Disney re-cap

Doug and I want to start first by saying how thankful we are to his parents for taking us (and the rest of the Harkins crew) on this Disney vacation. We appreciate every moment of it and will never forget it. The countless experiences, smiles, and sites we enjoyed those 10 days will always be looked back upon and treasured.

On a lighter note, prior to the vacation, I had a pedicure done in preparation for Disney. I meant to share it with everyone on the blog before we left, but never got around to it. I guess ten days after our return isn't too late to show you how excited I was:
In case you can't quite tell (and I'm not zooming in any closer since it's been three weeks since the pedi!), I had Mickey's ears painted on my big toe!!!!!!! and he's still there :)

We love walking around the house these days and having little bits and pieces of memories from Disney scattered about. Such as these mugs we picked up:

Okay, well that's about it for blogging about Disney...until next time

: )

Day 10 in Disney World/Mother's Day 2010

Our final full day in Disney fell on Mother's Day. I took the kids over to Mom-Mom and Poppy's room for a little bit to say good morning. Madeline's cousin, Liam, was visiting too so they had a little fun together for a bit:

Then Poppy got a hold of Liam and I escaped with our kids before he got to them too!!

Doug's sister, Mary, took some family shots of us at a few different points in the hotel. Here's our first and favorite one (you may see it again around Christmas!!):

This was our next location, but the lighting wasn't great:

I like the idea of a shot by the fireplace...but the kids were definitely over getting their picture taken...even with Mom-mom and Poppy helping to get them to smile!

So after all the photos, the four of us went back to Magic Kingdom to hit all of Madeline's "favorites"

First was the Carousal. We did this several times.

Me and my two on Mother's Day:

This is typical of Ethan. He is holding the straw from my morning coffee. He always gets something tight fisted in his hand and then hangs on to it for hours:

Me and my baby girl:

Love her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My little man:

Always making me laugh!

Buddies:

Buddies:

She is so beautiful...inside and out:

...and he is one awesome Daddy and husband!!!

Later on, we walked through the Swiss Family Treehouse (one of my favorite movies...I hope it's a favorite book of my kids):

I LOVE this kind of stuff:

Daddy walked ahead with Madeline a bit, but Ethan just wanted to hang out and be a ham:

Other neat things that I loved there:

After the tree house, we went on the Magic Carpet Ride. Ethan wasn't too sure what to think (he had napped through Madeline's other time on here), but he really liked it:

This was Ethan's reaction EVERY time the monorail went by...He LOVED that thing!!!

It was our last day so we decided to go out with a bang and let the kids get soaking wet in the "water thing" Here's Madeline trying to pull Ethan into the water:

So then Ethan tried to push her in:

The funny thing is, even though Ethan appears to be the first one to get wet, he hardly did at all:

He just wanted his sister to get wet:

...or his Aunt Mary:

Finally, Madeline was ready to really get wet:

Aunt Mary loved watching, but always stayed a safe distance away:

These pictures don't do her giddiness justice:

Meanwhile, Ethan and I hung out together and stayed dry (who loves this picture as much as I do???):

Madeline kept trying to get Aunt Mary wet:

Madeline stopped playing in the water for a quick minute to catch another family photo:

Then, right back in:

Hi Mom!!

Aunt Mary tried to get Ethan interested in the water:

I think she got a little wet:

Lots of fun by the water, then we got Madeline changed and checked out a few more things.

We met up with Mom-mom and Poppy on our way out and got another pic:

Another shot of me and my two on Mother's Day. I've been so blessed. I love those two so much.

Day 9 in Disney World

Saturday morning we headed straight for the pool.
Ethan with his protector:

Madeline had a blast in the pool:

Ethan was hit or miss. Sometimes he just wanted to stand outside the water...sometimes he would stand in it...but never anything more than that. In this picture, Ethan is getting adjusted to the water, while Madeline is giving Daddy a wet hug (I don't know who gave her that idea!! wink wink):

She thought it was funny to show me her foot out of the water. She really wanted me to take a picture of it:

Posing:

How they spent most of the pool time:

We eventually did all get in the water and even spent quite a bit of time in the "big pool." It was a nice change of pace from all the walking around all day in the ridiculous heat and humidity at the parks.

For a couple days Madeline kept saying she wanted me to take her picture with the Mickey at the hotel. But, believe it or not, I did not have my camera with me each of those times. Finally, I decided to make a special trip down to the Mickey with my camera to grab a couple shots of her. Here was her first, and my favorite, pose:

Obviously before naps, we hopped on a bus and headed over to Disney's Hollywood Studios:

They certainly were a scene stealer on the bus:

This was one of my favorite things to see!! Ethan really got a kick out of seeing McQueen and Mater too!

While Daddy had run to take Madeline to go potty, I was walking around with Ethan when he spotted two characters walking near him. It was two of the characters from a Disney cartoon called Little Einsteins (one of our kids favorites). He was so excited that he chased after them. They were about to do a little meet and greet, so I went ahead and got him in line. It was so cute, because he seemed to understand how the whole process worked. I even went into the backpack and grabbed Madeline's autograph book which he took and held like he knew just what to do. He managed to get a hold of my PhotoPass too. In this picture he thought I was going to take it from him:

Here he is in line so excited to see them up close!! He waited so patiently! I guess after 9 days of this, he finally realized that patience pays off:

Madeline joined us in line. Ethan continued to watch very excitedly:

Then it was our turn. He wanted Mommy to hand them the pen and book:

...and this is as close as he would get:

Madeline never had any problems meeting the other characters, but I guess because of Ethan's reaction, she decided to be shy too. I told Annie and Leo we would just go ahead and take a picture like this. Leo got a real chuckle out of that. Here's the results:

Then we took another bus over to a hotel where we caught a boat to Downtown Disney. Madeline was so funny on the bus. At one point she informed the bus driver, Angel from the the Bronx, that red means stop. The other passengers on the bus got quite a kick out of that. Fortunately, Angel found her quite amusing and continued to converse with her. He asked her is she wanted to be a bus driver in Disney World when she grew up, and her response was, "no, I want to be a Princess."

Anyway, here we are once we made it on the boat:

We met Doug's parents, sister, and younger brother and his family at a restaurant and had dinner together. Afterwards, we went over to Disney's Quest. We checked out a few things there, then I discovered this thing called Animation Academy. I knew Madeline would just LOVE this!!! This is the only picture I snapped because I had to have her on my lap in order for her to reach the drawing board (and Daddy was busy building and riding his own roller coaster). In this picture she is waiting for Animation Academy 101 to start. She loved the class. In fact she listened to the directions on how to use the drawing board very well. At one point the instructor made a joking comment about no one listening to the directions (most of the students were older than Madeline, so they figured they already knew how to use this thing). Well, Madeline piped up and said, "I'm listening!!!!" The instructor laughed and thanked her and proceeded with the directions. She took the whole class very seriously:

Here's her final product:

I should probably add that I did help her color in the ears. She was coloring them in very carefully, but we were running out of time. The instructor was counting down from ten before the machine would shut off and Madeline only had about 10% of the ears colored in. She wanted them colored but didn't know how to do it fast, so I helped her.

And that's where Day 9 ended.