Rod has been at Best Buy for 15 years and for probably 10 of those 15 years the stores he has worked in has come pretty close to winning the annual Holiday Achievers contest (November – January).  However, only the 10 best teams in each territory (there are 6 territories in the company) actually win the contest.  Each year those 60 stores get to send their Leadership team (Supervisors and Managers), plus a guest to the Best Buy Achievers event.  Well this year, Rod’s store finally won and we got a chance to go to Walt Disney World!  Now WDW may be the most magical place on earth, but if you don’t like to get on the rides it may not be the best thing you could win.  🙂  One guest, Lis, got to go for Free – all expenses paid but we were allowed to bring other guests.  A couple of Rod’s co-workers brought their kids with them too, but Alex and Sam opted to stay at home.  Sam did have school all week including Prom, while Alex had finals…. that being said, I’m not sure they would have made the trip anyway.

Even though we don’t really like the rides, we still had a pretty good time.  Best Buy put us up in a hotel in Disney (right next to Epcot) and gave us quite a bit of spending money for food for the week and  2 days worth of passes to the park of your choice… including Universal Studios.  We chose Animal Kingdom and Universal Studios, but opted to upgrade for the Disney Park Hopper which allowed us to visit as many parks as we wanted to on Wednesday and then for Thursday chose Universal.   We ended up not going to Universal on Thursday as there were scattered showers all day, so we gave those tickets to some friends and relaxed and went to Disney Springs (shopping mall) for lunch.  Overall we had a good time,  and we some photos with some pretty famous people.  We will have a couple of more posts with photos from the various parks, but here are some photos of the hotel and Achiever’s event.

Early, Early Flight on Monday morning – 5:45am… we had to leave at 2:30am to get to the airport, but we stayed up til 11pm watching GOT

Hotel Dophin… right behind us is the Hotel Swann – they had BBY employees in both

They had 4 pools between the 2 hotels… this one with a waterfall and a slide.

The only selfie Lis has ever taken….

Walking back from the boardwalk… the ferry can take you to the boardwalk, Epcot and Disney Studios.

Monday night cocktail party/dinner on the “beach”

We made a stop at the snack bar during registration a couple of times… lasted us almost all week long.

Gaming computer setup

Range Hood with built in LED screen for viewing Netflix, recipes, etc.

98″ Sony 8K TV… retails for about $60k

ATT/HBO had a booth with the throne for GOT

Lis and Sam were clearing away some leaves from the flower bed last week and decided to clean up the huge pile of leaves by the sewer drain (it’s really not on our property but it needed to be cleared away).  In the process of doing this they found a huge supply of worms and decided they would start a worm farm.  Of course they didn’t really know what they were doing but they got an old potato bag and some dirt and put the worms in there for safe keeping.  After doing a little research online they found the best place to put them would be by the window in the den where it was cool and didn’t get a lot of sun.  Lis has been feeding them some leftover celery and other produce but fortunately since putting them in the bag we really haven’t seen them.  🙂

Meanwhile in the backyard a bird built a bird nest in the small tree by the vegetable garden.  Lis was looking at the nest and realized that it had somehow managed to get a very large piece of French baguette into the nest… it’s actually part of the nest wall.  Now judging by the size of the nest, the bird wasn’t really that big so we don’t know how it managed to get it up in the tree.  The good thing though, the bread is probably now as hard as a rock and should provide some good protection.  🙂

We had a nice day for Easter this year and decided to take dinner outside.  Leg of lamb, Mac n cheese, asparagus and some purple potatoes for dinner with some cookies for desert.  The boys actually look good too.  🙂

You can no longer fit your big butt on the railing….  🙂

After 14 years of watching Alex play soccer and basketball and about 10 years of playing soccer and a few years of basketball himself, Sam decided to try a little baseball and swimming.  He started swimming this past Fall and joined the team that had a couple of years together and did pretty well for his 1st year out.

He actually started playing baseball last year as it was the 1st year JPII had ever had a baseball team, unfortunately as it turns out they didn’t have enough players to actually compete in a game.  This year they just barely had enough players, but not necessarily enough of the right players (definitely not enough pitchers).  They have been playing away games for about a month now and unfortunately have yet to win a game.  This is probably to be expected since everyone has about the same level of experience and years playing as Sam.  We got to see our first game on Friday as the team played their first ever home game at the new sports complex.  The field was done and in pretty good shape, but there was still a lot of construction work going on – including no concession stand, only one set of bleachers and lots of dirt everywhere.  The team lost another not so close game (10 run rule was invoked in the 7th inning), but they all gave their best effort and looked really good in their uniforms.

We started taking photos of they boys on the mountain for Lillian and Henri back in 2011.  This year we had a rare opportunity to take another one as they seem to now be few and far between.  Do you think the boys look any different??

For Gung Gung and Rod’s birthday we decided to do something a little different – we decided to go on a little adventure.  The adventure was the Rovers At Wintergreen event (https://www.roav.org/events) and to say the least we all had a blast!  The event was held at the Wintergreen Ski resort in the Blue Ridge mountains, up near Waynesboro, VA.  This was the first time that we ever tried anything like this – in fact it was the first time Lis’s car ever saw dirt other than maybe once or twice when we parked it in the front yard.  Since it was our first time out and we had zero experience, we decided, after much discussion, to take the ‘Easy’ trail first.  Unfortunately  our idea of ‘easy’ and their idea of ‘easy’ were clearly not the same.  To be fair it had rained about 2″ the day before and the trail was very wet, muddy and slippery – if this hadn’t happened it probably wouldn’t have been nearly as difficult.

Anyway, the first and only trail started off pretty good, Lis was driving the LR2 with Alex and Rod, while Gung Gung was driving the SE3 with Sam.  Lis was super excited and swerving around showing off a bit… at least for about the first 5 minutes.  After that pure panic set in and Alex and Rod feared for their lives as Lis was close to having a panic attack while driving. 😄 As mentioned previously the rain had made it very muddy and slick and the we were having trouble staying on the trail.  Of course the trail was only really wide enough for the vehicles so if we were to slide off the trail it would probably be down a 45° embankment… at least until the trees would have stopped us.  Luckily that didn’t happen and Lis muscled through until almost halfway when the trail leader stopped us to explain that we were going down the next hill and making loop back up.  While this was going on, a few people got out and stretched their legs, and we decided to switch drivers…. Alex declined to drive so that left Rod for LR2, while Gung Gung was still driving the SE3.  While talking to Sam and Gung Gung we noticed that they had a flat tire – well to be fair it was pretty much shredded by that point and the rim was chipped away… we’re not exactly sure how long they were driving on it, but hey it’s not a party until something is broken.  After talking to the trail leader, we all decided we needed to change it where it was and a couple of the other drivers came over to lend assistance.  One had a flat hydraulic lift – which was far superior to our jack and another had a compressor to blow up Sam’s spare which only had about 15 pounds of pressure. 😃Everyone was super nice and supportive and really thankful that it was us and not them. Well after that was all over, we all made it down the hill and re-assembled for the ascent back up and back to the parking lot.   Of course, again the mud proved to be a major factor in the journey back because everyone was having a super hard time getting back up the hill.  Each car had to go one at a time, to give each car plenty of time and space to make the ascent…  a couple of them got stuck and had to back down a little ways before trying again.  Fortunately, for us we had now figured out how to use the ‘Sport mode’ on the LR2 and we made it in one shot.  Gung Gung and Sam, kept in low gear and also made it without incident.  After us, there were only 4 more drivers to make it up – the last being the trail leader – who effortlessly made it over the top in his D90 Defender – in fact you will see in the last video that he easily travels over the boulders that we were so desperately trying to avoid.

Sam did a great job taking all the videos – forewarning, each one is about 2 minutes long.  Also, the videos really don’t do the trail justice because for us this was a white knuckle affair – see Lis’s expression in the rear view mirror of one of the photos. 😬

So this is what happens when Alex and his friend Jeremy get up at 7:30am to watch FIFA. 😴😴😴

So Sam and 3 other classmates from JPII entered the 2019 Sheppard Memorial Library Public Library Quiz Bowl a couple of weeks ago and came in 2nd Place!  They were competing against quite a few other teams from the Greenville area and the questions ranged from History, Math, Science and other topics.  Surprising to us, this is the 2nd year Sam has participated – see article below.  If they would have won, the team would have moved on to the regional bowl.  We are very proud of Sam for always trying new things!

Michel Phelps doesn’t have to worry just yet, but Sam won his first race a couple of weeks ago – a 100 meter freestyle!  Sam typically competes in the 50, 100 meter and the men’s relay but this was his first individual win.  The team practices every Monday and Wednesday morning at 5:45am in the Aquatics center (same place as the dive shop) and Sam manages to make it to almost every practice.  We are very proud of him for trying out something new this year and for making it to all of those early morning practices.  Of course, he still needs to work on his form – especially his turns and of course his physical conditioning and stamina, but he is making great strides.   The photos below were from Saturday when the JPII team competed against other Pitt County schools.