Princesses on Ice

I'm a few weeks late with this, but Rachel and I took Adria and her friend Joni to Disney Princesses on Ice. It was really fun! There were tons of little girls dressed as princesses and even some older girls and adults, too. I'm a fan of ice skating, so I really enjoyed it. It was amazing how they could ice skate in some of the costumes.

Here's Adria and Joni with 1 minute left! They were SO excited!

Here's the 2 little girls with the other princesses
Here's the 4 of us - Adria, Joni, Rachel and Me
There were 6 princess stories and then the last hour was the Cinderella story. It was hard to get good pics, so here's a few of the better ones.

Here's Prince Eric (from the Little Mermaid) fighting Ursula

Genie and Aladdin singing and dancing

Beast and Belle

Cinderella, the mice and Cinderella's fairy godmother

Cinderella making her grand entrance at the ball

All the princesses and their princes dancing at the ball - you can see Tinkerbell in the corner too

Here was the finale with all the princesses and princes lined up on the castle stairsAll in all it was a great time. I bought some over-priced cotton candy to enjoy during the show that also came with a mickey mouse crown. :) The girls had fun taking turns wearing it. Thanks to Rachel for scoring us such good seats! Hopefully we can go again when they're in town.

Mississippi

I took a week off of work and made a trip down to Mississippi to see my sister Becki, her husband Paul, and their daughter Natalie. It was a great trip!! My week went by way too fast though...it was hard to leave! Here's a few pictures of the 200 or so that I took. :) If you'd like to see more, I've got the majority of them posted on Facebook in an album. We did some sight-seeing, went to the beach, went bowling, went on a shrimp boat tour, went fishing a few times, and just enjoyed each others company. I also got to baby-sit Natalie on Saturday while Mommy and Daddy were working. All in all I had a great time and I'm hoping to make it a yearly trip!

Here's one of my first views of the Gulf Coast.

Here's the beach along Hwy 90 from the top of the Beau Rivage (one of the casinos).

Isn't she the cutest girl in the world?!?! She loves her swing.

Natalie and me as we were fishing - pretty sunset too!

This is a big blue crab that Becki caught one other day we were fishing. They're really strong guys - hard to reel in. She got this one up on the pier and then Paul grabbed it so we could take some pictures.

This was on our shrimp boat tour - our guide explained how they use the net and then he also showed us his catch. It was really neat!

Our catch - there was everything from shrimp to fish to a jellyfish and a sting ray. We got to see him feed the pelicans and seagulls too!

This is Shirley, the boat's pet pelican! You can see the fish in her mouth. She tends to be spoiled they told us......can't imagine why.

Here's a small video of the pet pelican Shirley getting some lunch.



We enjoyed a bit of time on the beach the day before I left. We hunted for seashells and enjoyed wading in the water. Here's a picture of me, Paul, Becki and Natalie enjoying the sun!

Me and cute little Natalie! She was so much fun!

Here's me in front of the Hurricane Katrina Memorial. The top of the marble is how high the tidal surges got during the hurricane. The case is filled with items donated by Katrina survivors. So much of the landscape is still missing. As you drive along Hwy 90, you see empty cement slabs, or 2 steps leading up to nothing, so much that was destroyed hasn't been rebuilt yet.

For Halloween Natalie was a killer bee and Becki and Paul were killer bee catchers.
What a cute little family!

Paul is big into Halloween and he loves to get dressed up and enter the Halloween contests. This year we went to one Friday and Saturday night, one at the Beau Rivage and another at the Hard Rock. Here's a picture of Paul (he's the Dark Lord from the movie Legends) and Becki dressed up to match. I'm a party pooper, so I didn't dress up at all. Unfortunately, Paul didn't win either contest, so that was a bummer.

Here's a video of Natalie 'crying.' She cries, but she also screams....it was cute at first....... :) We found out at her doctor appointment that she had an ear infection so I'm sure that was part of it. She was still pretty darn cute even with the screaming. And no, I'm not a mean Aunt, Becki was on her way to get her out of her carseat while I was taking this short video.

Here's another little clip of Natalie in her crib. I think she was teething again, so she likes to chew on everything. She's so darn cute!!!

Like I said earlier, it was a fun time!! I wish they lived closer so I could see them more often, but I'm glad I had the chance to make a trip down there and see their little corner of the world. Thanks for a great time guys!!