they actually wouldn't be coming out for another 45 minutes (forget that!)

So Bert and I did a spaceship ride where it feels like you are actually in a spaceship going to outerspace. It was crazy! I was a nervous wreck in line for this! Then as we are standing on our spots about to get on.. this lady in front of me asks her husband "Isn't this the ride a man died on" (WHAT!??).... then as I sit in my seat, the 10 year old boy next to me kindly shows me where the barf bag is but asks me nicely to turn my head the opposite way if I do need to... you know... haha... so my job in this ride is pilot (nice, right?) so during the ride it tells me to push some button or something or another and since I was spending my time freaking out instead of listening i had no idea what to do... so the little 10 year old boy pushes my button for me and sarcastically says "This is why woman should not be allowed to drive!" hahhahah.... what a funny little kid!! :) Anyway... I survived! And it was pretty fun!

Then we took the hot boat ride back to hollywood studios....Kinzie was sleeping so Mimi sat outside with her while Bert and I road the Aerosmith RocknRollercoaster twice and then we got on the tower of terror twice (we used fast passes from the previous visit a week ago and no one noticed.... Bert felt like the man!.... and as he said.... we were..... "stickin it to the mouse!"

So then the next morning we got up and headed to the Contemporary Resort to have breakfast at Chef Mickey's.

We got to meet Mickey.... goofy...

Minnie....

Pluto...

and Donald Duck!
This was the closest we could come to Minnie holding Delaney. You can see how thrilled Maeby is haha...

heres daddy, donald, and the girls

And MiMi and Maeby

And Mimi and both her girls

We decided to head to downtown disney one last time after breakfast to give us our Disney experience closure .... heres daddy and his girls with the pirate

And Beautiful Mackinzie with her Minnie Mouse ears :) I love this picture :)

So we are done with our 3 character meals, and our 3 hopper days at Disney. We are spending just a couple relaxing (and for bert - working) days before we head back to Maryland on Wednesday! It was a WONDERFUL vacation in which we fully spoiled ourselves and our girls! But we do look forward to being home and spending time with our friends and families! We miss you! See you soon!!

Swimming in Hudson & More Disney!

Our family enjoyed yet another busy, fun-filled weekend. After having Laura's side of the family in town last weekend, it was time to hang out with some of my side of the family - cousins, primarily.
My cousin Casey recently bought a house in Hudson, Florida with her boyfriend, Brian, and this was our first opportunity to visit their new home and spend time with them. We spent most of our time in their pool!

Kinzie was a wonderful swimmer, as she always is, and Maeby really enjoyed her second time ever in a pool!

More pool fun...

... Laura took a lot of pictures of the pool fun!

Kinzie was the Queen of the Nile on this poool raft.

... and a mermaid with her noodles.

Maeby practiced jumping in the pool, with my help.

... and not to be out-done, Nala displayed her pool-jumping abilities.

And Mackinzie finally convinced her mommy to join in on the swimming fun.

Casey was happy to finally have another 'Rode' girl in the family.

.... and Nala wanted a 'taste' of the action.

We ended our Friday night with an exciting game of 'Motor Mouth' - a board game from 1990 based on the speed-talking guy from those old 'Micro-Machines' commercials.
We had a great day on Saturday comprised of more swimming and lots of grilling out. There were also lots of games like darts, shuffle board, and Wii Bowling. It was definitely a relaxing weekend in Hudson and it was great to catch up with Casey & Brian.
On Sunday morning, Laura and I got the girls up at 5am and we hit the road back to Leesburg. We dropped Maeby off with Aunt Pat and swapped her out for my coustin, Artie, for the day. Laura, Kinzie, Artie and I headed off the Disney's Animal Kingdom to start off a day at the theme parks.

As soon as we entered the park, we stumbled across Stitch! He liked playing with Kinzie's pig-tails while we took their picture. Our first stop at the park was the Kilimanjaro Safari. We saw lots of wild animals, including a white rhino standing and eating no further than 4 feet from our vehicle. It was awesome!
While at the Animal Kingdom, we also enjoyed the Festival of the Lion King show and the Finding Nemo Musical.

While strolling through the "jungle" we came across Baloo from "The Jungle Book" and took the opportunity to add his autograph to Kinzie's "sign book", as she calls it.

Baloo even taught Artie the proper way to scratch your back up against a tree.

After a rather huge fiasco, Kinzie opted not to participate with the Dinosaur ride and it was probably for the best because it was a pretty scary ride. Instead she mustered up the courage to have her picture taken in front of the T-Rex skull.

Kinzie's bravery only took her so far... she made it inside the theater to see "Its Tough to Be A Bug!" - starring the characters from "A Bug's Life".

We all had a laugh taking pictures in our funny bug-3D glasses...
... but after about 5 minutes of stink bugs, bee stingers, giant grasshoppers, and smokey-fake bug spray, Mackinzie had had enough and she wanted out - immediately!
I guess our next showtime there will have to wait until she's a little older.

Our next stop of the day was Disney's Hollywood Studios where we met "Sully" from "Monster's Inc.".

Unfortunately, Sully's hands were too big to autograph Kinzie's "sign book", so we settled for a picture.
It was also unfortunate that the park closed at 7:00pm. We definitely would have liked to enjoy more of the rides and shows yesterday, but time just ran out too quickly - although we were able to do and see a lot, including the Aerosmith Rock N' Roller Coaster, the Tower of Terror, the Beauty & the Beast show, the Voyage of the Little Mermaid show, the Great Movie Ride and the Backlot Tour. We were also able to catch the new American Idol Experience finale and see some guy named Kevin Dees sing "Go The Distance" and win a "dream ticket" to the front of the line at any real American Idol audition. It was a very cool show altogether and very much like watching American Idol on television. Hopefully we'll make it back to Disney Hollywood Studios one more time before we leave Florida so that I can take the opportunity to audition myself!

I'll close out this blog post with one final picture of Mackinzie, rockin' the pink camo stroller and having another great day at Disney!
-Bert

a little chit chat from Maeby