me, Mike Hyland at Hong Kong Disneyland, 5 months before Grand Opening

I can’t believe 5 years have passed. Since then I’ve been back to Hong Kong for another 2-month stint in 2006, spent 6-weeks in Paris in 2007, toured Madrid and Barcelona in 2007, been to 4 Super Bowls (7 total) and so much more (WDW Moms Panel, Disney Parks Blog, Twitter, Facebook, and so much more.)

Super Bowl XL in Detroit  and trying to look deep in thought in Paris 2007.

What kind of a mom would I be if I didn’t bring out the baby photos!?! (Please don’t click away – these are worth seeing and there’s not very many of them.)

This is one of my favorite pictures of Jefferson. Total action shot!!

Here’s a photo of Ashley- my very first dog. She lived to be 14 years old and was quite a girl! She was an awesome dog.

And then came Mikita in December 2007.

And following Mikita’s arrival was the re-friendship with Mike.

I’ve had some really wonderful life moments shared with you here on the blog. I’ve been struggling lately trying to figure out where it goes from here. I have to be honest, I’m confused with all the advice I read on blogging and the “rules” they establish for bloggers and realize I don’t fit into this realm, based of what they consider the “right” way to blog. I blog about everything in my life – my dogs, my man, my friends, my work life, my home life… everything. Yet the “experts” say I should have a niche and focus. This thinking has me all confused and wondering if I should even continue on.
But I will. I enjoy this, even if it’s not what a blog expert says it should be. I hope you continue to read my blog. It will be what it has been for the past 5 years – a blog about my life. A blog about what I do, who I am, what makes me happy. I don’t write this for advertisements so I have no guiding light other than my heart. I hope you continue to stop by once in awhile and enjoy what you see.

While I was tossing and turning one of the bizarre thoughts that entered my mind was hoping I would find some of my family recipes that I’ve lost over the years. Two in particular came to mind – my grandma’s “Fudgies” and my Aunt Theona’s doughnuts. I had the recipes for many years on note cards I kept in a small green plastic container – which is nowhere to be found. I was really thinking this morning about Aunt Theona’s doughnuts. I wondered how many people in this world have probably never experienced the pleasure of eating a homemade doughnut. Doughnuts are so readily available and pretty cheap, why would you go to the trouble of making them at home? Once you’ve tasted one, you’d understand. My aunt’s doughnuts were so darn delicious!
The whole point of this story is – I was up at 3am thinking about how people don’t eat homemade doughnuts and then the wackiest thing happened when I opened today’s paper.  Look at what was on the front page of today’s Orlando Sentinel:

You  have got to admit this is WEIRD!!

Maybe now I’ll find that recipe.  Really weird!

Location:  Orlando, Florida

Outside Temperature:  68-degrees

Water Temperature:  57-degrees

Dogs say:  Let’s Swim!

Mom says:  Not me!

Gotta get the ball out of the water.

I can get to it this way.

I’m going in.

Got it!

Ah – Let’s do it again – about 30-times!

Happy Sunday everyone.

]]> http://leanneslife.com/2010/02/21/the-first-swim/feed/ 2 http://leanneslife.com/2010/02/16/disney-social-media-moms-celebration-photos/ http://leanneslife.com/2010/02/16/disney-social-media-moms-celebration-photos/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:39:31 +0000 Leanne http://leanneslife.com/?p=954 The Disney Social Media Moms Celebration officially wrapped up four nights ago and I’m still in recuperation stage.  Although today I finally was able to put in a full work day without zoning out. My apologies to my online friends because I have not been keeping up with the content demand. And I’m so thrilled about you visiting my site. I’ve never had so many comments on any one post before and it really thrills me to no end. (Insert giddy smile here.)

I still need some time to gather my thoughts for a coherent blog post on the entire event. I’ve been visiting some of the site from the bloggers who attended and I am so impressed with their writing talents and amount of content they publish.  Janice and Susan from 5 Minutes For Mom are simply amazing!  Their energy levels are through the roof and it shows in their website.

While I gather my thoughts, here are some photos from the event. These are a compilation of my pictures, plus photos from Preston Mack – the official Disney photographer on Friday, and Josh Hallet of hyku.com who attended Thursday’s breakfast with Guy Kawasaki.

Kathy Ireland captivated the audience with her eloquent presentation.

Backstage with Kathy Ireland. What a beautiful person she is!

Walt Disney World Resort President Meg Crofton welcomed the moms to the first ever Social Media Moms Celebration.

Maxine Clark, founder and Chief Executive Bear of Build-A-Bear Workshop delivered the opening presentation that set the tone for the rest of the day.

Cool shot of the American Adventure rotunda where Guy Kawasaki presented. Photo compliments of Josh Hallett, hyku.com

Marissa Jaret Winokur had the crowd laughing with her creative presentation on how she uses social media.

Chris Brogan and moms from the conference at Epcot on Thursday nights.

Chris Brogan and me at the end of the day’s events on Friday. Oh yeah – the Muppets showed up for the festivities, too!

ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover star Ty Pennington at Thursday’s Volunteer Family Celebration event at Epcot.

The new Guinness World Record for structure made out of canned food. The food was all packaged up and distributed to local food banks in Florida and Georgia, enough to feed 70,000 meals!

We wrapped up a very fun yet busy 3-day social media conference for moms and their families at Disney last week. For me, it was exhilarating to meet so many people that I’ve befriended through Twitter over the past year and to finally put real faces with Twitter IDs and avatars.  Some people were very easy to recognize from their itty bitty photos on their bios and others totally caught me by surprise. (Yes @dcanoli I’m talking about you!) It was wonderful to see some of my online friends again in person – Allison, Jeni, Cooper, Erin, Janine, and of course, my WDW Moms Panelists Margaret, Diane, Kathy, Joanne, Terry, Suzannah and Andi.  It was just such an experience to meet so many wonderful people and spend time with them.  I also have to give a shout-out to Susan and Janice, Jennifer, Amy and Maria for all their help in making this event a reality. I know I’m forgetting many folks and I’m so sorry. I think if I recalled everyone this blog would be 20 pages long.

More to come on the activities and wonderful speakers.  (Such as Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Kathy Ireland, Maxine Clark, Marissa Jaret Winokur and the hilarious Maryellen Hooper)

Ice droplets formed on my trees and bushes Sunday morning. I woke up at 2:00am remembering I forgot to turn off the sprinkler system which runs every Sunday morning at 4:00am. 

I am actually very “ok” with this palm tree biting the dust.  I’ve wanted to get rid of it for years because it grows faster than weeds and takes over the yard.  Maybe, hopefully, the freeze got to most of it and I can finally yank it out of the ground.

I spent part of the day yesterday (New Year’s Eve) at the Magic Kingdom working a Cross-U shift. For those not familiar with this every so often, usually during peak periods, salaried cast members will be asked to work a shift in the parks to help out.  The exciting and sometimes intimidating part of this is that we have no idea what job we’ll be assigned until we show up for our shift. My assignment this year:  Popcorn stand at the Castle hub in the Magic Kingdom. I was in charge of filling the popcorn orders as they came in. It was pretty easy because there were only two size options – a small box or a souvenir bucket. Once our team got a flow going we were rockin!  I’m positive we were the best and most efficient popcorn stand in all the parks yesterday.

It was so much fun to see everyone at the parks having such a good time. At 4pm the cast started handing out the New Year’s Eve hats and horn blowers which quickly added to the buzz along Main Street.  If I had anyone to hang out with I might have just stayed at the park for the rest of the night to ring in the year. It seemed everyone was having a great time.

I feel very blessed going into 2010.  While I have few tight personal friendships, those that I have I cherish.  I am also grateful for the many wonderful people I work with and for those amazing people that I met through work (read: Moms Panelists and bloggers). Your support and encouragement means so much to me.  I appreciate everyone so much and wish you all the very best in the coming year.

For those that have asked – Jefferson is doing fine.  He cooperated so quickly I am actually stunned.  The boxer shorts lasted less than 24-hours.

Here’s where the lump was removed from his right hind leg.

Happy New Year to all!