Disney World - Wednesday

I was going to try to get all my Disney photos in one post, but it was getting very long, so I figured I better split it into two.  If you're wondering why the girls are wearing the exact same thing on both days, I did laundry at the condo on Tuesday, and so the girls chose to wear their Elsa dresses both days at the Magic Kingdom.

I couldn't get a fast pass to meet Anna and Elsa, so we went straight there as soon as the park opened on Wednesday.  The wait was already posted at 45 minutes, but the girls chose to wait in line to meet them anyway, and the wait ended up being closer to an hour.  They were very patient in that long line; we played a lot of games of I-Spy to pass the time.  They said the long wait was worth it when they finally got to meet Anna and Elsa.  :)  Anna was really cute, vivacious and outgoing.  She talked to the girls about being sisters, riding their bikes in the hall, and building snowmen.  Elsa was a little more cool (ha ha, I'm so funny) but the girls were thrilled to meet her.

Here is what Amelia had to say about meeting Anna and Elsa in her journal, it was the only thing she chose to write about from Wednesday.

Nathaniel was not a very patient waiter, but he did okay.  His problem was that the wanted to explore the line, and I kept having to either pull him back towards me so that he wasn't budging, or pull him along with us when the line moved so that he didn't get left behind.  He did NOT like having to be moved along.  He wanted to keep playing with the bars and the posts and the ropes.

We rode the carousel a couple more times, and I even got to ride a horse once.  Megan had such fun riding her horses; when I was riding next to her, we had a whole conversation about how she was going to name her horse Gracie and that her horse liked to eat apples and carrots.

We saw the Tiki Room show, which I think the girls enjoyed because they like birds a lot.  For the first few minutes, Amelia was trying to figure out if the birds were real or not, and then she announced at the top of her lungs that the birds were fake.  Nathaniel fell asleep, on Ben this time.  When we left the Tiki Room, Jasmine was right across the way, with a pretty short line, so the girls decided they wanted to meet her.

 Everyone but me rode on the teacups again.  The girls rode with Ben because they knew he would spin them FAST!  And we finally got a family photo in front of Cinderella's castle!

After lunch, Amelia wanted to ride the race cars with Grandpa.  I asked Megan if she'd do me a favor and go with me.  Though she refused at first, she ended up changing her mind, but she made me drive.  Those cars were hard to drive!

Megan was a little crabby as we walked through Frontierland, but then she perked up when she saw these birds.  They weren't too scared of people, but they wouldn't let Megan get too close.  We saw these birds all over, does anyone know what kind they are?

Jeff and Jane were kind enough to save a curb seat for us for the Festival of Fantasy parade, while I took the girls to meet Tinkerbell.  The people in charge of the line made a big deal about how the girls were going to shrink down to fairy size to meet her.  I don't think they fell for it, but her little fairy garden was very cute, and they were excited to meet her.  Megan told her that she dressed up like her for Halloween last year.  Oh, and the girls wanted to meet Ariel again so that she could sign their autograph book, so we waited in line for a short time and got to see her again.

The parade was fantastic! We all loved the bright colored floats, all the characters, and the gorgeous costumes on the energetic dancers.

Megan was happy to see the Jolly Roger, Captain Hook and Smee:

This guy was part of Merida's dancing troupe.  He caught sight of Nathaniel, who had been eating a melted chocolate chip granola bar, and couldn't stop laughing at him.  This picture doesn't do him justice, he had melted chocolate ALL OVER.

And we finally got to see Donald, Daisy, Mickey and Minnie!

We went on lots of other rides on Wednesday, including Peter Pan's ride (we were so lucky to only have to wait 5 minutes!), It's a Small World (Nathaniel loved it so much that we rode it twice) , Ariel's ride (we basically got to walk through the entire line), the Seven Dwarves Mine Train (which Megan was brave enough to try, but HATED it, and Amelia was too afraid to go on) and Winnie the Pooh's ride (it had lots of fun things for kids to play with during the wait).

We rode the train all the way around the park in the late afternoon.  It was nice to sit down in the shade for a little while and relax.  Megan got ahold of my phone and took a few funny face photos.  Nathaniel enjoyed sitting with Grandma and not having to wear a seat belt.

Amelia and Megan were getting goofy on the train, playing some kind of tongue sticking out game.

One of our fastpasses was for storytime with Belle.  We had no idea what to expect, but it ended up being a story time that kids could help act out.  Sadly, neither of the girls wanted to participate.  But at the end, they got to meet Belle anyway.

We happened to run into the end of the Main Street Electrical Parade on our way out of the park.  It was packed with people, but we were lucky enough to find a little space where we could watch the end.  It was really cool to see.  I especially liked Pete's Dragon:

Thanks for taking a family photo of us, Jeff!

As we walked over to the gift shop, we noticed that Snow White was outside and the line to meet her was very short.  So Amelia waited in line while Megan was in the gift shop.  Snow White was very sweet!  She even talked with the same kind of high voice that she had in the movie.  She asked if the girls liked to dance and twirl, and when they said yes, they all twirled together. 

Everyone was really tired at the end of the day, so we decided not to stay for the fireworks; we were hoping we could see them from the monorail on our way back to the car.  But it worked out even better - the fireworks started as we got off the monorail, and we got to watch them from across the lake at the monorail station.  They were beautiful!  Nathaniel especially enjoyed watching them; this was the first time he had seen fireworks.

According to Amelia's journal, here is a list of all the things we did on Wednesday, along with some random drawings of bowls of pickles for Grandma and Abby.

Happy Pi Day!

To celebrate Pi Day of the century, I made Amelia this shirt using a free pattern and a freezer paper stencil.  Well, I actually made the shirt for Megan, but she refused to wear it this morning, since she had already put on her Elsa dress and didn't want to change clothes.  So Amelia said she would wear it for me, since it was her two favorite colors.  I was pleasantly surprised that it fit her!

The girls wanted to make a Thin Mint pie to celebrate, so I found this very easy recipe that uses an entire box of Thin Mints along with chocolate pudding and Cool Whip.  Good thing we have a lot of Girl Scout cookies in our house.  After Megan ate her slice of pie tonight, she said that Pi Day is her favorite holiday!

So what else did we do to celebrate Pi Day?  Well, it was 56 degrees outside, so we went to the park.  On our way, we spotted what I believe were two sandhill cranes looking for food in one of the retention ponds nearby.  We saw them pulling things out of the pond and throwing them into the air.  And we got to hear their trumpeting call as they were flying away.  It was pretty cool, at least when you're used to seeing only Canadian geese this time of year.

Then we went to one of the new parks nearby; it has a lot of spinny things that the girls love.  Amelia and her friend call these the Dizzymaker 2 and the Dizzymaker 1000.

Nathaniel enjoyed his first experience at a big park.  He figured out how to crawl up the steps of the medium sized slide and then go down it all by himself.  He really liked it when Megan went down with him, too.

And of course he got to swing in the baby swings, which he loves.  It was really windy today, though, so he didn't last too long at the park.  He liked swinging with Megan.

 Megan tried out some of the high climbing things today.  She was a little nervous, but she did great!

Disney World - Monday

We had a fantastic time at Disney World last week!  The girls were the perfect ages to enjoy most of the rides, be excited about meeting princesses and other characters, and wait (mostly) patiently in lines.  We went to the Magic Kingdom on both Monday and Wednesday, and I'm glad that I was talked into going two days.  I thought Monday was pretty crowded (for the off-season at least), and we were glad to be able to use five fast passes throughout the day.  Wednesday was a much nicer day; it wasn't nearly as crowded, and we were able to do a lot of rides with minimal waiting.

We used fast passes to meet Ariel, Rapunzel and Cinderella on Monday, then Tinkerbell and Belle on Wednesday.  I ended up buying the girls an autograph book so they could get the princesses to sign it; the girls thought that was fun, and it helped to break the ice when they met a princess.  The girls were pretty shy and slow to warm up at first.

We rode the carousel quite a few times, since the wait was generally short.  Megan especially loved the carousel; she picked out the specific horse she wanted to ride.

Megan was a little crabby both days; I'm sure she was tired, but she also had an ear infection that was diagnosed on Tuesday evening at Urgent Care.  (So in the last ten weeks, I've taken kids to the ER in Glen Carbon, a take care clinic in McHenry, and an urgent care in Kissimmee.  Lucky me.)   I think she just wasn't feeling quite herself for most of our vacation.  It was hard to get her to smile for pictures at first, but after a lot of snacks, she felt more like smiling.

We ended up riding Dumbo twice:

and the people mover in Tomorrowland three times, because it never had a wait, it was in the shade, and Megan especially thought it was really fun to go through Space Mountain.  The last time Jane, Amelia, Megan, Nathaniel and I rode it on Wednesday evening, we were hoping that Ben and Jeff would be riding Space Mountain while we were going through it.  The girls yelled "Daddy" a few times but no one answered.  Ben said he thought they were riding it after we had gone through.

We got a fastpass for Pirates of the Caribbean, so we took the girls on it.  I told Megan that there was going to be a little waterfall, but it still freaked her out when we went down it.  Plus, we were sitting in the front row, so she got a little splashed.  While we were on the ride, she seemed interested in looking at all the pirate things (Megan loves pirates right now), but after we got out, she and Amelia both said they didn't like it at all.  Until Wednesday night, they said it was their least favorite thing at Disney World.  Now, though, Megan claims that she liked it the whole time.  It's funny how her memory works!  Next, Jane took the girls on Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride while Ben went to get us another fastpass and Nathaniel was napping in the stroller:

The girls say that the Jungle Cruise was their favorite thing we did at Disney World, because they thought the tour guides jokes were hilariously funny.  They are still quoting them a week later.  Their favorite jokes are:

• "If you liked this ride, my name is Rob.  If you didn't like this ride, my name is Samantha."  (They thought it was very funny when we ran across a Cast Member named Samantha at the storytime with Belle.  They told her all about what Rob said, and she pretended to be indignant.  It was cute.)
• "I made up a poem for you, it goes like this:

                     Giraffes are tall
                     Hippos don't float
                     This ride is over
                     So get off my boat"

• (as we were entering a cave)  "Since we're in Disney World, this is probably a gift shop."

Here's everyone waving to the people waiting in line.  Even Nathaniel was waving!

Nathaniel did very well both days at the park.  He slept in the stroller a few times and he also fell asleep being held while waiting in line.  He got carried a lot, too, so that Megan could sit in the stroller.  It was really nice to have four adults taking turns carrying him.

People have asked me about Nathaniel's hair, because at home the back gets all matted and sticky-outy no matter how much I comb it or wet it down.  Well, turns out, it's curly!  All three of the kids' hair curled up in the heat and humidity of Florida.

We got ice cream treats both days at the park.  Here's Megan enjoying a Mickey Mouse ice cream wearing her fancy new princess hat that Grandma bought her:

Nathaniel made sure that he got some ice cream, too:

Grandma also bought Amelia a visor, which she clearly knows how to wear the right way:

The kids all loved riding the monorail, especially when we were leaving the park and had the car mostly to ourselves.  

I had brought a journal along for Amelia to write in every day.  She made a list of all the things we did at the park, and then she talked in detail about a few of her favorite things.  I wish I had made her write more, but we were so busy that there just wasn't time.