Our third day in the parks was New Year's Eve and was probably my favorite day of the entire trip. We had breakfast reservations at Animal Kingdom's Tusker House Restaurant before the park even opened that morning, so we didn't have to wait in any lines! I had read to avoid Magic Kingdom and Epcot on the holidays, so eating breakfast and spending the day here was an excellent choice. It was a chilly morning, so we were all bundled up, but it ended up being a beautiful day! We started out with a sleepy family picture in front of the Tree of Life from Disney's The Lion King. We spotted Everest while we were waiting in Africa for breakfast. My dad & I would later wait in an hours-long line to ride this roller coaster while the girls were enjoying nature trails with my mom and Josh. ...
family
Walt Disney World | Day Two
Day two was a VERY light photography day. We essentially repeated ourselves and spent another day in Magic Kingdom. We were only there until early afternoon so that we could get a nice long nap in that afternoon. We rode a hand-full of rides we missed on the first day and let the girls have an encore on all of their favorites from the first day. We started out by grabbing a fastpass for Space Mountain and then rode the Jungle Cruise while we waited on things to warm up a bit. The captains on the cruise are always pretty cheesy and witty, but the girls enjoyed all of the fake animals and it was a nice relaxing way to start the day. Especially considering the stress that laid out ahead. We told Ella that she didn't have to ride anything she didn't want to except for Space Mountain. She is ...
Walt Disney World | Day One
I was just as excited about waking up Saturday morning as the girls were. In fact, I woke up about 4:45 and just couldn't close my eyes again. I laid in bed reading until an acceptable hour and then it was time to meet the Mouse! We had heard from Guest Services the night before that MK had reached capacity and been closed for three days running, so our plan was to be there a half hour before the gates opened and it was a good one. The girls opted for the Ferry Boat to cross over to the park and I was secretly thrilled. I love riding the ferry because it offers the first glimpse of Cinderella's castle! We took Ella to Disney World in 2009, but it had been awhile. This was the first trip for SK and my cousin, Molly, so they were all understandably excited as we began our ...
The Disney Surprise
If you've been reading my blog for more than six months, then you know what a big surprise we had in store for the girls on Christmas morning. Unfortunately for you, it's been a long time since then with no photographs or updates on how well that all went over. I decided that since it's finally 90 degrees outside, we could all cool down with a few posts from our wonderful week between Christmas and New Year's Day. For those of you who are new to the blog, let's recap. Josh & I took Ella to Walt Disney World in the spring before her third birthday. It was a spur of the moment decision that followed an almost month of work-related travel for me. I was exhausted and I missed my family like crazy and we got the awesome opportunity to stay in an all-expenses-paid time-share not far from ...
Some Things
I was copying a few photographs onto my hard-drive this week and noticed there were quite a few things in spring that I didn't blog about. Seeing as they all occurred more than a few weeks ago, I figured it's a little late to recap at this point. Instead, I decided to share a few favorites along with some other random and useless information. Sound good? Back in February, our high-school had a fundraiser for the varsity baseball team in the way of an Alumni Baseball Tournament. This is the third year Josh has played and my girls always love spending time at the field watching their daddy. I loved this picture of me and Belle. This is a rare moment when she's in the mood to snuggle. The photo of Sophie below, is typical Taz. Mischievous with a gleam in her eye. She wanted to wear her ...
Happy Campers
In case you're new around here, you might not know what our summer vacations look like. I wrote a little bit about why we camp the summer after Sophie was born and again the year after that and you can read about last year's adventures here and here. I've never not camped at the beach during the month of June with the exception of the summer before SK was born. That is 34 summers in Gulf State Park. I am so lucky that when Josh was introduced to this road trip almost seventeen years ago, he didn't run screaming. 30 people, 7 travel trailers and one beautiful beach makes for quite a memorable vacation. We owned a small trailer after we got married, but we sold it after I got pregnant with SK. It wasn't large enough for a family of four, so we've been renting the last several summers. Our ...
A Very Merry UnBirthday!
Now that I've had a chance to recover from the unpredictability of the day, looking back on Sophie's birthday is such a treasure. She is the happiest child and there wasn't anything that could have ruined the celebration for her. She was so excited for all of her friends to be in one place and she was truly enthralled by every little detail of the day. I know you won't be surprised when I tell you I didn't take any photographs that day. Having a talented sister is a dream come true. You haven't enjoyed a birthday party until you weren't forced to lug around your camera all day and stress over whether you missed any precious moments. Fortunately for me, I was able to enjoy the day with my family, knowing that she didn't miss a thing. The party invitations were sort of a last minute ...
The Mommy Wars
I am long overdue for posting pictures of our Easter. But, as I was uploading the photographs earlier this week, all I could think about was how our Easter baskets would be perceived by perfect strangers. Did we do enough? Did we do too much? How sad that those are the thoughts that ran through my head. I've been thinking a lot lately about the wars we wage on each other. In fact, I almost blogged about it several months ago, but convinced myself not to rock the boat. Sometimes when I'm laying in bed at night scrolling through social media sites, I have to shake my head when I see what we say about each other. Why are we, as mommies, so mean? I'm not pointing the finger, I'm guilty of it myself. We are constantly comparing ourselves and when we feel like we don't measure up, we turn on ...