Disney World, Part III -- The Magic Kingdom

While we had a wonderful time with all our free fun at Disney World, visiting the Magic Kingdom is always a highlight.  This trip to the Magic Kingdom was especially fun for me, as Keira was old enough to be excited and truly appreciate and marvel at everything around her.  She wanted to try everything including her first roller coaster -- The Barnstormer.  She was BARELY tall enough to ride, in fact they measured her a few times to be sure, and she was super excited to be let in.  Yet, even though she cheered to get on, she wasn't so sure once it started going.  When asked later, she said it was okay, but way too fast.  However, besides the roller coaster, she was very enthusiastic about everything else we rode.  We rode: It's a Small World, Dumbo, The Magic Carpets, and even Pirates of the Carribean (although she clung to me for most of that ride.)  One of our favorites was the Winnie the Pooh ride, which we kept getting Fast Passes for.  While on Pooh, I was able to get a few photos of her sweet smile.

She also enjoyed "loving" all the stuffed animals in the Winnie the Pooh gift shop, after the ride.

Near Winnie the Pooh is the carousel which we rode a few times as well, and as you can see she was pretty excited.  :)

Continuing on our tour of Fantasyland, Keira spotted "The Mugs" and asked to ride them.  It took me a minute to realize that she meant The Teacups.  :)  Interestingly, I'd never ridden The Teacups at Disney World.  Keira loved the crazy whirling motion, and being able to control our teacup.

After trying the Flying Carpets, Dumbo and The Teacups, I proposed the rockets in Tomorrowland.  I knew she would enjoy controlling our rocket, making it go up and down, but I wasn't sure what she'd think of the altitude.  True to form, she was fearless and giddy.

While Keira and I were running around happily jumping on every ride we found, the boys spent most of the day riding Elijah's favorite -- Splash Mountain.  I think they said they rode it something like eight times!  Between Splash Mountain rides they did end up riding The Train, The Flying Carpets, Pirates of the Carribean and Buzz Lightyear.  Of course, I had the camera, so we don't have any still pictures of their adventures (Scott had the video camera.)  We met up a few times through they day, then finally stayed together once we met for an early dinner.  After dinner, we rode The People Movers.

We stuck around Tomorrow Land and giggled through the Laugh Floor, which was especially funny since we've now all watched Monsters Inc. together repeatedly.  It was wonderful to hear Elijah laughing hystericallly.  He has a great laugh and I love it when he's silly.  We also rode Buzz Lightyear together a few times.  Once again, Keira liked steering our car.  At the end of the ride, Elijah wanted him and Keira to pose with Emperor Zurg in jail, but she wasn't so sure.  Elijah posed with him first, to show Keira it was okay.  The photo of the two of them didn't turn out, but the brave big brother shot did.

As for the weather, it rained off and on throughout the day, and as the evening turned into night, it started to pour.  We didn't let it put a damper on our fun, we wore our slickers, dashed from building to building and when it wouldn't let up we took a drowned rat break and ate some ice cream.

After our fun-filled day, we took our tired babies on a boat ride back to the campground.  I especially loved the contrast of our sweet, sleepy boy wearing his new Darth Vader hat.

Disney World, Part II -- More Free Fun

Besides the sand and water fun that Keira was partial to, there was plenty of other free fun to be had.  Not only is the camp ground about half the price of the hotels, it seems to have even better amenities, too.  One of our favorites this trip was the new pool.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the pool on this trip.  The pool has always been fine, but since our last visit they added a large water slide and a big water play area.  The new improved pool nearly made visits to the water parks obsolete.  In fact, this trip we only visited a park, The Magic Kingdom, once.  The rest of the trip we spent exploring the camp ground, the pool, and the rest of Disney World by boat, monorail, and bus.  Keira's favorite mode of transportation were the boat rides.  That's another advantage to the camp ground, while the budget hotels are only accessible by Disney World buses, the camp ground, however, can also be reached by boat.  From the boat, you can get to Magic Kingdom or the various resorts on the lake, who are also linked by the monorail.  We enjoyed many boat rides this trip.

One special highlight of our boat rides was that one skipper fed the birds.  Apparently, the birds could differentiate between the various skippers, since he was the only one we saw feeding the birds, and consequently the only one who seemed to attract them.  Birds would land on one of the wires attached to the bow of the boat and the skipper would feed each bird by hand.  It was very cool.

After our boat ride we headed to the Contemporary Resort to ride on the monorail.  We did this trek from boat to monorail on a few separate days, and each time we passed the Mickey shrub in front of the Contemporary Resort.  Each time, Keira insisted on taking a picture with it.  Yet, she never seemed to want to cooperate for the picture.  After multiple tries, here's the best picture I got in front of that Mickey shrub, as you can see Elijah was a little frustrated by the multiple attempts by this point.

Besides taking advantage of the awesome new pool and boat rides, we also found some great places to hang out around Fort Wilderness.  Daddy and Elijah got in plenty of games of checkers on the Settlement's ample porch.  While the boys played checkers, I watched Keira splash in the puddles and play on the playground, which you can see if you look behind Elijah in this next picture.

Possibly my very favorite Fort Wilderness diversion was the nightly campfires.  Every night, when it's not rained out, there's a free campfire program at the Meadows (near the awesome pool).  There's a singing cowboy who sings favorite songs like "If You're Happy and You Know It."  He also tells Knock Knock jokes and performs other family friendly entertainment like a speedy western version of the Hokey Pokey.  Elijah really enjoyed the cowboy's jokes and silly asides.  He seemed to get quite a few of the jokes and participated fully with a huge smile plastered across his face. 

The special guests at each night's campfire are Chip and Dale who perform with the cowboy, then come around to hug, give high fives and sign autographs.  I think the campfire is one of the single best character experiences available.  You don't have to wait in a long line or pay any money for this encounter.

In short, our stay at Fort Wilderness was awesome, and inexpensive.  In fact, we had such a wonderful, affordable time, that we've already booked our next vacation in November.  I know -- crazy!

Disney World, Part I -- Sand and Water Fun

Once again, we had an amazing vacation at Disney World.  As the kids get bigger, each trip is easier and more fun.  In fact, both Scott and I think that this may have been the best trip yet.  And, that's saying something, considering we slept in a tent and it rained every day.  We decided to brave the camp ground again, and yet again, it impressed us with its great facilities and lots of entertaining things to do.  Interestingly, for Keira some of the best fun to be had was provided by Mother Nature, she loved playing in the sand and the water.  First, she spent many happy hours playing in the sand that covered our camp ground.  In fact, it was her main source of entertainment on our first day.  Once we gave her some sand toys it was difficult to tear her away from her new activity.  It gave me plenty of time to sit back, relax and enjoy the peaceful surroundings.  These pictures can also give you a good sense of our camp site that Scott did a great job setting up.  And, something that was a great addition was our large sun shade/rain shelter that covered a large part of our camp site.  It allowed us to keep our camp site relatively dry, and offered us a bit of shelter to get in and of the tent without getting rained on.

  

Along with the sand at our campsite, another one of Keira's free favorites was the proliferation of puddles to be found everywhere we went.  As I said, it did rain every day, but it was a warm rain, and the temperatures were generally in the 80's.  So, it was perfect puddle stomping conditions.  Elijah even got in on the fun.

Elijah's End of the Year Party

Elijah has finished Kindergarten, I can't really believe it.  It is all going by SO FAST!  During the last week of school, all of the families were invited to an end of the year party.  Keira was very excited to join her brother in his Kindergarten classroom one last time.

I also took the opportunity to take Elijah's picture with his teacher Mrs. Nash and his T.A., who was particularly wonderful with Elijah, Ms. Taylor.  They did such an amazing job with their whole class, and specifically Elijah.  It's sad to have to leave them next year.

While we all had fun at the party, Elijah was even more excited when he got home.  Waiting for us on our doorstep was package he'd been anxiously awaiting -- our butterfly kit.  In Kindergarten, they had watched caterpillars turn into butterflies.  Elijah loved it so much that he decided to spend a few weeks of his allowance on our own kit.  In his excitement he found a creative and silly use for our butterfly house.

Keira's Playground Time During Soccer Practice

During the spring, Elijah had soccer practice on Monday evenings.  Sometimes Keira and I went and watched Elijah and the Earthquakes practice, sometimes we stayed home and a few of the last Mondays I took Keira to the playground at the soccer fields.  She played and fortunately, I was still able to watch a little of the action on the fields, down the hill, too.  She especially enjoyed her playtime if she brought along a friend to play at the park with her.  On this particular evening, Elmo was the lucky guest.  Keira loved playing with Elmo on the slides and on the swings.

Keira's Birthday, Part II -- Princess Witch

As I said in the previous post, one of Keira's favorite presents at her party was her dress up trunk.  At the party, I think she was especially enthralled by the trunk itself.  She was impressed by how it opened and closed.  But, once we got it home, she looked through all her costumes and was even more interested in the gift.  We tried on one of the dresses, but unfortunately she tried it on with just a diaper on and decided it was too itchy.  But, she LOVED all the accessories.  She loves to put on a bunch of them and then she plays imaginary games about what she's dressed up as.  One of her favorite alter egos is a princess witch.  The crown she's wearing was actually part of the birthday card she got from Aunt Seana and it now lives in her dress up trunk, too.

Keira's Birthday, Part I -- Birthday Party

We had planned to celebrate Keira's third birthday at Keira's favorite park, but the rainy weather made us change our plans.  At the last minute, we decided to head to our local Chick Fil-A instead, with Keira's favorite indoor play place.  As usual, one of both kids favorite parts of the party was seeing their family, like Auntie Andrea.  Keira got in a good snuggle, while Elijah spent a lot of time playing "Rock, Paper, Scissors."

This year, besides family we also invited Ari, who's two, and his parents, Eli and Heather.  Eli is a childhood friend of mine from California who lives about fifteen minutes away.  Amazingly, we got back in touch on facebook and our two families have been hanging out ever since.  While I was getting Keira ready for her birthday party, I told her that Ari was coming.  She said, "He's my best friend!"  That's usually a distinction that she saves for her brother whom she calls "my best friend, big brother."  :)

Besides enjoying her family and friends, Keira also enjoyed her presents. This was the first birthday that she seemed to understand the concept and gleefully tore through her stack. Some of her favorites at her party were her dress up clothes trunk, her dress up Minnie and her big magnifying glass.

Until the last week before her birthday, Keira had told me that she wanted a Dora party.  But, as her birthday got closer, she changed her mind and wanted to have a Minnie party again.  It ended up working out okay since Grammie had found some homemade Minnie overall shorts at her store.  Someone had taken a Minnie pillow or sleeping bag, cut it apart and used pieces to create some adorable overall shorts that Keira wore for her party.  Here she is showing off her Minnie ensemble saying "cheese."

Finally, once again, Aunt Seana generously offered to bake the birthday cake.  This year, Keira wanted pink cupcakes.  Keira, Elijah and many other guests loved the yummy treats.  Thanks Aunt Seana!