Surprise trip to Disney World

What do the Porter's do when the world is melting down with fear over our deteriorating economy...go to Disney World!

We surprised the kids and told them as we pulled up to the airport that we were going to Disney World. Our cover was they thought we were just going to find 'something fun' to do before church. Once they noticed we were getting quite close to the airport we had to say we were going to watch the planes take off and land. This only lasted a few minutes before we spilled the beans, they were ecstatic and couldn't believe it.

We ended up doing 3.5 days of parks and wore the kids out. In fact on the last day at Animal Kingdom they were begging to just go home and swim, gladly. Britney's parents and her sister Linzee joined as and all had a blast. Click the picture for the full gallery.

Houston, we have a problem

(confidential post, not to be discussed with Lucas....play dumb)

I know that at some point boys and girls start to explore the world of "Boyfriend/Girldfriend", but at age 6? Here is what I found in Lucas's back pack after catching some hints from Gracie that there was a little love in the air. I will translate for those of you who don't understand first grader penmanship and spelling.

"Dear Courtney- Right when saw you at the meet and greet I just loved you and I don't know how to tell you this But I'm your boyfriend. I've loved you from the start you really opened up a new world to me. Love Luke you boyfriend."

What would you do? Rip it up? Let him take it to school and enter the world of love? I decided to let him play his game and learn for himself. I did alert the teacher there was an incoming letter that could create some drama. I have to say that my gut was to tell him he was too young and freak out....breathe in....

The outcome....Lucas reported today that Courtney declined his boyfriend demand and said she is not old enough. (I like her already) He seems ok with it and I'm sure will get his game back soon and try again. As for me we will be invoking a blackout on all 'tweener' shows in hopes to curb his desire to find a mate.

White Christmas

We had a very white Christmas....we have had about 12-18" of snow and still have 6" on the ground. The kids have had a blast and have sledded outside nearly everyday. Here are a few highlights from the season.

This is Jack getting ready to decorate the tree. He was very into the ornaments and was very good at clustering his all together.


Grace and Lucas making cookies, well more making a mess and hoping to get some cookies out of it.

Charlito in the snow. We ended up having so much snow we couldn't use the stroller as a babysitter while the other kids sledded.


These shots are from a 2 horse open sleigh. We were invited by some friends to go on a sleigh ride which led to a great sledding hill. Perfect winter activity for the fam.

Early Celebrating

We are working through our family traditions pretty early this year which is nice. Normally it feels like the week before Christmas we are cramming to get suff done. On Saturday we headed downtown to enjoy the lights, a monorail ride, and the Christmas Carousel. It was actually sort of warm and non-crowded....especially helpful when you take on downtown with 4 kids.

My ladyz got skillz

Most people that know Britney know she is pretty amazing around the kitchen. She can make your standard meals better than the average chef, she can cook for hundreds and not have it taste like a cafeteria, and one of her most impressive yet lesser known skills is making chocolates at Christmas time. She started with my Mom and has take it to a whole new level. Chocoloate pepperming truffles, key lime something or others, the classic peanut butter, etc. she does them all. The only down side is our house gets taken over by her and her friends for a good 3-4 days, but it is worth it, check out the fruits of her labor.

Annual ride in Tahoe

I go on an annual ride to Tahoe with some college friends and their friends and their friends-friends. You get the idea, it's a group that has evolved over the years and is one of the best trips of the year. Here are some shots:

The group up in the hills. I'm #4, Brad Edgren is on the orange KTM, John Blatter in the back, Dixon Taylor in red.

John found some extra furniture near where the RV was parked, dragged it over with the bike. Turned out to be pretty cozy place to rest after a 3 hour ride.

Vista shot where you could see for miles. This is day #2 after we had to replace half of Brad's clutch hydraulics at a local shop.

Half way around the world in 4 days

I took a business trip to Korea this past week for some meetings and was glad to see a country that wasn't so 'Americanized'. It was very modern and advanced in many ways, but they still had a very strong sense of Korean culture vs. places like Germany which felt like the US but with an obsession for beer (oh wait, the US is obsessed with beer...).

Here are some shots:

This was the wall of my hotel lobby. I loved it. It was made up entirely of......

.......these little people. It may be hard to tell, but there are actually several different kinds of people (male, female, old, young, etc.) Pretty cool.

This woman was selling Silk Worm Larvae on the street. That is the hand of my co-worker who bought some (he grew up in Korea) and persisted to try and get us to eat them for the next 4 hours. No takers in the group.This is at 3:00 am at a market the size of most small cities. I tried a new technique for switching back to Pacific time called "stay up all night before your flight home", it worked.

And finally, this is what I love about other countries. There seem to be few rules (as in we have WAAAY too many), that restrict people from being creative and taking the path of least resistance. Yes, that is probably 300lbs of goods stacked on a $500 motorcycle, now ready for delivery.