Major Tip - Disney Mobile Magic App

If you have an iPhone or an Android, you need to download this app. It is a life saver in the parks.

The app used to only be available to Verizon customers, and only became available for the iPhone this past February. You can get the app with any carrier, but if you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, you get access to new premium features, including videos and games within the app. 

It is the ONLY official Disney parks app, and gives you GPS enabled park maps, the ability to check on or book dining reservations, as well as see menus, character meet and greet times and locations, and exact wait times for rides (this is a big one. Any other app that says it gives you wait times for the rides is usually updated by users, so it isn't going to be exact. The Disney Mobile Magic App will give you the correct wait time.)

Cori's Trip to Walt Disney World - The Off Days

The best way to start out a trip to Walt Disney World? Rest up!


Our first two days in Florida were spent at the house that we rented in Kissimmee (about a 5-10 minute drive from WDW). We had v cswbedrooms with TVs in each one (and a king sized bed in ours), a huge kitchen, living room, dining room area, and our own pool and hot tub. 

Having those first two days to just chill and get ready for the week ahead was really great. We also took another day in the middle of the week to relax, which was another great idea. After two full days in the parks, a day to rest our feet (and our sunburns) was so unbelievably beneficial. Not to mention that we got to spend the entire day with the family, and not just half of the day.

My Fitness Inspiration Picture

Shedding for the Wedding (which isn't happening for a long time but it's never too early to get started, right?)

I never really considered myself thin. I always had a little extra baby fat on my stomach and hips, and being a dancer, my thighs were always big. But it wasn't until I gained 22 lbs during the last three years of college and went to get new headshots taken that I really realized how skinny I actually was in high school. I was showing a friend at work pictures of me from 2007, because he didn't believe me when I said that I only weighed about 105 lbs when I graduated.

These photos are all from around prom and graduation. 5 years ago. I wore extra small shirts and size 2 pants.

Now I have to bring smalls and mediums into the dressing room when I try shirts on, and in pants I'm tetering on the edge of being a 6. I know to most people this sounds like I need to be told to shut up, but when you're not even 5 feet tall, it's a lot. I'm about 2 lbs over what nutrition guids say someone my height should weigh. But the problem is, none of that weight is muscle, it's all fat.

I wouldn't be so upset about it if it was just my body. I could dress to hide that. I have been for the past few years. Unfortunately, it's most evident in my face. Which means that I can't get new headshots until I lose weight.

This was my headshot from senior year of high school, and this was my headshot from senior year of college. The one from college has been retouched significantly, the one from high school has no retouching.

My biggest fear is that AJ is going to propose to me, and either someone will be there to take pictures or we'll get engagement pictures done afterwards, and all I'll see when I look at them is how fat my face was. 

So I've started dieting and exercising. I'm testing my willpower with the Special K diet, and sofar it's been going pretty well. Although I do have to admit, I'm having my period and I'm craving weird things, so I did have some pistachio ice cream and skittles for breakfast one mornig.  The exercising part, well, that could be going better. I got on the eliptical the other morning and the only thing that stopped me from getting off after five minutes was how embarrasing that would be. So I stayed on for 20 until I couldn't push myself to do anymore. I've purchased several dance workout videos, so hopefully those will be easier and more fun. I'll be able to start doing one today, since the incision on my stomach from my mole removal is finally healed. That is, if I can keep my energy up. That's my other problem; working 6 days a week at two different jobs leaves me pretty wiped out, and if I get home and sit down, it's over. I'm not getting back up. Hopefully, starting to exercise will give me more energy.

But I can already see an improvement in just my mood from taking action. I went shopping yesterday to try and finnish off a gift card by buying a shirt for Disney World, since I don't like the way most of my shirts look nowadays. I took as many as I could into the dressing room with me, and because I'd gotten so used to things not looking good, I wasn't expecting much. I ended up not even trying on the last thing I brought into the room with me, because I already found three shirts that looked great and that I wanted, and I wasn't actually planning on spending anything over what was on my gift card. I came home and modled them for AJ, and he got as excited as I was, because, as he said, it had been a long time since he'd seen me that happy.

So we'll see how things go. I'd like to lose more weight by the time we go to Disney, but that's only about 20 days away, so... like I said, we'll see. This is one of my favorite pictures of me that's ever been taken. I'd love to look like that again.

Being a Big Girl, Part 2

I was able to get my stitches out today. Thank God. They were awful.

Once the stitches were in, they put Steri-strips over them to cover them up. About an hour or so later, the lidocaine wore off and it hurt like a bitch. The biggest problem was that the incision was in such an awkward pace; just above my belly button and a little to the left. So every time I went to sit down or bend over, the Steri-strips would hit the crease in my stomach and push the cut forward. And any kind of twisting was definitely out of the question. I had to call the doctor and get a prescription pain killer the day after the surgery because I couldn't sit up.

Today, the wound still wasn't fully healed, but at least it had scabbed over so that the stitches could come out. I'm gong to have to wait to see what the final scar is going to look like.

Being a Big Girl

Today, I got plastic surgery.

No, not like that.

I had to get a mole removed. Well, I didn't have to, but I had gone to get it checked out because I was nervous about it, and the dermatologist said that he didn't think that there was anything wrong with it, but that if I was nervous about it and it would keep stressing me out, then the best thing to do would be to get it removed. Since it was a flat mole and not a raised one like the one on my back that I'd had removed a few years earlier, getting it removed would require stitches, so he forwarded me along to the office's plastic surgen.

I went to the apointment by myself, even though my mom and AJ both said that they would come with me. I took the lidocaine injections like a champ, even though I hate needles, they stuck me about 7 different times, and each one burned worse than the last. I spent most of the time gripping the sides of the hospital gown in my fists and tensing up my feet and my legs so hard that they started shaking. Once I was numbed, the process of removing the mole and getting the stitches didn't hurt, it just felt really weird. I could feel them removing the skin, and I could feel the stitches tugging at the skin, but it was more like someone pulling your hair: Your hair dosen't feel it, but the scalp that it's attatched to does.

But I'm very proud of myself for doing it all on my own. My senior year of high school, I was sitting on the table in the doctors office crying because she had given me three shots in the same visit. .

I'm a big girl now :)

I had the strangest dream last night

I dreamt that I was getting married. Now this sounds like a wonderful dream, but it was far from it.

I dreamt that after a long road trip with my mother that involved stopping at creepy houses in the woods and driving on lots of dark, windy roads and playing video games, we got to a campground resort type place. There were lots of log cabbins and big lawns and such. This is where the wedding was going to be.

 AJ had told me that he didn't want to get married, but I was aparently desperate to have a wedding, so I was going to marry Mitch (who definitely wouldn't be marrying me in real life, because when we were 16, he broke up with me because of our religious differences). I was in the room where we were going to have the ceremony, in my wedding dress, placing flowers and seeing to last minute details. Then I started pannicking because I realized hadn't ordered bridesmaids' dresses or a flower girl dress. While I'm running around trying to figure out what to do, my girlfriends from college bust in in full Disney princess costumes, wigs and all. We're finally ready to get started, but we were doing the wedding backwards, in that I was already in the room and Mitch was going to be walking in. I guess we decided to take a break before we started, because the next thing I remember is being outside where they were setting up the reception, which kind of looked like the Renn Faire. Then Mitch came up behind me and we saw each other (again, something that will never happen at my real life wedding). He looked strange, although in the dream I didn't notice; I remember now that his eyes were too close together and he was wearing green eyeliner.

We walked around talking, and the more we did, the more I realized that this was wrong, that I couldn't marry someone I didn't love. It wasn't fair to him, to AJ, or to myself. So I told him this, and somehow I got hit in the stomach by a spear (there was an underlying Hunger Games feel to the whole thing), but I was only minorly inconvenienced by it. Somehow I ended up in a car with AJ.

I really don't remember much after that. I mostly remember how happy I felt that I was going to have a wedding, and then the gut-wrenching pain and guilt that I was not marrying AJ.

It was not fun to wake up from.