Moving into 2012 Technology

Greg had suggested a while back that maybe I should get a tablet in order to keep up with the "times".  I had mixed feelings at the time because I can't stand it when Greg is constantly on his phone in the car or while we're out at dinner or when I am in meetings at work and people have out their cell phone checking email or on the internet when they should have their full attention on what is being said.  It is one of my biggest pet peeves, and a really bad habit of others in my opinion. 

Society has become so dependent on technology, and it does make day to day activities easier, but personalities and the ability to have a simple conversation with a person suffer.  However, I do believe that I need to continue to evolve with the times and learn to use a tablet or I will end up like my mother, who we had to teach how to use the remote to the TV at the age of 8.

So, I've convinced myself that a tablet would be nice to be even more mobile than a laptop, be able to create my beloved lists again, take it to the grocery store, see recipes for cooking, read more, and find other fun apps that I would find useful.  Greg also said he would be interested in one for himself to be more mobile for his work.

We went to Best Buy and came home with 2 tablets.  Greg got an Asus tablet with a 10.1" screen and I got a smaller 7" Samsung tablet.  Greg has set up his tablet to work with the program that he uses at work for his projects, and I slowly find more apps that I find interesting.  Greg went back and purchased a keyboard that he can use with his tablet, and I love a case that I bought that props mine up for better viewing.

It's been about 4 weeks now with our tablets, and I do fall in love with it more and more.  The grocery list app organizes it perfectly for my route through the grocery store, and then as I check off the items, it gets rid of them so I know that I got everything on my list.  Brilliant!  I also check Facebook and Groupon more often to keep in touch with friends and not miss a good deal.  This morning, I bought my first book to read on the Kindle app, "The Introvert & Extrovert in Love", but more on that book in another post.

Anyway, if you have ever thought about getting a tablet, go for it!  They're useful, fun and my smaller sized one is super mobile.  I do still feel like there is a certain time to use it and other times when it should be put away, but I have trouble convincing Greg of this.

Welcome to Our Painted Dreams!

We started this blog to connect with those who we don't see all the time or wait too long to pick up the phone and call, but the blog to this point has mainly been about our house projects.  But as you can see from the lack of posts, we have settled down a bit on the projects and have enjoyed our lives and the busyness of this summer. 

I began to think about where I really wanted to go with this blog and what the message would be.  The title of The Miller Family just wasn't cutting it, and the title and URL having our name in it was a little too personal for me.  I began to think about my life to this point and how it all started from a dream - to grow up, go to school and get a job, find a husband, buy a house, have some pets, maybe children one day, and live happily ever after.  If it could only be that simple, right?  I've accomplished 5 of those dreams, I'm still growing up and changing constantly, the potential of children look good for the future, and my life overall is pretty happy, although I can't help but feel like something is missing.

I think so many of us go through the hustle and bustle of our busy lives and don't stop to think about where we are really going or what we're working towards or if there should be something that we're working towards.  So, here's to slowing down and focusing on what really matters - my personal happiness, my relationship with Greg, enriching our lives together, and creating a happy environment that we can call our home.

Day 6: Gatorland

Florida is known for their population of aligators, but I had to visit Gatorland to see what it was all about.  It was a make-shift zoo designed around aligators, and they had a live animal encounter show, gator jumping show and gator wrestling show. 

It was really hot out, so we only stayed for two of the shows, and missed someone wrestling with a gator, which I really wanted to see, but there wasn't enough to keep us entertained until the show time.  The pictures that we got were really cool, and it is the greatest amount of aligators that I've seen in my life in one place. 

What I didn't like about the place that some of you may not know about me, is my fear of birds.  They were everywhere!  There were animal feeding exhibits, and huge birds surrounded those areas fighting the animals that you were supposed to feed for the food.  When I had my camera in my hand, they thought it was food.  I had to put it away, and then they left me alone. 

I was also expecting more out of the gator jumping show, as if a gator could jump as high as a dolphin.  I guess I had pretty high expectations because they could barely get out of the water to get the chicken off the rope from us cheering them on as you can see in the video below.

Day 5: Pool & Put-Put

As you saw from the earlier post, we went Frisbee golfing again on Wednesday to play the second course.  After that, we had plans to lounge by the resort pool.  The weather turned out to be pretty good all day, with only 1 downpour while we were at the pool.  We took a break, ate lunch, and went back when it was sunny.

We took a nap before we went out to dinner, and then we went mini golfing.  It was hard to decide where to go to dinner each night because the typical chain restaurants were everywhere!  We went to Fridays, Olive Garden, Mi Sushi, and Sakura Asian Fusion.

I'll brag a little about myself, I'm pretty good at mini golf.  Greg's pretty competitive, but this is one sport, if you would call it that, that I can actually have a fair shot at beating Greg.  I got two hole-in-one's and ended up 7 strokes below par. Greg was 9 strokes above.  See the score card below!

Day 4: Shopping & Orlando Brewery

Tuesday was another cloudy day with rain in the forecast, so off to the outlets we went!  Greg is quite the shopper if you didn’t know.  Greg bought 3 pairs of jeans, 1 from Guess at $24, 1 from Gap for $11 and 1 from Banana Republic for $35 (big spender) all fitting him very well.  You’re probably asking yourself who could possibly need 3 pairs of jeans at one time, but Greg does wear jeans every day to work, so it is justified.  Greg also tends to buy multiples of the same items if he feels it is a good deal.  For example, Greg has 5 pairs of work out shorts exactly the same, 1 for every day of the week.  Likewise, Greg bought 2 pairs of Nike compression shirts that were $10.

To sum up our shopping purchases, here is the list below:

Greg: (3) jeans, (2) compression shirts, soccer cleats, (2) polo shirts, running gloves, thin wallet, sunglasses, and a tri-pod chair that you will have to ask Greg about sometime.  It looks like it could hold a 3 year old, not a 165 pound man.  I was able to get him to sit on it for a photo.  He says we would like it for when he travels.  It was $3.  Let’s see how long it lasts… Total = $175

Shayna: black shorts, running shorts, black heels, dress, oil mister for cooking, sunglasses… Total = $115

The chair is smaller than Chase...

One of the items that I had written down to do was go on a tour of an organic brewery simply called, Orlando Brewery.  The tour wasn’t all that great.  If you have been through a tour before, then it is pretty much the same process.  The tour was more preachy than anything about being organic, and “we are what we drink”, and saying they don’t want to be drinking toxins that are used in pesticides.  Regardless of what they believe, they had some of the best tasting beers that Greg and I had in a long time. 

We got a sampler platter and tried 8 different brews.

The beer is kept in a refrigerator at 44 degrees, and when poured in a glass at room temperature, it warms to 49 degrees where it tastes best.  We ordered a beer before we went on the tour, and I did comment that I thought it was a little warm; however, after the tour, I learned this was intentional and unlike most beers, this one tastes good at warmer temperatures.  They only sell locally, but Greg has already emailed them trying to see how he can get ahold of more of their beer.

Day 3: Disney's Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom was one of the Disney’s Parks that we knew we wanted to go to.  We looked at the forecast, and it called for a cloudy day, so off to the park we went.  Once we were in the park, Greg suggested that we go to Dinoland first.  There was a “Time Warp Dinosaur Exploration Ride” where we were in an interactive vehicle travelling through time to a story plot to find a particular dinosaur.  We dodged dinosaurs, meteor strikes and made it out in time.  It was really fun, and a good ride to start with. 

The clouds were getting dark right before we got on the next ride, a mini rollercoaster.  Just as we got out of the gate, it started to sprinkle; however, the ride continued.  As we were slowly climbing the slope for the drop, it rained harder and harder.  Huge cracks of lightening and thunder hit before it was over, and we were soaked…  Not a good way to start off our day.  We waited for 10 minutes under a cover for the rain to clear, and we walked to the theater where there was a musical for Finding Nemo.  We were going to skip this, but we thought we would sit through it and dry off a little.  The musical was actually really cute.

Next was the big roller coaster to the top of Mount Everest.  The roller coaster twisted and turned, went backwards, and it was all over before we knew it.  After that, it looked like it was going to rain again, so we were going to go to a bird show that was under a cover, but they cancelled the show due to the weather, so we hurried to a restaurant and stopped for lunch during the next big downpour.  It was crazy to see how much rain fell.  I saw on the news that it said certain areas received 5 inches.

After lunch, it was back to the bird show that wasn’t that impressive.  We rode a train over to an area where there was supposed to be a petting zoo, but it was closed because of the weather I assume.  Also, over there you could learn about how they care for the animals.  The only thing of interest was a possum in a pan.  On the trek back to the train, it started raining again, surprise, surprise.  Thankfully, the train was covered overhead.

We were just going to leave, but there was one more all-terrain vehicle attraction that rode through a trail to see the animals of Asia.  We were a little disappointed because the website for Animal Kingdom had all these cool animals on it, and we had only seen a possum in a pan and some birds.  But, we saved the best for last apparently, because this attraction had it all!  The animals were everywhere, and it was cool riding in their environment learning about the animals and their habitats. 

These were the all-terrain vehicles that we were riding in.

This is a mound created by termites.  They were all over.

These trees looked like their roots were in the air.  I can't remember the name of them.

Look in the trees.  There were tons of giraffes.

After the ride, there was a walk that we went on because we were told the gorilla had an infant.

Greg believes he can communicate with gorillas... He just has a staring contest with them, and they do typically get upset.  This one just decided to lay down.

All in all, to put it simply, we were miserable all day with the rain.  We still posed with smiles for the pictures, and we saw some cool things, but the park would have been better enjoyed with children.  So, we are done with Disney, and we won’t be back until several years later if we can still afford it then.

Day 2: Frisbee Golfing in Orlando

It rained off and on for 3 days on our trip, so we planned our days accordingly with outside activities while it wasn’t raining, and then shopping pretty much when it was raining.  Yes, we went shopping 3 different times on our trip to the same outlet stores at 3 different locations, and Greg was the big spender as usual.  One of the activities that I looked up before we left was a Bill Frederick Park at Turkey Lake with 2 frisbee golf courses. 

I thought it would be pretty cool playing around a lake.  Frisbee golf is something we got into when I was an intern my first summer in Kansas City because some coworkers played and there was a course by my first apartment.  I bought Greg and I a starter set around $30 for 3 discs for an anniversary present, and those 3 discs are still Greg’s favorites to play with. 

Greg is really good at Frisbee golf, and I feel bad going with him sometimes because he has to stop numerous times for me to throw my disc further up the course before he even gets to where his first disc throw dropped.  After a few bad holes, Greg suggested that I learn how to throw the disc with my forehand because he thinks it would be easier for me.  I told Greg that I didn't want to learn something new, if I couldn’t master what I was doing at the time.  A couple more bad throws went by for me, and then I gave in.  Greg instructed me to hold the disc with my two fingers supporting the underneath, and then to throw it level by snapping my wrist…  And, there it was, the most, fantastic, furthest throw I had ever had in my life!  Greg was right…AGAIN.  I continued throwing it like that, and I kept up with Greg for the rest of the course.

I thought playing Frisbee golf in Orlando would be similar to playing in Kansas, but the views were just incredible, especially around the lake as you can see from the pictures.  And, did I mention it have live gators in it?!?

We went again on Wednesday and played the second course.  It rained a bunch the night before, so it was really muggy.  This course was more surrounded by trees, and that made it difficult to play.  Greg decided he would take action shots of me when I threw the disc.  After laughing pretty hard at some of the pictures, I decided that I had to get some of him as well.  We’re pretty critical of ourselves, but all in all, they are pretty funny, and I hope you get a laugh out of them as well.

Yes I look like I'm flying away in my follow through

And Greg looks like he's sprinting on his follow through

On this hole, the discs had to be thrown over the lake.  We played from the tee to totally dodge the lake. 
We're not that good.