family fun | OUR LIFE IN 3D

Archive for the tag “family fun”

16 Jul 2015

7 Comments

Tax Return Weekend!

OK, who out there would like to have more money next year on your 2015 tax returns?

Good! I see you, and you, and you over there.

How many of you enjoy fitness, or being active, or outdoor activities?

Good! I see some more hands.

Now everyone, take deep breath.

Doesn’t that feel good?

I love that feeling!

Nothing gives you the feeling of being alive, or healthy, or being energized like a breath of fresh air to me.

This weekend is made for everyone that raised your hands.

Its that time of year, where I try to raise money for one of my favorite and worthwhile charities, The Lung Association

Next weekend July 25th, I am running up and down stairs of our local coliseum to raise money for the Lung Association.

And I need your help…

In order to participate in all this huffing and puffing, with my now antique lungs, I first have to raise $100.

If any of you value your health and your healthy lungs, or value clean air for that matter, or know someone suffering from asthma, would you like to help me raise money this clean air / healthy lungs initiative?

You can check out my Stairclimb web page and make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE (add $ to your tax return) donation here. Please check it out!

Do some of you remember this little girl?

Well she likes to race Daddy up the stairs every morning after breakfast. I stopped letting her win about 6 months ago.

Now, she flat-out beats me!

So little Dylan wants to race me in the Lung Association Stairclimb too! And why not? She loves to climb…

At Disney World we constantly had to remind her that they did not build Disney for her to climb on!

And so she really thinks she can beat me on my Stairclimb!

Who wants to make a bet?

We went to a practice last Saturday and she actually ran the course twice! Of course she was huffing and puffing too! Nothing like climbing a bunch of stairs to help you appreciate your lungs!

So she is now registered to climb next Saturday. She set up her own Stairclimb web page here, if you would like to sponsor her. She will need to raise $100 too though in order to participate.

We both do!

(not just her)

UPDATE: So we made a Team for the Stairclimb. You can check out my team, “I Can Beat My Daddy“.

and Thank YOU to all incredible sponsors so far! Wow!

Thank you so much! Your generosity really touched Dylan and myself.

The Stairclimb people were so excited to have Dylan climbing at her age that she was actually interviewed on the radio Friday by one of our sponsors!

http://www.kickin925.com/

Pretty cool, huh?

Check out her radio promo spot Here.

Good advertising for the Stairclimb! Good advertising for her fund-raising. I wish they would interview her Daddy too so he can raise some money 😦

So all you people out there that raised your hands (you can put them down now). Please consider donating to Dylan, or I, to help us try to improve the quality of breathing in air in our life times. Any amount, $5, $10, or so one would be so appreciated. Dylan said she would even send a personalized thank you letter to all of her contributors.

I will too but I don’t see that as much of a selling point as one from a second grader.

AND, you can add to your tax return for the entire amount of your contribution.

It’s a Win, Win, Win!

The good feeling inside will have you soaring!

Here is our local Stairclimb FB Web page. Look back in a few days to see if Dylan’s radio interview is on there.

Thanks for considering this!

We love you all!

Or some of us just take the stairs Kevin...

Or some of us will just take the stairs Kevin…

Have a Great Weekend Everyone!

Breathe in, Breathe out, move on…

Posted in Archives and tagged charity, Don't raise more money than me either, family fun, giving back, healthy lungs, Kickin 92.5, Lung Association Stairclimb, tax returns, Why is evryone contributing to her?, You can't beat me!

23 Jun 2015

10 Comments

Princesses For A Day…

...smiles and memories to last a lifetime.

You can’t walk into Disney World without hearing the word “Magical“! They are trying to incorporate the word Magical into their brand at Disney. And I tell you they truly succeed at this. From the moments BEFORE you enter the Disney World park, they builds suspense and anticipation…while you are just killing time waiting for the gates to open. Take a look:

That takes place everyday about 10 minutes before the park opens

Well would be more magical than for our two little Princesses to meet the real-live Disney Princesses? Yes, there is a ride for that!

So while we were not on time enough to get the Disney Fast Pass for this attraction we were able to race to the other side of the park the Magic Castle, where it all takes place.

Once there, we arranged for our little Princesses to get a room so one by one their adoring Disney Princesses could come by and greet their biggest fans.

Who do you think arrived first?

Anna and Elsa were Giddy with excitement!

The shock or adrenaline of meeting the one and only Elsa and Anna was actually too much for little Skylar at first. She had a meltdown at meeting her favorite celebrity.

Dare I say Froze on the spot!

Dylan was able to compose herself for the task though as Elsa made her appearance:

The joy was evident when they both got to share hugs with their very favorite Princess Anna.

You could tell Princess Anna was equally thrilled!

Next came Rapunzel to meet our very own royalty. She bent down to humble herself before our girls:

Seizing the moment, I broke into my Smolder for Rapunzel:

Carpe Diem!

You could tell she was curiously having fun with the idea but I could tell she had her mind on this guy…

Next, arriving at our Disney Princess Meet and Greet was none other than Cinderella!

Cindy looks Star-Struck!

Our girls were all smiles at meeting the one and only Cinderella.

She is simply in awe while meeting Dylan; and rightfully so

Treated like royalty, they were presented with the Disney Glass Slipper Award for living their lives (and wardrobes) in “all things Disney”.

Disney Glass Slipper Award!

It was really a big deal! They were very excited!

Our girls never did get a chance to meet their first love in Princesses, Princess Ariel. I hear she was some where out to sea.

The Magic didn’t end with this Meet and Greet though!

When word got around the Magical Kingdom that our girls, were visiting for the first time, the cast from the Briar Patch tracked them down at a Magical Restaurant, the Crystal Palace.

(Folks, if you visit Disney World, Get the Meal Plan, I’ll explain later)

One by one the list of characters dropped by to say hello to our girls during dinner, including you know Pooh…..

Piglet asked what the girls were wearing?

And that was just dinner one night!

All in all, Disney World takes the art of ‘making dreams and magical wishes come true‘ an everyday evident. As you can see, our girls were nothing but smiles, thanks to Disney generosity and ingenuity.

Maybe the best example of Disney Magical genius came to life on our last day.

I guess everyone knows about the Frozen phenomenon that has entranced almost every female girl, ages 2 -22 on the planet. It has become a gold mine for its creators. Adding to that is the Frozen songs and soundtrack that most every girl in grade school and Junior High know by heart.

Right?

Does every child know these songs?

So what could be more Magical to a young girl than singing her favorite Frozen songs along with the Frozen Princesses? …at the top of her lungs

Would that not be Shangri La for any girl 2-10?

Well Disney took these ‘two great tastes that taste great together’ and made a show out of them in one of their less popular parks, Disney Hollywood Studios.

Do think it is hard to get a ticket for this one? Even the Fast Pass line took 20 minutes to get in.

But could anything be more memorable, more Magical then singing along with Elsa and Anna during their famous movie?

Look for the unbridled smiles on our girls and everyone else at the end of this one:

Genius!

And our girls got to sing, and smile (did you see those smiles?) and feel like Princesses every day we were there!

Thanks Disney!

You are Magical!

Posted in Disney Magic and tagged Disney Princesses, Disney World, family fun, Frozen, Frozen sing-a-long, I'll write you rapunzel, keep calm here comes the smolder, Magical, OK I embellish sometimes, vacation

15 Jun 2015

15 Comments

Isn’t this worth it?

A strange thing happened at our house last week.

A fancy, jigunda teal lawn ornament waiting for me when I got home from work

What the heck?

And then I found this!

..,the dog out did himself in the hole he dug this time

I think I need to sit down!

The kids didn’t seem to mind!

They just like to climb

Now what?

Enter Mr. Crane. Girls, you better get out of the pool!

Up, Up and away…

Navigating through the houses

Opps! Someone forgot to open the gate for Mr. Crane

Touch down!

Leveling the pool. I didn’t plan on my backyard quite looking like this!

Leveling it already? Really? When the backyard looks like this?

You want me to sod this rough backyard? I didn’t feel like smiling. I felt like crying!

I’m starting to feel a little better now.

And that is the evolution of a smile!

Isn’t this worth it?

And this is just the beginning of our Spring week with the Great Aunt Sue!

Posted in Archives and tagged crying, family fun, pool, Sod all this?, swimming

08 Jun 2015

4 Comments

The Star (Wars) Treatment

OK…

to bring you up to speed on our Magical Disney trip…

First, our girls seemed to disappear on the Tower Of Terror ride.

It turned out that some of the Disney magic fairy dust only shrunk them; they were never really lost.

In order to prevent some sort of a law suit Disney allowed us to star in their upcoming 7 Dwarfs Mine Ride commercial.

Which we did!

They liked us so much for our happy smiles and marketable potential they signed us to contracts to star in future Disney ~~sparfs~~ flicks.

Understand?

So, on our final day at Disney, they whisked us on a very quick Star Wars promo spot, also a cameo featuring yours truly, and a photo shoot for future auditions.

They paraded us off as our new adoring fans looked on...

They paraded us off like stars as our new adoring fans looked on…

For some reason they thought I was the Yoda character!

As if….

Here we are at our very special Star Wars photo shoot before the scenes were ready to begin…

It was awesome! We were treated like Stars! Like Royalty! With dignity and respect!

Here is more from our Imperial shoot:

OK, well we are still paying our dues in the Star Wars saga it appears.

Then it was off to lunch with the rest of the Star Wars stars a the local Disney studios’ canteen.

Try rushing ahead of that guy in the lunch line! He will give you the look of death; and actually breaths like that ALL THE TIME!

But we couldn’t stay past lunch cause we were trying to get Dylan back for her last day of school.

Disney seemed duly disappointed.

Caught off guard, they didn’t know how to pay us for our work that week on short notice. So they ushered us over to the Future Track building and paid us with some little sports car to tie us over until our next scenes.

…and on the way out they gave us each a prototype Action Figure set they started working on that morning, telling us they hoped to get them on the shelves before the Christmas holiday.

In Toy Stores by the Christmas rush

Those cute girls should blow away those Ewok sales figures

My little diva was still not satisfied however. Her new popularity gone to her head evidently. And so we had to put her in Time-Out, Star Wars style, before we hit the road.

So begins hour Disney Hollywood (Studios) career!

I would be happy to sign photos or do guest posts at the going Star Wars cast rates….

Have a great week knuckleheads!

Don’t worry, I only have 200 more Disney pics to drop on you.

I told you I we had a great time for our first visit!

Posted in Archives, Disney Magic and tagged 7 dwarfs mine ride, Darth the line is behind me, Disney Hollywood Studios, Disney World, family fun, Star Wars, the force was with us, Tower of Terror, We are stars!

06 Jun 2015

8 Comments

Disney Commercial

Well I know some of you figured out what happened to our kids in the last episode of 3D.

Yes, we were in Disney World so there was a very good chance they were shrunk, with all the magic dust flying around.

Do you here a buzz?

Well we spoke to the park managers about our situation to see how they could fix our predicament.

We were not happy at the time!

In an effort to appease us (and they did) they asked us if we would like to be part of a Disney World commercial and some marketing advertising for one of their popular family rides, the 7 Dwarfs Mine Shaft ride.

Somehow I got tagged as the 8th Dwarf!

With out hesitation we agreed. They restored our kids to their original heights. They rushed us off to be with all the other high-priced Disney actors. And we became Disney World stars!