Day 3 - Downtown Disney

Here was the original plan for Saturday: somewhat lazy morning, go to Disney hotel to check in (we had been staying at an Orlando Marriott), lunch at the Grand Floridian and then head to Downtown Disney for the afternoon and evening.  Good plan right?  It would have worked well too, except Mia started complaining on Friday that her ear was hurting.  Then she woke up a couple of times during the night and again complained about her ear and some stomach pain and she seemed to have a fever.  Uh oh.  So, Mia and I headed over to the ER at Arnold Palmer Children's Hospital.  Look at my sweet girl relaxing on the bed and enjoying some Cheerios.

The first doctor came back, and she was very nice.  She gave Mia a thorough exam and said her ear seemed to be a little inflamed, but she wanted her supervisor to examine her too.  As soon as the doctor left, Mia said "why didn't she look behind my ear?"  I said "what do you mean?  Does your ear hurt inside or behind it?"  Mia replied "Behind my ear."  I looked, and sure enough, it was as dry and flaky as could be.  When the supervising doctor came in, I told her how embarrassed I was and explained what happened.  She said not to worry about it, but still wanted to examine her.  When she did, she confirmed one of her ears was in the beginning stages of an infection, so she prescribed Amoxicillan.  It was actually good that we went in that morning after all since this allowed us to catch the infection early.  So Mia and I headed over to Publix to fill the prescription.  Poor little thing.

 

We went back to the hotel, picked up Ryan, Liz and Lily and headed on over to Downtown Disney.  We picked up our Photopass package and then headed over to Earl of Sandwich for a yummy lunch.  After that, it was our appointed time for the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.  If you're unfamiliar with this place, let me tell you...it's crazy.  This is where they turn your little girl into the princess of their choice.  Lily chose Sleeping Beauty while Mia went with Rapunzel.  They get that princess' dress, their nails painted, make-up, their hair fixed...all sorts of stuff.

 

 Unfortunately, Mia wasn't feeling very well (she hadn't started any medicine yet) and she was very tired; we were making her miss her nap again.  She let the "fairy godmother in training" paint her nails, pull her hair into a ponytail and put a jewel sticker on her face, but she adamently refused make-up (fine by me) and a hair piece.

Our sweet Rapunzel.

Lily on the other hand was thoroughly enjoying her experience.  I think she could get used to a pampering lifestyle!

 Getting her hairpiece in.

 Included in our package was also a little photo session we gave us some cute pictures; however, I haven't had the chance to upload them yet.

 

After the boutique, we had a little bit of time to kill, so we did a little shopping and explored for a bit.  Oh, and Mia insisted on changing back into her regular clothes :-)

A little bit later we headed over to see La Nouba.  This is an incredible Cirque du Soleil show.  I have seen about 6 or 7 cirque shows, and this is probably my favorite.  We planned far ahead, so we actually had front row seats; they were awesome!  Mia was a little upset by one of the "scary" characters, but otherwise, she loved it like the rest of us.  I am amazed at what these individuals can do!

When this show was over, we headed over to our hotel to check-in...finally!



Day 2 - Islands of Adventure

On Friday morning, we had a quick breakfast at the hotel and then headed to Orlando for a day at Universal's Islands of Adventure.  It was fantastic!  As we entered, we headed straight over to Seuss Landing.  The girls were amazed.  This is such a fun place!  They were dressed in regular clothes at first, but after a few minutes here, we bought them "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" outfits; they were too cute to pass up!

 The Cat in the Hat ride was absolutely Lily's favorite ride.  She rode it four times!  Even now, after the trip, she says this was her favorite part of the vacation.

 Mia loved the Carraseusal!  She wanted to ride it again and again and again.

 Lily enjoyed this too, though not as much as Mia.

 We all rode One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and had fun on it.

 Mia and I rode together.  She laughed pretty hard when the water sprayed from one of the fish and got me pretty wet!

 We all enjoyed the train ride that went high in the air all around Seussland.

 Stylin' in these blue wigs.

 Fun statue posing after lunch at Mr. Mcgerkus' Circus' lunch.

We took a little playground break at If I Ran the Playground.  It had lots of cool features like a water park (though we didn't play in it), a playground with lots of hidden fun, tic tac toe on the belly of a suess character, a rocking chair-like worm...it was a fun break.

 

 Mia loves The Grinch.  She was excited to stand by this statue and hold the Max doll in one of the gift shops.

 There is a neat little area with the once-ler's (from the lorax) house.  The girls really loved getting to hear him talk through the rope line.

 Every hour they performed "Oh The Stories You Will Hear!" which was pretty cool.  We listened to the story of The Lorax.  There was a neat storyteller who did a great job, and then lots of characters came out...The Lorax, Thing 1 and Thing 2, The Grinch, Sam I Am and The Cat in the Hat.

 We got to meet the characters after the show too.  Here's the girls with The Grinch.  I think this could have been Mia's dream come true! 

 We actually saw him as we first walked into Suessland; I wish you could have seen her reaction.  Her hands came up to her mouth, and her eyes got wide.  For the first time I can remember, Mia was speechless!  When she talks about meeting him, she says "His heart had growed.  He was nice."

 

Liz also enjoyed meeting The Grinch.  He was a playful thing!

 Who doesn't love The Cat in the Hat?

 Thing 1 and Thing 2 with the real Thing 1 and Thing 2.

 Green Eggs and Ham friends.

 The girls love the Lorax.

 My favorite roller coaster in the entire world is here.  The Hulk is awesome!  We really appreciated Liz hanging out with the girls so we could ride it; they snap a picture as you're riding, so we got that to remember the ride.

 Ryan and I were very excited to walk through Harry Potter World.  We love the movies (and I promise I will read the books someday), and we had heard great things about it.  The castle was impressive to see.

 The Hogwarts Express welcomed us.

 We enjoyed seeing all the cool sites, and Liz let us ride the other awesome coaster here, Dragon Challenge.

 

After Harry Potter World, we headed over to the Lost Continent area.  The girls thought the dinosaur exhibit was really interesting.  They loved this wall where they could use a scanner to search for fossils.

 One of the curators took the time to tell us about four different dinosaurs, and the girls loved pressing the buttons to hear their screetchs.  They also enjoyed seeing a "dinosaur egg" hatch and seeing lots of bones.  It was an interesting place, that's for sure.

 

We tried walking through the Marvel Superhero area too because Mia loves superheros.  However, she was very tired since we skipped her nap and didn't really seem too interested.  We decided by this point it was time to head on out.  We couldn't help but stop at one of my favorite spots: Bubba Gumps!  Look at this shrimp...absolutely delicious!

We then found our way to the Orlando Residence Inn and settled in for the evening.  Lily couldn't wait to complete her homework assignment, so she completed that while Mia settled down.  Once everyone was calm, we turned in for the night.

Day 1 - Most Awesome Family Vacation!

Where to even start?  I guess we can go back to April, just after tax season.  Ryan and I started talking about how next April 6th (that's right, April of 2013) will be Liz's 60th birthday, and we wanted to do something really special and fun for her.  Pretty quickly it came to us that a trip to Disney was in order.  Unfortunately, Liz's birthday falls about a week before the end of tax season which means we can't do anything right then.  So we started talking about when we could go instead.  We originally thought we could surprise her with the trip on her birthday and go in May.  Then we realized that's the end of school which isn't a good time to miss out on activities.  So then we were looking at the summer time.  I do not like Disney in the summer...too many people and too hot.  So we started talking about backing it up a little bit.  Really, it couldn't be anytime between January and mid-April, so we started looking to the end of this year.  With the timing of lots of things, we realized that the beginning of November would be perfect.  So, just before Mother's Day, we gave Liz the news about her very early 60th birthday present!  To say she was excited is an understatement!  Then came the hard part...not telling the girls and waiting on the trip to arrive. 

 

Finally, just after we returned from the beach in October, we told the girls the good news.  They were super excited too!  The best part was they had no idea what was in store.  They expected to go to the Magic Kingdom and have fun; they had no idea all the cool things we had planned.  To build on the excitement, we made this countdown calendar (which I couldn't get turned here).  Each day, we took off a Mickey and the girls received a little surprise such as a Pez dispenser, finger puppets or coloring book.



Halloween came and went, and on November 1, we started the drive in the early afternoon.  Lily thought it was cool that she got to leave school a couple of hours early.  We made it to Gainesville, FL that Thursday evening.  We made a quick stop at a Subway for dinner and then headed over to the Residence Inn.  The girls thought this was such a cool hotel; they loved that there was a little living room and kitchenette in the room.  While I gave the girls a bath, Ryan and Liz headed out to tour the UF campus which is where Liz graduated from.  I think she had a lot of fun bringing back lots of great memories.  Here's a picture of Liz in front of the ADPi sorority house.

 They also made a stop at The Swamp, Florida's football stadium.  Liz was a cheerleader at UF so she knows this stadium well.

They came back and we all headed to bed.  Our vacation was officially on!

Happy Halloween!

Lily's school celebrated Reformation Day today, so all the kids came dressed in 16th Century costumes.  I am so not a creative person, and I've had a million things to do, so Lily's costume was a little bit of a stretch; she went as a peasant because the grey dress seemed to work.  When I explained what a peasant was, she exclaimed "Yea I don't have much money!"  As she got ready this morning, she grabbed her treasure box, put two coins in it and asked if she could take it to school to show that she doesn't have much money.  This picture was taken as her class performed in chapel this morning.  They recited Psalm 23 and sang The Continent Song together.  It's always fun to see little events like this.

 The girls couldn't wait for Halloween trick or treating!  Even though Mia went as Captain America to her school party yesterday, she was Captain Hook tonight.

 Lily was excited to dress up as mermaid Ariel.

 Lily begged to go trick or treating at houses this year since that is something we haven't done before for various reasons.  So, we went over to Doug and Julia's house to trick or treat around their neighborhood with them which was fun.  Vivian dressed up as Pocahontas, Claudia was Rapunzel (who enjoyed wearing peacock wings) while little Evelyn was a peacock.  Our friend Debbie also joined us, so we had a good time together.  The girls collected tons of candy!

Fun Times

ACCA's kindergarten classes went to Smyrna Fire Station 1 last week.  I wasn't able to make it, but I heard it was lots of fun.  Here's Lily and McClendon on the front of one of the trucks.

 We have loved the Smyrna Food Truck evenings.  Picnics with lots of yummy food (like the paninis below), but of course the best part was the King of Pop's popsicles each week!

 Soccer wrapped up last week.  I think the girls enjoyed the season for the most part; I'm glad we did it, and we'll see about coming back in the spring.  After Lily's game, her team had a little pizza party and then presented each player with these cute little trophies.  Unfortunately, Mia's coach forgot to order trophies.  That's okay though because the trophy shop is pretty close to our house; Mia's trophy showed up on Tuesday.

 The girls and I had so much fun making Shrinky Dink bracelets one afternoon!

 I love seeing these reports from Mia's class, especially the last comments.  Such a sweetheart!

Handsome and Gretel

We had our annual family pictures made earlier in the week.  As we were about to leave, Lily looked at Ryan and said "Daddy, you look so handsome."  Mia quickly agreed and said "And Mommy looks so Gretel."  Ryan and I got a good laugh about that one!

Hooks Fun Fall Day

Saturday was just what I needed.  I wanted just a nice, fun, family day enjoying the beautiful Fall weather.  We had planned on going to an apple orchard, but had learned on Friday that the excessive rain a few weeks ago had made for an early harvest and there were no good trees for picking available.  On to Plan B.

 

We slept in a little and then headed to Chick-fil-a for breakfast.  That is always a fun treat, but it's even better when you see the cow dressed up as pirate!  From here we stopped by First Methodist's pumpkin patch.  It's nothing fancy, but the girls really enjoyed it.  We let each of them pick their own small pumpkin.  Lily wanted one with "just a small stem."

 Mia loved this one.

 Debating on which one will make the perfect family pumpkin.

 Stopping for a picture with a little scarecrow.

 I'm such a sucker for these kinds of pictures!  They were looking right into the sun, so it was difficult to get a great picture, but I think it's pretty cute.

 After the pumpkin patch, we went over to Parkway Point where we all enjoyed the Hotel Transylvania movie.  I have to say, I normally don't like Halloween things, and I certainly didn't want anything scary for the kids; this movie was perfect!  It was actually really cute and had a great daddy-daughter storyline to it.  After the movie, we grabbed a quick drive-through lunch and then stopped by Michael's to get some pumpkin carving tools.

 

After nap time, we headed out to the deck to start the fun.  The girls decorated their small pumpkins with the stickers from the patch.

 Lily showing off her multi-faced creation.

 Mia trying to make a face like her middle face on the pumpkin.

 Upon looking inside the pumpkin, both girls exclaimed "EWWWW!"

 Ryan concentrating.

 The final creation.  A little kitten on top of a jack-o-lantern.  Isn't it cute?!

We rounded out the day with some football and grilled hot dogs for dinner.  What a perfect day!