Shuttle Discovery Launch from Lando Lane

One of the great perks... this is what we saw Sunday night when Shuttle Discovery launched. No doubt that being 3 miles from the launch pad is awesome, but this view from our house in Orlando is pretty sweet too!

You can see the boosters separating in this photo.

Auntie Kendra, Uncle Chucky & the Three Amigas....

Chuck and I got to watch his sister's 3 little girls yesterday (ages 3, 5 & 6). We had a blast and even learned a few things...Everyone is strapped in and ready to head out for the day's adventures! First stop - Lake Eola to see the swans and play on the play set. We didn't realize that there was also a festival going on, so it was even more fun!

Of course promptly after I took this first picture of our first swan sighting, my camera's battery died... it took me a good 15 minutes to stop throwing my own little tantrum internally. I knew there were going to be soooo many photo ops and was really exicted, but it was fine, b/c then I put my camera away and got to really focus on our time together. :)

So, we had a good time at the park and then headed into the festival to find our lunch! We come across a tent selling hotdogs and everyone was excited except for one...she wanted macaroni and cheese... um, I was pretty sure that there wasn't going to be any mac n'cheese at the festival so I started to sweat. As the conversation continued, all of a sudden her stomach began to hurt. So, I pose the question "Your stomach probably wouldn't feel better if you had a snowcone, would it?" Well, you all know the answer... I am such a sucker! So we all ate our lunch and then headed out back to our house to let the food (and snowcone) settle b/c I didn't want to deal w/ any real stomach issues caused by running around after eating. So we get home and decide to watch Finding Nemo...

This is where Max watched the movie from...he was so upset. (oh and yes I clean my windows...ever 6 months....)


Then after our rest we headed out to the park near our house w/ Max...

#1 LESSON LEARNED YESTERDAY: Ask children BEFORE you leave the house to go to a park w/o any bathrooms, if they need to use the bathroom.

This was taken 3 seconds before she stopped and the flood gates opened...I felt so bad for her, but it wasn't her fault. :( We rounded everyone up and headed back to the house did some laundry and took a little snooz. :) It was all good.

Aphrodite & Dionysus

Chuck and I have been trying to really save some $$, so when we talked about Valentine's Day we decided to cancel our reservations at the fancy restaurant and just have V-day at home and cook up some Greek-style food at home. So, we made chicken kabobs, lamb & beef patties as well as some rice-spinach dish that is Greek and I forget the name of and am too lazy to google so as to seem cultured. I really just got on Allrecipes.com and found the recipes, they sounded good, and we could say we were having a Greek-love infused V-day dinner. Anywho, here are some pics of our grub...it ended up being 9:30pm before we ate b/c, well honestly, I was enjoying the wine-part of dinner alot and then got lazy about actually making any food. :) We didn't get around to making the Baked Fudge dessert either. oh well. It was awesome food...especially the chicken! Ohhhh...AND we made Naan from scratch! I was a little nervous b/c I'm not a real good baker person b/c I really hate measuring out stuff and it having to be just the right conditions for a dough to work, etc, so before I even started I made sure to make a comment about how I'm sure the humidity in FL was somehow going to have an ill-effect on my Naan. :) I'm just a pessimist like that sometimes. But it turned out awesome and I had to exhibit some serious self-control so as to not just chow down on the Naan w/ hummus.

Wow...I have a lot of catching up to do!

The other day we took Max over to the playground at the school next to us...it has a fence all the way around it so we just take him off leash and throw the football/tennis ball/frisbee and tire his butt out. He absolutely loves it!

Max could retrieve ALL day long....this is my favorite picture although I was waiting to get pummeled by Max seconds after I took this picture. Then I handed over the camera to Chuck and threw the tennis ball right at him as payback. :) Nothing like seeing a 95 lb dog running full speed towards you through the camera lens.

This is me doing the "Gator Chomp" in preparation of watching the game... don't worry, my blood is still Purple (go Cats!).

When my sis was in town visiting we all went downtown to Lake Eola to sit on a blanket and soak in some sun and let our hangovers wear off.... See that Max is all intent on something?? Well, I started getting a little nervous b/c he was eyeing all of the geese and ducks that were around us, and I'm pretty sure he would've jumped in the lake had we not had a good hold on him. He tried several times...

The fountain at Lake Eola...

Some more pictures...

You can see that Max is warming up to the camera (note the tongue). :)

this is an old tree stump in our neighbors yard that i think is pretty neat... a place where my cousin and i would've played with our Barbies. Don't know why I feel like that, but for some reason i love this tree stump.

Here's a picture of some bracket fungi on one side of the tree stump.

Here is Max at his happiest....getting ready to go fetch a ball.

Waiting for me to throw the ball....

I am so excited!! I've been wanting a SLR camera for ages and Chuck surprised me with one for Christmas this year. AND I got a zoom lens, so I can really take some awesome pictures. I'm looking forward to taking it home for the holiday so that I can get some pics of other "models" besides my two here at home. Chuck will let me take his picture but he doesn't do anything funny for me and Max is fun, but I'm not sure that everyone wants to only see pictures of Max all of the time. :) Here are some pictures this afternoon in our backyard. As you will notice Chuck was doing lawn work and I was also supposed to, but, well, I wanted to take pictures. :) I did run the leaf blower after I decided there was nothing else to shoot for the day! here are some of my pics...

Max is not that thrilled with it yet...as you can tell, but he is getting used to it. (you can tell he's not happy when his tongue isn't showing.)

He really doesn't like me at this point b/c I was using treats to get him to sit and stay...he really looks upset... the little Scrooge.

I think he is pleading with me here to stop.

this isn't that great of a shot, but it shows our tree...

I know that it's not fair that i get to take pictures of flowers in our yard in December.

Max is enjoying playing outside and rolling around....

Here is one of our big oak trees in our back yard....I love this tree and it has this huge vine that climbs all the way up it. I thought we were going to lose the vine after our past "freeze", but it always comes back to life!