Thursday Thirteen: The Castle

I wish I could take credit for today's T13, but alas I cannot. My dad is the true photographer in our family. While we were there this weekend, he gave me a CD he had made of the pictures he took while we were on vacation. I struggled with the settings of my camera and never could capture the beauty of the lights changing against the castle, and the fireworks as well. He did an awesome job so I had to share.

Here are 13 of my favoprites that my dad took. I love some of the angles.

Wordless Wednesday: Oblivious Pose

I know it's a naughty picture, but it's funny because I didn't even notice the statue until Steve pointed it out to me after I took it.

Photo Story Friday: Some Favorite Candid Florida Shots

While re-sorting through the pictures from vacation, I was left with a few that didn't fit into any other categories but that I really liked. I thought I would share them with you, while my kids are chasing each other around the house with yarn...I don't know why but at least they're getting along.




I LOVED this one of Aaron. We were on the people mover going through Space Mountain and his eyes cracked me up.











I have spoken about Aaron and his hearing/speech issues many times. Although he has been given a perfect bill of health in regards to hearing, this was still his pose during anything somewhat loud, whether it be the Lion King Show (shown here), other shows, parades, or rides.














I LOVED this shot. Daddy and both boys jumping into the pool at the same time












Both of my boys love to tickle or otherwise amuse their youngest cousin. Their cousin is happy to oblige.











I love this shot because it was taken on the way out of Animal Kingdom, our least favorite day of the three park days. They were so content to just sit and watch the water and I feel a sense of peace when I look at it.









I like this one of Noah, because on the last day of vacation because it speaks volumes about how tired we were by the end of our marathon day.


















Have a great weekend and come back for Weekend Top Five on Monday.

Thursday Thirteen: Our Last Night of Vacation T13 Style

After all these vacation posts the last two weeks, was there any doubt that there had to be one about the castle/parade?

I tried for 13 cool pictures of the castle, but I just didn't get good enough shots, so I thought I'd tell a story instead.


1. I didn't know that the castle started changing colors at dusk so I was amazed when we were finding our spot for the parade and found the castle turning pink




I don't know the lady on the cell one out front but my photo editing program was lost when my computer had to be stripped a few months ago.









2. I thought it was even more fun to watch as the colors kept changing, both to deep blue, and then a vibrant purple.

















3. We started lining up early, which was a good thing because the crowd got heavy very quickly.
I mentioned earlier this week that we brought a stroller with us for Noah on our marathon day at Magic Kingdom, which ended up being a very good idea.

Notice how big he is for it, but he was thankful to be able to sit while we were waiting for the parade to start.

I can't believe he was actually surprised when the strap wouldn't fit him!

4. Luckily, my brother and his family were able to find us in the crowd so the kids could all watch together. My youngest nephew loved playing with our balloon stroller identifier during the wait.


Can you see his cute little smile through the balloon?





5. This is one of my favorite "kid" shots from our vacation. The four older cousins lined up ready for the parade. I love how happy all four of them look, even after a VERY crazy week away from home.

This is how I choose to remember the week, even with all of its ups and downs.






6. And yes, the parade did actually start eventually. I had quite a challenging time trying to get good shots of the floats but I will try share some of the ones I did capture.










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9. Everyone got excited when Ursula came strolling down the street. The way she spun and moved was really cool and I still would like to know how they did it.










10. During the entire parade, Aaron held his usual pose...hands over his ears












11. My niece, the only girl in the group, got the sweetest smiles when the princesses started coming down the street.


Nope, no clue why Aaron's mouth is wide open.








12. I didn't get any pictures of the fireworks since I was videotaping it, but is was spectacular. Afterward, we waited around for awhile to let the crowds thin out before heading back to the monorail. After about twenty minutes, I looked down at Aaron to head toward the exit, and was surprised to find him completely asleep.



















13. I was even MORE surprised though when I looked at Noah's stroller.

At almost seven year's old, my "grown up" first grader had also FALLEN ASLEEP!

He was hanging completely off the poor stroller, but he didn't really move much at all on the way back to the car.

The people on the monorail were nice enough to allow us one without collapsing the strollers so both boys could continue their snooze.









So, I know this wasn't your typical T13 post, but when have I ever been typical?

Have a great Thursday!

Friday Photo Story: Our Marathon Day at Magic Kingdom

After a long week of "vacationing", there were still quite a few rides at the Magic Kingdom that we had wanted to experience with the kids but had not had a chance to. So, like you read about here, we had a character dinner with my family scheduled on Friday, our last day at 4:00. We were planning to go to dinner and then hang around the park for the rest of the night to watch the night parade and fireworks.

Steve and I decided that since it was our last day, we would make it count and do a marathon day, from the time the park opened until after the fireworks ended at night.

We knew it was going to be a long and exhausting day, but we are SO glad that we chose to do it. It was the most fun day we had in the parks by far. There were lots of things that we didn't even know about that we got to experience since we got there at opening.

We started out bright and early at 7:00, hoping to get to the parks before it actually opened at 9:00. We got into the outside gate around 8:15 and waited among the crowds (remember this picture from Wednesday?).

The first surprise came at about five minutes to 9. A "welcome show" was held right outside the entrance and all of the characters arrived by train to open the park. It was exciting...you could feel the energy. I didn't get any pictures because we were looking right into the sun, but we did get some video of it. Noah passed some time by taking silly pictures of Steve with my camera.



















When we first walked into the park, we headed right to the "lands" that we wanted to do.

The first thing we came to was Aladdin's Magic Carpet. No line! Cool!

The boys and I jumped right on while Steve went to get fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.








After riding it once, the ride operator told us we could go again if we wanted since there were no people. After two more times, Steve came back, got on and we went yet one MORE time.














Hyped up from our good luck, we headed to Pirates of the Carri bean. Again, NO WAIT. Walked right through and onto a boat. We were even more amazed when we discovered the operator of the ride was a student at the school my taught at before he retired. What a small world! Although the ride was dark and eerie, the kids handled it quite well and we were off to more stuff.





We moved on to Splash Mountain (again, no wait) but as we loaded, the ride broke down and we had to get off...first broken ride of the day.

So off to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Our fastpass was for 10:15 and it was 10:00 with a five minute wait. Let's go ahead and go...

Here came our first glimpse of the day of Noah's "demons" from the Everest ride two days previous (which I mentioned in this post). The kid who LOVED every roller coaster he had ever been on in his life, started crying uncontrollably because he was so scared to go on the ride. Steve and I struggled between one of us taking Aaron and the other sitting off with Noah or just biting the bullet and doing it.

Yup, the bad parents that we are, we just moved him along. I kind of felt that if he was going to get over this issue, we needed to just do it. The part that he was scared of was because that DARN Yeti jumped out at him. It took a lot of convincing that nothing would jump out at him on this ride.

We got through it one time and our fastpass was ready so we just turned around and rode it again. I still can't believe we were able to ride that ride TWICE in a row.

So off we headed to Haunted Mansion. Once again, NO WAIT. We walked right in again.

Noah had recuperated a little from his "trauma" and we loaded into the cars. The spooky music kind of freaked them both out a little but they were fine...
UNTIL..
Oh yes, yet another ride broke down. And where should it break down? The spooky graveyard with loud creepy music and ghosts continually popping out at them from behind gravestones. We sat there for a good 8 or 9 minutes before we went again. No one was interested in doing this one again.


So it was now around 11:00 and we had done most of the rides we had wanted to tackle the entire day. So we headed to Dumbo and waited in a line (still only 30 minutes) and checked that ride off the list.



















We did actually get back to Splash Mountain, where Noah started in on his minor panic attack again, but he got over it when we told him to just watch the story of Brer Rabbit which we had read at home. Once again, the ride was still not quite working properly, and there were major "log jams" and we kept ramming into the logs in front of us while the ones behind us kept ramming into us. The good thing was that I didn't get wet, which was good because everyone else was coming off it soaked and I really didn't feel like being wet for the rest of the evening.

Then it was off to re-ride Space Ranger Spin, which had been the favorite on Monday. My score, sad to say, did NOT improve. I still don't understand how Aaron can get 1000 points, Noah can get 1400 points, I can get 4000 points and my STINKER of a husband can get 50,000 POINTS.














While over there, we took in the people mover through Space Mountain and the Monsters, Inc. Show (which was very funny).



















We stopped to eat our sandwiches we had brought for lunch and were starting to get tired so we headed up to ride a few spins around the park on the railroad. By that point, it was time to start gathering for the afternoon parade, and then head over to dinner with the family.














We also were caught by surprise by a neat character show right out front of the castle that even included it's own little firework show. Aaron was talking about seeing "the REAL Peter Pan" for days afterward.














After dinner, we needed to actually WAIT for rides since the fastpasses were gone, but we didn't mind. We made it to the jungle cruise, where Aaron was invited to drive the boat for a little while














I thought it was kind of neat that every time there was a crowd waiting for a parade, a Disney "cast member" would put out fun activities in the streets for kids to do. Noah is quite the hula hooper!














Are you exhausted reading this? I am again just writing about it. But it really was a good thing that we did it. I was glad we did it on the last day so that the "grumpies" from being tired the next day were spent in the car on the ride toward home.

My T13 for next week will be the images from the evening from this long and eventful day. But for now, I need to go take a shower, get dressed, and take Aaron to the park.

Have a great Friday!

Dinner With Pooh and Friends

My brother and SIL were generous to treat our entire group (11 of us in total) to a character dinner at the Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom on our last night of vacation.


Yup, we do stand out a little all in red







The four of us had been in the park since it had opened that morning, so we were a little more grumpy than we should have been when we first arrived, but luckily, the spirit and joy returned pretty quickly when:
A. We got a look at he amazing spread of food at the buffet
B. You just can't be grumpy when Tigger is bouncing around
C. How excited the boys were to see their cousins again

After getting our group settled between two tables, we took turns heading to the buffet for food for children and ourselves.
Noah was still on his eating freeze because of the dumb tooth (that STILL wont come out) but was thrilled to head over to the dessert bar with my dad and pile his bowl full of ice cream and sprinkles.









We were honored to be visited by Pooh



















Piglet














Eeyore



















and Tigger, who definitely had the most personality of the characters. My niece and nephew had autograph books for the characters to sign and Tigger got creative in signing by using Aaron's head for a desk














and then Aaron reverted into his silliness and started his "poking" problem again, to which Tigger,(just like Lilo earlier that week) made it clear that poking WAS NOT okay. I really liked how the characters could get their needs met while still staying in character and being kind to overzealous children (aka Aaron)














Noah opted to "play it cool" with a high five, rather than the typical character hug



















It was a nice way to spend our last meal together and two weeks later, the boys are STILL talking about the ice cream with sprinkles that grandpa got them.

I know they don't read this blog anymore, but a big Thank You to my brother and SIL who treated us to this special dinner anyway. We appreciate you including us.

Have a great day everyone!