Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Definitely Disney World

Continuing on our DisneyWorld trip, Caleb loved Animal Kingdom just as much as Magic Kingdom! (Also, I think we were photobombed by the "dads-with-strollers" crew.)


Celia connected to her wild side in Harambe village in Animal Kingdom.


We all ate lunch at Yak and Yeti and ate delicious Asian cuisine. We also managed to get another group shot of all of us (a rare occurrence).


Over in Hollywood Studios, I managed to snap a quick shot of our row on Star Tours before they said no pictures. Balo was turning into a droid, apparently.


We got a picture with the soldier guy from Toy Story after we rode Toy Story mania. He's always entertaining.


Caleb loved Hollywood Studios just as much as the others. In other news, I think he gained weight daily. I can barely hold him up in this picture.


As a reward for all of my baby carrying, we headed to Beaches and Cream for the greatest sundae that exists...the No Way José (a.k.a. the IGoHoJo, if you are like me and get those two sayings mixed up). It's a glorious bowl of hot fudge, peanut butter, and ice cream. 


Celia and Balo got to sit at their very own table. Our waiter was amazing and gave them balloons for their birthdays. This is Celia enjoying her ice cream. 


Did I mention our waiter was amazing? He saw there were two other little ones that wanted balloons, so he brought two more over for my parent's "wedding anniversary" (which it was, but the girls were wearing their anniversary buttons because they wanted buttons like the birthday kids... so now they had both buttons and balloons).


Here is everyone walking along the "beach" next to Beaches and Cream, very satisfied on a lovely Disney day full of ice cream, complete with balloons. 


At the Magic Kingdom the next day, we managed to get a castle picture with all of us. 



We also got to meet Elsa and Anna. Elsa was blah, but Anna was pretty darn exciting. She was chatting it up about her friends, and her sister, and Olaf. She was pretty good.



At the exit, we got a picture of all the kiddos with Minnie mouse. (Balo didn't want to get his picture taken with Elsa, of course.)


We rode Dumbo again with everyone. 


We rode the Barnstormer again. 


Caleb proved he was having a romping good time in his signature way.


And then we were captured by Zurg! Clara and Celia managed to get their scared faces on. Balo and Caleb looked thrilled, and Sabrina thinks she can take down Zurg with her muscles. Obviously.


The Haunted Mansion has also added some fun activities to do during the line, which the older kids remembered from last time. Here they are posing with the silly statues at the start of the activity part of the line. 


As we were waiting for our reservation to be ready for lunch, the kiddos all sat very photogenically on this stone ledge. Unfortunately, Caleb did not fit (nor did we think it wise to set him on it since it was 3 or 4 feet off the ground).


We got to eat at the brand new Be Our Guest restaurant. It was absolutely amazing. It was the Beast's castle. Inside was the grand ballroom where most of the tables were. Then there was the West Wing, where we were, which was all ripped up and had the rose in it. Also, the picture of the Prince over the mantle changed to the beast during a lightning storm every twenty minutes or so. It was awesome. And "the grey stuff" ("Try the grey stuff, it's delicious, don't believe me? Ask the dishes!" .... just in case you needed a reference reminder) was a menu item.... so of course we tried it! It was, in fact, delicious! Also, the Beast came by to welcome everyone as his guest and then he went to the royal library (which was disappointingly small and lacking in books compared to the movie) and took his picture with everyone as they left. 







And with that, we had a lovely end to a great trip to Disney! Thanks to the Edvalson family for making it all happen.

Friday, April 24, 2015

More Like Disney World

Once the cousins arrived, the real party began. Balo and Celia were immediately close, as always, which is super fun. They loved their matching monorail shirts. We all waited for the bus at our Disney hotel house and were off to breakfast at Ohana at the Polynesian Resort.


Breakfast was all you can eat with Mickey and Stitch waffles, Hawaiian juice, and pineapple as the highlights. The mound of food they gave us at the kids' table was rather larger than we really needed.


It was a character breakfast and Pluto was up first. The kids were a bit nervous, but enjoying themselves.


Everyone was a big fan of Mickey. Except Caleb. He was nervous about all the characters. Tom captured Mickey with Elena with everyone taking phone pictures. Classic.


Lilo came over and actually spent a little time trying to get Caleb to warm up. He wasn't totally opposed to the game of peek-a-boo she instigated. 



Our family friends, Cal and Eric, joined us for the breakfast and we all got a giant picture with Stitch.


Since the Stitch picture was a bit crazy, we got a nice picture when we arrived at Magic Kingdom to show off all of our unique Disney shirts (Tom and I designed them as Christmas presents for the family). 


Here are the kids on the monorail in their monorail shirts. Last time we were at DisneyWorld, Balo and Celia has a schtick where they named the buses Jonorails and the boats Bonorails. Thus their shirts were born.


We hit up the speedway. This is the last trip we'll be able to take advantage of child swap on all the rides. It's perfect because each baby gets a ticket for 3 people to ride in the fast pass line. So we would get two of those, and the adults would take turns with the babies, and then the adults could take turns taking the 4 big kids on all the rides twice in a row. The big kids really didn't know how good they had it this trip. On every ride, before it was even over, Sabrina would say "I want to go on this ride again!"


Of course we went on It's A Small World. And Caleb loved it. He spent the entire ride pointing and "ooing" at everything.


I took pictures while Billy and Tom took a turn on the Barnstormer--one of the kids' favorites--with the big kids.


If you look closely, I caught Tom and Billy as they blasted through the Barnstormer sign. The other kids were too short to capture.


This picture should be on a Disney brochure. Big Thunder Mountain and a Mickey balloon are in the background. We're all wearing Disney shirts, and there are some ducks that Caleb is enjoying. Isn't Disney magical?


Back at our hotel/house, we tried to take pictures of the kiddos on the stairs. These are the best we could do:



Jammie time on the couch was always fun. We never got out of the house before 9:30 or 10, so the kids got plenty of quality time together.


Here are the kids on the Jonorail on the way to EPCOT.


We visited Crush, Nemo, and, of course, Bruce.


Elena and Caleb slept in strollers by Mater while the big kids played on the Cars playground.


Elsa and Anna made out of plants were big hits with the girls. And Tom and Caleb took a standard EPCOT ball picture. 


And there was more fun still to come....

FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed