Always Remember That

Last night I went to see Mary Chapin Carpenter perform live in Durham. It was fabulous. I've loved MCC since way back when -- "Passionate Kisses" and "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", both of which she played; her "Stones in the Road" CD was the soundtrack of my graduate school years, while "time*sex*love" was almost all I listened to while I was pregnant with Mallory. If I listen to music instead of NPR on the way to work, it's almost always MCC, and certain songs -- "Jubilee," "Your Life Story," "River," "Walking Through Fire" -- I play over and over again and will never get tired of. (And why had I never heard her song about Halley's comet until last night? Must get that one off itunes immediately.) Anyway, I can't adequately describe how great she was. Except that -- last night, as I was getting ready to leave for the concert, Phoebe said, "I want to be a rock star when I grow up, b...

Wow, it's taking me a long time to finish this. Does anyone even care anymore? I hope that someday my children appreciate me preserving these memories in such loving detail. So: On Wednesday we went to SeaWorld -- we meaning everyone except Chris, who hates dolphins. Ha! Not really. The children were dragging a bit, right at the start: But look! Penguins! Incidentally, if you're thinking to yourself, hmm, Krista has the same scraped-back-hair and no-makeup-face in all of these pictures, didn't she even attempt to groom herself better down in Orlando? The answer is, no, I didn't. It was too hot. That is what I looked like all week. On to Shamu stadium for the Shamu show: Amy took that picture, plus some other really cool ones; I couldn't get out my camera because Phoebe was collapsed in a sweaty, whiny heap on my lap throughout the whole show. Mallory, however, was extremely impressed and immediately declared her intention to be a whale trainer when...

We were worn out after our long day at the Magic Kingdom, so on Monday night we made the decision to throw the guidebook and its advice out the window and retool the schedule. On Tuesday morning, instead of waking up early and getting to Epcot as soon as it opened, we instead slept in and had a leisurely breakfast. Then Chris and his parents took the kids to the pool while Amy and I went grocery shopping. We ended up getting to Epcot around 2:00. This is the approach we took for the remainder of our trip and it worked out so much better for the kids. Take that, guidebook! Epcot was the most beautifully landscaped of all the parks, although I see that I didn’t really capture that in pictures. Here we are all at the entrance. Why I didn’t take our picture with the giant golf ball in the background, I don’t know. Epcot is divided into two sections – FutureWorld, which is kind of quasi-educational, and World Showcase, which has shops and restaurants and attractions representing the d...

The guidebook I read before leaving for Orlando advocated getting up early and arriving at the park before it even opened, with the goal of beating the crowds; so, despite the fact none of our party – including the children – got to bed before 11:00 the night before, I made sure we were all up and out the door by 7:45 on Monday morning. Spoiler: This is the only morning we took this approach. Our hotel was only about 15 minutes from the Disney parks (which, incidentally, are all rather prettily situated on a huge swath of, I assume, swampland in Orlando – all nicely landscaped, and, although surrounded by zillions of resorts and hotels and whatnot, basically hidden from view until you arrive at their gates). We stopped at the parking gate at Magic Kingdom and were welcomed by the attendant, who assured us that we had arrived at “The Happy Place of the Earth.” Close enough! Disney is very efficient; we were waved into a parking spot and then directed to a tram, which would carry us...