The Abbott Family Web Site

We had our 20 week ultrasound today. Everything looked great! We saw the heart and it looked perfect. We also saw the brain, face, spine, and all those other important body parts. Oh, and, drum roll please, we’re having….. A BABY! Yes, we decided to not find out the gender of the baby so Steve and I looked away whenever the tech was checking down in the pelvic/leg region. My mom watched but said she didn’t see anything that gave her a good idea. So, either she really didn’t see anything or she’s going to be good at denying it for the next few months. It was a lot of fun to watch the baby moving around. It’s approximately 14 ounces right now which is exactly where it should be. While we were looking at it’s face we could see it “chewing”. The tech commented on how it looked like it was chewing gum. It was so exciting! I definitely feel the little one moving around now. Often it’s a swishing feeling but I also get these little pokes and kicks too. We have to get the photos scanned in so when we do we’ll post a couple of them.

Our snow storm finally ended last Friday. We ended up with 12 inches of snow on our patio table and that doesn’t include the occasional melting or blowing that happened over time. The second storm we had on Christmas Eve finally dropped the right kind of snow for us to build a snowman. We’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our family, “Mim”. (That’s what Josie calls him.)

Unfortunately he didn’t last long. By Christmas morning he was curving terribly to the side. As our neighbor pointed out, he had “snowliosis”. By that evening, he’d lost his head. I think he’d gotten into the egg nog when we weren’t looking. Most of the snow is gone now. We have nothing left in the backyard. We have maybe 2 inches in the front yard in spots and some of the piles are left from Steve’s shoveling. There’s also a thick lane divider in the middle of our street. I’m not sure what Josie’s going to do when she wakes up the first morning and looks outside for snow and there isn’t any. It was a wonderful white Christmas!

Which is why I’m glad I married someone who knows how to deal with it! It’s been a few years but Steve picked up that snow shovel with a lot of expertise. He has a lot of experience with it, after all he grew up in upstate New York. He cleared our walkway and cars in no time. It took a little longer to get the driveway to a point where we could actually get out but he did it a lot faster than I thought possible. As of Monday afternoon, we had 10 inches of snow on the ground. I’m sure a little melted yesterday although it didn’t get warm enough to do much. It’s been snowing all morning again and we’re expecting more tonight and into tomorrow morning before it finally starts to let up. This will truly be a magical Christmas. I always dream of a white Christmas and it looks like this year I’m finally getting one. A special thanks to my wonderful in-laws, Bob and Sandy. I guess your offer of sending me snow every year finally worked!

Here are a couple of new pictures to give you an idea of how much fun we’ve been having. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love snow and that I can’t get enough of it. I’m still enjoying watching it come down!

10 inch measurement:

Our happy shoveler:

A cleared path:

Snow family:

Our house in lights:

Backyard under snow:

We did have snow last year. Enough to take Josie out for the obligatory “first snowfall” pictures. But there really wasn’t enough to play in. This year is a bit different. We’ve had some arctic air over the last week and several snow storms moved in. Of course, we missed the first one last weekend. We barely got a dusting. And Wednesday’s brought just another dusting. But by Thursday we had actually gotten close to half an inch. (I know, that’s still a dusting to some of you.) We took a nice family walk around the neighborhood to visit my folks. Josie absolutely loved walking in the snow. She wouldn’t let us carry her there at all. Some of it did melt so it wasn’t looking like all that much by Thursday evening but by Friday morning we had almost an inch! This was very exciting for us. More snow fell off and on throughout the morning so I took Josie out to play in the front yard around lunch time. She really enjoyed “throwing” snowballs and picking snow up off the ground. I even helped her make her first snow angel. She put up with it until I wanted to take a picture and set her back down. As you can see, she wasn’t so happy at that point.

But don’t worry, the smiles came back as soon as I stood her back up and dusted her off. The good news is, it’s been snowing since last night and we now have around 7 or 8 inches. We took her out again this afternoon in hopes of building a snowman but our expert snowman-maker (Steve) said it was just too powdery to stick together. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen any other snowmen. We tried to make another snow angel but she was most unhappy with that experience again. The snow angel looked better today though since there was more snow.

We are expecting even more snow over the evening with it supposedly changing to freezing rain sometime tomorrow. Hopefully it will warm up slowly so we can have a “white” Christmas even if it doesn’t actually snow on Christmas Day.

On a sad note, Josie fell down in the house last night and split her lip open. She also must have hit her top left front tooth because it was bleeding at the gum. There was a lot of blood and tears. After sucking on a washcloth with an ice cube in it for a bit the bleeding stopped and so did the crying (from all of us). She has a bruised and fat lip today and is eating more on the right side of her mouth but otherwise seems to be ok. As you can see, she was still all smiles this morning.

And on a very happy note, it’s almost Christmas and we are definitely ready. Josie has been enjoying her advent calendars every day, especially the chocolate one. She has also tried to get into the presents under the tree a couple of times and really enjoys looking (aka pulling on) the ornaments on the tree. She has several favorite Christmas carols, including the Little Drummer boy (“pum pum”) and Deck the Halls (“ya ya”). And she is loving all of the Christmas books I’ve had for years and years. She even made her visit to Santa a few weeks ago. She was a bit shy but she did warm up to him when he brought out his book to read and gave her a candy cane.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Ultrasound photo from 9/23/2008

Josie’s going to be a big sister! Our biggest news of the year is that we are going to have a baby! The newest addition to our family should arrive by May 14, 2009. We are thrilled! Josie is in love with babies and said she’d like to have one live with us. I think she’ll be a great big sister. Everything is going well so far, although the morning sickness is quite a bit worse this time around. I’m 13 weeks along, though, so hopefully the nausea and exhaustion will go away soon. At our first appointment in September, we got to see the baby on the ultrasound and hear and see the heartbeat. It was a healthy 151. We went in for our next check-up on 10/30 and everything looked good. We heard the heartbeat again and it sounded very good. Nice and strong with a good rhythm to it. We’ll have to go back and listen to the tape to figure out the rate. We’ll be checking in again with the doctor just before Thanksgiving. I’m sure you can all imagine how excited we are to be adding to our family. What a blessing this is!

Is it any wonder that with two Disney-loving parents, Josie learned early on who Mickey and Minnie are? She lovingly calls them (both) Mimi. She absolutely loves her Mimis. I bet you can imagine how excited she was to see them in their home of Disneyland last week. We took her for a 6 day trip to visit “The Mouse” and we had a wonderfully relaxed time. We took the Nanny along as well (that would be my mom, Grammy) which made nap time a great time for Steve and I to get out on our own.

Josie loved all of the rides she went on. We took her on almost all of the available kids rides, but I think the carousel was her favorite, by far.

Unfortunately, “It’s a Small World” was closed and “Storybookland” was closed our last couple days there so we didn’t make it on those. We also missed “Casey, Jr.” But I’m pretty sure we made it on all of the other Fantasyland rides, as well as the Bug’s Life area of California Adventure. It was so much fun to watch her toddling down Main Street in her Tinkerbell costume or Minnie Mouse dress. Apparently other people thought she was pretty cute too. The crowds weren’t too bad until they started picking up on Thursday, which was to be expected. Although Christmas remains my favorite time to visit, it was fun to see the park decorated for Halloween. One of the highlights for me was on the last day I was able to meet up with my old friend Theresa who is now a manager at the Emporium on Main Street. We both were part-time cast members at the Disney Store in Portland before I headed to one in Spokane during graduate school. She had moved to the new one in Vancouver when I transferred to that one as well, so we worked together off and on for almost 5 years. I’m so amazed and happy for her living the Disney dream. She worked her way from part-time to full-time to assistant manager to manager of the Disney Store and then made it down to Disneyland. Does it get any better than that?

Another highlight for us was we got to visit the stone that Steve bought for me for Christmas in 2006. We paid for a 50th anniversary stone in the plaza between Disneyland and California Adventure. It may seem silly, but that was really thrilling for me.

We went to three character breakfasts while we were there. We started at Minnie’s in the park. I have to say, after going to several breakfasts at WDW last December and also experiencing Goofy’s Kitchen last time we were in Disneyland, the way they handled the food at Minnie’s was a great disappointment. There was no clear start to the lines for food. The lines were ridiculously long. And the best part, because of the placement of the entrance and the placement of the food, the long long lines for food blocked the entrance so people trying to be seated had to weave through the people in line and the people in line didn’t want to move for fear of losing the spot they’d been standing in for 10 minutes. The nice part was the characters (from memory there were at least 8 ) all came to your table. Unfortunately, we were put in the middle of a section so Josie would watch them come all around her but it took them forever to actually visit with her. We actually had to chase Pooh down because he came to all the tables around us but never came to our table and she was so disappointed.

The next day we tried Storyteller’s Cafe at the Grand Californian Hotel. The food was handled much better there. The lines were not bad unless you wanted an omelet. There was a decent variety. Other than that, it was a great disappointment. We thought we were at a good table this time for the characters to come by but they seemed to go all around us again and tease Josie. The biggest disappointment was that we only had two characters (Dale and Terk) actually come to the table on their rounds. Kenai (Brother Bear) came to all the tables around us and Josie was so excited but he didn’t come to our table. We had been there an hour and seen two characters so we mentioned it to our waitress who talked to the person in charge of the characters. She told us Kenai would be by, so we waited. He did finally make it and Josie was thrilled. We saw Koda (also from Brother Bear) from a distance as well as Chip but neither came to our section of tables, although they were close. For the price of a character breakfast, when you are paying for the experience of seeing characters without having to wait in the lines at the park (because believe me, my breakfast was not worth even half the price we paid), this was extremely disappointing. I doubt we’ll waste our money there again.

Our last attempt at a character breakfast was at Goofy’s Kitchen. This is by far is the best one. There is a huge variety of food and no lines to get to it. They had both breakfast and lunch fare. Off the top of my head, I remember at least 6 characters. We were seated on a main thoroughfare. In a little over an hour, all of the characters made it to our table except Jasmine who we ran into on our way out. This is probably the only one I would try again.

On the topic of food, I was so excited to eat at Blue Bayou again that we had 3 reservations, including one on our last day for lunch, which also happened to be my birthday. Our first visit was our first day in the park. We had lunch there and it was not what I remembered. The prices, like everything these days, had gone up a bit. That was not completely unexpected. Unfortunately they had gotten rid of a lot of the variety on their menu. If you don’t like blackened and spicy or seafood, then you don’t have much to choose from. Steve and I shared the beef ribs and it was delicious. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood for much foodwise, but I’ll explain that in a later post. This one’s already getting long enough. I did get free birthday mousse, which was great. We decided to cancel our other reservations, including the one on my birthday. I’ll probably always insist we eat one meal there when we go, I just won’t have such high expectations. Even the mint julep (one of my absolute favorites) was quite watered down.

I know it sounds like there was a lot that didn’t go right on this trip. But we are good Disneyphiles and we didn’t let it get to us. As Steve kept saying, if you can’t have a good time at Disneyland, then you’re doing something wrong. We had a blast and loved watching Josie really take in the experience this time. She was a little young to get it when we went to WDW in Dec. It really is true that the most fun you can have at the parks is watching your children enjoy it.

We stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel and actually managed to get adjoining rooms. That might be the best thing I can say about our stay this time. Unlike our previous trip to stay at GCH (which we thought was wonderful except for our Downtown Disney view room – VERY LOUD), we were not nearly as impressed this time. It kind of left us wondering why we used up so many of our DVC (Disney Vacation Club) points to stay there instead of the Disneyland Hotel. The rooms really are quite nice at GCH, but we were so greatly disappointed in the housekeeping service that I’m not sure if we’ll stay there again. There were jawbreakers on the floor of the bathroom that Josie kept finding, leftover from a previous guest. I found one also, which was against the wall but out in the open, not even hiding under the vanity. I’m not exactly sure how they could have missed them. Needless to say, that was a huge safety hazard when having an 18-month old toddling around the room. Another safety problem we noted was the fact that out of six times housekeeping knocked on either of our doors, they only announced who they were one time. In a hotel as nice as this, I would expect that when they knock they are letting you know they are in fact hotel staff before you open the door. We did inquire about this at the concierge desk and were informed that all hotel staff should be identifying themselves verbally when they knock so you know who is there.

We love the fact that they offer turn down service but can not understand how a hotel that is catering to families would want to come in your room at 8:30 or 9:00 at night to do it. I guess we are abnormal parents but we actually kept Josie to her afternoon nap schedule and her regular bedtime. After the first night where we realized they were not going to turn us down before Josie was going to bed at 7:00, we decided to call housekeeping every day and request early turn down, being specific as to the fact it needed to be done by 6:30 so our daughter could go to bed at 7:00. When they say it’s no problem, you actually expect it to be done. I’m trying to remember but I think in our 5 nights, it might have happened twice.

Then there’s the regular maid service every day. The first two days they cleaned our room while we were out in the morning so by the time we brought Josie back for nap around 1:00, the rooms were nicely made-up. After that, we would get back from our morning out and find the rooms were still a mess. Wouldn’t you figure they have the same schedule of cleaning every day? So on Wednesday, the rooms were not cleaned when we got back. Steve noticed they were cleaning every other room as they came down the hall, skipping half of them. Ummm, ok that’s an interesting way to do things. We put the Do Not Disturb sign on both of our doors and put Josie down for her nap. We figured they could come back after she got up when we headed back out. With Josie napping in our room, my mom and I were resting in her room while Steve did some shopping. About an hour into nap time there was a knock on the door. It took me a couple seconds to wake up and decide it might be Steve coming back and he might not have a key to my mom’s room so as I started to get up there was another knock. No problem, Steve will wait for me to get there. Next thing I know, as I’m on my way to the door, the door is opened and there is a housekeeper walking in. Needless to say I was fuming as she wanted to clean the room and the Do Not Disturb was clearly on the door. They should NEVER let themselves into someones room like that. I basically kicked her out, telling her that the baby was taking a nap and they could not clean now. Of course, Josie wasn’t sleeping for long as the noise of it all woke her up. Needless to say, we had a conversation with the concierge about all the problems up to that point and she said she would talk to her supervisor and to the housekeeping department. While we had no more unexpected intrusions during our stay, I’d like to say they there were no more problems either. Unfortunately, Josie had an accident in her crib and we had to call for a change of sheets. First, they sent up a mattress pad only. Then, when we called again, they sent up a mattress pad and a twin size sheet. How exactly do you put a twin size sheet onto a crib? Finally, we called again and told them we needed an actual crib sheet and that the baby was getting ready to go to bed so it needed to be pronto. This all started around 3:00. It was now 6:30 and we still didn’t have a sheet for her bed. Finally, after 7:00, they brought up another mattress pad and twin size sheet. If we hadn’t taken an actual crib sheet off the crib to begin with I might wonder if they don’t have them. But they obviously do. Steve was able to fit one of the twin sheets on the crib well enough that we could put her to bed. Then he marched down to the front desk with the other sheets to have a talk with them. They looked up our reservations and saw all the problems we had had. To their benefit, they did give us a credit on our room to try to make up for the hassle. But honestly, I would rather have had decent service and paid full price so I feel like going back there some day. I’m just not sure if we want to waste our DVC points on staying there again or not. Steve suggested that the next time we go we should use our DVC points to stay on the concierge level of the Disneyland Hotel. My family stayed there in 1996 and I have to say that sounds like a great idea to me.