Daniel Says – January 2, 2009
Nikki: “I don’t feel very good Daniel.”
Daniel: “I feel hard and easy.”
~ Daniel
Daniel Says are the thoughts expressed by Daniel Degutis. All rights reserved. Copyright 2009
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
My Twitter Pictures of 2008
Over the course of the year, I changed my Twitter picture to reflect my mood, current events or the time of year. Being the last day of 2008, I thought it would be cool to look back at all the pictures. Join me on a trip down memory lane.
Frumpa’s Elves
The grandkids have been practicing long and hard to give you this wonderful holiday presentation.
Note – I have the video for family members (i.e. no need to buy it).
Send your own ElfYourself eCards
If the video above doesn’t load/play due to have holiday traffic, try this link.
Christmas Concerts 2008
‘Tis the season… Daniel and Christopher’s first Christmas concerts. Enjoy!
Daniel
Christopher #1
Christopher #2
10th Anniversary Vacation: Day 3
We decided to make our third day of vacation one of shopping and sightseeing (of sorts). With the dearth of Disney apparel (specifically Mickey Mouse items for Judy) in and around Chicagoland, we planned on checking out everything Disney that can be purchased outside of the theme parks.
Breakfast was, and will continue to be, the standard continental breakfast at the hotel. Why pay for a meal when it’s included with our room.
By 10:30am we were off to our first destination, Premium Outlets Mall which has a Disney Outlet Store amongst it’s dozens of other stores.
On our way out we grabbed some pics.
I thought Faulty Towers was across the pond?
Gators are a real threat here in Florida.
We found a few treasures at Premier Outlets, including a Mickey Baseball jersey for Judy, then headed for lunch at Chicago Pizzeria Uno. Yes, a known good pizza for lunch. I don’t mess around when it comes to pizza.
Next, we headed to Prime Outlets for the Disney Character Outlet store. While at Prime Outlets we checked out the Columbia Outlet store where I purchased a new jacket for winter at 50% off retail.
Our last shopping stop was at Downtown Disney. Numerous stores, restaurants, clubs and boutiques on the lakefront. Below are some pictures from Downtown Disney.
The bridge to Pleasure Island:
Judy trying on some head wear:
The Lego Store had some awesome displays. Here are just a couple (we’ll upload more to Flickr soon). Yes, these where made entirely from Legos.
We ended the day at Planet Hollywood for dinner.
Being a big fan of the burgers at Hard Rock Cafe Orlando (probably the best burger I ever had), my goal was to do a taste test of burgers between Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock which we’ll dine at on Monday night. Unless they’ve completely ruined the burgers at Hard Rock it will be no contest. The mushroom swiss burger at Planet Hollywood lacked flavor. The cheese and mushrooms were good, but the big tasteless beef patty made the burger, in a single word “blah”.
Posted by Al Degutis
10th Anniversary Vacation: Day 2
We started our day a little later than planned (i.e. got up at 7:30am instead of 7am) because we didn’t realize that the time on the alarm clock was set to AM last night when we set the alarm. This is no big deal since we are on vacation after all but we did have a full day planned.
We grabbed some breakfast via the hotel’s continental offering (“waffles and bagels and donuts, Oh My!” as Judy said), and then headed off to Epcot.
We arrived at Epcot around 9:30am and the park seemed relatively empty. By noon the crowd had increased and we both noticed the extremely large number of stollers parked at any given attraction. As Judy wondered aloud how people could find their stroller amongst the sea of strollers, we witnessed a mom giving a security officer the description of her missing stroller.
We did a few of the rides and attractions including Test Track, Soarin’, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Nemo and Friends and the interactive chat with Crush (the turtle from Finding Nemo). We also did some shopping. Here’s Judy trying on a hat:
We had lunch at the Electric Umbrella at Epcot.
Our second stop of the day was Disney’s Hollywood Studios where we caught the Disney/Pixar Character Parade and Block Party as we arrived around 2:30pm. After that it was straight to the Rock-N-Roll Rollercoaster, an indoor, very dark (except for a dozen or so neon signs/lights) steel coaster. We got to see Mator and Lightning McQueen make an appearance as we strolled by. We took The Great Movie Ride, a “walk” down memory lane of some of the classic movies. When the rain finally came, we checked out a few of the shows including Indiana Jones Stunt Show (pre-empted by the rain), Star Tours, and the 3D Muppet Movie. I continue to be impressed by the amazing 3D movies that can be produced.
We decided not to wait around to see if the rain would let up in time for the Fantasmic night-time finale, so we headed out for dinner. We dined at P.F. Changs, where we truly enjoy their Chicken Lettuce Wraps and numerous entrees.
Row of palm trees at the Mall of the Millenia:
Posted by Al Degutis
10th Anniversary Vacation: Day 1
This Saturday we will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. To celebrate we’ve traveled to Florida to spend a week in Orlando, which was one of our honeymoon destinations.
Today was a travel day. Our two-and-a-half hour flight was in the middle of the afternoon, but taking the extremely affordable Van Galder bus to O’Hare forced us to depart based on the bus schedule. (Note – taking the Van Galder cost us $36 vs $100 for the 60 mile limo ride.)
We grabbed our luggage and headed for breakfast at IHOP.
Next was the bus ride to the airport. We checked in and found a spot to sit back and checked email to kill time until lunch.
We had lunch at Chili’s in the airport terminal.
Again, more waiting for the flight which was moved to a different gate due to a departure delay with the flight at our gate. Our plane was late as well, arriving shortly after boarding was supposed to begin. We took off about 30 minutes later than scheduled, which isn’t bad. I’m glad I don’t travel much.
After we landed in Orlando, we got the rental car and headed to the hotel. It was coming up on 8pm local time so we stopped for dinner first here:
After dinner, we checked into the hotel and started planning tomorrow’s events which will consist of a lot more than just eating. Probably a lot of standing in lines and sweating with a 60% chance of getting wet from rain.
Posted by Al Degutis
