Kris Noorman | the journal

Category Archives: Travel

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more florida memories | downtown disney

April 13, 2012 – 10:37 am

Downtown Disney. December 2011.

On our third day, after hanging out at the pool for a while, we headed to Downtown Disney for the evening, did a little window shopping, made a stop at the Lego store (of course!), had ice cream and rode the carousel. We met up with Heather’s friends, Dina & Andreas, while we were there (some of you may remember that I shot their wedding in Naples FL a few years ago). It was so great to see them again. Chloe also discovered her new favorite store, Little Miss Matched. We would return there before the end of our trip for a few souvenirs. Here are a few highlights of the night.

Ghirardelli, anyone? Yum!

Scarlett LOVES Toy Story!

I love this picture. Pure joy on her face. <3 (and on her mommy’s face, too) There’s Chloe in the background, too, spinning and spinning.

My little family.

Downtown Disney at night. Chloe with one of the living statues.

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pool hair and prune toes

January 25, 2012 – 10:49 am

crazy hair after swimming. Florida. Dec 2011.

Love me some sweet little baby toes all wrinkly from being in the water for so long. <3

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splashing around

January 14, 2012 – 12:55 pm

silly Zach in the pool. Florida. Dec 2011.

On Monday morning, the guys and the kids decided they wanted to go swim, so we all headed down to the pool. Heather and I took pictures while everyone frolicked. Zach was being silly (above) pretending to be a baby like Scarlett. This picture makes me smile. Everyone took turns playing with Scarlett. She was splashing, being tossed in the air, playing with the pool noodle and “jumping in” like her cousins (more like leaning forward and falling into her daddy’s arms). Zach is so sweet with her in this picture (below). He loves that little girl and it’s so cute how he wants to help take care of her.

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to infinity and beyond

January 12, 2012 – 11:16 am

movie time. Florida. Dec 2011.
Monday morning, the kids plopped down on the bed in Heather & Jeff’s room to watch Toy Story 3. I love how Scarlett is wearing socks on her arms and her little toes are curled up all cute.

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advent fun

January 11, 2012 – 10:39 am

Scarlett coloring. Florida. Dec 2011.

I brought along the advent boxes on our vacation so we could continue to count down to Christmas. I thought it would be fun to include Scarlett in the fun, too. On this day, the advent box said “Let’s do some Christmas coloring”. I brought along some old coloring books the kids hadn’t really used and got Scarlett some cute crayons/crayon holders in animal shapes. Love her expression in the picture above. She’s so adorable.

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ping pong, anyone?

January 10, 2012 – 9:55 am

ping pong at the Activity Center. Florida. Dec 2011.

After yesterday’s picture, this one makes it seem like MiMaw is out to get Zach. This was a funny little accidental shot. I got low and took some pictures of him hitting the ball and she just happened to swing as I shot the photo. We had a fun time playing ping pong and foosball at the resort’s Activity Center before it started raining that afternoon.

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bingo!

January 9, 2012 – 10:30 am

Zach winning at Bingo! Florida. Dec 2011.

The resort had activities poolside just about every day. On Sunday afternoon, we decided to go check out the Bingo game. We were the only group there, but it was fun. The above picture cracks me up because the boys kept winning. Chloe and MiMaw would get very close and one of the guys would call BINGO! This is just after Zach called “BINGO!” and you can see MiMaw’s fist punching the air by Zach’s head. LOL!

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get up

January 7, 2012 – 11:03 pm

Scarlett waking Chloe up. Florida.

It was our first night of sleep at the resort. Chloe was sleeping on couch cushions on the floor this day as we had one extra person for the first night and had to shuffle the sleeping arrangements. Scarlett was already awake and she wandered in and saw Chloe lying there snoozing. I told her to wake Chloe up and she proceeded to tug on the blankets until Chloe groggily opened her eyes and rolled over. It was very cute!

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a happy holiday

January 6, 2012 – 1:42 pm

This is where we were a couple weeks before Christmas. FLORIDA! It was the most wonderful, relaxing vacation. Just perfect. We were there with Mom+Dad O, Heather, Jeff and Scarlett. I’ve always thought it would be so fun to go on a family vacation with everybody. And it was.

The first few days, we got settled, recuperated from the long drive (yes, we drove 20 hrs. straight through to get there. we are crazy!), swam, relaxed, went out to dinner, played games, went to Downtown Disney. It was a perfect start to the trip.

On Tuesday, we surprised the kids with a trip to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. That was fun! Chloe LOVED all the roller coaster and water rides. Those were her favorites. That girl has no fear. She and Jake went on the Hulk roller coaster several times and she loved it more each time. Zach is the complete opposite. No roller coasters for him. We really enjoyed Harry Potter world. That was very cool to see. We went there once in the morning when we first got there and went again at the end of the day, which made for some very cool shots of Hogsmeade at night. Also liked Jurassic Park. That movie is a favorite of ours, not just because we love the movie, but because it was during that movie that Jake realized he really liked me. We were just friends going to a late night movie with my brother Tim. I tried to take a picture of us in front of one of the dinosaurs, but my self portrait aim failed and all I got was the edge of the truck in this shot. Still like it, though.

On Wednesday, we headed to Disney in the late afternoon for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas event. We arrived around 4 and the park was open until midnight for us with special fireworks, parades, hot cocoa + cookies, and even snow on Main St. It was very fun and a beautiful night to celebrate the holiday season.

The BEST thing about going to the theme parks the second week of December was short waits on just about every ride. That was awesome! The kids, especially Chloe, are huge complainers when it comes to waiting in long lines, so to walk up to a ride and practically get right on was awesome!

The last couple days, we relaxed and recuperated from two days at theme parks, swam, hung out some more, played games, went to Downtown Disney again, got souvenirs for the kids, and went to Cocoa Beach (just the 4 of us).

I felt very sad when it came time to pack. We had such a wonderful time with the family and I really didn’t want it to end. I seriously almost cried on the day we left. And not just because we had a twenty hour drive ahead of us. LOL!

While there, I took over 1,400 pictures. Obviously, I’m not going to share all of them here, but I think I will share one or two photos at a time that I really like and want to share the story behind instead of several big posts. We’ll try that and see how it goes.

Can’t wait for the next family vacation in a couple years!

By Kris | Also posted in Family, Kids | Comments (0)

a whirlwind trip

October 12, 2011 – 11:01 am

When I tell you how many things we crammed into our two-day getaway to the U.P., you will think we are crazy, but we did it. We left early Saturday morning for a 5-hour drive to the Upper Peninsula. We arrived at Mackinaw City around lunchtime, so we stopped at the park there, had a picnic lunch and took some pictures by the bridge.

After lunch, we drove across the bridge. This was the kids first time there. We went to our hotel to check in, but we were there too early, so we went on our way north. Of course, we had to stop at Castle Rock just north of St. Ignace. We climbed to the top and thought we might have heart attacks on the way up. It’s pretty steep and there are a ton of stairs to climb. But the view was lovely and it was worth the climb.

We drove northward to Whitefish Point, took a look at the lighthouse and buildings, ventured out to the beach to see Lake Superior, and picked up some rocks.

Then it was south toward Paradise and a visit to Tahquamenon Falls. The falls are always so cool to see. We went to the lower falls first, walked the boardwalk to get a closer look, and took some pictures. The wind was so nice there and it was blowing mist from the waterfall in our faces, which felt nice since it was such a warm day.

We got some ice cream and the kids played checkers before we headed over to the upper falls.

Every time I’ve been to the upper falls with Jen, the river has been pretty low. One year, it was so shallow that the falls were split and dry in the middle and people climbed out on top of them. But this time, the river was flowing fast and deep and I got to see them in all their glory.

After a beautiful fall day, we spent the evening at our hotel swimming in the pool. I fell asleep almost the second my head hit the pillow. It was a ton of driving in one day.

Day two would be filled with even more driving than the day before. We stopped at Java Joe’s for morning coffee and Joe asked where we were going and after informing him we were headed to Kitch-iti-kipi, he suggested when we were done there, we should head a little further west and south on the Garden Peninsula to Fayette State Park to the ghost town. And that’s exactly what we did!

We went to Kitch-iti-kipi first. The kids really liked it there. I knew they would. I’m so glad Jen and I discovered it this summer. Chloe even got to make the raft move across the spring. It’s so cool there. It stays at a constant 45 degrees, so it never freezes over. I can just imagine how awesome it would be in the winter.

Then it was off to Fayette. I think this was my favorite place of the weekend. I love every place we went, but there’s just something about walking in a deserted town, where people used to work and live, seeing where they lived and the beauty of the location of this old iron town with the cliffs and water surrounding it. It was the coolest place. Very peaceful, too. With the fall colors, it just felt like the perfect time of year to visit there. Thanks, Java Joe! We loved it!

We headed home in the late afternoon and drove two hours back to St. Ignace then another five hours home. It was a crazy amount of driving and a thousand miles added to the odometer, but completely worth it.