No cha cha cha...

...but we're still having a great time!!!! yep, you guessed it: we've been in orlando for a few days now! i ended up not going to cha thursday. the ride from our house to orlando took 9 and a half hours but we couldn't check into our hotel until 4pm. i couldn't ask my husband to drive over 9 hours, drop me off, drive another 3 hours to my mom's house in jacksonville (the only place we knew he could hang out while i was at cha), rest for an hour and turn around and drive ANOTHER 3 hours to pick me up. i wouldn't have been able to cheese it up with div, helene and tim holtz because i would have been so worried that my papa and baby bears weren't safe on the road! so, i was sad that i didn't get to have my first cha experience. but, guess what?!!? we STILL got to have dinner with helene, div and mark (div's hubby) that night! that freakin' RAWKED!!!! we had the BEST TIME!!! they are the WARMEST people you'd ever want to meet!!! i let them know that i NEVER want to leave buzz and bloom's design team! PLUS, they won the most innovative product award at cha...why would i EVER go anywhere?!?!? kea literally JUMPED on div and then helene and had to be pried away...that was confirmation to me that they're good folks because he normally plays shy baby around people he's just met!


friday, we slept ALL day! when we awakened around 4, we got dressed to go out and of COURSE it started storming! this resort is so large that we still had plenty to do here! we had dinner, got cones from the ice cream shop, took kea to the kids' zone and then came back in to...more sleep!!!

saturday i met jules in person! the first thing she said to me was, "you're so pretty!" (yeah, she's a keeper!) i packed two BULGING bags of supplies because i just KNEW i was gonna crop with someone else for the first time...lies and garbage!!! we yap, yap, yapped for about four hours until one of us (i don't remember which!) was in danger of passing out! so, we went (along with john and kea) to dinner. have you ever been to a restaurant where the food is AWESOME but it has OBVIOUSLY cooked itself because the staff SUX too much to have prepared it? well, that's how our experience at uno's was. we were seated in a corner (i honestly think we were in an annex somewhere!) and we were forgotten for about 20 minutes! the waitress finally took our orders and when she brought the appetizers, she brought another waiter! she mumbled something about not serving us because we were sitting on the south side of the building or something but she promised that the waiter would take EXCELLENT care of us...lies and garbage!!! i think he came to the table exactly one and a half times (the half time was when he kinda waved at us from across the room and gave us the thumbs up!) but the food...oh, it's almost a SIN to just call it food! (can you tell we love to eat?!?) before katrina, i was addicted to the blue cheese crap dip at joe's crab shack. well, katrina was better than rehab because she lifted joe's right off the pier! ever since then, i've been jonesin' for that dip! uno's had a dip VERY similar to it!!! i've already told john that i need more before we go home-that'll give me a chance to study the menu and the listed ingredients so i can try to duplicate it when we get home. if i don't get more...mama WON'T be a happy camper! there may be some shanking involved...i haven't decided yet. anywho, john and jules and i joked and had fun and kea laughed at us joking and having fun. when we got back to the resort, jules and i went to the ice cream shop. on the way, we got some seriously dirty looks. i told her maybe everyone was mistaking us for ebony and ivory, the lesbian wrestling gymnists (i've gotten that before!) but she didn't agree.

FUNNY story: you know before we left that kea and the devil thought it would be fun to hide the truck keys, right? well, before the evil locksmith came over and robbed us, we looked up and down and all around for the keys. john kept saying, noonie, tell daddy where the keys are, son. well, i guess kea got tired of being asked because he found his book, brought it to daddy and turned and pointed to this:

i was all FOR shanking him at this point: if a kid is smart enough to show you a PICTURE of the keys that he has so sneakily hidden, i think he deserves to lose a little blood! but, because my husband makes the final decisions around here, i had to go with what he wanted, which was a kea with all his blood, so i didn't cut him! now, if he shows us a picture of a potty while we're trying to train him/save money on pampers, even his daddy won't be able to save him!

oooh, great scrappy news: i just found out that i'm the september guest designer for coordinates collections!!! i love their sketches and their kits...i can't wait to get that yumminess into my hands and kreate with it...i'm STOKED!!! (that's like my third time saying that today so you KNOW i'm excited!!!)

make sure you check out the new lotus challenge to use fingerpaint. even i used my man fingers to kreate a mini...and ummm....i LIKED it! i love seeing paint on my hands and knowing that i've kreated beauty (mushy but true!) give it a try!

i'm gonna cut this short because we're getting up early to take kea to meet the rat. please pray for us because for the last two weeks i've been asking, "do you want to meet mickey?" and he's responded, "NO!" he says no to everything these days but i think he meant it when he said no rat. if i tell you we left the park in 10 minutes, you know mr. kea meant what he said and said what he meant!!!!