Magical Adventures & Memories
I was so honored and excited when journalists Sharon Kennedy Wynne and Sherry Robinson (also the editor of the blog) asked me to contribute, after Sharon interviewed me regarding my position on the Walt Disney World Moms Panel.
My first piece is all about the Top 5 Food Values at Walt Disney World.
Big thanks to the wonderful team at Whoa, Momma! for this opportunity and keep a watch out for future articles from me!
Those who know me offline know I am rather obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. If I could, my entire house, or at the very least a room, would be themed to Alice in Wonderland. Shockingly, I was never TOO into the Disney animated film when I was little – it just always seemed too long. But as I got older, I grew to love Disney’s Cheshire cat and Alice herself. Tom Petty’s Don’t Come Around Here No More video is still one of my favorites. In college I may have owned a tie-dyed t-shirt featuring the iconic caterpillar, but I don’t think I was wearing if for the same reason everyone else was. {I did go through an innocent phase of tie-dyed shirt-crystal-necklace wearing in college…Stacy and Clinton would’ve had a field day with me. Ok, they probably still would. But I digress…}
[Read more…] about Alice’s All New Wonderland-Tim Burton’s Playground
I’ve mentioned before that I was spoiled as a child. I remember once, a two of my friends told me I was spoiled and I had to ask my mom what it meant. She said it meant I was really loved. Now obviously that could be misinterpreted to lead my friends to think they weren’t loved, but we all seemed to turn out okay. Really, as a child I don’t recall being obnoxiously spoiled. I mean – I never had an Easy Bake Oven
OR a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine
, so seriously, how bad could it have been? I actually think the conversation with my friends came from my announcing our first trip to Walt Disney World. I suppose, in the world of a small bedroom community in New England, announcing a 2-week trip to Walt Disney World where we would stay in the Lake Buena Vista Vacation Villas was something to be envied.
Anyway, that is not the point of this post. I wanted to talk a bit about my parents, and how I was raised. Of course, my reflections and memories of my childhood are just that, MY memories, and my mom may have a completely different account as to how things happened. These are the things that stuck with me and formed me into the kind of parent I am today – some as a direct result of what I rebelled against as a child, others because I appreciated the lessons I learned from my parents.
This is part 1 in the All About Me series for NaBloWriMo that I’m taking part in for February.
So I figured what better place to start than the beginning right? My parents met in Boston, when my dad was working in the same restaurant as my mom’s ex-husband – my siblings dad. Her ex-husband was working there on the side, his actual career was that of a high school English teacher. My dad had moved up from waiter to Maitre D’ of this particular place, The Cafe Budapest. This was a 5-star Hungarian restaurant run by a feisty woman named Edith Ban, a Holocaust survivor with her concentration camp number tattooed on her arm, a flair for business and wearing beautiful white dresses. The restaurant was famous for its cuisine as well as its color-themed rooms and was featured briefly in the movie The Housesitter.
Those of you who have been online for a while have probably heard of NaNoWriMo before – National Novel Writing Month. The goal there is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I tried it once about 4 or 5 years ago, and didn’t get much past a first chapter. Blogging is a little less daunting, so with a reminder from a friend’s blog, I thought I’d sign up and give NaBloPoMo a try.
Since I can’t ever make things easy, I thought I’d go a step further and make all posts related to this month about me. Yes. Me. Of course I’ve blabbed about myself before, usually in relation to Disney and my memories there, but I thought I’d use this slightly shortened month to talk about myself, either in-depth or just some fluff pieces. A lot of times you stumble across a blog or a person online and you think you know them based on their likes, their recent entries or their tweets. Sometimes what’s visible is only the tip of the iceberg that is the person behind a blog. The way I relate best to people is based on common background or interests. I know I instantly feel a kinship with someone if they say “I love David Bowie!” or “That was my favorite toy as a child!”. Why not expand on that and see just how much we all have in common?
So welcome aboard and stay tuned for some fun (and hopefully interesting) posts all about me. There will probably be additional non-me-related posts this month as well, but I’ll try to do 28 NaBloPoMo posts on their own. That said – any questions or topic ideas about me you’d like me to touch on? I’m all ears (or eyes really). 😉
11 years ago, I wasn’t exactly partying like it was 1999. I had high blood pressure, swollen ankles and was pretty much done with being pregnant. It had been a rocky start due to severe morning sickness that left me unable to even keep water down. Typical first-time mom-to-be worries kept me on edge most of the pregnancy and after being told it was a girl for almost 5 months only to discover in the ultrasound it was a boy, I was always expecting the unexpected. So perhaps I should’ve known in the morning when I went in for my 37 week check up on that last Friday in January, that I’d be admitted to the hospital by that night.
To make a very long story short not as long, when I was actually IN college back in the 1990’s, I’m not really sure what happened. I loved high school so much and I did well. I was in all honors and AP classes and graduated with honors. However, I soon discovered that being in a small, close-knit Catholic high school was quite different from heading off to an enormous college in downtown Boston. I loved my classes, but being a commuter, I sort of floundered socially. It was much easier to find an excuse why I couldn’t make it in to classes than to suck it up and head in town. I thought maybe the school was the issue, and transferred to…an even bigger school in another part of Boston. I’m not sure why I thought that’d solve my problem. Again, loved my classes…that’s where I majored in Creative Writing for Children and later Public Relations…but again, I just felt lost.
Surely we all remember that beloved children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon
, right? That Harold was every child’s hero with his ability to create a wonderful world of purple from a single crayon. He was also every parent’s nightmare. Purple crayon?! Just where is he drawing this world? As a parent you have to ask – what was that author thinking?! Of course, I’m just kidding, the book is a wonderful reminder of just how vast a child’s imagination is and the wonders it can create. But I recently had my own experience with a purple crayon that made me look at it in a completely different light.
I can’t tell you the number of old diaries I have from my adolescent years, teens, and twenties which were once brand new Christmas presents. Oh, I had such good intentions. I would record my innermost thoughts, wishes and goals and motivate myself to achieve what I knew I could. If you look through those old diaries, you’ll most likely lists of resolutions on the first few pages. The first one was the same each year: Lose Weight. I’d be so excited by the prospect of the new year and all it would bring, I usually went through the year writing down the number of pounds I thought I could lose by each date and marking my ‘goal weight’ date with stars and exclamation points. It seemed so tangible then, that in just a few weeks or months, I could be where I wanted to be.
Then, the real world kicked in. My diary stayed hidden in a drawer or under my bed and I had no reminder of the goals I hoped to reach. Temptation was all too easy to succumb to. The days turned into weeks and months and those goals faded into history. Every year it was the same. Add that to my list of ‘must do’s’ that don’t get done. It came to a point where I stopped getting those diaries to write in, because it was known I didn’t bother keeping up. It also came to a point where I just stopped making resolutions because I knew I’d forget about them so quickly. Why bother with the game? Continue Reading New Year, New Me
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away there was a planet where it was acceptable, nay encouraged to get bad perms, wear white overall short shorts (oh yes, I said white overall short shorts!), and of course, coordinate your ensemble with matching plastic beaded necklaces, twisted together, forming the perfect accessory. Ladies and gentleman, that planet was called The 80’s.
As most of you no doubt know, today is the anniversary of the official opening of Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in 1971, Epcot (or EPCOT Center as it was known at the time) in 1982 and later Epcot’s Morocco pavilion in the World Showcase, in 1984. I thought it would be a fun way to celebrate those special days in history with my own little stroll down memory lane – Embarrassing Photo Edition. I know there was a picture of me as a baby on my first visit to Magic Kingdom, but I could not find that particular one. Instead, I found one of my sister and brother, proudly representing the 70’s with their attire. The picture was taken in the Main Street Flower Market area, now of course long gone with the Emporium expansion. From the look of the banners, it must have been around the 4th of July, which would make sense because I would’ve been 6 months old, making my brother 9 and my sister 10. I wish we had more pictures from this trip since clearly they are full of Disney history.
Next up, to commemorate Epcot’s anniversary, I wanted to share a picture from one of our earlier visits there. However, I’ve already shared quite a few, including my first 3-Season Salute Annual Pass photo and one of Dreamfinder, Figment and me. So I thought I’d share one with much more to comment on – mid-80’s EPCOT!
In this photo you not only get the treat of the “Rainbow Bright” version of “Space Mickey” but see yet another bad perm on me, countless black rubber bracelets a la Madonna, really, really short shorts (in pink and white stripes no less), white sunglasses with twisted glasses lanyard and of course – a Swatch watch. I was about 13 here so you also get to enjoy my head tilt, which says, “I’m WAY too cool to be seen with Mickey – I mean, just LOOK at me”.
Then, in honor of Morocco’s opening day, I dug up some pictures from a 6th grade class trip to EPCOT. My best friend, Nalani Proctor and I some how managed to be the only two students my mom and dad had to chaperone that day, so we had our own itinerary for fun rather than staying with the class, since we knew EPCOT like the back of our hands already. There are quite a few posed photos like the ones below, including sombreros in Mexico and posing with a castle guard in the United Kingdom. Maybe I’ll scan some of those in later…
I’m not sure why we are posing like we are in this photo, but I know my dad is the one that told us to do it. Maybe some sort of twist on a yoga pose? No clue. Oh, as I was previewing this post it hit me: maybe he wanted us to pretend we were granting wishes like Jeanie in “I Dream of Jeanie”?? In any event, you can see the shame that is tight, white overall shorts. I’m not in anyway sure of how I thought that was a good idea. My t-shirt underneath was a classic EPCOT baseball shirt with the EPCOT symbol in rainbow colors, but you can’t see it under the overalls.
Here is a close-up of Nalani and I wearing a Fez. Highlighted here are my first of many bad perms, my super cool twisty plastic necklace (anyone remember those?) and my dire need for braces, which I would obtain a couple of years later. My friend is sporting the also-popular polo shirt-under-a-sweatshirt look, with short shorts. Ahh…Planet 80’s.
I hope you enjoyed this look back at what seems to be a different universe entirely. Of course the funny part now is that many of the styles popular back then (plaid, neon colors etc.) are now “in” again today. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, so they say… 😉
Most importantly, Happiest of Anniversaries to the Happiest Places on Earth…thanks for the memories, embarrassing or otherwise! Here’s to 100 more wonderful years of Magic!