Giving thanks

Some things I am thankful for/what makes me happy:

- A sister who is nosy enough to be asking me for an update ;) I love you, Honey!

- A family that loves me whom I regard with equal love and adoration.. I miss my parents and siblings so much. And it is a bittersweet holiday season for me because I am excited to be experiencing a full length Christmas at Disney... but it is so hard not being home with my family. It is both of our first time spending a holiday away from our families. *sigh*

- Christmas music! It love it. It is so soothing. And it makes me happy no matter what my mood might have previously been

- Being crafty and making Christmas cards and ornaments.

- The people I have met and the friends I have made over the past several months while we have been here in Orlando.

While I am looking forward to heading home to Mississippi, getting back to school, and settling down, leaving here is going to be hard. I am going to miss the amazing people that I have met. I have learned so much from this experience, grown so much and met people who I know I will stay in contact with. Words cannot fully express all that I have gotten out of this experience. I just know that Trevor and I will be making quite a few road trips and even a trip to Europe and Asia in the next couple of years.
I am going to miss playing at Disney was much as I want to. Working at Disney is... an adventure to say the least. Honestly, the guests we had today were some of the rudest I have ever encountered. Including a young man who called me a very unsavory name and told me I should be fired because we don't carry salsa on the condiment bar. If only you could see me rolling my eyes right now. It was quite ridiculous.
To sum it up, I will miss living down here(to an extent), playing down here, and the people I have met down here. But knowing that very few people who I am here with now will be here after I leave makes it a little easier.

Well, there is somewhat of a blog update. More like a scattered list. I will try to do better about updating, Honey. But I lack motivation knowing that no one really reads this. Sad I know. :)

Christmas Shopping, Amish Friendship Bread and anything in between

I picked up an extra shift for yesterday, so today was my only day off this week. I started the morning with an hour long frustrating phone call with Capital One. Trevor and I opened up a Money Market Savings Account with them several months ago but have never received our checks or debit card for the account. Since we will be moving home in two months we will need access to that money for school and housing needs. The first thing the man told me was our account had been frozen and we would not be able to access the account. For how long, they wouldn't stay. This really upset me. They have thousands of our money but we can't use it? That is completely not ok with me.
I asked them what we needed to do to get access to it and they said Trevor would have to go through an hour long conference call to authenticate his identity and social security. His name is only on the account as the co-owner. They said after that process they could send us our checks and debit card in the next month. Rather than go through that process and risk yet another thing going wrong, we closed our account. They should be mailing a check to Mom and Dad's in the next few days for them to deposit into our account. Hopefully nothing else will go wrong.

Trevor and I went to Magic Kingdom after lunch for Christmas shopping. Right now we have 50% cast discount on merchandise through the 16th of November. We thought it would be a good time to get some of our Christmas presents knocked out of the way. :) We bought presents for D'Lynn, Josh, Heather & BJ, and Trevor's mom at MK. We visited in Tomorrowland with some of the people I used to work with before we headed out. Paula, one of the managers of Tomorrowland Merchandise, asked me to e-mail her with my days off so that she can send it to the other managers in T-land and the scheduler so they can schedule me for some extra shifts during the holidays. I am BEYOND excited about this. I loved working in merchandise and I loved the people I worked with in Tomorrowland. The only reason I left was to have the same days off as Trevor and closer shifts. I am pretty excited about the prospect of spending some of my time in T-land during Christmas.

After MK we went to Cast Connection. We bought presents for Trevor's brother Adam and his girlfriend, and Trevor's dad. Trevor bought a bag for me and I bought a kit for making Christmas gift tags.

I am working on making part of the present for my parents. I already know what we are buying for Rachel, Winnie and Caleb. It is just a matter of picking it up. Trevor hasn't decided what to get for his other brothers, Estus and Eli. I would love to have all of the Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving even though none of our family will receive their presents until after New Years when we move home.

I am having trouble dealing with the fact that we won't be with our family's for Christmas. It will be the first time for me to be away from family for Christmas. I know that Trevor and I are now our own family but it is still difficult to adjust to it being just us for the holidays. I don't think we will have stockings this year. And most likely we won't have a tree in order to save money and space when we move home. I just hope that it still feels like Christmas. I would hate for our first Christmas to not even seem like Christmas. It would seem like such a disappointment, especially since it is my favorite time of the year...

On a different note, I used my first batch of bread from my Amish Friendship bread starter. Trevor helped me prepare it and we had a blast cooking. :) It smells so good and is now done baking. I can't wait to taste some of the cinnamon-y goodness!

Beautiful Weather and Christmas Music

The weather has been so beautiful. It is a lot cooler but not too cold. It makes working in the kitchens at work so much cooler and nicer. I love it! I just wish I had more leisure time to be outside and enjoy it. :)

I love, love, love Christmas music. And I usually force myself to wait until November 1st to start listening but I couldn't help it. With the weather change I was even more so in the mood to get the music going. So the last few days I have been listening to all of my Christmas music. I think I might try and expand my Christmas music over the next month or so. Any selections of favorites are very welcome. =)

I don't have much more time to write so that I can finish getting ready for work. Leave a comment if you actually read this, it would be appreciated, I promise! I can see that people are viewing my blog but no one, other than Honey occasionally, ever seems to comment. It would just be nice to know who is reading so that I can read your blog as well. Have a great Friday and Halloween!

Day 63 of 1001

Just a small update on my progress!

1.Go on a date with my husband once a month (3/33)
I LOVE date nights or even full days. Period. They are amazing!
2. Well, I have completely slacked on taking pictures of the two of us. I think I need to rectify this.
7. I attended a Halloween party. I don't really like Halloween at all, but I did it for Trevor. In his family growing up, the biggest holiday out of the year was Halloween where as in my family Christmas is the biggest holiday. I enjoyed the evening because I was in my sweetheart's company.
11. Bring him breakfast in bed at least once a month (3/33)
It is so special to treat him with this. He loves it and looks so happy and content(which is very rare for him upon awaking in the mornings. :)
26. Try 10 new recipes (4/10)
We've both been enjoying this one. I even have three new cookbooks to try new recipes from. I'll post more about that on another day.
31. Make new starter for friendship bread and share
Day 1 of the starter. I finally quit procrastinating and made my starter today. I can already taste the cinnamon bread! Yum!
32. Complete a Cross Stitch
Christmas surprises, maybe? :)
49. Get to my “ideal” weight
I have been working out a few nights a week with some of the girls I work with. It is much more enjoyable and motivating for me when I work out with others.
50. Start recycling consistently
Ok, so I am not a recycling pro yet or anything, but I am making progress. :)
55. Go through my full bottle of vitamins
Slowly but surely making my way through it.
59. Don’t buy any new clothes unless they are fully flattering to my body type and make me feel comfortable AND 60. Build my professional/adult wardrobe
I bought 3 new shirts and LOVE them. I feel completely comfortable and feel that they are very flattering. They are also pieces that are part of my professional/adult wardrobe. I am so excited!
79. Read for pleasure once a day (60/1001)
I slacked on this for a few days while my parents were here but I have read enough on other days that I think it makes up for it. This is probably one of my favorite things to check off on my list. :)

The little things in life...

That make me happy =)

Our vacation was good. Trevor and I were both exhausted by Monday night. We both got ADO's(Approved Day Off) on Tuesday and enjoyed sleeping late. There were still meal credits left from the Dining Plan and they would expire at the end of Tuesday, so we decided to make a day long free date. We had a late breakfast using 2 of the credits. We had some time to kill so we went to Cast Connection and Property Control(one of my favorite places). It is basically a warehouse and store filled with Disney items with mild damage or that we no longer carry in stock on property. It is all highly discounted and then we get a cast discount off of it. I got a kick out of looking at some of the furniture in the back of the store. Whenever they re-do the interiors of the hotels, they sell the furniture at a highly discounted rate. This week they were selling furniture from the Carribean Beach Resort and Fort Wilderness. :)
After looking around for a while, we headed to Downtown Disney. Trevor and I used one set of our free movie tickets from work to go see Fireproof and used what was left of our snacks on the Dining Plan for the movie.
We had dinner at Wolfgang Puck Express with 2 more of the credits. We still didn't use all of the credits but it was nice to enjoy a day long date and not pay for a thing. :)

I dreaded going back to work today. Having the last several days off was great. I could get used to not working WAY too easily. =) But once I got back into the groove of things at work, the day went pretty smoothly. After work they opened the Tower of Terror up to cast members and we rode on it several times. They kept the lights on for the entire ride and offered 8 x 10 photos for $5. We rode a few times and bought the picture from our last ride. :)

And I came home to find a clean kitchen and laundry sorted and put away. I love my sweet husband! It is so nice to come home and find some of the things on my to do list already done without me having to lift a finger. What woman doesn't like to be spoiled like that? :)

As a side note:
As I type, I am importing some music into my iTunes.




I bought this while my parents were here. And I know I will be listening to it constantly. Some of the songs I already had from different things but I was beyond excited to find that it included songs from two of my favorite older Disney Movies: Summer Magic(1963) and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band(1968). The soundtracks for these movies are very hard to find unless it is in LP form. So obviously I am ecstatic about this. I have a feeling I will be listening to the songs A LOT. 126(ish) songs of pure Disney Magic. I can always count on Disney music and Christmas music to make me feel happy, almost giddy no matter what my mood was before. I love it!

The day is here!!

The day has come for mom and dad's trip to Disney! I feel so giddy and excited, you would think I was the person who was going for the first time. :)
Their plane comes in late tonight, around 10:45pm. So once I get off work tonight, I will go check us into the hotel and make a wal-mart run for mom so that when she gets here she can just relax and enjoy it. Trevor and I bought cast member lanyards with character pendents for each of the little guys. Winnie picked Lady and the Tramp for her character, Josh picked Goofy, D'Lynn wanted Chip and Dale and Caleb picked Donald. All of the little guys except for Winnie will be getting Disney Dollars as belated/early birthday presents since they have birthdays while Trevor and I are working at Disney.
I am SO excited that I only got a few hours of sleep. And I am cleaning and running around in a frenzy trying to get everything done. Sounds pretty ridiculous, huh?
I am looking forward to having several days off and getting to really enjoy Disney as a guest. I was able to get Friday - Monday off. Trevor is supposed to have Friday, Sunday, and Monday off. I am not sure which parks we will be going to each day, I think we are just going to wing it. But, fortunately, we have learned the ins and outs of getting the most out of our time in the parks.
Well, I guess I will go find something to do before I go into work at 11. Hopefully time will fly quickly today at Hollywood Studios so that they will all be here before I know it!

Family Vacation

Ok, so it really isn't much of a vacation for me... BUT my parents and the lil guys will be coming to Disney World October 16-21(next week!).
I am beyond excited about this for many reasons. The main one being that I miss my family terribly and I can not wait for them to be here and get to see and experience some of the things I experience here everyday. It has been many, many years since my parents came to Disney World(early 1990's) so my younger brothers and sisters haven't gotten to come. That is probably one of the most exciting things in my opinion - getting to be here for their first views of the parks and helping create some of that magic for them. All 8 of us(me, trevor, mom, poppa, winnie, josh, d'lynn and caleb) will all be staying at the All-Star Music Resort. We opted for one of the value resorts because with my discount it was $100-$200 less per night than the other places which can accomodate a group of our size. During October they are also doing a special for cast members with the Disney Dining Plan. For adults it is $20.99 per night and somewhat cheaper for children(which Caleb only made by a year). This includes 1 table service meal, a quick service meal, and a snack per day. It's quite a steal considering you can't even eat at a table service restaurant for that price(unless, of course, you are dining on water and appetizers only). So we are VERY excited to be tasting some of the finer foods at Disney.
Here are some of the places we plan on eating:


The Hoop dee Doo Musical Revue! We have category one seats which means we should have a really good view of the stage. I am really excited about this one. :)




Teppan Edo of Japan in Epcot. Trevor and I ate here on our honeymoon. Obviously it was good enough for us to want to go back. ;)




The Crystal Palace at the Magic Kingdom. Mom and I talked it over and thought it would be fun to do character dining and this is what we ended up choosing. I am even more excited about the fact that I know several people who are "friends with characters" at the Crystal Palace! Which means that I might get pictures with characters that I actually know which is always a fun experience.

We have one more dining reservation but I don't think we have decided what to do with that one yet. We shall see.

Work today but long (10.5 hours) but it went by farely quickly and that always makes work 100% better. Extra magic hours were tonight and I didn't get off until midnight. It is super late and I am headed to bed. Good night!