Anna Skamarakas

This will be called the day when my family could have ganged up on me, strangled me, and strung me up by my toes to dangle from the highest point of Cinderella’s Castle!

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As this is going to be our most ambitious day of the week, we are all up and ready to head over to Animal Kingdom bright and early.  Brighid runs to get fast passes for Kali River rapids, and the rest of us head in to Its tough to Be a Bug.  There are no lines this early in the morning, but we do have to wait for the second show to start.  We are hoping Brighid catches up with us, but she does not, and in we go.  As always, a fun show, not to be missed.  Although, with no lines, you don’t get to really admire the Tree of Life.

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We have nothing planned for today, except meeting Dori and her family for dinner tonight at 1900 Park Fare.  I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to that!   I have had at least a half dozen reservations at 1900 Park Fare and have yet to make one of them for various reasons.  Plus, it will be nice to see Dori - I haven’t seen her in ages!!

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The plan for the day is to get up and out early, but not too early.  We have a 2:30 lunch reservation at Restaurant Marrakesh as part of our Candlelight Processional package for tonight. 

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We are definitely sleeping in today!!   Well, everyone else is.  I’m not a sleeping in type person.  I think my father has instilled in me the belief that if you wanted to sleep, you could stay home.  Vacations are for getting up, doing stuff, seeing things. 

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We have decided to take a trip to Disney!   Yeah, I know, so what else is new?   Well, this is our first time going back as Disney Vacation Club members, and our first time to stay at our home resort, Saratoga Springs!   We’re all very excited for that reason alone, and we have invited my stepmom to come along with us, so it should turn out to be a great trip!

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I received this DVD this Christmas as a gift from my husband and children.  It was one of those movies I REALLY wanted to see in the theater, but either Jim would not go or Brighid could not go, and the timing never worked out.  Anyway, I’m so glad it got picked up as one of my gifts - it was an AWESOME movie.

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I generally love Christmas, so if this starts off sounding like it’s going to be grumpy and miserable, it’s not that the whole holiday sucks - just some of the aspects of it.  To begin with, I had my party 2 weeks earlier this year, thinking that I would have   more time to get the rest of the stuff I need to get done finished without the stress of the party looming over me.  I’m still up to my eyeballs in wrapping left to do   And I am hoping that all of my gifts are up in the cabinets above my bed, because if they are not, I’m in big trouble.  I did find my in-laws presents, and wrapped them late last night, packed the box up and got it ready to go, then realized I had one more small box for my mother-in-law that I hadn’t put into the box.  I just found that and had to rip open the box and add it, so it didn’t get mailed today, as it was supposed to.

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Last year, Jim insisted that I blog everything about last year’s Christmas party so that this year, I had it to come up with a menu and a floor plan for this year’s party. It worked out pretty well, in that I had a whole list of things to follow - stuff I knew did not work, stuff I wanted to repeat, how I wanted everything laid out. So, this year, we’re doing it again. This is the run down - and the background - on this year’s holiday party.

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When I started my weight loss surgery journey, I hoped and prayed that I would be one of those one hundred pound losers before the end of my first year.  My second hope was that I would at least get below 200 pounds - which is pretty darn close to 100 pounds lost, since I was starting at 295.

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