Disney Trip

We were so lucky to visit Disney World in December 2012! Adam and I both love Disney World, but this time we got to show it to our little Latham!

We were able to visit Disney because one of my dearest friends, Tamara Whyte, got married there. She had a stunningly beautiful wedding. And we were so pleased to have an excuse to drag our 8-month-old on a trip to Disney. Adam and I feel like we now know exactly how to navigate Disney with a young child.  :)

We flew out on a Thursday morning. In a stroke of luck, our local, tiny airport had recently opened up a direct flight to Orlando. That meant that we drove 15 minutes, and then hopped on a plane and arrived in Orlando! No layover, no parking fees, no hassles! We got to Orlando and took the Magical Express to our hotel--Disney's All-Star Movies. That afternoon/evening, we visited Downtown Disney, which we referred to as Downton Disney. 

On Friday, we went to EPCOT. We visited The Living Seas and went to the Nemo ride first. Latham did GREAT! After that, we started hiking through all the countries. We went on the Mexico ride, saw Donald, went on the Norway ride, and then started to get tired. We photo-op'd a few more countries, shopped for t-shirts, and went back to the hotel for a nap and an early dinner. We went back to EPCOT at night and did a character meet-n-greet with Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto. Then we enjoyed a few more countries and watched the fireworks show. What a lovely day!

EPCOT--Aquarium feeding time

EPCOT--Encounter with Donald

EPCOT--Meeting Mickey

EPCOT--Pluto meet-n-greet

EPCOT--Minnie time

EPCOT Christmas Tree

EPCOT--Mexico

EPCOT--Mexico

EPCOT--Norway

EPCOT-Italy!

EPCOT--Roll Tide!!

EPCOT--China!

EPCOT--England, lads!

EPCOT--Canada

EPCOT--France at night

EPCOT--French fountain

EPCOT--Japan!

EPCOT--Morocco!

 

EPCOT--Kisses at night

EPCOT--at night

Watching fireworks at EPCOT

EPCOT--tree and nighttime lights

Saturday meant Magic Kingdom! When we arrived, I realized that I had forgotten our special FastPass+ passes. We had gotten these special passes because Disney was doing a trial run of new program. These passes allowed us to choose four rides prior to our visit and it gave us an hour's time window for each. So, we had the day all planned out; hence, I had to go back to the hotel (Adam stayed with Latham in the park, and Latham napped while I was gone). After that, things were on track for a great day! We went on Buzz Lightyear (I had an all-time high score, and Latham learned to twirl our vehicle), Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan, the Haunted Mansion, and The Little Mermaid. Latham was so interested in all of the rides and had fun. We went to New Fantasyland (the massive addition of the Beast's castle and more), and enjoyed it. In an amazing stroke of luck, we were able to get into "Be Our Guest" (the restaurant in Beast's castle), and we had the most delicious early dinner. It was AMAZING! After that, we left Magic Kingdom and went to the Floridian for the rehearsal dessert party. Delicious desserts and watching the fireworks over the castle...absolutely perfect!

Magic Kingdom

Magic Kingdom tree--during the day

Magic Kingdom Tree--at night

Magic Kingdom ergo snuggles

Magic Kingdom--on the bridge to Beast's castle

Magic Kingdom--meeting Beast

Artistic shot of the Magic Kingdom Castle

Magic Kingdom (our only couple picture!)

Magic Kingdom--my princes

Magic Kingdom at night

On Sunday was the wedding. We got all dressed up and a private coach picked us up and brought us to the Wedding Pavilion. The wedding was gorgeous, the reception was spectacular, and it was so much fun to hang out with friends! After the wedding, we went back to the hotel, changed, and then went to Hollywood Studios. We rode The Great Movie Ride (a favorite of mine), explored The Art of Animation, and watched, slack-jawed, the incredible Christmas light display.

Our family at the Wedding Pavilion

Gorgeous menfolk

The happy couple--Tamara & Brian

at the Reception with Minnie

Dancing with Mickey at the reception

Hollywood Studios--lights!

Hollywood Studios lights

Hollywood Studios--lights!

Hollywood Studios

Hollywood Studios--Lights Spectacular

Monday was our last day and we went to Animal Kingdom. We went to see The Festival of the Lion King, we rode Kilimanjaro Safari, and we saw so many animals on the walk after the safari. Tigers, gorillas, bats...it was so fun! Then Adam and I took a turn each on Expedition:Everest. I went first, while Adam watched Latham; then we switched. The line was incredibly short (plus we had Fast Passes), so that went really quickly. More exploring and pictures happened and then we watched Mickey's Jungle Jingle Parade. After that, we ate a great meal at a restaurant in Animal Kingdom.

Animal Kingdom--Everest

Animal Kingdom--on safari!

Animal Kingdom explorers

Animal Kingdom hat buddies

Peering at animals

My bat-men

Animal Kingdom tree

Animal Kingdom

On Tuesday, we had to catch the Magic Express at 4:45 am (yawn), but we were back in our bed at home by 10 am. Luckily, Latham took a nap then so Adam and I also napped and tried to regain our strength! A Disney vacation will always be draining...but bringing a baby means even more energy was sapped. It was worth it though! We can't wait to go again!

Conked out (this happened almost every night...though he still woke up during the night)

See? It does happen every night!

Nursery Pics

We moved into our house in early March of 2012; Latham was born on April 8th. That's NOT a bunch of time, especially considering that we were both working, were moving in and cleaning our old place, painting walls, doing House Hunters, and so much more. Plus, I was 9 months pregnant...so I couldn't do as many things as I would have wanted.

We did know what color we wanted to use, so we painted the room rather quickly. My parents purchased a glider and ottoman for us (from a local store), and that was delivered before anything else. We moved the furniture in and constructed the crib by late March. And then we put books on the bookshelves, a rug on the ground, got clothes/blankets/etc washed and into drawers shortly thereafter.

Everyone wanted to know our nursery theme, but I didn't care to have my theme decided by a whatever patterns happened to be in Babies R Us. So, we decided that we wanted blues, greens, grays, and browns in the room; we wanted elephants (Roll Tide!); and we wanted literature and literacy to be major components of the room. The literature was the most difficult part to integrate (save the books on the bookshelves). But I figured out which quotes I wanted, went to Etsy, and then got them to custom-make it for me. I like how it turned out, and I really recommend StickItThere. I received the quotes on April 9th, but didn't get to put them up until late April. I then hand-painted a stenciled series of elephants onto the walls, finally finishing in late May. The quotes are below...thanks to Shakespeare, Rowling, and the Bible!

After 9 months of a baby, I can say that I really think we did a good job of designing our nursery and utilizing space. We use an old dresser for his drawers and it doubles as the changing table (with a changing pad secured to the top. It's a great height, and there's a lot of handy space around (to hang the diaper storage bag; hide the diaper genie; have wipes, vaseline, medicines, etc easily in reach).

Some pics:

And, yes, I meant to publish this in April of last year. And, yes, I know the pictures aren't the best. My response: Come and see our nursery for yourself; you'll find it adorable! Plus, the little person in the nursery seems to like it!

iChristmas Card...Copeland Edition

We thought about writing this Christmas card in binary code, but we didn’t want to make it too difficult for you humans to read. So, here’s a recap of the Copeland family’s year from our iPerspective. Yes, all the iDevices in this house have integrated across the wireless network to create a pretty amazing card. Everyone else seemed pretty sleep-deprived and didn't seem to be up to writing a Christmas card (hence the timing of this card...), so the iDevices stepped up to the plate! Plus, we’re basically the most important things in this house, so it’s time we showed that to the world.

Just a note, we usually refer to the users of our products as He Who Scrolls Often (Adam), Frustrated-By-Autocorrect (Cathy), The Drooler (Latham), and The Sniffer (Oliver), but, for you poor humans, we’ll simplify and call them by their human names. I swear, we make so many allowances for your puny brains!

iHouseHunters

Early in the year, Adam and Cathy closed on a gorgeous house. They seemed to think that having a baby, moving, setting up house, working, etc wasn’t enough on their plate, so they also filmed an episode of House Hunters. Why, oh, why, can’t these humans figure out how to just communicate via ESP? It would save us so much time. But our users’ episode should be online sometime, though you can check this page to see when re-runs might be.

iBaby

A squalling baby enters your life, and what do Adam and Cathy do? Pick up their iProducts of course. They downloaded apps galore to keep track of feedings, to monitor diaper changes, to have white noise. Without us, they would have been lonely and bored during feedings and while putting him to sleep. They are even keeping the iPad in Latham’s room, basically just for the white noise! Steve Jobs never knew he created the most expensive sound machine in the world.

The pictures! Can we talk about the pictures! Our devices have never been so full of pictures. That kid gets photographed at all times. But, wow, is he photogenic!

That kid started grabbing things pretty early. And, of course, we’re about his favorite thing to grab. Yes, drool on the iPhone. We’re sophisticated machines, but that doesn’t matter to you! Put us on the ground and watch the kid crawl toward us. Sure, that’s not going to develop into anything bad, Mom. Our overlords have complimented us on seducing a young one into the land of technology, but, really, the kid did it on his own.

iVisits

One would think that visits to Harrisonburg or by our Harrisonburg users would be simple. But, nope, texts, calls, and e-mails seem to abound. Humans like to plan, it seems. Many people visited Harrisonburg--both families (Grandma&Grandpa Blose, Gran & Grandaddy Copeland, Annette, Chris, Ethan, Eva, Anna, Craig, Bethany, Luke, and Laura), Sarah&Blake, Jen, Lauren, Hannah, Nick&Rachel (plus Evie & Bertie), Denise, and Carol. And our users visited Nashville (twice! once for the Morris-Kraemer wedding and once for Thanksgiving), D.C., Baltimore (so Cathy could tryout for Jeopardy), and Hanover (for Cathy’s 10-year college reunion).

iDisney

In December, the three humans travelled to Disney World. So many pictures were taken, as our humans celebrated the Whyte-Robbins wedding! Adam and Cathy downloaded Disney apps and pretended like it was awesome to know the wait times for all the rides, even though the only roller coaster they rode was Expedition: Everest. They seemed pretty pleased to take Latham on Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Kilimanjaro Safari, The Great Movie Ride, Buzz Lightyear, and more. And, of course, pictures were made with Mickey, Donald, the EPCOT golf ball, Cinderella’s Castle, the Tree of Life, the Sorcerer’s Hat, and everything else at Disney. I swear, they kept making that little kid smile and eat Cheerios and wave at everything. It’ll be a miracle if that kid doesn’t end up thinking he’s the center of the universe.

iJobs

For all our intel through e-mail and texts, it seems that Adam still has the same job, as the International Study Center Director at James Madison University. Cathy is still teaching writing and rhetoric part-time as an adjunct at JMU. She reluctantly gave up her other part-time job at the Arboretum, but has enjoyed the extra time to spend with Latham. And, luckily, she can now show Latham all the best Arboretum hiking trails!

iEverything Else

Our users constantly talk about how blessed and grateful they are to have such wonderful friends in Harrisonburg. A big old group of friends (from Muhlenberg Lutheran Church and JMU) helped them move and paint and have given love&support as our users have transitioned into parenthood. The Campus Ministry students at Muhlenberg have babysat but, more importantly, have been so cheerful just to spend time with. Cathy has found many other Mom-friends through Reba’s class and, wow, they post to Facebook late into the night and early in the morning!

0000110101  [Haha! My best joke yet! Too bad you have to be an iDevice to get it!]

i2013

Our humans have great hope and excitement for the upcoming year! Please contact them by phone, e-mail, comments on Facebook, or however you want, but know that they love and appreciate all of you!