Except, we weren’t.

In all of the confusion, we neglected to bring their autograph books with us.  Smee was there with his captain.  This was quite possibly the last time we’d see him this trip.  Perhaps, our only opportunity to get his autograph, but we had nothing for him to sign.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but parenting ranks right up there too.  I couldn’t let my kids go disappointed, so I thought quickly.  I brought the kids to the table where they were serving drinks and grabbed a napkin.  Then, after Smee signed a girl’s book, I asked if we could borrow her pen.  Borrowed pen plus napkin equals two very happy kids.

Have you ever had a moment where you had to think quickly to help your kids get something they really wanted?

Disclaimer: We paid for our own trip to Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Though we were given an incredible deal from Disney, they never asked us to blog about this event. All opinions expressed above are my own.

After we left the introductory cocktail reception, I headed over the the beach near the Yacht Club.  (B and I had actually gotten separated during the Adventures By Disney.)  There, I found B, her parents, and the kids.

We were each given a bandana (which some of us fastened around our heads pirate-style) and drinks were offered with cool light-up "ice" cubes.

As we entered, we were serenaded by a pirate band and the centerpieces on our tables included a treasure chest.  (NOTE: We didn’t try digging up the beach looking for buried treasure.  That’d be bad form.)  Even the food was being guarded by a pirate.

Luckily, the pirate food guard didn’t mind us chowing down on some grub.  And what food there was!  A feast fit for a Captain (Hook)!

Many of the dishes had a decent kick to them.  Not burn your mouth spicy, mind you.  Disney wasn’t trying to get us to soak our mouths’ in the nearby waterway.  The food did have a spiciness about it that felt perfectly appropriate for a pirate party.  After all, what pirate would choose to eat bland food?

This wasn’t even all of the food, mind you.  There was also a kids table with corn (a non-spicy version), hamburgers, hot dogs, fruit, and, of course, Mickey-roni and Cheese.

Of course, there were plenty of people to meet.  I had finally met Rene Syler (aka Good Enough Mother) in person at the cocktail reception, but we took the opportunity to have our photo taken.

(Hmmm…. Is that dadarocks in the background checking his smartphone?  I believe so!)

See this calm looking spot over here?

Well, it wasn’t calm for long.  They called all the kids over and started playing some pirate games.

Yes, those are hooks on their hands.  Just like a certain Captain had.  Speaking of whom, he made an appearance with Smee and Jake.  Sharkey and Bones couldn’t make it – I think they were busy cleaning the Jolly Roger – but a pair of singing pirates helped get the kids dancing.

Finally, there were amazing desserts including a fantastic bananas foster and, of course, Mickey Ice Cream Bars.

With the sun setting and the kids getting tired, we headed off of the sand for some much needed sleep.  It was a long, but very fun day at Disney World and our trip was just getting started.

Disclaimer: We paid for our own trip to Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Though we were given an incredible deal from Disney, they never asked us to blog about this event. All opinions expressed above are my own.

The boys snuck into our room at about 6:20am to wake B up and wish her a happy Mother’s Day.  Had I been awake at the time, I would have headed them off and let B sleep in.  Instead, we gave B her mother’s day present, I made everyone breakfast (including breakfast in bed for B), and then kept them as quiet as I could while B got back to sleep.  (NOTE: Next time I let B go back to sleep, I’m confiscating her smartphone so she can’t check Twitter/e-mail/etc when she should be sleeping.)

Eventually, I got the boys dressed and took them to the park and then the grocery store so B could get some true quiet time.  After picking B up, we all went out to eat an ice cream lunch (mine was blueberry flavor which makes it healthy, right?).  We did some shopping and stopped by Mimi’s house to visit and drop off her Mother’s Day present.  Then, we quickly picked up some dinner and had a nice cookie cake for dessert.

Fast forward to today.  Today is a different kind of celebration.  While yesterday was a celebration of B being a mother, today is a celebration of the event that made B a mother for a second time.  Yes, today is JSL’s birthday.

It’s hard to believe that JSL is five already.  It seems like just yesterday that we were welcoming him into our family.  It’s been amazing seeing him grow and learn about the world around him.  He is creative (often performing shows with songs that he makes up on the spot), loving (he adores his big brother and loves cuddling), and surprisingly bright (just when we forget how old he is and think of him as a baby, he shows us just how much he understands).  Oh and he’s quite the little geek-in-training with a special love for Transformers and superheroes.

It’s a weird mixture of pride and sadness to see your little baby grow up.  On one hand, I love the kid he is becoming.  On the other and, I want him to be my baby for as long as possible. (He’ll be my baby for his entire life, but he likely will resent me calling him that when he’s 18.)

Happy birthday to JSL.  Mommy, Daddy, and NHL love you very much and are so proud of you.

Meanwhile, B isn’t a very big superhero fan so she has no interest in seeing this movie.  I had pretty much resigned myself to catching it on DVD, but then I got to thinking.  I’m a man in his mid-thirties, not some teenager without a date on Saturday night.  I don’t need someone with me to prove anything to anyone.  Why can’t I go see the movie alone?  (Of course, finding the time to get out to actually see the movie is another story.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever gone to see a movie all by yourself?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #138

My mind began to race.  My sites were down.  All of them.  TechyDad.com, TheAngelForever.com, FollowerHQ.com.  All down.  And not just down, but proclaiming to the world that we were suspended.  A quick call to my host later and our accounts were restored to full access with the explanation that a page on our sites had caused undue strain on the server.

Let’s put aside for a moment the suspension reaction… I’m dealing with them on how better to react.  In fact, a similar problem a couple of days ago resulted in my sites being taken down with an error message for a few minutes – a much better solution.

Back to the strain, though.  When I got back home, I loaded up the log files.  Now, a typical log file, for a single view of one page, will contain multiple entries.  After all, as you’re reading this, you’re likely seeing images, there are colors and text styling via CSS files, JavaScript files and more.  This is part of what I saw in B’s log file:

46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/a-floral-splash-of-color/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.71.213 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/dole-whip-cravings/ HTTP/1.1"
79.125.64.99 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/the-cupcake-club-book-giveaway/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:05 -0400] "GET /2012/02/falling-in-love-with-disney/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:03 -0400] "GET /2012/04/selecting-phone-sounds/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.131.104 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:04 -0400] "GET /2012/04/views-from-a-friends-birthday-party/ HTTP/1.1"
79.125.88.69 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:06 -0400] "GET /2012/04/time-for-ubp-2012/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.130.60 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:06 -0400] "GET /2012/04/photo-gifts-for-mothers-day/ HTTP/1.1"
46.137.131.104 - - [30/Apr/2012:13:21:05 -0400] "GET /2012/04/disney-natures-chimpanzee/ HTTP/1.1"

As you can see, these were requests for only the HTML code of the pages. No CSS, images, or JavaScript downloaded. Just repeated calls to pages on TheAngelForever.com.  Different IP addresses were used, but they all seemed to originate from Amazon Web Services in Dublin, Ireland.

So what happened?  I have two theories.  The first is that a content scraper was trying to pull all of B’s content via an Amazon Web Services hosted script.  Something went wrong and it made so many requests so quickly that it bombed the site out.  The second is that the person behind the script didn’t care about content and the rapid requests/site bombing was by design.  In this scenario, our mystery script runner isn’t a scraper, but instead launched a DDOS attack on TheAngelForever.com.

(Quick explanation for those who don’t know what a DDOS attack is.  A DDOS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack is when a group of computers request so many services from a server that valid visitors can’t get through.  To use an analogy, imagine a restaurant that thrives on delivery orders.  Now suppose a group of people (thus "distributed") repeatedly call the restaurant’s phone and hang up.  If they do this often enough, valid would-be customers can’t get through (i.e. "denial of service").

Stopping a DDOS attack is tricky.  We can’t block the attacker because they are coming from so many IP addresses.  You can block a group of IP addresses (e.g. 46.137.*), but then you might be blocking a lot of valid users.

So how can we keep this from happening again?  There are some network tools that our hosting provider can employ, but not much B and I can do.  It might happen again tomorrow or it might never happen again at all.  So if you ever see that message again, just be patient (and perhaps tweet me) because the site will be back soon.

After we checked in for Disney Social Media Moms, we had some time.  Given that the Yacht Club resort is so close to Epcot, we walked on over.  We had two goals in mind: Playtime and Lunch.  Actually, lunch was at the top of the grown-ups’ list, but the kids just wanted to play in the UK.

Lunch took priority, though, and I knew a nice little spot in France.  Thanks to the magic of Disney, France is but a short walk away within Epcot.  We went into Boulangerie Patisserie and got some food:  Vegetable Quiches for B and me, pizzas for the boys… Ok, we were in France so they called them cheese tartines, not pizzas.  Still, it’s bread with sauce and cheese.  (Plus, the boys do better when you use familiar terms.)

Next, we walked from France to the UK.

Here, B and her parents went shopping while I supervised the boys as they ran through a small hedge maze.

We also saw some topiaries, sand art, and Duffy.  (More on these later.)

Some more shopping and walking later and it was back to the hotel for us.  After all, B and I had to head over to a introductory reception.

I’ll admit, this is precisely the kind of thing that I was dreading.  A social function where you don’t sit quietly listening, but rather talk to various people… people you may have met online, people you may have met in person, or people you may not have met at all.

All in all, I think I did pretty good.  I almost went up to someone I didn’t know, mistaking them for someone I knew and I introduced myself to one person whom I had met before, but by and large I survived unscathed.

The reception included some nice features like a guy playing the ukulele, some nice food to eat, and a few speakers talking about Adventures By Disney.

Adventures By Disney, by the way, is a Disney-fied tour of far away lands.  You get to see the sights without such mundane worries as how you will carry your luggage.  Trust me, once you’ve tried Disney’s Magical Express for your Disney World luggage versus dragging it all around yourself, you’ll appreciate "magical luggage transportation.

Before we knew it, it was time to leave for the Swashbuckler Soiree.  As we headed out, we each got a PhotoPass+ card and disc.  These would come in very handy later on.

One last photo before I close out this post.  Can you guess whose nails these are?

Those would be the nails of Jackie Gailey (aka @jjzmgailey aka Jackie’s Magical Moments).  Very impressive!

Disclaimer: We paid for our own trip to Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Though we were given an incredible deal from Disney, they never asked us to blog about this event. All opinions expressed above are my own.

Early in the morning on Thursday, April 26th, we packed the car and headed out.  Though it was chilly, we were wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts.  No, we didn’t misdress the kids.  We were boarding a plane and headed for Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration.

Soon, we were in the air and, once the pilot cleared our electronic devices, I took a few "way up high" shots.  (If you look closely in the second picture, you can see the plane that passed us – with plenty of room, mind you.)

After we landed, the phones came out and the tweeting began.  Excitedly, we monitored the #DisneySMMoms hash tag seeing people commenting on arriving and boarding buses.  I began to wonder if anyone from the conference would be on our bus.  Perhaps someone I had met before on Twitter was standing two groups behind us wondering the same thing.  It turned out that we did have social media company on the bus.  TheToySpy spotted JSL and me and tweeted at us a few times before the bus arrived at the Yacht Club.  We spoke briefly before heading to check in.

For those of you who don’t know, the Yacht Club is one of DIsney World’s deluxe resorts.  It’s very nice.  Wait, I don’t think I emphasized that enough.  It’s *VERY* nice!!!  There, much better.  Don’t believe me?  Here are some photos of our room, bathroom mirror and the view out of our window.  (I wonder if that nice couple by the pool knew they’d be blogged about.  Everyone say hi to Random Anonymous Couple!)

Once we were settled, we checked in to the DisneySMMoms welcome center.  NHL could hardly wait and would keep running ahead to point out the signs.

He barely stopped long enough for me to take a photo of this turtle or for us to talk to some other DisneySMMoms attendees.  Seriously, you’d think *he* was attending the conference!

After checking in, I took some stuff we were given back to the hotel room and then caught up with B, the boys, and B’s parents.  Along the way, I saw this being set up for a party later on.

Yes, the party was for us, but you’ll have to stop back another day for that one!  After all, if I covered all of this in one blog post, it would be about six thousand words long and the load time from the photos would be atrocious.

Disclaimer: We paid for our own trip to Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Though we were given an incredible deal from Disney, they never asked us to blog about this event. All opinions expressed above are my own.

NHL has a "travel buddy" that he takes with him on every trip.  It’s not something he sleeps with every night at home, but he likes taking it with him on vacations.  Unfortunately, this seemed to have disappeared a few nights ago and we only realized it as we were ready to leave.  Fortunately, when I called the front desk of Disney’s Yacht Club, they mentioned that they never throw anything out.  Unfortunately, their lost and found department didn’t open until 8:30am and our Magical Express pickup was at 7:30am.  So I left a very coherent voicemail message.

Ok, who am I kidding?  I left a semi-rambling description of the lost item followed by my name and my phone number.  Well, I tried to leave my phone number.  Remember that "brain lock" from before?  Well, that happened.  Suddenly, I couldn’t remember my number.  B tried to help by giving me her number to tell them, but that only confused my locked-up brain more.  We hung up (feeling completely embarrassed, of course) and I composed myself.  I looked at B’s phone number on my phone as I called back and left a better message.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t think we’d ever see the buddy again.  I figured it was gone for good.  But, as we approached the TSA carry-on check, Disney called us.  They had found NHL’s buddy!  They confirmed our home address and told B that they’d ship the buddy to our home.  This was a nice, magical resolution to what could have been a very sad end to our Disney trip.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you or your kids ever lost anything on a vacation?  If so, did you find it again?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #137

Disclaimer: We paid for our own trip to Disney World to attend the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Though we were given an incredible deal from Disney, they never asked us to blog about this event.