As someone who really doesn’t like most rides (I don’t like rides that go really fast or really high… so that pretty much eliminates most of them), SeaWorld is nice because there is so much to do that doesn’t involve rides. That also means it’s nice for my twins. At age 3, many rides at theme parks have a height limit that excludes them.

Our day at SeaWorld started with a visit to the dolphins. We also saw the seals, and the penguins (I just love penguins!). We checked out the Shark Encounter, and we touched stingrays. By we I mean me, with the kids looking at me like I was crazy and yelling, “Ewww!”

I posted a Whrrl story during our day at SeaWorld. Here it is:

I also live streamed from Qik while at SeaWorld. Here is my video of penguins:

And here is my video of Shamu’s Believe show:

SeaWorld is a lot of fun for all ages. I think it has several that could allow strollers but don’t, which would make it much easier on the kids (you know, their main demographic). But I do love that there is more to this theme park than rides, and that there are some great opportunities for children to learn there.

Oh, and of course, my husband DOES like rides that go fast and high. If you can believe it, my one of seven attempts to catch the riders zipping past was actually the time he was on board. Wild.

You can see my full Flickr SeaWorld Set.

Follow #typeatrip on Twitter.

Here are the Whrrl stories I did from the parks.

This is the story from Universal Studios:

Here is the story from Islands of Adventure:

Follow #typeatrip on Twitter…

That’s what my 3-year-old son said yesterday, softly to himself soon after we arrived at Disney World. I know many families do the traditional Thanksgiving, but this year we decided to pack up the minivan and head south. Today, Thanksgiving Day, was our first day at the parks during this visit. A statement like that, so simple, so almost adult-like, is exactly the reason why this is known as the most magical place on earth.

Day one of #typeatrip (well, full day one as we stayed overnight in St. Augustine and then arrived here yesterday afternoon) was pretty fast-paced but fun.

First of all, staying at Contemporary is wonderful for anyone with kids who will want to hit Magic Kingdom, oh, 3 million times over a few days’ time. I love being able to see the Magic Kingdom fireworks show from out balcony each night. It’s a quick Monorail ride there when you don’t go the wrong way on the Monorail like we did this morning. Let’s just say we got the scenic ride.

We arrived and it was packed, so clearly we aren’t the only ones who decided to spend the holiday at the parks. We kicked around there for a couple of hours, then went back to the hotel for a PB&J lunch made in the room before heading to Disney Hollywood Studios.

That is a photo of Magic Kingdom decked for the holidays. We spent most of the day and evening at Hollywood Studios. The highlight for the kids was seeing Lightning McQueen and Mater and meeting Buzz Lightyear and Woody.

We had dinner at the ’50s Prime Time Cafe. It was a cute restaurant, full on following its theme of eating at mom’s house. We were informed of the rules (“no elbows on the table, no whining” and so on) when we were seated.

The decor was kitschy ’50s.

It was a bit annoying waiting more than half an hour when we had a reservation, but it was a great choice for Thanksgiving. I nagged at the kids to order traditional turkey for dinner, but they insisted on mac and cheese (times two of them) and a hot dog. Sigh.

The food was great. Here was my Thanksgiving dinner, and it was as good as many I’ve had.

At the end, I had a tough time deciding on a dessert. I wasn’t disappointed in my choice. I’ve always loved Boston Cream Pie, so I ordered the Boston Cream Cupcake. Delicious!

After dinner, I had to see what I would argue is one of the best reasons to visit Disney World over the holidays: the Osbourne Family Dancing Light Spectacle. This video doesn’t even do it justice, but this show is just crazy cool and amazing.

And here is a little taste of the show from our balcony each night.

Disclosure: Disney World is hosting our visit to the parks and to Contemporary Resort

Photos and video © Kelby Carr

So when Katja Presnal mentioned doing a test drive of the couponing site, A Full Cup, I was much more intrigued than I normally would be. She sent along a $50 American Express card, and I decided to see if I could really buy groceries with that. I seriously can’t remember the last time I spent so little at the store. If you read my previous grocery shopping post about my reverse shopping list, you know this is something that’s been concerning me.

What happened? Well, watch and see…

Here was my original to-do list with my comments as to status in italics:

• Grow herbs, vegetables and fruit (done! maybe not well, but I did do it)
• Make juices, teas and sodas (made orange juice once… wasn’t impressed with results, but I do still need to make another go at it)
• Make yogurt (well, I have bought plain yogurt as starter several times and let it go bad… does that count for anything? I am very excited to try out a cool crock pot yogurt recipe I just learned about, though).
• Make pasta (no, but I did buy some amazing locally made pasta like a killer ravioli at the Asheville Downtown Farmers Market).
• Bake breads (I have tried this one over and over and over again… my bread is still pretty awful, but seems to be slowly improving).
• Start a compost (well, I have a discreet wooded area of my yard where I have randomly added compost ingredients… I am not sure if it will turn into compost or not. I’ll let you know when I start gardening this year! I did see a cool compost bin at Sam’s Club for $50 that I might buy)
• Buy more local produce and products (This I definitely feel like I did very well. We bought at some of the local farmers markets on several occasions, and I have gone out of my way to buy things that are locally grown and made).
• Learn to preserve items when they are local and fresh with freezing, canning, etc. (I actually made my first go at canning this year and was surprised at just how simple it was. This coming year I hope to have more homegrown produce to can and get much more time to try this).
• Make jams and other condiments (I made apple butter that rocked, with locally grown apples we picked together as a family, and then canned in my first attempt at canning. This was probably the best example, the time I was proudest, of my Sustainable Kitchen Project attempts. That’s because it had the full circle from being local to making the apple butter from scratch to canning it myself. Next time, maybe it will be with apples I grow, too!)
• Make butter (on my to-do list… but I did buy some marbles finally to follow a cool project to let my kids make the butter themselves)
• Make beer and wine (I have made beer years ago, but haven’t tried the wine. I did buy a couple grape plants that have wine grapes, so this could happen this year from grapes I grow myself!)
• Make cheese (can that be done at home? that would be coool!) (still on my to-do list, but this one actually sounds kind of easy so I may do it very soon)

So as you can see, I did actually try several new things and I at least learned more about many of the things on my list. I was kind of impressed with myself, just because it sure didn’t feel to me like I accomplished much on this front.

So here is how to participate. I have created a fancy badge so you can show off your commitment to a more sustainable kitchen:

Copy this code and insert into your sidebar:
<a href=”http://kelbycarr.com/join-the-sustainable-kitchen-project”> <img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-227″ title=”sustainablekitchenprojectbadge”
src=”http://kelbycarr.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/sustainablekitchenprojectbadge.jpg”
alt=”" hspace=”5″ width=”180″ height=”136″ align=”left” /> </a>

Then do the following:

1. In your Sustainable Kitchen Project post, make your own to-do list of all the things you’ve been meaning to do in your kitchen to be more sustainable but haven’t.
2. Add posts as you try things on your to-do list, especially with pictures to help others learn.
3. Upload pictures to the Sustainable Kitchen Project Flickr Pool.
4. Add the following code at the end of any Sustainable Kitchen Project post: <a href=”http://kelbycarr.com/join-the-sustainable-kitchen-project”>Join the Sustainable Kitchen Project</a>
5. Leave a comment here (preferably right after you post about your project, since CommentLuv will automatically pull the link) to point us to your personal project. Be sure to include a link to your main post.

So needless to say, I was thrilled when she asked to interview me for TravelingMamas.com (which, if you haven’t checked out yet, you definitely should.. the four traveling mamas there know their stuff!).

Here is an excerpt of the interview:

One pleasant consequence of being a travel writer deep into Web 2.0 and new media, is the interesting people I “meet” along the way: These are the fellow writers and technophiles with whom I have extended online relationships, but only occasionally meet. One of my longer online professional relationships is with Kelby Carr.

Read the rest of the interview…

What really clinched it, for me, was when I heard that my fellow Type-A Mom editor, Amy Lupold Bair, was already planning to visit Disney World the exact same week we were considering it. (You may have seen Amy at her wonderful Resourceful Mommy blog, or as the Type-A Mom Suburban Moms editor.) It was clearly fate!

So… soon you can follow us:

• 2 Type-A moms
• 2 dads
• 5 kids
• 3 grandparents
• 2 birthdays (ish… my daughters is soon after)
• 1 flight
• 1 roadtrip via Type-A Mom-mobile

If you follow the #magicmoms tag at Twitter or visit Type-A Mom from Friday, Nov. 28 through Saturday, December 6, you’ll find live Twitpic pictures, Qik videos, Utterli audio, blog posts, and more about our experiences at the most Magical Place on Earth at what I (at least) consider the Most Magical Time of the Year (a time of year I’ve considered even more significant since my first child spent her first Christmas in the NICU).

On a side note, I really think micro blogging and the many social tools out there are so well-suited to travel writing. Besides breaking news, I can hardly think of writing better served by the immediately to provide your audience with pictures, video, audio and just random thoughts in real-time. I love me some Web 2.0.

You can also customize the widget below with you’re preferred size and color if you’d like to follow us on your desktop or put it on your blog.

Here is an excerpt from the People post:

“It’s very hard,” the actress confessed on Britain’s morning show GMTV. “I stopped at three months, [it was] about as much as I could do.”

I would write something really eloquent and deep, but I ranted in my email to my friend. I figured I would just paste it right here:

I am really irritated. This makes me so mad. How many poor moms will give up because they figure if the super celebrity mom couldn’t do it, how could they. This pisses me off just as much as EVERY nurse and doctor in the NICU telling me how hard breastfeeding twins is (they were referring to supply, which is completely bogus because supply meets demand and I had TONS of milk before returning to work anyway).

Her main complaint seems to be positioning, which I found actually pretty easy. Setting them was hard (I needed help from someone at first because getting both positioned was hard since you had to do one baby one-handed at first). She should really (1) try harder or (2) learn more about it or (3) keep her problems to herself.

While it is good for mom to know sometimes it doesn’t work out, I don’t believe three months of trying breastfeeding is enough for a public figure who surely has tons of help with everything. Did she call LLL? Did she have a post-partum doula help?

So that was my email rant on the subject. I didn’t edit it for public consumption here because I wanted you to see my email as it was sent. I know sometimes a mom does need to stop beating herself up with guilt about failure to breastfeed, but certainly we should all encourage moms to try and to seek out support.

And I am here to tell you, you certainly can breastfeed twins. It was probably one of the more fascinating stages of my life to nurse two babies at once. If you do have trouble with something as easy to remedy as positioning help, please seek out assistance from an experienced twin mom, a lactation consultant, a friend, La Leche League before you give up. And if you do that first and still find breastfeeding twins isn’t for you, then at least you will know you have tried.

EDITED TO ADD: I know some of you think I am picking on Angelina Jolie for not finding success breastfeeding twins. I don’t criticize her for giving up. I criticize her for giving up for a BAD reason and when she has so many resources available. I criticize her for not mentioning resources. Most of all, though, it angers me that she is perpetuating a myth that twins can’t be breastfed… and believe me, it is a VERY common myth. I heard it all the time, and even today people on Twitter who are positive are saying how they think it’s so amazing I BF twins. Like it’s a big triumph. I think it should be COMMONPLACE. I know I was determined because of the issues with my first child and in a way it was like my chance to make up for it… but I also know that it never entered my mind twins would be harder initially. Maybe it’s because I knew a friend of mine who did very well with twins, so I had a good example. That always gave me hope. So perhaps THAT is truly my point. We need good examples to inspire us, not bad examples to give us a reason to give up. Then, even if we do give up, at least we will have tried first.

Photo of breastfeeding infant, © Marek Bernat.

If you can get past the offensiveness of the ad (I know, it’s hard), there is a larger issue here. Companies are marketing to moms without any clue what moms think. This, to me, is just further evidence that all companies and marketers who want to reach moms need to hire a Chief Mom Officer like Jessica Smith.

I recommend you (and Motrin!) watch Katja’s video:

And keep an eye on the PR nightmare via this feed of posts tagged #motrinmoms on Twitter:

If you have posted about Motrin moms (I already see loads of mom bloggers tearing into them. Don’t mess with the moms, companies!), please post a comment here. If you leave CommentLuv checked, it will pull your latest post’s link in automatically.