Amy O on the Go...

Yes, only six months after our first trip to Disneyland with Audrey, we went again! We really wanted to see it in all of it's holiday magic. We had originally planned on going down the weekend before Thanksgiving when the lights were first up, but there were major fires in So Cal the weekend before, and we had heard the air quality down there was terrible, so we postponed till New Years weekend. It was a great time! Although we were lulled into thinking So Cal was warm even in the winter... it was not! Rainy and cold, but we persevered... here's a few pics, and a link to our full album!

And here's the full album on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47434458@N00/sets/72157612376336091/

It's been three months. THREE MONTHS! These haven't even been the busiest three months of my life, by a long shot, and yet, no blogging. Even after I put this website on my christmas cards, and I'm sure everyone flocked here expecting amazing things, and they got nothing. We've had three holidays, three opportunities to dress Audrey up and get her looking all cute, and none of those pictures have been blogged. Wow, I'm a terrible terrible person.

Now that that is out of the way, let's get the cliff's notes of what our last quarter was like. First holiday: Halloween. While mothers across the country promptly blogged their cuties in their outfits on Nov 1, I didn't even take one picture. Audrey had a great time at school - she was a princess fairy with wings and a pink tutu skirt. We then did the parade in town with her friend Colin - each time they got a piece of candy they had to stop to eat it. We then attempted to do some trick or treating in our new neighborhood - Colin's parents told us about the street where kids get candy and parents get wine, so we were all for that. But on the way there, it started raining and then Audrey got a wasp caught in her hair and it stung her head. Completely random, but we cut the night short and headed home. Much to my delight at the time, and chagrin now three months and a few pounds later, we did not get one single trick or treater. I'll know for next year not to buy anything. Here's a few pics to catch you up:

Gettin' ready for Princess Fairy School:

A pre Halloween jig -

With Colin at the parade, chocolate smudges and all...

We had a busy November - I jetted off to Arizona for a friends' wedding party, and got to recharge with a weekend of girl (and Kyle) talk that was much needed! Next it was baby shower season with one for my sister and one for my friend Jen, so excited to have babies everywhere! Then Thanksgiving -- the big news over Thanksgiving was Audrey's first horsey ride! We got ole' Buddy, a horse that my parents bought when I was like 14, so he's a pretty old guy, down and put Audrey on him. She had a blast - she was laughing the whole time. I know we fully documented it, but I can't find the pictures on the computer now, so I'll have to post them later.

December was wonderful - we enjoyed decorating the house, and I had to try real hard not to go crazy shopping for Christmas decor since we've moved into the house we're going to be at for a while. We strung lights outside and put our tree up in the living room, and overall got Audrey super excited about Santa and presents and Christmastime. I got a little gift a bit early, though - a new nephew, and new cousin for Audrey! Allison gave birth to Cooper James Harmon on 12/17 - he's a cutie, just like his sister Mia. ;)

On Christmas morning, we awoke at 4:30am to barf in her bed...she had gotten some sort of bug that was going around. So we consoled and cleaned and moved her into our bed for a little more R&R, and then we got barf in our bed. So we just decided to get up at 5am and open presents, why not? After all that, we really enjoyed opening up all our presents at home, even though we definitely got tears when there were no more presents to be opened. I don't know how to get a toddler excited about Christmas and presents, and then try to explain how it's not all about presents for them! Oh well, she's two, it's to be expected. She got a laundry load full of pretty new pink things to wear, and lots of pretty dresses, skirts and tights, so that's what she's been wearing every day. We only took video of the morning, but that evening and for the rest of the weekend we packed up and headed back down to Oakwood to see Gaka, Bompa, and the Harmon clan. My mom took most of the pics, but here's an action shot of her opening up her first Barbie, complete with stilettos and a pink Corvette:

Okay, I'll end this one here.. I'll start a new post with our New Years' pics - we headed to Disneyland in the first weeknd of the new year, and had a blast!

Sorry for the delay, but I'm back to finish my blog about our trip! Now, we go to Egypt...our port was Alexandria, and we took an excursion to Cairo for the night to see all the sights. Of course, the week before, 8 European tourists were kidnapped in southern Egypt, so they were trying to make us all feel welcome by lots of tourist police with guns and a motorcade of 12 buses.

Our first stop was the archeological museum...and while yes, it was amazing to see all the treasures of King Tut and the actual artifacts in the tombs, but it also gave us our first introduction to "Egyptian Hospitality." Cory was shaken down for a few Euros from the very cordial tourist police, and a nice lady in the bathroom sold me some toilet paper. Everyone wanted a little sumtin' sumtin' for anything, so we had to get used to that quick.

Our next stop was the Alabaster Mosque, or the Mosque of Mohammad Ali. It was gorgeous, inside and out! Plus, great views of Cairo and the pyramids in the background...

The ceiling of the mosque

Pyramids in the distance, from the Alabaster Mosque

I don't have too many pictures of the evening, but it's not high on the list of things we want to remember...we did this really cheesy "sound and light show" at the pyramids - it was our first up close look at them and the sphinx, but it was super cheezy -- imagine bad music and bad narration. After that, we went on a Nile dinner cruise, with unknown food flavored with diesel fumes, and terribly Barry Manilow and Celine Dion songs sung by out of tune entertainers. I'm pretty sure it was this food that I subsequently had to rid from my system (I'm trying to think of a delicate way to explain this...) the following day at lunch, hence making the second half of the trip not quite as enjoyable since my tummy was a bit rumbly (as Pooh Bear would say). But anyway, I did make it through the next morning and the touring of the pyramids relatively unscathed...

Lots of guys with camels...our guide said it was free to get on a camel, but 20 euros to get off...

Cory made me do it...

And I made him do this...

I love this picture...

So, we made it back to the ship and said goodbye to Egypt... it was mixed emotions, we were very happy we saw everything, but it certainly wasn't quite as made for tourists as a lot of places. We're not the most rugged of travelers (my stomach, to be specific), so I was happy to be going back to Greece!

This is our next port, Corfu -- we rented a car again to get out across the island.

Shopping!!

Gorgeous countryside...

These are the hills of Albania, which was right across the water... never thought I'd see Albania in person!

And that's pretty much it... we did have one more port, but we elected not to get off the ship - we spent the day in the spa and relaxing on the ship, which is just what we needed! Here's a pic of me relaxing on our suite...

And that's it! A great trip, but I'm super excited to be home and gettin' serious about potty training. ;) I'm sure I'll blog about that a lot in a bit...

I know, it's been two months! What can I say... the last two months have been split into "BT" and "AT" ... before trip and after trip. Cory and I went on a two week cruise to Turkey, Greece & Egypt the second half of September, and never before have I had to do so much preparation and deal with so much anxiety before a trip! But we did it, and it was awesome, and we're absolutely thrilled to have it be over with. ;) So, shockingly, I'm going to be blogging some pictures that aren't of Audrey! I don't know if i've ever done that before... Audrey had a great time, by the way, with her two grandma's who stepped in to shower her with love and attention while we were gone. We missed her tons, and since we got back last Thursday, we've been spoiling her even more than they did!

Anyway, for the whole 318 pictures, you can see my flickr album at this link But I'll blog a few with descriptions and all...

We started out in Istanbul; this is the Blue Mosque. We finally found it (after hours just wandering the streets), and were disappointed when we couldn't go in because it was prayer time. We were visiting in the middle of Ramadan, so tourist access was limited. It's supposed to be gorgeous inside! But the outside was just as impressive.

This is the Grand Bazaar, a maze of shops in Istanbul - you'd think I'd be in shopping heaven, but every other shop is a carpet place that gives you complimentary apple tea and Turkish delight, trying to get you to spend thousands on a carpet which they'll ship for free! We spent too much time avoiding these guys...

Our next port was Izmir in Turkey. We took a cruise excursion to see some ancient ruins about 30 mi outside the port. This is me learning something...

Us at the ruins of Pergamon... it was a very interesting trip, although we had to deal with more carpet strongman tactics on the way back , since that's where our bus stopped for us to go potty. Then, the driver got lost on the way back to the ship, so we were winding through the narrow streets of Izmir, and the bus actually got stuck on a turn. It was entertaining!

Our next port was Mykonos, and we rented a scooter to shoot around the island all day. It was awesome!!

Here's the beach we hung out at for a few hours... since it was the first beach we hit, we hadn't purchased sun screen yet, so we thought we'd just find a hut on the beach that would have some. Yeah, it was 23 Euros!! For those of you that don't know how much the dollar has been sucking, that's like $30. for suncreen. Well, we didn't get sunburned, so I guess it was worth it.

As you can tell, Mykonos was gorgeous, and the main town was awesome - cute little boutiques and great food. The streets are all narrow little alleyways that you immediately get lost in, so we literally walked for hours just trying to find our way out. It took us forever to find out where we parked our scooter! Our ship stayed in port that night till 11:30pm, so we got the chance to go out to dinner and really enjoy the town!

Our next port was Santorini, another awesome Greek island. On our side of the island, all of the towns are on the tops of these huge clifs, so our choices were to take a tram up (which, luckily, we were the first people off the ship this morning, so we avoided the long lines!), or you could ride a donkey up the switchback trail on the right. On our way back to the ship, the line to take the tram down was so long, that we opted to walk the trail down the hill. It just smelled of donkey excrement, plus we had to deal with a group of Japanese tourists on donkeys that couldn't control them very well!

This is the gorgeous town of Oia, on the cliffs of Santorini. More great shopping and food, not to mention the scenery!

We rented a convertible bug on Santorni to see the sites - the first place we went was this black sand beach to have a swim before seeing the rest of the island.

Cliff walkin' Cory...

Alrighty folks, I'm going to have to do the rest later. I haven't even gotten to Egypt, and that's gonna take a while! The country definately had some stuff to see, and we took pictures of it all since we're pretty certain we'll never be back. Ever. Despite all precautions, we both got sick, and up until yesterday I was still dealing with the aftermath. I can forgive a country for having different parasites and bugs than we do, but that on top of getting shook down for money every time you go to the bathroom (which is often when you get sick!) as well as the Giza mobs selling postcards and lame headresses at all the sites, it kinda soured the whole trip. But it was sumtin to see, I know. I'll post those pics later... I've got to get my rest, since my vacation will officially be over tomorrow as I enter the wild world of Revolution Foods again!!

There must've been 10 times in the last few weeks something would happen and I'd think "I can't wait to blog about that!!" Well, I've forgotten all those times. So I really have nothing of interest to say. I'll share a few pictures we took at the portrait studio - I finally got Audrey's 2 year pictures. I had to wait through several face bruises before I could take her in. And we finally did it! Our summer has been rolling along - swim class is over, but we went to the zoo last weekend and enjoyed seeing the animals. We've just been hanging out with friends and relaxing! Which is good, because our fall is shaping up to be quite busy...from about mid August through Christmas, it seems like we've got a lot going on! But it's all fun stuff, so that's good. Okay, enough babble, here's a few pics...

sorry they're kinda small... I must tout my super-mom-ness, though...after I got her all dressed up and looking cute, I took her to Babies R Us because that's the only place you don't need an appointment. Well, of course, they said they were booked all day and I'd have to come back tomorrow, so I said okay, but that we'd stick around for a little while to see if anything opened up. 20 minutes later they squeezed us in!! Ha! It's the little things that excite me, really...

We toured around the Monterey Bay this morning in Grandpa's boat, and had a blast! Here's a pic, just before Audrey got sick of her life vest and decided to risk it by not wearing it. I guess 4 days of swim lessons emboldened her, but luckily Grandpa didn't step on the gas so fast that we had no reason to test the theory.

Well, it must be summer and we must have a lot of fun, exciting things going on, because this is my second post in twenty four hours! My mother in law will be so happy with me. ;) We had our first day of swimming class, and I was nervous... last summer, Audrey went from kind of enjoying the swimming pool to crying and being terrified of it, so I thought we might have a few days of warm up. But luckily, she was all jazzed from the get go! It helped that she got to wear her new Dora bathing suit that she got for her birthday. As we all gathered around to listen to the teachers' instructions, Audrey went from yelling "Swimming! Yay swimming!" to "Mommy's boobies, ooh, Mommy's boobies..." Okay, I'm exaggerating, she wasn't yelling it, but she did say it like 10 times. Anyway, we got in the pool and she liked it, but it still took about 25 minutes of our 30 minute class to get her to detach from me in any way. This swim class is every evening for the next two weeks, so I think we'll be a pro! Here's a few pictures daddy took...

Getting ready...

Twirling!

Splashing mommy in the face...

Floating & kicking

Investigating the pool toys