Our Disney World Vacation

We recently went on our fourth trip to Disney World and it was fantastic. We thought this might be our last trip for awhile, but both boys enjoyed it so much that I'm sure we will be back sooner than we thought we would.


This time we pulled the boys out of school so we could go during Disney's off season. Even though there was a pile of homework to do when we got back, it was so worth it. The lines were pretty much non-existent and the weather was just about perfect. It was a little too cold for swimming and we had a little rain on our last day, but other than that it was wonderful for walking around all day at the parks. It was so nice not to fight crowds and really enjoy our time there. One night at Magic Kingdom the boys rode Buzz Lightyear 6 times in a row. There was no line at all. They got off the ride and got right back on it. Amazing! 


I decided to try and make a little video featuring some of the pictures I shot and the ones we purchased through Disney Photopass. I also added in some video here and there, but I have to get much better at the video taking with my camera. I couldn't get it to focus a lot of the time so I need to be reading the manual and figure that out. 


There is audio on the video, so make sure you have your sound on. 


Here is it! I hope you enjoy it! 





Disney World February 2012 from Christie Ellis on Vimeo.


Thanks for visiting me!

A few of my Favorite Pics of 2009

As we get ready to say goodbye to 2009 and hello to 2010, I thought I would post just a few of my favorite pictures of the year. I have taken so many this year because of the Project 365 that it was really hard to narrow them down. 

These two are favorites because they remind me of our trip to Disney World this last March. The top one because it is of the four of us and the bottom because of how exciting it was for the boys to open the Indiana Jones show. Here is the post of the video we have of this event. 

This next picture says Spring to me. The boys were in the backyard and found a four-leaf clover. It looks so perfect! 

This next one is pretty obvious. Just a silly picture of a silly boy in some silly glasses.

And my water fireworks. One of my all-time favorites!

I remember I went to take Maggie for a walk one night and got about 1/2 way down the block when I saw this huge cloud with lightening in it. So I ran back to the house, dropped Maggie off, and got my camera. Sorry Maggie, but I think this picture was worth you missing a walk!.

I love this picture of the boys in front of the Arch. When you grow up in St. Louis, I think you have to have one of these pictures. 

And how could we forget the little puppy that came to live with us. As much as she has driven me crazy this first year, she is super cute! Look at the little stub of a tail. :-)

And lastly, these two pictures of the boys at Gulf Shores. I love, love, love these pictures of them! 

Happy New Year everyone who comes to my little blog. I wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy 2010!


Thanks again for visiting me! 

My Personal Highlight from our trip.

On our first full day of our vacation we went to Hollywood Studios. Last year when we went, we missed out on the Indiana Jones show and Spencer really wanted to see it. So we made a point this year of going. When we made it over to that part of the park, the next show was about an 1 1/2 hours away. I asked one of the women working there what time we should be back to get a seat, when another woman walked over to us and asked us if the boys would like to participate in the show. I said, "Yes!". They would be Jr. Directors and would get to open the show by saying "Lights, Camera, Action!". We signed them up and the woman told us what time to be back and then she would escort us to special seats. Special VIP seats!!! :D
Well, Spencer takes after me and started to have a mini meltdown about having to speak in front of all those people. I don't know if it is Connor's age or if he really is fearless, but he was happy to do it and didn't seem to care at all! Spencer was a nervous wreck and I didn't want to make him do something he was so uncomfortable with, so I told him he didn't have to go out there when the time came if he didn't want to. Connor could go by himself.
Well, the time came and Spencer jumped up with Connor and went out there! We were so proud of both of them!!! If you have been there, then you know that the auditorium holds a lot of people! I completely understood why Spencer was a little freaked out by it all! But as you will see by the video, they both did an awesome job of being Jr. Directors!!!!



And yes, the guy did get Connor's name wrong.

One More Week!

I can't believe that in 7 short days we will be heading to sunny Florida! (I hope it is sunny while we are there!) Since I didn't do a great job of planning out all my layouts of our last trip for my countdown (I ran out last week), I thought I would share a few of our very first trip there. This was way back in 2005. :D

At that time Spencer was 4 and Connor was about 18 months. It is amazing to see how much the boys grew in the 3 years between our trips. And this was the beginning of my scrapbooking journey! I believe at this point I was just starting to get involved in the Message Boards and looking at other scrapper's work. And I know this because this book was made from a kit from one of my very first QVC Scrappy purchases. So this had to be when I first starting visiting scrapbook boards because I never even looked at QVC before that! lol!!
To see how much the boys changed take a look at this layout and this one from last trip. The pictures were taken in the same places.

Yep there I am with short hair!

This next layout has a funny story to go with it. Since Connor was only 18 months we really didn't think he would have a clue about getting souvenirs while we were there. We had told Spencer he could get a few things. We were only there for three days on this trip, so each day we let Spencer pick out a little something from whatever park we were at. And we weren't being mean to Connor, we just really didn't think he would know or care that Spencer was getting some things. And for the most part, he didn't care. Until this last night. We were at Epcot and Spencer wanted one of the light up toys. At first we said no, and then we kept walking around and they have these stands that sell those toys about every 100 feet. So we finally relented and let Spencer get one. Again, not thinking Connor would object or want one too. WE WERE SO WRONG! We got about 25 feet away from that cart, and Connor let out the biggest wail of despair that he didn't get a light up toy too. We tried to calm him down, but it wasn't working. He wanted a light up toy, dang it! So we literally ran at full speed to the next light toy stand and this is what he picked out....the Tinkerbell wand. He still looks a little pitiful in this picture but he did recover and his parents learned a valuable lesson. Just because he didn't talk a lot back then (and he has since made up for that-now he is Mr. Chatterbox), he so knew that he was getting the short end of the souvenir stick on that trip and he was done with that!

Give me my Tinkerbell Wand!

Thanks for visiting again and reading all my countdown posts to our trip. And don't forget that next week I'm going to try and blog from the parks a few times with my Iphone. I hope it works!

14 days and counting....

Wow! We are only 2 weeks away now! The time is really going by fast. Yesterday we finished up making our dining reservations. We are going to go to a couple of favorites from last time (Lilo & Stitch breakfast) and try some new ones (Sci-Fi Dine In & Raglan Road Irish Pub). Can you guess who picked the Irish restaurant? :D I can't wait to eat all that good food.

Here is the last layout from my 2008 Disney Album. This is one of my favorite layouts. It is simple in design, but it took me forever to finish. That isn't digital. I took all of my left over pictures and cut them out to fit into the mouse ears shape. I just love how it turned out!

This is my picture of the day for yesterday.
We bought this puzzle in a bottle at Disney last year.

More Disney

Okay I must have not counted on my calendar correctly because I'm at the last day of our trip this week. I thought for sure I had enough days to go right up until a week before our trip this year. I do have one more layout to share next week that is kind of a summary page for our entire trip that is at the end of my album. (And I must say that layout is one of my very favorite layouts that I have ever done.)

So here is Day Six. We spent this day at Epcot and then back at the pool at the resort. I, of course, love Epcot because we get to visit the wonderful country of Mexico there. And we all know what Mexico serves: Margaritas!!!! If you haven't figured this out yet, I love Margaritas. I don't drink them often, but something about being out in the warm sun, and I just felt that I needed one. Or two. :D








Thanks again for visiting. :D

Now this Countdown is starting to get Serious!

We are officially one month away from our trip! Woo Hoo! This weekend I think I'm going to dig out the boys summer clothes from last year and see if everything still fits or if we need to do some shopping. :) We got them nice new tennis shoes this last weekend and I know they need new swimsuits. (They have been wearing the same ones for the last two years!) The only thing about shopping for summer clothes at this time of year is: 1. there isn't a huge selection yet and 2. nothing is on sale! And if you know me, I'm a huge sale/clearance shopper! I did get both of the boys some new shorts on super clearance last fall, so I'm really hoping they are all set. Now me on the other hand, I desperately need new shorts. I started looking a few weeks ago and there is just nothing out there yet. I'm hoping the stores get something soon.

So here is our Day Five from last's years trip. One of the things I absolutely love about Disney is how friendly and helpful their employees are. The main picture there of the four of us was taken by one their employees. He saw me taking pics of the boys by that fountain and came over and asked if we wanted him to take a picture of all of us. And he took an awesome photo!




Thanks again for stopping by!

Still Counting Down!

5 More Weeks!!!

I'm still here counting down the days to our Disney trip. Why does time seem to go so slow when you are waiting to go, but once it is here, the time just zips by? In a perfect world it would work the other way. But since we don't live in a perfect world, I'm still counting each and every day until it is Vacation Time!!!

These pages are from Day 4 of our last trip.
We went to the Animal Kingdom this day.

This was breakfast at the Tusker House with Donald Duck.
Spencer liked this a lot because it was a buffet and he could go pick whatever donut he wanted. Yes, vacation food is sooo much better!

My pictures here of Spencer winning one of the games didn't turn out. He ended up way too dark to see in the picture, so I just changed them to black and white and lightened them up a bit. Then highlighted them with some rub-ons.

And you have to get Mickey ice-cream at Disney! Yum! And since I dream of some day living where there are Palm Trees, I had Chris take a picture of me leaning on one.

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look at my Disney album. It brings back such good memories of our trip!

6 Weeks to Go!

Only 6 more weeks and we will be in the warm Florida sunshine! It can't get here soon enough because right now we have sleet and snow here in St. Louis.

This is Day Three from our trip last year. We spent part of the day at Epcot and part of the day at Downtown Disney. Spencer loved going to the Lego store there. I think it was one of the highlights of the trip for him.

Look closely at the top picture of the boys in the "Bruce" shark from Nemo. : D

Countdown to Disney Continues...

Now we are only 7 weeks from our trip! Yea!
This is Day Two from our trip last year.






Next Tuesday, I will post Day Three. This is fun to go back and look over what we did last year and know that we will be there again very soon. Just a reminder that you can click on any of the layouts to make them bigger.
I also have the scrapbook I did from the very first time we went; back in 2005. Maybe I will post that one too!

Disney World, Here We Come!!!

We have decided to go back to Walt Disney World this March! We weren't planning on going back so soon after our trip last year, but Disney is running a very good special right now and I found awesome air fares on Southwest Airlines. So two weeks ago, we booked it! We usually plan our vacations out months in advance, so this is kind of fun to plan it so fast.

We are leaving eight weeks from today, so I thought every Tuesday leading up to our departure date, I would post a portion of my Disney Scrapbook album from last year.

This is my title page.
This is the only Disney scrapbook thing I buy at the parks.
I think it is a fun way to open my book.

This is the story of our horrible flight getting there last year. We ended up on that plane for 7 hours. Not a great way to start a trip, but at least we got there safe and sound!

The way I sent my book up was to divide it into each day we were there. So the rest of my layouts today are all about our first day.

I also took a picture each day of the big landmark for each park,
and used that opposite my journaling for the day. I had the pictures printed as 8x10 and then just cropped two inches off, so they would fit into my 8x8 page protector.
I found this setup to be the easiest way for me to include everything we did on one page,so then I could just concentrate on the photos for the rest of the pages.

You can click on any of the layouts to make them bigger to read the journaling. I kept the red and black theme throughout my album, which ended up being 60 some pages long! And I got the best tip for the autographs from a wonderful scrapper friend of mine from Hawaii, Joscie. She suggested taking 4x4 white cards and an archival pen with you, and having the characters autograph those. That way you can incorporate those into your book when you get back. Genius idea! But then I have known Joscie as nothing but an awesome scrapper for a while now! Click on her name and get ready for some scrapping goodness.

So check back here every Tuesday and I will post the next day of our trip.