Epcot - Day 4

For the 2nd year the Disney Company has put on an event called Disney's 2008 Alliance Appreciation Dream Week. It consisted of vendors such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Siemens and all sorts of other companies that help to make Disney what it is. They had a lovely and plentiful buffet ready for us as we walked into the reception hall. It was absolutely BEAUTIFULLY decorated. All over the tables were pretty blue table clothes with iridescent shimmering star tablecloths, a DJ booth, drinks, appetizers, and one very beautiful CINDERELLA carriage tucked just ahead of the buffet table. As everyone walked in the room we were greeted by cast members handing out Mickey ears to wear that lit up like fireworks. What a treat that was. As we searched for a table to sit at, we encountered 2 other HP employees and their families/spouses. Turns out that one of the ladies works almost in the same group as Jake but she lives in Atlanta and the other gal works in Santa Rosa facility. OH, the food was delicious as was the dessert which came later. Yes, you know me, I took photos of FOOD!!! The DJ played some great music…all Disney of course. The kids had fun, they danced and they even had a dance contest for the kids. They made it fun for everyone there especially the kids. After dinner at 8:30 everyone was escorted down to where we had VIP seating for Illuminations: Reflections of Earth. It was magnificent. There were fireworks galore, it was beautiful. We had a large dessert buffet waiting for us as well and coffee and other beverages. Disney sure knows how to put on a good show that’s for sure. EPCOT photos.


After the fireworks display at Epcot we made our way to the Magic Kingdom. The extra magic hours were till 3am and we stayed till around 2:30. WOW, what a busy, busy day. We stayed and watched the Spectro Magic parade. Not long after the parade we headed back to our resort to bed. We were so tired. See you next blog.

Epcot - Day 3

We were talking with some other guests and they said that since we were celebrating our anniversary at WDW, if we talked to the concierge at the hotel they would give us a Happy Anniversary pin to wear. It has Mickey & Minnie. So for the next 5 days we heard Happy Anniversary from Cast members and anyone else who saw the pin. We felt pretty special.

Our 3rd day was spent at Epcot. We rode a lot of rides, saw a lot of things. Sorry there is not much more, just did some rides so needless to say we didn’t take many photos. Sorry. What little we did you can see them here EPCOT from the Finding Nemo musical. They didn’t come out very well unfortunately. See you next blog.

Disney Hollywood Studios - Day 2

Hello, hello, hello! Long time since blogged. Ha-ha. Well here it is our 2nd day at WDW. We have been having such a great time. Today we ventured over to the Disney Hollywood Studios. The most fun attraction I’d say we did today was the new Toy Story Midway Mania. WOW, it was TONS of fun, not only for the youngsters, but for us big kids too! J The wait time was 90 minutes but we figured it’s hecka hot outside so might as well take advantage and wait 90 min in a nice air conditioned building. And guess what???? It only took us 30 minutes to get to the ride. I have to say those with kids and wanting to go to DHS, and do the TSMM is a MUST DO!!! It’s a 4-D midway-style game playing adventure. You sit in little cars and aim at targets and accumulate points. That was the most fun we had all day, well now no that’s not true. I think our favorite part was when we went to see the Studio Backlot Tour. We participated as ‘extras’ as crew members of a ship that was being attacked by the enemy. We got completely drenched but it sure did feel good cuz it felt like over 100 degrees out.

They have some new attractions/rides @ DHS, one being the TSM and the other is Journey into Narnia: Prince Caspian. TSM was really good as you read above but JINPC was rather boring. You go into a room, see a 5+ minute preview of the movie and then you go into another room where they have the costume & props displayed in cases from the movie. It was neat to see those things but it’s led to make you believe there was more to it. Kind of disappointing but that’s just our opinion. We’ve seen many shows and rode many rides. Another must see show is the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. It was really entertaining. It has edge-of-your seat stunts, adventure and comedy and a must see show.

We had lunch at the 50’s Prime Time Café. I had the meatloaf meal. Jake had the chicken sandwich and fries. See the 50PTC is kind of like stepping back in time to the 50’s and being in Mom’s house at dinnertime where you respected mama’s house and of course Mama. No hats, no elbows on the table, hands washed, and Please and Thank You were the most important words in your vocabulary. It was hilarious. Mama (our waitress) caught me putting my elbows on the table and she scolded me. Of course, Mama scolding me was all in fun and part of the ambiance of its environment. Playing at each table black & white TV’s playing b&w TV shows such as Donna Reed, Dick Van Dyke, Dennis the Menace…well you get the idea. Funny thing we noticed is that each show had something to do with eating in “mama’s” kitchen. J Their dessert menu wasn’t your standard menu; it was one of those old view finders that we used to play with as kids. Several dessert selections and you were good to go.

Jake with Mama

Checkin' out the dessert menu

Jake checkin out the dessert menu

After lunch we did other rides and walked around. We finally made it to the infamous The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Since me and rides don’t go well together I have a prescription for the motion sickness patches so luckily I had that or else I would have tossed up my lunch. Although I was still a little nauseated afterwards but I rested on a bench for awhile. It was 8pm and the park was closing for the day. We hadn’t had dinner yet so we opted to go to Boma @ the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It was buffet style and African food. It was so yummy. I tried things I never would have thought to try as did Jake. See here I am talking about food again. You all probably think that’s all we’ve been doing is eating. Ha-ha. Well here we are back in our room and getting ready to take a dip in the Jacuzzi to end our evening. Much needed Jacuzzi, our dogs (feet) are barking and the best way to cure that is a nice hot bath, err, uhh Jacuzzi. If you'd like to view all the photos from today, click on the link HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS. See you next blog.

Magic Kingdom - Day 1

Today was a great day from start to finish. Got up early and headed to the Magic Kingdom. We did the majority of the rides accept the roller coasters. Jake doesn’t like the feeling of not having control if he rides a roller coaster and me well…my stomach can’t handle going upside down and. Jake especially doesn’t like Space Mountain; it’s in complete darkness and doesn’t enjoy not having control. We headed over to Monster’s Inc. Laugh Factory. It’s an interactive show with Mike Wazowski as the MC. I actually got chosen to do a funny skit with one of the acts. They pick guests at random to “pick on”. I had to pick a # between 1-50 and say it aloud. He then claimed to be psychic and tried guessing my # several times. Anyway, the camera was on me the whole time for all to see as he instructed me to put my hands above my head and snort like a sheep. It was pretty embarrassing and at my expense. Ahh, the life of a guest @ WDW.

Our first “thrill” ride was Splash Mountain, a great way to cool off from a hot, hot day. Most of the thrill rides have a camera hidden somewhere amongst the ride so you have to know where they are to get a good picture. So needless to say, I knew exactly where the camera was and as we got to the 50 foot drop and I raised my hands as high as I could and took a great shot of us. That’s a keeper and will most likely go in my scrapbook. J We ordered it in 8x10; they had a special price for that and a frame. HEY, when Disney is giving out good deals…TAKE IT!

So pretty much the day was spent walking and riding and can’t forget EATING!!! We headed back to the resort after a long day of walking and went in the pools. Holy cow, we never imagined all the pools they had between our resort & the beach club resort. They have 5 pools in all, the biggest being Stormalong Bay which actually has sand around it and in it so that guests can make sand castles. The deepest it went was 8’ deep. The bigger pools closed @ 11 so we went over to the other pool by our room and were in it until 1am. We met a very nice newlywed couple who were visiting from London, England. We talked about the differences between living in America and England. It was amazing to find out that some of the same hardships of the US are also the same as it is in England. For instance, the average house price in England is about $350,000+. The prices of gas or as they call it petrol, is even more expensive than in the US. They are considering moving to America but either living in the Carolina’s or Florida. We really enjoyed talking with them and they were such a nice couple.

We didn’t take many pictures today but the ones we have taken I will upload and share the link with you all if you are interested in seeing the rest of them. MAGIC KINGDOM But we did get the Disney’s Photopass so those we can access online and when we get some of those, we’ll show you them too. Disney World has also started decorating for the Not So Scary Halloween party and we got a few shots of those too. Well it’s 1:30 and I’m dead dog tired so that’s it for today. We’re going to Disney’s Hollywood Studios tomorrow. See you next blog.

We made it to WDW

We started our morning waking @ 3 am to catch a flight @ 6:14. Our good friend Daryl was nice enough to pick us up @ 4:15 and drive us to the Sacramento airport. THANKS DARYL, we owe you one! But here we are in beautiful sunny Orlando, Florida. The home to the happiest place on earth, Walt Disney World.

We made it in, flights were good. The leg from LA to here was long, 4 ½ hours. Whew! Jake slept a bit but I just couldn’t. I was restless. But they did have a free in flight movie which was Kung Fu Panda. It was actually a cute movie; I figured it was free why not take advantage of something free. =) When we got to the airport we caught the Disney Magical Express to our hotel, got checked in and went and had…yep you guessed it FOOD!!! I know what you’re thinking; oh bother all she’s going to blog about is food. Ha-ha. Nope but I will say this we did go to the Cape May Café in the Beach Club resort buffet for dinner. It was really good. It was their Clambake night. Too bad Jake & I don’t eat clams, mussels and oyster’s cuz there were plenty and it was all you can eat. ANDREW, you would have had a feast just on those alone.



I had a surprise waiting for me when we got to our room. Jake had ordered a beautiful bouquet of flowers and had them delivered to our room before we got there. He’s such a romantic. They are absolutely gorgeous. That was the first surprise, read on.

After dinner we strolled down back to our resort by the manmade beach between ours and the Beach Club resort. On our way back we walked by a big movie screen sitting out at the beach and there was a movie just starting on the big screen. Every night they have a different movie to watch so that guests can watch a different movie. The movie tonight was College Road Trip with Martin Lawrence and Raven Simone (? spelling), Disney of course. There was also a fire pit where guests of the resorts were roasting marshmallows and making s’mores. They sure did look yummy but we had just eaten a big dinner with desserts so we had to pass. But maybe tomorrow night or another night we can take advantage of that. After all we are going to be here 7 more nights. He-he. As we continued on our stroll we came across a cute baby bunny running around checking things out. I think he wanted s’mores too!


We headed back to our room and my 2nd surprise awaited me. Jake had ordered an anniversary dessert. It was a solid white chocolate Minnie Mouse and 4 white chocolate covered strawberries. Oh were they yummy! What a great surprise. I asked if he had anymore ‘surprises’ in store and he said, “Maybe, we’ll have to wait and see”.

If you ever are going to visit WDW and you are looking to save just a bit of $, go to the website Garden Grocer and order any items you might want. We ordered breakfast items like, milk, orange juice, cereals, mini bagels, sodas and water. They came in handy as we ate in the morning in our room that way we didn't have to have breakfast out every morning in the parks. Tomorrow we are visiting the Magic Kingdom. Goodnight all. See you next blog.

Lucky 7

I was driving the Mustang the other day and I noticed the mileage read 77777.0 so I drove around the parking lot just so I could take a picture of this milestone. So when it hit 77777.7 I pulled over into a parking space and took a pic with my camera phone. LOL...corny I know. The irony of it all is that Jake & I have been together 7 years, the car is 7 years old and the mileage was all 7's. Lucky 7's. I should play the lotto.

California State Fair

Jake & I met up with the Monick family (Evan, Stephanie, and son Liam) at the California State Fair this past Sunday. We had a great time hanging out with them. We were lucky enough to witness Liam's first trip to the state fair, he's just 3 month old. He's sooo cute. He slept quite a bit but all in all I think he enjoyed being in his mommies arms and extremely content even with the temp over 100 degrees. We did our best to do things in the exhibit halls. We saw all sorts of neat things. We visited the California Counties exhibit where diverse counties compete for accolades by creating original and elaborate displays showing off the incredible and unique beauty of California. They were amazing. I think my favorite had to be the Placer county display. Each and every one of them were original and creative.

On our way to the fair we realized I had forgotten to put the memory card back into our camera so I took pictures with my camera phone. Evan took a picture of all of us with their camera in front of the huge chicken. Evan says "Now we have proof we hung out together!" Hilarious. Evan, Steph & Liam left around 4 and Jake & I had the rest of the evening to do other things. We caught The Stars of the Peking Acrobats. Holy cow they were amazing. It was cool to see the death difying acrobatics they did. I thought I was gonna pee my pants. :0 We also saw Terry Stokes, a Hypnotist. He's pretty good. He calls people up on stage and hypnotizes them and makes them do funny stuff. Sometimes I wonder if it is for real so I raised my hand to participate but I didn't get chosen. I've always wanted to do that but this is the first year I actually raised my hand. :( Oh well, there's always next year. =) I think we spent most of our money eating food...uhh junk food that is. LOL!!! But boy the Funnel Cake was soooo worth it. Yummy! There's nothing more nutricious than yummy fair food...uhh yeah right. LOL It was worth it to go to the fair this year. We have always gone every year except last year. It was weird not going last year. I have no idea why we didn't. I think we'll keep the tradition alive and continue to go again. See you next blog.

New do and scrappin too!

I got a new do...hairdo that is. I went shorter this time around. I haven't had my hair this short in a very long time. I'm really happy I did it and Jake really likes it so I'm happy about that too! =o) LOL I think it looks much better in person. I don't like photos of myself this close up but I figured, what the heck.

I aslo went scrapbooking and was quite productive there too! I got 4 layouts completed. WOO HOO!!! I'm trying to finish my disney album from last year hoping I can get the majority of it done before our new trip. LOL...yeah right! Check out these beauties. =)

Long time...since blogged

Things around here haven't been terribly exciting so I haven't had much to blog about. We had our nephews Danny & Erik for a few days and that was nice. They are such good kids. They watched alot of the Disney Channel and shows such as The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Wizards of Waverly Place, and the infamous Hannah Montana. It's amazing how popular these shows are. The twins form Suite life played Julian, aka 'Frankenstein' on the movie Big Daddy. Wow has he grown.

These past 2 weeks have flown by. LOL We have been preparing for our trip to WDW which we leave in exactly 8 days, 10 hours, 12 minutes...well as of this moment while I'm blogging. We have been clothes shopping for the past few weeks and it's been fun. We tell everyone we can about our upcoming trip. We have our days all planned out, what parks we're going to do, places we'll be eating. Some new restaurants to try. We are going to the 50's Primetime Cafe one afternoon for lunch. I can't wait to try the meatloaf. Ahh yes some of you are thinking ohh gross but I LOVE meatloaf and I don't make it for dinner here at home because Jake is NOT a fan of it. =( So I'm going to take advantage of that. We're also going to do the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Review. I'd say it will be a hoot, but in this case it will be a HOOP!!! haha. Other points of interest of dining are the San Angel Inn in the Mexican Pavilion @ Epcot. The Liberty Tree Tavern in the Magic Kingdom. And last but not least the Rose & Crown in the United Kingdom pavilion @ Epcot. LOL, here I am talking about all restaurants but we are going to take in some of the attractions to, don't you worry! Hopefully the motion sickness patches I have will help when I go on the Tower of Terror. Jake likes that ride so we'll see. Maybe I'll save that ride for last in the evening, just in case the patch doesn't work. But cross your fingers for me. =)

We have a jam packed 9 days while we're in Florida but we are going to enjoy every minute of it. The weather in Florida has been pretty moderate for this time of year. The average day forecast for when we are there says low 90's. The 10 day forecast has 92 most days. Well we'll try and beat the heat by staying cool but it is what it is and we'll have TONS of fun anyway.


We learned something new. So we have problems with teeny tiny ants around this time of year. Well they just LOVE cat food. So I looked online on how to keep them out of the food and this is what I found. If you fill a larger size bowl with water and set the cat food bowl inside it will keep the ants out and they can't get to it. I didn't think it would work but sure enough it works. WOO HOO. We originally tried moving the food bowl all over the downstairs and nothing seemed to work and then we had to throw out a full bowl b/c it was covered in the darn pesky things. But now we have a pesky free cat food bowl. We change the water every couple days so as it doesn't get icky. NOTE Ants can't swim so therefore they don't get into food. =) Tip of the week. See you next blog.

Blue Man Group member

Our friends Tom & Michelle have a friend that became a member of the Blue Man Group. She sent us this picture and I wanted to share it. It must be really neat to know a Blue Man. =) They are phenominal, we saw them in Las Vegas last year. If you ever get to Vegas or hear they are traveling in your area, they are a MUST SEE!!!

Their friend Nick is the one on the far right who tossed out the first pitch against St. Louis yesterday, and the Cubbies won.

Computer problems resolved...

Well, it happens to all of us - my computer decided to no longer participate... I have been building / trying to get it to work / scraping by a computer since November of last year. State of the art - quad 64 bit processor - 4 gigs of ram - Terabyte of hard drive space - sooper dooper video card - 2 monitors - very very fast -- HOWEVER -- it has never worked well and I was basically able to email, pay bills and see the Internet (my mobile phone can do that). Well last week one of the more serious problems came up - it corrupted my hard drive - would no longer boot and wouldn't allow me to re-install the operating system or anything - just dead. I was fed-up tried to get support from ABIT - manufacture of the main board - with nothing and finally decided just to get a new one. I picked up a moderate to high end mainboard at Fry's that is made by EVGA - it has the Nvidia 780i chipset (it was the best one that would work with my now outdated CPU and Memory). Installation was not uneventful, but eventually I have got it all to work and what a difference - my computer actually works and works well. Now to get the ABIT board replaced and recover some of my losses.

Work is very busy... Finishing my work up for FY08 Sarbanes Oxly Audits for my division and starting the JD Powers Certification for 2008. I never thought that I would get corralled into the compliance role, but it has been interesting. Wishing that I was doing more engineering stuff - but it is employment for now...

Well enough of the techie talk...

Looking forward to the WDW vacation at the end of the month. Enjoying spending time with my nephews.

but most of all, enjoying life and being very much in love with my wonderful wife Laura...

Take Care - Jake

Roseville fountains

Jake and I are taking care of our nephews Danny(9) & Erik(6) for a few days while Becky and Dan are on a 4 day Carnival cruise (lucky dogs). They're good kids, fun to be around and always coming up with something funny to say.

We took the boys over to a new development in Roseville called The Fountains, it's described on the website as Distinctive. Unique. Upscale. Fountains at Roseville is the first lifestyle center of its kind in the Sacramento region. We hadn't been there yet and I heard good stuff about it from Lisa. When we asked the boys if they would wanted frozen yogurt, they said that they didn't like it. We took that as 'We've never tried it so we don't like it.' We were right, they had never had it before. Well they were in for a real treat. So we tricked them and told them we were taking them to get ice cream and treated them to frozen yogurt @ Big Spoon. Danny's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree when he saw all the toppings you could put on it. I think he was in topping heaven. He chose peanut butter fro yo and topped it with as he put it "lots of stuff, can't remember. How do you expect me to remember"? LOL. He said it was really good. Erik on the other hand, taught us all a lesson on toppings of frozen yogurt and we learned not to mix sour gummy worms with strawberry kiwi fro yo...yeah, not such a good combination apparently. It had started to melt and wasn't eating it. Jake asked him why he wasn't eating it and he says "It's too sour". At first we weren't sure why it would be sour then I remembered he had put the sour worms in it. OOPs, poor kid had to toss it in the garbage. We offered to go back and get him something different on our way back to the car but he declined and I think it kind of spoiled it for him.
*NOTE to self, sour gummy worms & fro yo don't play nice.

As we ate our fro yo, we strolled down to the dancing water show that was taking place. They dance every half hour on the weekends and to music. It was really neat. The boys got a bit wet and Jake & I took pics of the boys with our camera phones. We didn't think to bring our digi cam. Danny said he wants to bring his baithing suit next time, he got that wet but of course that's what happens when you lay across the railing and almost stick your head into the line of fire...err..umm water!!! Today we are taking the boys back to the fountains to the Childrens Interactive water feature and having a picnic. That should be fun. What better way to spend a sunny California Saturday afternoon than spending it with 2 entertaining boys, a picnic and water!!!

Have a great weekend. See you next blog.

Hello Bloggers...

Just saying hello to all of you that read this... Laura just told me that she set it up so that I could blog too. I don't have much more to say now as I am still working. Laura is doing a great job learning all of the cool stuff that can be done in this blog - I am very proud of her and the site looks great.

Well have a great weekend, and when I find some time I will blog something...

later, Jake