Meeting the Princesses

I didn't realize, until our trip was over, that Lily and Claire met every Disney Princess.  Every single one.  I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  They sure are cute together.  Claire gets so dreamy-eyed whenever she meets a character.

We started with Rapunzel, because we heard she has the longest line.

Then we visited Tiana (well, I snuck away to ride the Haunted Mansion).

Then Cinderella, Belle, and Aurora.  Claire loves Aurora and was super chatty with her.  She made up all kinds of stories.

The next day in Magic Kingdom we met Aladdin and Jasmine.  It was funny to watch them ride the Magic Carpets ride before they came over.  They kept getting hit by the camel spit!

My favorite character interaction to watch was Ariel and Prince Eric.  Here's Claire's dreamy eyes for Ariel.

Here's Ariel's dreamy eyes for Prince Eric (so funny!)

Then we asked Prince Eric where Max was (Max is his dog's name).  He went off on a story about Max and his whereabouts.  Afterwards, he told Lily he needed to whisper a secret in her ear.  He pulled her in close and gave her a big kiss on the cheek!  Lily was so surprised.  Eric's tricky like that.

Well, Claire was a little jealous that Lily got kissed so she had Prince Eric give her a kiss too.

Then, in Animal Kingdom, we met Pocahontas.  The girls, especially Claire, were fascinated with the fringe across her chest on her dress.  I felt bad that my kids were inappropriately touching Pocahontas, but I'm sure they weren't the first.

At EPCOT we met Mulan.  She was very concerned about the locations of Mushu and Crickee and wanted Lily and Claire's help finding them. 

On our last day, we met Snow White.  She was very into her character and did a great job.  She completed our collection!

I think its more one of my life dreams (to meet all the princesses) than my kids, but that's OK. What an accomplishment! 

3-D Glasses

Apparently we thought it was really funny to take pictures of each other in 3-D glasses this trip....we have a lot of these pictures.  Here's a peek into the collection

DisneyWorld - Evening at Epcot

Its a long flight from Seattle to Orlando...about as long as it is to fly to Hawaii.  The kids were really good on the plane though.  We left early, early in the morning and arrived at EPCOT at 6pm or so.  We rode Finding Nemo, watched Turtle Talk with Crush, ate dinner and then went to meet some very famous people.

Afterwards, we found a sweet spot to watch the evening fireworks show (which is spectacular).  We spent a few minutes after the fireworks were over exploring the UK Pavillion.  It seemed so real at night with no one around.

Then we headed home to try and get our kids to bed so they could adjust to the 3-hour time difference.  It was a magical first day!

Snowpocalypse 2012

Seattle was hammered by a bad snow and ice storm this winter.  Usually snow doesn't really phase me, but here it doesn't happen very often, so they are totally unequipped to handle it.  Add to that the fact that we live on a really steep hill with millions of trees and we had a small disaster.  Our road was closed and our power went out....power outages in the winter stink!  We tried to keep warm by running our gas fireplaces, but we were just hanging on to 60 degrees.  After one night roughing it, we went to stay with the Millerburg family.  They still had power and only live a mile away.

The next night, the Maner family came to stay with the Millerburgs too.  Then things turned into a party!  We stayed up late playing games, ate yummy food, and had a regular stay-cation.

The men all worked from "home" in Spencer's office.

The kids all played together and thought it was the best thing ever.  We even planned little relay races for them.

The snow and ice stopped early enough for us to still make our flight to Disneyworld and our power even came back on before we had to leave.

It reminded me of the last time we went to Disneyworld....the airport was closed in Houston because we'd just suffered a hurricane.  Our trip was delayed 1 day, but our power came on right before we got home from our trip.  Coincidence?  I'll let you decide!

Point Defiance

On the Monday after Christmas, we went to the Point Defiance park in Tacoma to enjoy the beauties of nature.  The park has great views of the Puget Sound, a old-growth forest, and a nice road through it all making it very accessible (we drove).  Someday we're going to get a "family" car so that I don't have to sit in the back seat on Jeff's lap while he's wedged between two car seats....someday.

Christmas Day

Christmas day was a big success.  We had so much fun together and it was really special that my Mom and Dad could be there with us.  We decided to have a smaller budget this year because we're planning on going to DisneyWorld in late January (our kids don't know yet).  They still ended up with way more toys than I planned on.  Oh well!

Here's Claire dressed up as Rapunzel with her matching doll...that's probably the last time Rapunzel's hair looked good.  Now I know why they named the movie Tangled.

Later in the day, Claire changed to the Aurora costume and matching doll and then fell asleep on the family room floor.  Our little Sleeping Beauty.

Cookies for Santa

On Christmas Eve, the girls and I decorated sugar cookies for Santa.

I have not found the perfect sugar cookie recipe...in fact the sugar cookie is my baking nemesis.  They either are tough, or too cakey, or the dough is so soft it just coats everything it touches.  So this year, I bought a mix thinking that would be better.  Nope!  We skipped the cookie cutters and just had round, drop-style sugar cookies instead.  I wasn't going to fight with the dough...Santa would know and then I wouldn't get any presents.

We did have fun decorating though.  Lily's first move was to dump about half a bottle of yellow sprinkles on one cookie...then we had to re-use those sprinkles and we ended up with more yellow and italian-flag (red, green, and yellow) cookies than I would've liked.  Oh well.  Santa didn't mind.

Here's the finished product.

Here's Claire after sampling the cookies.  Yes, that is frosting up her nose.