Bryan is happy

September is in full swing and the older two are back in soccer!!!  Daddy is a happy man!!  I love the league we belong to as there is only 1 practice and 8 games.  Games are always at the same time Saturday morning on the same field.  Easy, peasy!

Game #1 was hot, hot, hot!!!  Rocco was up first and he is showing that he is his father's son!

 

Look at that face!  Intense!!

 

Poor Jillian!  My pink girl was given a black uniform so she made up for it by picking pink shoes!

 

She doesn't quite have the moves like Daddy but she sure looks cute trying!!

And this little cutie hangs out with Mommy and is quite the devoted cheerleader!!!

 

Game #2 was brought to us by a COLD front in the middle of September.  What??  I couldn't even find jackets/long sleeve shirts for the kids.  We are still wearing tank tops and shorts.  Mother Nature is so weird!!!

Rocco scored twice!!!

 

High-fives with Coach!!!

 

Jillian was not happy with being "cold."

 

And this girl...Ha!  She laid on the ground and sucked her thumb!  She had had enough cheering for the day!!!

Disney World Day 3

Back to my Disney vacation review.......Day 3 brought us to the Magic Kingdom.  I could spend everyday at Magic Kingdom and be juuuuust fine!  I love everything about it!  We started out with breakfast reservations at the Crystal Palace with Pooh & Friends!  Hands down, in the opinion of all of the adults, best breakfast in all of Disney World.  We will do this every time we come!  It is a buffet with great American options, not too overpriced, it has good kid menu choices, plus it is right in the middle of the park so you leave and are ready to hit the rides.  AND you get to love on Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore which you really can't do anywhere else!

 

 

As Pooh was leaving, Rocco grabbed my camera and said he wanted to take a selfie with Pooh.  IT WAS HILARIOUS!!!!  He is such a crazy boy!!!

 

The key to success at Magic Kingdom is the Fastpass!  Period.  Our first Fastpass was to the brand new ride 7 Dwarfs Mine Train.  Everyone rode except for me and McCoy so no pictures but this was the best ride according to all adults and kids that rode!!  The wait time the entire time we were there was 75-90 minutes!!!!!  Not us, with a Fastpass we just walked right up!!! 

 

Next up, big kids and Bryan and Bill went to the Big Thunder Railroad (with FP) and the little kids and Mom, Dad, Summer and I went to Peter Pan's Flight (with FP).  I love Peter Pan's Flight (maybe top 5).  Hadleigh could of rode it again and again.  But this one the wait was 45 minutes or more so we did not ride it again. 

 

Finally our last FP of the day was to see Anna and Elsa!  IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!

 

Next we headed to the Beast's castle for a light lunch.  It was delicious but I was a little disappointed in the experience.  It was just missing something.  The castle/restaurant was beautiful but it needed characters or something???

 

Next we headed to Frontierland and rode Aladdin's carpet ride and obtained another FP for the Pirates of Caribbean. 

 

The sky started to darken so we headed out of the park BUT main street was packed with the afternoon street par-tay!!!  This is one of Summer's favorite things!!!  Mickey heads up the floats!!!

 

Lots of dancing in the streets!!!!

 

Well, it started pouring and the rest of the crew headed out but as we got to the front I saw a sign for a 10 minute wait for Tinker Bell.  Me and the girls JUMPED at this chance!!!  It was so worth it!!  TinkerBell was so interactive and friendly to the girls and talked to them for quite a while.

 

Finally, we headed to the Contemporary Resort.  Summer had researched and found a Pirate Ship docked at the Contemporary and toured the lagoon with a great view of the fireworks.  Because we didn't take an afternoon break, everybody was pretty tired.  We definitely over-did it but all the kids were troopers except for Roc.  He just couldn't hang on.  He slept through the whole pirate ship ride.  Oh well!!!!  He did get to meet Captain Hook before he crashed.  All the other kids were quite happy and had lots of fun with Captain Hook and Smede with a surprise visit from Peter Pan at the end of the voyage!!!!!

Interrupting Disney Review for First Day of School

Monday morning, these two were ready to go!

 

 

Little Miss was mad at me from the get go.  She did NOT want to get out of bed!  She did NOT want me to put her hair up!  She did NOT like the outfit I put her in! 

 

This boy melts my heart!!  (On a side note, on Saturday, he was jumping on my bed shouting, "I get to go to choir!  I love choir!  Mommy signed me up for choir!"  Then he stopped looked at Bryan and said, "Daddy, what's choir?  HA HA HA)

 

She was so ready to go back.  To me, she is really growing and changing in her looks right now.  She really does not look like a baby/little girl anymore but growing into a young lady.  Sigh!  Not ready for that!!!

 

Back to Little Miss!  She really got mad at me when she saw Jillian had a pink frame.  Hadleigh also loves pink and did NOT want a yellow frame!!  I am so mean!!!!

 

The kids all did well at school yesterday!!  I got great reports from all the teachers!!  YAY!!!!!

Disney World Day 2

On our second day at Disney World, we went to Epcot!  Our family had not been to Epcot since Summer and I were young.  We were looking forward to seeing some new things.

Because we had breakfast reservations, we got into the park before it opened.  Bonus!  Summer had read about a ride called the Fast Track but I did not get a FastPass for the ride so Bryan and Bill took the older kids right away to the ride while we checked in for breakfast.  They said it was pretty cool!!

 

Jillian and I had a secret surprise for everybody.  Our breakfast reservations were for a princess breakfast in Norway!!!!!!

 

The boys were very surprised!!!  Meeting Belle.....

 

Jillian saw Princess Aurora immediately!!  That is her favorite and she was so excited!!!

 

The boys got into it quickly and loved the princesses too! Look at KK's expression!  Ha!

 

Hands down - Snow White is my FAVORITE!  She interacts with the kids.  She talks so sugar sweet!  She is precious!!!

 

Look at Rocco - he is such a ham!!!

 

Ariel was a hit!

 

And finally, who does not love Cinderella!!!!

 

There were parades!!  The food was delicious!!!  Askershus was an awesome way to start the morning!!  Then we started going to our FastPasses.  We did Turtle Talk with Crush and the Finding Nemo ride.  We stopped by to take pictures with Bruce but poor Rocco got squished and one of Bruce's teeth hit Rocco in the eye.  Drama!!!

 

Then we rode Soarin' and we were done.  We picked up another Fast Pass for the evening.  On the way out of the park, we took pictures. 

 

We went back to hotel for naps and came back refreshed for dinner.  We had reservations in Italy at Via Napoli and to celebrate Dad's birthday!!!

 

Rocco hamming it up again.  You can see his eye injury in this picture!  Dinner was so-so.  No one in my family goes too much outside the box with food.  So this was a little out of our comfort zone with the selections - there was not any plain spaghetti on the menu if you know what I mean.  We did alright!

 

Finally, the kids rode another ride and we stayed for the light show/fireworks over the lagoon.  Everybody loved it and the kids loved all of the light toys!!!

Disney World Day 1

Our plane left at 6:10 AM!!!  Bryan and I told the kids that there could be NO crying when we woke them up at 4:00 or we were not going.  They did wonderful!  Just look at their faces at 4:30AM!!!

 

 

On the plane, I had the littles......

 

 

Bryan had biggie (guess who had the easier job)!

 

We arrived with no problems, checked into Port Orleans Riverside with no problems and caught a bus over to Animal Kingdom. 

 

 

The whole gang in front of the Tree of Life.  I don't know if you can tell but it was HOT!!!  Like scorching hot with absolutely NO breeze.  But the kids were troopers and we just kept going....

 

 

We started with lunch reservations at the Tusker House.  The lunch has all of the main characters and the kids were going crazy!!!

 

 

The main man!!!!!

 

The lunch was awesome.  The kids loved meeting all of the characters and participated in a parade....... except the kids did not eat a thing.  We paid for a full-price lunch for them to eat a cracker.  We had a big talk with the kids following the meal about how important it was for them to eat because we were paying big $$$$$!!!

 

Afterwards, we split up.  Bryan and Bill took the big kids to the first rollercoaster - Mount Everest and the rest of us took the little kids for a character meet and greet. 

 

 

I thought that Hadleigh could handle regular panties because she has been doing so well at home but while we were waiting to meet Baloo and King Louis, she pulled on my arm and announced "Mommy, I made a trail."  To my horror, she had peed all down the sidewalk.  AWESOME!!!  So in the next picture please do not look closely at her shorts!! 

 

 

Our next fast pass was a bust!  The River Rapids ride (which everyone was looking forward to getting wet and getting relief from the heat) was not working!  Oh no! 

 

So we headed to our final fast pass, the safari ride.  I do not have any pictures from that because I didn't ride it.  I thought I would be too claustrophobic and I made a good choice b/c everybody said how rough and bumpy the ride was. 

 

Finally, Minnie Mouse was missing from our lunch.  Hadleigh insisted we find Minnie Mouse before we left.  So we tracked down Minnie in the park and waited in line to see her...and waited...and waited......BUT IT WAS WORTH IT.  One of my favorite pictures from the whole trip!!!

 

We headed back to the hotel and the Disney Fairy had stopped by and left the kids some gifts.  This is something that helps with behavior and with curbing the kids from asking for gifts all day long.  They know if they behave that the DF will bring some little goodies. 

 

Next up....Epcot!!