Orlando – Disney – Thanksgiving Vacation
Posted by Chris Noland in Family Vacations, TheNolands on November 28, 2009
Five days at Disney was a lot of fun, and very tiring. This was Andrew’s first time to Disney and he got to experience it all as we visited all of the parks. The Migliore’s joined us for the entire week and Andrew had a great time running around with Josey, Ashley and Anthony. Rob and his crew have season passes and were our resident tour guides for our trip. I think it has been a long while since they have had a four full days at the parks as we went non stop.
On Saturday we went to MGM Studio’s (now the Hollywood Studio’s) . Andrew’s favorite was The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror™ and he had us go on it twice as he loved the dropping and Stacey and I were surprised he was not scared. The Toy Story Mania! Ride was awesome and it is a big video game. You are play against your co-riders (2 per car) and shoot targets, getting points as you ride around the track. The Muppet*Vision 3-D ride was cool but I am a sucker for the Muppets and Andrew liked it.
Sunday was another exciting day as we went to the Magic Kingdom for the first time. We beat the Migliore’s there and were able to do a few rides before they arrived. We took Andrew on the Haunted Mansion and I made the mistake of letting Stacey hold him during the intro and he started to freak out and buried his head in Stacey’s lap the entire ride.
Monday was our second day at Magic Kingdom and we were starting to slow down a bit after two days of running around. Some of the highlights of the day were the Country bear Jamboree, the show has aged a lot but Andrew and the kids still had a lot of fun. Dinner was awesome at the Whispering Canyon Café the restaurant is served Family style and “all you care to eat” (sill trying to figure out when it changed from all you can eat to all you care to eat, but that may need to be another posting later) One key thing is not to order Ketchup as they bring it ALL to your table, and since Andrew is a ketchup junky we enjoyed the experience.
Tuesday was the last day of our official Disney adventure, and fittingly we went to Animal Kingdom. The park has a few cool attractions, the roller coaster is Expedition Everest™ which is a bit different since it goes backwards for a bit, reminiscent of the Tidal Wave at Great America for the older readers (since it is gone). The Safari was cool Kilimanjaro Safaris® but I don’t think it is as nice as the safari south of Dallas. The water ride Kali River Rapids® was a lot of fun for those that stayed dry, Stacey and Jen seemed to get the most wet which is funny as Jen had a white shirt on and Stacey had white pants. The highlight was DINOSAUR and we got a great group picture with Stacey screaming that I will have to scan in when we get home.
Wednesday was our last day that we wanted to go to Disney and finish with eating our way around Epcot since we only had been there for Dinner Sunday night but the weather finally turned kind of ugly and rained all day. We decided to take in a movie before heading up the Stacey’s parents for the rest of the week.
A long week and ready to get home and start getting the Christmas decorations up.
Pumpkin Patch
Posted by Chris Noland in TheNolands on October 31, 2009
The pumpkin patch was a lot of fun this year. We went to a new one north of flower mound in Argyle (basically Lantana) and it had a train. The patch is called Pumpkin express
The pumpkins were pretty good but I have to say the highlight was the train, but I have always liked trains. And no I am not that kind of engineer, but I was trying to think how I could build one of these when I get a bigger piece of land.
Andrew had a lot of fun exploring the patch, jumping in the bounce houses and going through the maze. It was a cool morning and we did not have a lot of time to play around as Andrew had to get to his swim lesson.
I would recommend the place over the “normal” one people go to in Flower Mound off 2499, the kids will LOVE the train and will talk about it for days.
Walking with the Dinosaurs
Posted by Chris Noland in TheNolands on October 25, 2009
On Saturday we went to the “walking with the Dinosaurs” show at AA Center in Dallas. The dinosaurs looked very cool and Andrew seemed to enjoy the event a lot
The show was a bit too short for the amount the tickets were ($50 each), I am glad I did not get the tickets on the floor that were almost $80. The show was about 1.5 hours with a 20 min intermission. Andrew enjoyed it, but he still in not old enough to be all into dinosaurs, am I not really sure when that should be expected. Next time I might just schedule some movie nights with Jurassic Park as the 10 foot screen in HD looks awfully good.
Here is a movie I took with the camera.
Baseball Game – Rock Hounds at the Dodgers
Posted by Chris Noland in Andrew Sports, TheNolands on September 26, 2009
Today was a great game against the Rock Hounds. This was the 2nd game of the season. The Dodgers are really starting to pull together some good plays. Nathanial was great as the pitcher and got some good tosses to Nicolas to get a few outs.
The rest of the team is slowly starting to click and get the ball to the right place. It is good to see the team start to work together, there are still the occasional lapses when everyone runs across the field or lays down to pick up a ball.
Andrew had a few good plays and seems to have good form with his swing but I need to spend some more time pitching to him and doing some soft toss drills. He seems to be having fun at the games and enjoying crushing the ball when he can and tearing down the baseline.
Richardson Corporate Challenge 5K
Posted by Chris in TheNolands on September 20, 2009
The Richardson corporate challenge was today and Stacey actually joined the Tek Team. The weather was still a bit warm & humid for me, but still pulled in an OK time of 20:15, it was 26th over all with the winner finishing at an amazing 17:35 (and he is over 40) Stacey really sucked it up and pushed it to a 34:25 time, next year she is targeting under 30 minutes (she does not know yet) .
The rest of the Tektronix team did really well. The men’s side of the team changed a lot as David left the company and Chris Ulrich was traveling, we were fortunate to have Holger push it a bit faster and a few new recruits to the team added some speed.
The women’s side did exceptionally well with Fiona blazing it in for a silver in her age group at 20:47. Since Ulrich bailed on us this year he sent his wife to keep the name alive in the standings and she finished second for the Tektronix women at 27:23. Anamika wanted to show sustaining does more than engineering and pushed it to a great time of 33:44, beating her 2008 time of 35:01.
Part of the group stuck around for a good picture.
Next year we expect to have a larger team (hint, hint to readers) and need to find a way to get some the executives to run as 3.1 miles is a piece of cake.
Run fast, think later.
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