Magic Kingdom

Warning-Picture overload ahead! I will try to keep my comments minimal (good luck with that, right?)

We started the morning beating the crowds at some of the more popular rides and then met up for our character breakfast with Winnie-the-Pooh and friends. If you ever go to WDW, do the character dining. It is a little expensive, but so worth it. You get individualized attention from the characters and the meals are good.

Wouldn't be a vacation without these 2 being goofballs!

Princess Tiana and Prince Navide. Tate wasn't so sure about waiting to see a princess, but once he talked to this prince he was all about it. They were both super great with the kids and spent a couple minutes just talking to them.

The highlight of any trip to Disney World! You can find the same characters in different places. These guys were kind of hiding at the exit of Splash Mountain. We weren't really looking for them, but the line was short and its Mickey and Minnie!

Parade time! This one included a ton of the "main" characters. If you ever go give me a call - we had a great strategy for getting a spot and taking a little break.

This is how Tate was for every parade. Another melt mommy's heart moment! He felt like every character was all about him - it was awesome!

Trouble at the test track! These 2 should never be alone together!

My amazing kiddos! They were a blast!

Nighttime at the Magic Kingdom

The whole crew. I wouldn't have traded this experience with them for anything. We made sure to get our alone time with our own families, but being there and sharing it with them was great! Enjoy the moments! Have a great Friday everyone!

Hollywood Studios

So, I thought I would share some pics of each day of our trip. This will save all of you from getting my mass email of 300+ pictures from Kodak. Your welcome! For some reason I can't rearrange my pictures, so they are out of order-sorry! Here we go:

Hollywood Studios is home to Disney's Pixar characters, so the parade was a highlight for all the kids - especially the boys. Tate didn't stop waving for the entire thing!

We had a really great spot and all the characters were in front of us waving to the kids at some point. It didn't hurt that we had on our "Von Awesome" shirts. I can't tell you how many characters and workers commented on them during our trip.

Beauty and the Beast - always great! We had lunch while waiting and I don't think the kids blinked once during the show. In fact, it is Tate's newest infatuation. Wait til the Epcot pics later and you will see why.

Tram ride from the parking lot. Disney takes a lot of stress out of that too - they have multitudes of workers telling you exactly where to park, so you don't have to deal with idiots who are trying to get better spots or talk their way into rockstar parking. I tend to be a little intense about those types of people, so each day my day started a little better because of them :)

"Disney Rocks" show including music from Disney channel movies. The kids loved it and the girl in blue kept singing to the kids and was even talking to them as her float left. If I have any major tip it is to try and get front and center for events like this and the parade. The cast are very interactive and always happy (its Disney World!). I had many melt-your-heart moments because they were interacting just with us and made my kids feel so special!

Pluto was our first character meeting of the trip. After awhile we had our system of autographs and pictures down to a science. Disney also offers a photo pass system where they give you a card to keep for your stay and each picture op you can give it to them and they take pictures. They scan your card and then you can view and purchase all the pics they took also. They are expensive, of course, but some really great pictures.

Ok, so this moment made me cry - I admit it. But, if you know how much he loves Buzz and Woody and could have seen his face when it was all about him and them, you would have been bawling too! Disney does a really good job of having places to meet characters, so other people aren't swarming around you trying to push you out. We had plenty of time with everyone we met and again, they were amazing with the kids. Buzz was messing with Tate and Woody kept "commenting" on our shirts.

Waiting patiently. We got very lucky in terms of crowds. Our longest waits (which I didn't think were bad at all) were for characters, but definately worth it. These 3 were absolute troopers during the trip. Note the shirts - made all of us easy to spot in a crowd.

Luigi's garage with Mater. Again, Tate was in Heaven!!!

Before the parade these actors set up their "stage" right in front of us. I bet they spent about 10 minutes talking to us about our trip, where we were from, and our shirts :) They were on the speaker system, so they introduced us to the crowd.

Waiting for the parade to start.

Donald and Daisy

The big kids had to get in on the act too! Really great dads!

Having Aunt Beth along made the trip even more special. She was willing to take kids places, spend time with them one-on-one, and just amazing! A big part of why the trip was so "von awesome"!

Buzz and Teagan

Tate and Lightning

I really can't say enough about how great my kids were the entire trip. We were a little worried that Tate would struggle, but having a ride along stroller for both of them was a life saver. There is just so much to do that they didn't have time to think about being tired and if they were then we rested and moved on. For anyone considering a trip-these ages worked out great for us.

Thats it for Hollywood Studios. Next post is Magic Kingdom. Have a great Saturday everyone!!

I'm back!

More like we're back! We had an absolute blast on our trip and I will have more pictures to share later, but I am still trying to catch-up with reality. Brad has started golf season which means a little more Mommy time with the kids and maybe more time to devote to my blogging. The Disney trip kicked my picture taking back into high gear, so hopefully I get better about that also. Only time will tell, but for now here we go!

To infinity and beyond!!

Digging Out

Just like everyone else we spent the end of last week digging ourselves out after the big snow. I didn't think our yard was too bad until Brad actually started digging - I was wrong. That is a crazy amount of snow, and yes, I am taking the picture from inside. Finger in the way and all!









Speaking of digging out - Tate was invited to a birthday party for his friends Luke and Jenna. He had a blast and loved jumping into the "popcorn". Here is is with his buddy Griff. I don't think this is the last time we'll see these 2 digging themselves out of something :)









I couldn't get a good picture of the entire group - how could you, there were 20 of them! The snow day gave us a chance at some good bonding. Teagan wanted to try out some of the spelling sites from her class. She was nice enough to share with Tate and it made for about an hour of quiet - so worth it!!









Teagan participated in Poms night on Saturday, but before we headed out she got to spend quality with a friend. They were great and kept each other very busy.









Where's Waldo (aka Tate) in this picture? Can anyone find him?









I didn't get very good pictures of the Poms routine so here she is posing - not unusual around the Schaefers.
So, the rest of my time has been spent doing a whole lot of nothing, but isn't that what winter is for?











I started reading the first of three books in the "Uglies" series. Pretty good read and quick too. Yes, it is another teen choice book, but hey, its what I like!






Beyond Scared Straight - enough said. Another addiction to add to my DVR list.






I don't DVR this, but it is guaranteed to be on at our house on Monday nights. Right after is American Pickers, which is just as good. Nerds? Maybe, but its who I am! And I can watch it with my hubby!

I am still spending the majority of my time planning for Disney. T-minus 31 days til we head out. I have most of our supplies purchased and the clothes sectioned off in the closets for packing, but still looking for games to occupy the kids' time on the plane. I saw these magnetic games at Target the other day, but they wanted almost $8 for them! No way - I feel a project coming on!!! Have a great week!