All tagged 2023
Last October during Fall Break, we went to Destin. It is our usual go-to beach spot. It was just the three of us in our condo, but our best friends, The Owens, were also there. So we did things together when it worked out! It was a super relaxing beach trip, and we had a lot of fun!
For Thanksgiving this year, we stayed home and celebrated with my side of the family. Brad was lucky enough to come home from his work trip just for the week of Thanksgiving. His hours were all messed up, but it was really nice having him here to celebrate. Since he was home for only a short period of time, I hosted my family. We had lots of fun, and we enjoyed the time with the family!
Brad was lucky enough to make it to our Pumpkin Patch visit this year! He has missed the last few years, and he literally left for two months a few weeks after this. We had a lot of fun this year. And each year does get easier since Melody is getting older and can do more things by herself and has the freedom to do so. We go to Lyons Pumpkin Patch, and they also seem to also add things every year. And the weather was perfect this year too! And peep the picture of Melody on her first visit to the pumpkin patch! She has grown SOOOOO much!
Halloween this year was a bit different since Brad was traveling for work and missed it. He did carve pumpkins right before leaving as well as going to the pumpkin patch with us. But this year Melody picked Princess Leia as her costume of choice making it extra hard not having her Star Wars loving daddy there.
Back in June, we went to New Orleans to celebrate Brad’s cousin’s wedding. We got there on a Friday and drove home on Sunday. It was a really quick trip, but the celebrations were lots of fun. However, New Orleans is not a place I am necessarily looking to go back to without a purpose, ha!
You may this post a little backwards than my usual trip report posts. Normally I post about what we did each day, THEN I get into all the details on individual posts about all the specific things we did on our trip. Well I am starting with a very specific thing we did on our early September trip because it is the Halloween party! It ends on November 1st, so I wanted to share our experience as soon as I could!
Hello! Should I reintroduce myself? Ha. Well August was fun but crazy and blogging was not high on my to do list. Here we are almost a month later, and I am finally updating you on all the fun we had in July! A lot has happened, and I can’t wait to share it all. But let’s talk about July. It was our last month of summer before school started. School started back so soon it felt like! Summer just flew by. But we had lots of fun, and we made the most of what time we had left before Melody went back to school!
During our trip to Disney World in March 2023, we stayed at Shades of Green. Most people do not even know this resort exists. There is a list of criteria that you must meet to qualify to stay here. The two largest qualifiers is if you are military/former military (some special rules apply to the later) or a Department of Defense Civilian. We found out about the resort a few years ago, and we wanted to give it a try. It is actually located on two golf courses, so that was how we convinced Brad’s dad to come to Disney with us. It also gave us a great opportunity to try out the resort too!
I didn’t take near as many pictures this year during swim lessons. A main reason was due to swim lessons being MUCH shorter this year. Melody did a refresher course which only lasts 2 weeks. Last year we went for 5 weeks. Melody also did dramatically better this year. We didn’t have any tears or real complaints. She even jumped off the diving board since finishing lessons!
During our trip to Disney World back in March 2023, I finally took Brad to the World’s Largest McDonald’s. It is located in Orlando, and it has changed quite a lot from my first visit there back in 2008. While I didn’t research the changes, I am certain they leveled the original building and rebuilt it. Either way, this was all about our experience there in March of 2023.
We attended the 2023 Huntsville Comic and Pop Culture Expo back in April. We didn’t plan out things as much as we have in the past when it comes to our outfits. We also only attended Friday of the Expo vs the whole weekend or just Saturday. It was a lot of fun and much more calm on Friday night vs daytime on the weekend. All of the vendors were already setup too. The only major thing we missed was the mass crowd of cosplayers. There still was some cosplayers throughout the Expo though.
During our March 2023 trip, we spent our second day at the Disney parks (third day in Orlando) at Magic Kingdom that morning and Hollywood Studios that evening. We had a big, late breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table, so we didn’t do a real lunch. We decided to make a dinner reservation at Sci Fi Dine In Theater once we secured the plans for Magic Kingdom. Melody had never been there, and I hadn’t been there since our trip with friends in 2014
Melody’s 5th year of dance was this year, and she recently had her recital too. This was her last year taking a combo class, so she was one of the oldest groups dancing in her recital. And I honestly think they did the best. She has really come out of her shell over the last 5 years too!
Back in March 2023, we were able to ride Guardians of the Galaxy for the very first time. It was quite the experience, and I will say, I do think this is one of the best roller coasters there (we have NOT rode Tron yet). However, my experience afterwards was not the best.
Leaving Disney World is always one of the hardest parts. We really had such a fun time this trip, and we loved almost everything about it. (I will speak to the negatives in a future post. All were in regards to changes (such as Genie+.))
Day Six was our final day at Disney World before heading back to Huntsville. We opted to start our day at Hollywood Studios doing some of the bigger rides we didn’t do on day three. Then we wanted to end with our favorite park, EPCOT.
You have heard it before. You probably even live it. But May is truly the new December. ALL. THE. THINGS. But we always have fun, even through all of the stress.
Our fifth day was a day we had been look forward to for the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique experience. It would be Melody’s first time getting to do it, and Vicki was so looking forward to it. And while the time originally wasn’t ideal, we ended up being happy with it. So this was definitely a Melody kind of day ahead!
We decided to give soccer another try this spring. We found a program that had practice and games on the same day. It was very similar to last year, but I did feel that received more instruction through this program. Even so, this may be the last time. She did enjoy being goalie, but beyond that, she is more of a cheerleader/dancer/gymnast, ha.
Our fourth day at Disney World was our “break” day. We always strive to have a somewhat laidback day in the middle of a big Disney trip. Unlike trips past, we opted to still make it to the parks somewhat early, but leave after lunch. Brad’s parents are morning people, and while at Disney we tend to be too.
