We are back in Doha today (12/30/08) after another looong flight. It takes me a few days to re-enter the land of the living when we return. Today I successfully cooked breakfast and lunch, unpacked things, played UNO and Life and promptly fell asleep about 5pm.
We had a great time with family over the holidays. We spent most of the time at my Mom's home in rural East Texas (with no Internet). There were 38 of us celebrating in mom's little home. It was tight, but there was a lot of love going around. I loved seeing my sisters and brother and all their kids. Many of their children are adults now, with families of their own. It is so fun having so many little kids running around. I guess there will never be a time in our family that we don't have babies and little ones. My nephew and his wife are expecting their second child in April and hopefully our daughter will be with us by this summer. Another niece is getting married in April and we are planning on coming home for the wedding. It happens to be the same week as our Spring Break. Yay!
The kids and I drove to see Bill's family on Christmas Day. Bill had to come back to Doha early and missed all the fun. I think he was pretty lonely, but our friends in Doha took good care of him. We are so blessed with wonderful friends
Our trip to Disney was great fun! We used tourguidemike.com to help plan our trip and I highly recommend it. One of the things we did this year was dinner at 1900 Park Fair at the Grand Floridian. It was so cute. The stepsisters and stepmother were there along with Cindy and Prince Charming. The stepsisters were a hoot! Our favorite ride was Toy Story Mania. It is crazy the madness surrounding this ride. You have to arrive at the park at opening and walk with the stampeding herd to the fast pass line. While I got fast passes the kids and Bill rode it once. I think all the fast passes are gone by mid morning or something crazy like that and we were there during the slow season. Our favorite meal was probably at Cinderella's castle. We had the dining plan this time and I don't plan to do it again. It was waaaaaay too much food and I couldn't bear to leave our credits unused. We did get to eat a lot of fun character meals though. We stayed at the Polynesian resort and would definitely do that again if possible. You can see the fireworks from the resort beach every night. Just beautiful
The hardest part of the trip home was leaving my Mom. Her health is not good. In fact, we had to take her to the emergency room and several doctors appointments while we were there. She is having test done to see if they can figure out what is making her feel so bad. If you think about it say a prayer for her.
