Day Five, Disney World

aka "Boy am I tired."

Sadly, day five was the day we were leaving Disney World. We had just enough time to pack, figure out the complicated puzzle that is getting your heavy luggage to the airport through the Disney Express system and take some pictures of Audrey and Hannah in their matching outfits. Hannah was not feeling very cooperative, so we did not get many good shots. Although, we were lucky enough to get this shot of Audrey. Jilan's family was also checking out at the same time and we were able to capture the three girls on the steps.

Sidebar: Did I mention that the name of the building that we stayed at was called the "Arcadia House"? Hannah called it "Katie's House". Therefore, on our way home Hannah would mournfully say "I want to go back to Katie's House" repeatedly. Thankfully she has since recovered. While we were waiting for breakfast I snapped a few pictures of the girls and the photo's angle along with the wooden table in the foreground reminded me of a couple of pictures we took back in Sept. of 2006 of Audrey and Hannah in California. It is amazing how much they have grown. What little ladies.

A couple of notes about the trip overall:
- Hannah slept almost the entire flight BOTH WAYS. Good Girl.
- She had NO ACCIDENTS the entire trip. (potty training reference for those of you who are not in the know)
- Hannah took one nap during the vacation (if you don't count the flights). I don't think she wanted to miss a thing.
- Hannah does not like to have her picture taken FIVE THOUSAND TIMES.
- She loved Minnie Mouse.
- She prefers to be carried over any other form of transportation.
- We all had a wonderful time in Disney World. Thank you J, for coordinating the trip. Our only regret is that we could not stay longer.

Thank you for following along. I apologize it took me so long to post the pictures.
:)

Day Four, Disney World

aka: "Okay, okay, I have finally given in to the Disney Capitalistic Machine and I want to collect and trade your pins. Now trade me the Mr. Incredible and no one gets hurt."


Day four started pretty smoothly. And we definitely needed it after meeting "Miss Congeniality" on the bus the day before. We headed over to the Grand Floridian to have professional pictures taken of the group. The skies were overcast, but that made nice lighting for the pictures. We had two hours to get two individual group shots of each family(one in front of some trees and the other at the beach), an overall group shot on a staircase and a "red couch" picture with the girls. I still can't believe we got it all accomplished in less than two hours. I was able to capture some of the chaos that was happening on the beach. And courtesy of the another family, a photo of the photographer that endured it all. He had the patience of a saint. We tried to get the girls in roughly the same position as the red couch picture in China, but since there were some girls missing and not all of our lovelies were cooperating at that point, we got as close as we could. Hannah was smiling for the first two pictures and then she was more interested in the stuffed Minnie and showing us her underpants.



After the photo shoot we headed over to Epcot. It had started to rain on and off for the rest of the day. But since there is a lot to do indoors at Epcot, it really didn't matter much to us. We were just hoping that it would not affect the fireworks show that night. Besides Tiffany bought these adorable panda ponchos - there is always room for panda ponchos. Tiffany and Audrey treated us to a wonderful lunch at the restaurant that is right behind the "Living Seas, Finding Nemo" attraction. The food was really good and each table had a view of the huge tank that had turtles, sharks, stingrays and all kinds of fish in it. I had to share this photo I took at the Living Seas exhibit, because I was so proud of myself that I got Nemo's Dad (lower left corner) and two Dori's in one photo.



After lunch, we went to the Finding Nemo ride (very cute) and then we started to make our way to the part of Epcot that has all of the countries. We stopped at "Journey to Imagination with Figment" (also cute) and met up with more members of our group. Once we got to the countries section of Epcot I think we all made a beeline to China. Gee, I wonder why? Hannah was very excited because she nows thinks that she was born in Epcot. Hmmmm, we'll have to work on the fake vs. the real China at a later date. Mulan and Moo Shoo were taking pictures and signing autographs. Hannah loved Mulan - she ran away from Moo Shoo. It was very nice to stroll around the countries. They had a mask for the kids to make and add to at each country. They also had many alcoholic beverages for the parents - so everybody wins.

Sidebar: It was around Germany that I could not take it anymore and we started buying the special pins that everyone was trading. Tiffany, you were right - now I'm going to blow my paycheck on some collectors edition something-or-other pin that I just HAVE to have. There goes Hannah's college fund... just kidding... or am I?

Hannah finally took her first nap of the vacation (of course after the rest of the girls had already taken theirs) and was awakened by Moo Shoo (by that time we had made it all the way around and were back in China). Boy, she did NOT like that.









Once Hannah was awake, we were able to take some cute pictures of Audrey and Hannah together in fake China. After some additional pin shopping (see how quickly it takes over?) it was time to head to the dinner event that was scheduled for the group. Dinner was really good. Hannah and the girls were invited onstage to participate in a little skit that involved elephants. Hopefully that will explain what all the kids are doing in the picture.
The event also included front row viewing for the fireworks show later that evening. My camera doesn't do fireworks any justice, so I didn't bother to take pictures. I just focused on whether the fireworks scared Hannah. There were a couple of parts that she wasn't sure about - but she did really well.



After the fireworks show, we headed over to a popular character area to meet Mickey Mouse. There were other characters to meet, but Mickey was the focus. How can you go to Walt Disney World and not meet Mickey? The line moved pretty well. I think we were on line for about 45 minutes. Hannah met Mickey and Minnie without incident. Then she punched Pluto in the face. I guess she had had enough. I don't blame her, I was pretty tired too and Pluto is just... well, a dog. He doesn't even talk in the cartoons. At least I got her to apologize, but I know she didn't mean it. We were asking for a meltdown - We woke her up early, took about thousand pictures of her, scared her with loud, booming fireworks and then we make her stand in line for almost an hour. Good job parents! Although, I would have rather she punched Goofy - he was a little too pushy when we were taking the pictures.
:)

That was then, this is now.

Not the most telling picture in the world. Sorry that I am almost totally blocking the brick with my shadow. This was taken days after we got married in April of 1996. I think my friend Niki took the picture. She worked for Disney at the time and totally hooked us up.


Just look at us now. Hmmmmm well, at least you can clearly see the brick.
:)

Just Because

I just had to share these photos. I found this website through a couple of blogs that I frequently visit.
Yearbook Yourself
Thank you to bothAlison and Donna for introducing me to this fun diversion!




1952

1966

1976

1994 (This one looks the most realistic, I think... except for the Lee Press On nails)

Sorry for the interruption, we now bring you back to your regularly scheduled program.
:)

Day Three, Disney World

aka "Just because you are at Disney World, doesn't give you the right to act like an a$$hole." quoted from grumpy, tired (possibly from NJ) lady on the bus.


No worries, I'll get to that quote in a minute. First things first. Since the Cinderella pictures opened my eyes as to how long our daughter's hair was - I looked into getting it cut the next morning. Unfortunately there was not a salon at our hotel, however there were salons at the fancier (read: more expensive) hotels on Disney property. Do you remember Day One's quote ""What do mean I can't take a direct bus to our hotel?"? Well that holds true when trying to get from one hotel to another in less than 2 hours. It took us FOREVER to get to the fancy hotel, get Hannah's hair cut and get back to Downtown Disney where Tiffany and Audrey were waiting and waiting and waiting. Since we had already held them up enough for that day, we decided to split up while we went back to the hotel to drop off some purchases (I always try and make time to Christmas shop). I took this picture of Audrey making silly faces at Chris before we left the bus.


The plan was to spend the day at Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately we lost a lot of time, so we tried to make up for it as best we could. Before we got in the gate, we met up with Pluto and Pocahontas. We also saw Rafiki (from Lion King) but Hannah was not interested. Never fear, we got lucky later.






We went straight to the Lion King show since we heard that one was the best. A lot of people from our group had already arrived and they were kind enough to save us seats. So we sat at the end of the section. It was a GREAT show - I highly recommend it. Towards the end of the show, a young dancer in a Zebra costume comes up to us and asks if Hannah can be in the show. Absolutely, so then the zebra dancer takes her hand and takes her to a small group of older children who have been picked by other dancers. They quickly showed them how to wave and shake some kind of gourd/maraca looking thing. Hannah loves to do both of those things so she was very enthusiastic. The stage was round so the dancers proceeded to lead the children all the way around the stage. Hannah was so cute shaking and waving as the zebra dancer hustled her around the stage. I was so proud of her, I almost started to cry. Here she was thrown in a completely new, loud, chaotic situation, and she just shined. Timone was singing the song and then I noticed that after going around once, all of the older children were lead back to their seats while the zebra dancer and Hannah were hanging out at one corner of the stage. Then Timone finished the song and says "That was great kids! Good Job, especially you!" as he points down to Hannah. Then she comes running back and her little heart was racing. I was so proud of our little pixie (and SOOOO happy we got her hair cut). We have the whole thing on video and if I ever figure out how to get that on this blog, I will share it with you.



After the show we headed over to the area for our next group event. We wanted to get across the park before the parade so we weren't late. There was time for a quick costume change (Tiffany had bought the most perfect jungle outfits) before the parade began. The parade was really cute (as most Disney parades are) and Hannah was most excited to see Minnie Mouse. After the parade we headed to our safari/group dinner event. Here is a picture of our group before we went on the safari (we are in the back row). The safari was nice because it was getting dark and they were feeding the animals so they seemed to be much more active than I remember. It was VERY bumpy, so Hannah got jostled around a lot. She really liked the baby giraffe and baby elephant. After the safari we headed to dinner. Dinner was buffet-style. Tiffany and Chris seemed to have a lot of trouble - I guess I went earlier before the long lines formed. I was shocked and amazed that I dodged that bullet. Dinner was good, and Tiffany and CHris decided to eat as much as possible to make up for there experience at the buffet. Hannah got to dance with the band that was playing for the dinner crowd. Hannah and I had time to meet Rafiki and Timone. I am bummed that the picture is so blurry - I guess I had it on the wrong setting. I think I need to get a new camera. Does anyone have any suggestions?
:)






Oh, I almost forgot. Let me explain the quote of the day. After the dinner event, Animal Kingdom was closed to the public, so we were gently ushered out to the exits and onto the appropriate buses to get to our hotels. Sidenote: Did I mention that there were three older brothers (ages 6-7) in our group? Well, two of the boys were the catalyst of the "Incident" that I am about to explain. We are happily riding the bus to our hotel when a man towards the front of the bus turns around and yells "WHOSE KIDS ARE THESE????" Since both of the "kids" were part of our group and the man was yelling I immediately paid attention. Apparently the boys were rough housing on the bus and it really annoyed this man and his family. So one of the mothers in our group grabs her son and brings him back to where we were sitting and some people start making some comments like "Boy, someone is really grumpy... he's in a bad mood... murmur murmur murmur blah blah blah." So the wife of the angry guy gets out of her seat, turns around and says to all of us behind her on the bus, "Just because you are at Disney World, doesn't give you the right to act like an a$$hole." Uh Oh. That's when I raise my voice and say "Why are you cursing? Just stop cursing, there's babies on this bus." along with a few other people. She comes back with "I don't give a F-bomb." That's when Chris stands up and starts yelling at her to sit down and stop, to just stop, because there are children on this bus that had nothing to do with this... She refuses to sit down and insists that we need to control our children. And that's when Chris says "It's not my kid, there are other people on this bus..." Meanwhile I find it interesting that her husband is saying nothing at this point and that Chris is the only one standing up to this woman. I was holding Hannah's ears so she couldn't clearly hear all of this mess. Thankfully the angry woman and her presumably very angry family get off of the bus at a different hotel and the rest of the bus starts clapping.

Wow. I guess this is not your mother's Disney World.