A Disney Story

Disney, 2017.

The wife and I have been wanting to hit up Disney during Halloween for a number of years now.  The Trick-or-Treating (or really, the get a whole shit ton of candy to make up for your entrance fee in just a few hours), The special fireworks and the parade.

Truth be told we just love Disney and every single time we head to California the two of us, at the very least, hit up Downtown Disney to walk around and browse the stores then eat dinner at the Jazz Kitchen and catch the fireworks before we go back to the hotel and, eventually, head home.

We also both love Halloween and try to go all out and hit up a lot of local stops every single year during the season so we have been waiting to combine the two seasons for quite some time.

The wife found the dates that Disney labeled as "Special Attraction" and booked it for the ourselves and the children and it just so happened to fall on my birthday.

Disney does not disappoint, it is truly a magical place and I hope to raise my Toddler and the future baby serge properly so that they also love going to Disney and just enjoying a day hanging out with moms and pops.  I guess only time will tell if that happens or not.


So we get to Disney and there are 5 of us.
Myself, the Wife and Toddler and the two 12 year olds (ours and a nephew).

The wife and I wanted to take the toddler to see all the Cars stuff because that is what he is into and we decided the 12 year olds could go off on their own as one had a phone like device and we could keep in touch.
We would meet up for Dinner and finish the evening together.

So, we split and started to enjoy our days.
The toddler loved the Mater "cow" ride and made me ride it with him multiple times.  In fact, the 2nd time I recorded him during the entire ride just to have his reactions because he had so much fun doing it.
We also got to go meet Mater and McQueen and get our pictures taken with each which was pretty enjoyable even though the toddler was starting to get tired and, thus, moody.

We walked around a lot and eventually headed over to the original side so we could look at more and start the candy gathering.

After we filled a couple of bags the wife decided that she was starving and we went to get in touch with the 12 year olds.
No answer.
No answer
No answer
After about 30 minutes the wife starts to worry some.  We can't get a hold of them and her phone is acting up so if they try to call us it won't be successful.  We contact the nephew's mom so that she can use her tracking app and it is not getting a signal.

I decide that since our 12 year old loves the Indiana Jones ride we should head over there because there was a good chance (better than 50%) that they would end up over that way at some point because he would want to hit up that ride multiple times.
We wait around and nothing so the wife heads to the "Lost Parents" area to report that even though they aren't lost we were having phone issues and couldn't contact them and to have them call me if the kids got worried and went there.

Meanwhile the wife is calling her sister to help out and asking me if I have seen them and at this point I hear them announcing that the ride is down for maintenance and will be up shortly (this explains the lack of line which I did not notice until now).
So I'm pacing back and forth with a sleeping toddler in a stroller and the wife is starting to freak out when the boys walk up to me like nothing happened.

This was about an hour after we started to try to get in touch with them.

I ask them where they were and it turns out they spent the last hour on the Indiana Jones ride because it broke down when they were about half way through.  We couldn't get in touch with them because they were not receiving a signal because of where they were stranded.

From there we hit up Dinner at the Jazz Kitchen, watched the fireworks, the 12 year olds got a TON of candy and then we saw the parade and went back to the hotel.

Out of everything, other than watching the face of my toddler, I absolutely loved the fireworks and the Halloween presentation.
This is something we want to do again and probably by ourselves to truly enjoy the entire experience without having to worry about diapers, tracking children and every other distraction that comes with bringing a bunch of brats along.


TLDR:
Can't find kids
Go to kids favorite ride
They show up because they were stranded on said ride
Everything worked out
Happily ever after

Disney Family Pics

These are all of the professional photo's taken at Disney via their Disneyphotopass where they have camera people who will take pics of you and your family at certain landmarks then they scan a card and those pics get uploaded online.

Then, if you want these photo's you have to pay for the privilege.  $14.95 just for a download or you can pay other fees and get printouts mailed to you or a CD with all your images.

I didn't feel that $14.95 was worth it for the 7 whole photo's they took of us (and that includes the duplicates as you can see below, though if you look the duplicates all have a very minor variation like someone's hand moved half an inch or slightly different light shading - whatever) so I decided to just go through my cache and save them to disc instead.

I've still got about a million other pics to post - so this will be considered part two.

Please go check out part one of my photo bomb series of Disney Photos!

I warn you - I've got some half naked ugly fatty pics probably coming up lol!

A grrouchie Disney Vacation

Well, it's about time I throw some pictures up from our Disney Vacation.

There are some others that I don't have access to so I might be making a Part Two post at some point.

Phinneas and Pherb (???) dancing

Hot chick dancing with the peeps above

Damn I'm Sexay

AHHHHHHHHHH

Snagging the Gold Tooth

Pumping Gas

At the Pumps

Lightning McQueen

More Lightning McQueen

Lightning McQueen (again)

Riding the red-neck Voiced Mater

The Man keeping him down

Sand Boobs

Hey Ladies!

Decisions Decisions

The Best of - The Worst of - Times

I just got back from Disney and had an amazing time.
Some things I used to love I fell in love with again and I grew closer with my fiance and child and am looking forward to spending the rest of my life with them.
Not having them in the same room with me this evening is going to be very lonely.

I will throw some pictures up and do a write up at a later date.
However....


Two days ago I checked my Facebook and saw that I lost a friend.
Those who know me know I have talked a lot about Splitter and his writing.
When I first discovered him we used to talk a lot and I felt like I really got to know him.
He fell ill and it ended up being cancer.
Two days ago he lost the battle.
For those who pray please send them towards his wife who has lost her best friend and soul mate.

grrouchie thoughts with photo fails

At the beginning of June I decided that I was going to be a lot more attentive towards trying to slim down so that I can look fabulous for the wedding and while only a week in I have been successful.  I'll talk a bit more about that tomorrow as I want to get back to progress as a weekly post and the 1st was a Saturday so WTF right?

Poor Edward

The kids dad has actually been showing up and trying to be in his life a little bit more often recently which could be good or bad.  I'm under the impression that he is filling the kids head with some things but I'm not there for any of it so I don't know.  Last night (for the 1st time in several months) he said he wished his dad could live with us so that we could all be a happy family.  We had to explain to him that it won't happen and everyone is happier because of it and also that if his dad lived there we would not all be a happy family - I'd be 100% out of the picture.  I think he understood.
He then went on to say that when his dad lived there he got straight A's and he had a horrible year after his dad left and has to repeat 2nd great.  So, we had to explain that while his grades were better (he never had Straight A's) he just had a bad year and adjusted poorly but he showed a lot of improvement near the end and we are both very proud of him for that.  This is why we have summer tutoring lined up and will be helping him out over the summer as well.
I'm fairly certain his dad is the one that put the whole "straight A's when he was there" thing into his head as a "see, you were better off when I was there" type of thing.
This is going to be the most frustrating part of my whole life and I hope it gets better over time (hope he wakes up before the kid decides he wants nothing to do with someone who is going to be so negative all the time).

Oh please give me the Strenght to deal with this situation :)

One of the "last straws" that caused me to finally decide to leave Pennsylvania permanently was the insane weather in Erie while I lived there.  My last winter had an overnight Ice Storm that put about three quarters of an inch of ice around my car and it took me about 45 minutes to break open the door so that I could get the car running to melt the rest of it.  Yes- Remote Car Starter would have been an amazing thing but I didn't (don't) have one.  While I'm enjoying winter evenings in the 50's and 60's and have friends complaining to me because it's still snowing in March and April I am reminded that I made the right choice because real winters suck.

I don't miss this shit

Disney is just 5 work shifts away at this point.  We are doing our last minute prepping and picking up some things that we need.  We will buy a bunch of stuff to fill the cooler Tuesday evening and then weds morning we'll buy some Ice to pack into it for the 4-however many hours it is going to take to get there.  Our plan is to leave around 8 am and hope that the kid sleeps for most of the ride over.  I've learned over the last year that having a 7 year old sit in the back seat of the car is something that takes a lot of patience to deal with.  They want to be involved in every conversation and hate quiet and boredom.  I'm considering charging up my 3DS, my PSP and my Kindle Fire to give him something to play with over the course of the drive.  Between those there should be something to keep him occupied and quiet most of the time.
On the PSP I can load some movies - and I can do the same with my Kindle Fire.  There should be enough battery life to last until we get there (and then we can start charging everything).
I'm also thinking about bringing a video game system for the downtime in the hotel room - not really for video games but to watch a movie or two.

I bought these new headphones for the car ride!

The last important piece for vacation was taken care of when my fiance got her brother to take care of the dog while we are gone.  His request was we buy him a harness so he can take him to the park as his kid loves to go to the dog park and loves to play with the dog.  So, she is off doing that today while I'm wasting time on the internet, playing video games and reading comic books.

Lets hope he doesn't fun my secret stash of chocolate again!

I'm almost done with Avengers vs X-Men and then I can start on Marvel NOW.  I'll be done before vacation starts.
I've also started playing Skyrim again.  I'll probably never be into video games like I used to be, it's harder for me to find some that I really want to keep playing so I'll stick with games that I can dump hundreds of hours into and still able to find new things to do.  I've only bought 2 new games this year and when I pick up Skyrim Legendary Edition that will be the 3rd.  I used to do that before a month was over lol.