Three cuties in a tub

Ok, I have good intentions of getting Christmas photos up soon (it's only February!) but in the meantime check out these three cuties in the tub from Dec. 2008.

 

Mercy Auntie

Found this today as I was looking for another photo. Love it!

Disney Vacation - Resort and thoughts

 We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside Resort. The resort was beautiful and peaceful. We were surprised that the rooms were all separate - we had expected a regular hotel with hallways. 

We had to get a royal room because we had to change our reservations late to take advantage of free dining. The royal room had fancier curtains, pictures of the princesses and, as we discovered the second night we were there, light shows in the headboards!

The Loot. 

The grandparents had given some spending money so the girls were able to buy more than they planned, but it sure didn't go very far there.  

We had put off going to Disney for quite some time, because I had heard of the extensive planning required, the expense, the lines, the heat, and the crowds. So with that in mind, we went with low expectations and were pleasantly surprised. I think it helped that the time we went they were doing both sets of fast passes. Otherwise we would have waited in a lot more lines because the crowds that week were very heavy.

We had amazing weather throughout the trip. Once day and in the evenings it was chilly but the weather was pretty close to perfect. It was always overcast and looked like it was going to rain, but it never actually did. 

We really didn't do a whole lot of planning - most was done by our travel agent and some Disney loving friends. But we felt like we had some freedom in where to go while having the assurance that some of our rides and our meals were set for us. We were there for eight days and felt like we saw almost everything and never felt too rushed, although we did keep moving all the time. 

When we consider that everything was included except $25 in tips per day, the cost was pretty good too, so except for the air tickets we had to buy at an expensive time it was actually pretty reasonable. 

So in all, we had a really nice (if exhausting) trip. The kids had lots of fun, and we would consider going again if they forget too much in a few years. 

Many thanks to Lacee, Christina, Andrea and Kimber for help in planning!

Disney Vacation - Magic Kingdom second day

I had to make a second blog post for our second day at Magic Kingdom because we took so many photos. 

We started off in Tomorrowland and Adventureland which we barely saw the first day. 

We got stuck on Buzz Lightyear for 10 minutes. We got a ton of points until they erased them all when they restarted the ride. 

We danced with one of the Chipmunks and the Koala dude.

View from the Swiss family treehouse

We had dinner in the Beast's Castle.

When we crossed the bridge I thought we would have to go in an elevator up to it, but it was immediately there. I felt that the dining room must be in the mountain and the castle must be a facade above it. I asked a couple of people, but they all said "you are in the castle". 

The dining room was gorgeous. I tried to take a picture of the windows as well but it didn't turn out. They made it look like you were looking out on an evening mountain scene complete with falling snow. 

 See the desserts section.

The grey stuff was delicious!

We were celebrating Lizzy's 8th birthday so they brought her some special "grey stuff".

As we left, the knights were joking among themselves.