More Disney Photos - I think this is Part 3

 

On our return to Animal Kingdom, we got up an close and personal view with a raptor at the bird show. This show also holds some special memories for Bob who got thrown up on by a  baby while watching...

 

Bob rinses off in the Kali River Rapids Raft Ride with Rob

 

Brendan measures his wing span. It's wild to thing how much bigger he'll be the next time we're back.

The Tree of Life, the central point in the Animal Kingdom

 

We resorted to bribery to get Brendan out of the stroller and looking at all the amazing animals; if he stopped playing games on my phone and could name 25 animals he'd seen by the end of the day he got a hot wheels car. It was a very worthwhile deal.

Bob and Gail were often kind enough to wander with the babies in the stroller so Rob and I could ride roller coasters or go where Brendan wanted to go. Note the beautiful landscaping in the background. I think Animal Kingdom might have been my favourite park.

 



 

Miss Heidi, age 14 months. We forgot about Daylight Savings Time and ended up at Hollywood Studios before it had even opened on this day, so we had some time to pause and take pictures. We had also begun a tradition in the second round of park visits (ie. after the first 4 days) of letting Brendan stay behind at the hotel with Mimi and Papa for the morning and then meeting up after lunch. At least I think we did that every morning, the whole trip is such a blur, I can barely remember, but that sounds right...

 

Prince Harry (playing peek a boo)

Awesome playground at Hollywood Studios, built like a giant scale garden, complete with a leaf slide. The babies were thrilled too, because it was another rare occasion when they were released to wander. It was busy and crownded enough (a shock to us - since I had tried to organize a trip at one of the quietest times of year) that we just couldn't let the babies down very often without fear of losing them in the crowd or have them get in someones way. It's also nearly impossible to get them back into the stroller once their out.

 



 

A candid shot that shows a rather accurate representation of the trip

 

An iconic Disney father-son moment

 

We let the babies out again to stroll along the boardwalk before dinner this night and they had an absolute ball just running and exploring. This was one of my favourite moments of the trip.

 



 

That's a lot of kids/stuff/gear

 

The food was one of the highlights of the trip. We had gotten the Disney Dining Plan for free as a promotion, and we certainly worked it for all it was worth. This is a $25 dollar lunch for one from the bakery in Norway - free! Toasted cranberry apple cheese sandwich with double chocolate pretzel, fruit salad and Voss water. We were also impressed at how much healthy fresh food was available. Eating was certainly a treat every day.

Exploring the World Showcase at Epcot, my other favourite area of Disney. This is the gardens of China.

 



 

Beast of Burden

 Second quietest time of the year ?!?

 

A very heartwarming moment for me. After much encouraging/threatening, Brendan agreed to ride Figment's Journey Into Imagination with me. It's my favourite ride, and it turned out after 7 3/4 days of refusing to do things we kept telling him he'd enjoy he caved in, rode with me, and loved it!

 



Back at the Port Orleans hotel room Rob nods off while Brendan watches Playhouse Disney on TV

 



 

Ask Brendan what his favourite part of Disney World was and he says "The Lego Store". Ah, capitalism at it's finest! It was actually an awesome, awesome store with giant lego art installations including a 20 foot dragon, kiosks with piles of Lego for kids to play with on their own outside the front door and a giant wall of tiny lego components that you could buy mix and match style in a bucket. As much as I may dismay that it was Brendan's highlight, his excitement here was kind of one of my highlights too. I am certainly looking forward to the Lego years!

 

After great debate Brendan chose to buy a Lego Firetruck, complete with a lego tree on fire. They are so creative, those lego people.

 

So, we have nicknamed this "Night of Joy". The final day of our trip Brendan asked if he could see fireworks. He's historically hated fireworks since they're so loud, but in a last ditch attempt to make a magical Disney memory we shuffled around our dinner plans and asked Bob and Gail to hold down the fort with the babies back at the hotel so that we could take Brendan to the Magic Kingdom for the fireworks. As usual he was vaguely interested in doing a few things but adamantly opposed to most of the suggestions we made ("do you want to drive those space ships?" "no, I don't like space") etc, etc. Somewhere in the middle of dinner something mysterious and magical happened. Maybe it was finding out that we were staying up late, maybe it was finding out that it was our last night, maybe Disney puts something in the apple juice, but whatever it was Brendan emerged from the restaurant and suddenly gushed "look Mom, space ships!! Can I ride those?!!" Huh? From that point on, he was like a kid in... well, like a kid in Disney World, all wonder and excitement, face lit up like a Christmas Tree. Hence the nickname... night of joy.

 

Blasting through space

 

 

Watching fireworks (which he still thought were too loud, can't win em all)

 

Riding the spinning teacups with Mom

 

 

Cinderella Castle lit up for Christmas



On our way out of Disney World on the final night, walking down Main Street, Brendan stopped and declared he wanted to take a picture (like mother, like son). After he took it, he wanted to show it to me, and I gushed about how great it was. He said "Thank you, mom".

"Thank you for what, Brendan?" "Thank you for always loving my pictures" he said. I cried.

 Then we took this picture.

It really IS the most magical place on earth.

Disney Photo Post - Part 2 (of Part 1, how's that for confusing?)

Heidi and Harrison spent a lot more time in the carriers than we'd anticipated, much to the detriment of all the adult backs in the group. We'd known that strollers would not be allowed in line ups for rides or onto buses, but we hadn't realized that they wouldn't be allowed into restaurants, shows, movies, pavilions etc. So we ended up spending a large part of our days loading everyone and everything (diaper bag, bag of carriers,bag of distracting treats and toys) into the stroller, walking 10 minutes to the next attraction, and then unloading all the aforementioned crap necessary stuff onto ourselves and heading in. It's no wonder we were all a touch tired at the end of the day.

Here we are in front of the second largest aquarium in the US. Brendan generally preferred to play cars.

Stroller Parking outside each attraction

Brendan enjoying a giant ice cream in the streets of Paris.

One of those heartwarming "worthy of a Disney commercial" kind of moments - Brendan and Pooh playing at the United Kingdom colouring station.

The whole group out front of Epcot.

Impromptu Trolley Dancers on Main Street. This began round two of our daily park visits, starting back at Magic Kingdom.

Saints

Brendan driving a flying carpet. He had a ball on this! Didn't want to ride it a second time, but had a ball the first time.

One of those rare moments when we were able to let the babies out of the stroller or carriers to roam free; playing on Tom Sawyer's Island.

Heidi meets Prince Charming.

Harrison meets Cinderella. He did a whole cutesy/flirty thing with her that he had not done with Prince Charming. We're clearly going to have to watch out when he reaches dating age.

Harrison finds true love. He was totally and completely enamored with the wicked step sister Drizella. No flirty eyes. Total unadulterated infatuation.

Here ends part 1, I hope part 2 won't take me another 3 weeks to post...

Disney Photo Post - Part 1

The disney photos are uploaded, rotated and edited down to 600 of my finest shots. Which is impressive since most of these pictures were taken without stopping. Granted I've deleted the most blurry ones.

Here is a smattering of my favourites;

Brendan and I waiting for our turn to ride Brendan's first roller coaster... in the front seat! What a way to start roller coasters! But he did great and loved it! To quote; "Brendan what did you think of that?" "It was awesome" "Do you want to do it again?!" "No Thank You"

Blame Disney fever, but I renegged on every promise I ever made not to dress my twins up in too matchy matchy of outfits and dressed them in matching Mickey and Minnie sleepers for their first day in Disney World. Here we are waiting in line for It's A Small World

Disney was full of new experiences for the the kids, including first 3D movie. Heidi watched the whole thing. Harrison was unimpressed with the lack of walking around in a movie theatre.

One of the highlights of Brendan's trip was the obscenely large chocolate milks he got for dinner (and the obscenely large chocolate chip cookies, and the obscenely large ice creams...)

Our second dinner was an extravagant all you can eat Hawaiian buffet at the Polynesian Resort. Brendan danced a heartwarming dance of love with his dad and we all got leis!

Animal Kingdom (the newest Disney park, like a zoo, but not) had animal interpreters scattered all around the park. This one is convincing Brendan to pick up different pieces of laquered animal poo.

On our Kilimanjaro Safari Jeep Ride a huge rhino walked right in front of our jeep. The adults all seemed far more impressed by this whole ride than the kids, but it was very cool.

Trick or Treating on Hallowe'en at our resort, starring Tinkerbell, Peter Pan and Spider Man.

Veni, Vidi.

We're home!

I think it was Ceasar who said "I came, I saw, I conquered". Well, we are home and I am happy to report that we came and we saw. We'll have to leave conquering for next time!

Our 9 days in Disney World were an absolute blur, as I'm starting to go through the pictures I keep saying "oh yeah, I forgot about that!"

Our flight down was miraculously unaffected by Superstorm Sandy, but the last half of our trip overlapped with a week of holidays in the Jersey school system so we ended up running into lots of people who had been. We were lucky enough to have sunshine our entire trip. We'd made sure of that by rush ordering a rain cover for the double stroller which arrived the day before we left and schlepping it around every day.

I should resist the urge to start into a day by day account if I want to get to bed tonight but it was a lovely resort (we stayed on Disney at the New Orleans themed Port Orleans resort), great food (in massive quantities, thanks to our free dining plan promotion), and lots of memorable moments. I had expected Brendan to be a little overwhelmed by the all the sights and sounds of Disneyworld, I had not, however expected that he would instead be totally indifferent to the whole experience. The first night, coming home on the bus Brendan turned to me unprompted and said "Mom, I thought you said Disney would be fun". !!! His mood seemed to improve once we started letting him take breaks from the rides and shows to play his cars on a park bench. Sigh.

I will get to the task of going through some more photos and let them do the talking...

As we turned the corner onto Main Street in the Magic Kingdom and Cinderella Castle came into view Brendan said "Mom, Mom, look!"
"What do you see Brendan?!"
"Balloons!"
I pointed out to him after that behind the man holding the balloons was the big castle.

Family ride on the Magic Kingdom Steam Train

We were all universally exhausted every night, especially Mickey

Tinkerbell and Peter Pan

Ok, I finally got a picture of the twins in their Hallowe'en costumes! They never stop moving, so I still haven't gotten the perfect picture of them together yet, maybe in Disney World...

Disney, here we come

I have been reviewing my copious notes for our trip to Disney World have written a a series of tips for myself that I call The Commandments of Disney. I think it will be important for me to remember to slow down and smell the roses on this trip and let it be about the magic of the place for Brendan, rather than about getting all the rides done in one day. Cause we won't. Not a chance. I need to lower my standards, like maybe to one ride a day. That's accomplishable. All joking aside I really have very little faith in my ability to predict what the vacation to Disney will be like. Will we tour the parks all day long? Will we spend all day in the hotel room, pleading with our twins to sleep? Who knows? If I can remember my commandments hopefully we will enjoy whatever version does happen. We will be gone for 10 days so that there is no time pressure to get things done efficiently, and are staying at the Port Orleans resort, right at DisneyWorld, so hopefully that will make things easier. We have a pass that allows us to wander freely in and out of whichever parks we want, whenever we want so that bailing with crying twins won't feel like a loss. We also have the (mostly) all inclusive dining plan so we're not counting pennies while we're there. And most importantly, Bob and Gail are coming. Yes, that's right. I don't know why they would agree to spend 10 days straight days with the whole crazy family, but they did, and they can't get out now!

So without further ado, The Commandments, and a brief glimpse of what our next 10 days could look like...

Commandments of the Magic Kingdom
1. Thou shalt be guided by Brendan. If he can experience any amount of wonder and rapture your job is done. He should not feel like he is being taken from place to place, at this park especially
2. Thou shalt be flexible and willing to skip lunch at the Harbour House if it's not convenient so that Bob and Gail understand you are not a nazi who needs to be accomodated.
3. Thou shalt let Brendan ride the train first, since we can't ride any of the high priority attractions anyway.
4. Thou shalt advocate for yourself and make time to ride Space Mountain on the second day
5. Thou shalt resist the urge to keep pushing through attractions until Brendan or the twins are completely worn out. There is no doubting that Brendan will be able to tour all day. Once. But the next day, possibly days, will be a write off and it's not worth it. If you see too much the first day there won't be enough for the second day, anyways.
6. Thou shalt not horde snack credits for Epcot. Spending $3 on a cupcake out of pocket on the last day because you're out of credits is fine. It's a $3000 trip. Enjoy it.
7. Even though they will make fun of you, thou shalt give Bob and Gail a rough itinerary of what is happening each day because they will enjoy knowing what is going on without having to ask. That being said, don't be bothered when nobody else reads it

Commandments for the Animal Kingdom
- Thou shalt not feign excitement over getting all the passport stamps for the Discovery Club stations because Brendan probably doesn't care about completing the book.
- Thou shalt not try to figure out how to switch off and allow everyone to ride the three thrill rides, because frankly I don't want to ride Dinosaur and Kali River Rapids. Rob will want to ride Expedition Everest (I wouldn't mind), and he can do that while Brendan plays at the Boneyard playground easily or if Bob and Gail want to take the kids back to the hotel early. Bob and Gail really should see It's Tough To Be A Bug.
- Thou shalt ride the train to the Conservation Station as many times as Brendan wants to.
- Thou shalt try to watch Finding Nemo before we go, partially to familiarize Brendan with the story, partially to prepare him that his mother gets eaten.
- Thou shalt remember to bring something to help him sit through the whole Nemo show - a diversion or a reward (it's 40 minutes long)
- Thou shalt let him play in the Boneyard playground and I will let him come back as often as wants. I will be a smart parent however, and not go into Dinoland until I'm prepared to let him stop and play for a while.

Commandments for Epcot
-Thou shalt remember that it's more important for Brendan to have fun exploring in the World Showcase then to get to gift shop every store, since you're probably not buying anything anyways.
-Thou shalt give Brendan interesting things to find in the World Showcase instead of assuming he'll find the architecture fascinating
-Thou shalt prep Brendan. Most of the rides at Epcot are movie based and a few are dark rides. Watching them before we leave home is key. As are the next two comandments.
-Thou shalt not force Brendan to see anything he doesn't want to, you'll just miss the whole ride fighting/calming him
-Thou shalt not force Brendan to sit through a whole movie if he wants to leave, but this might be a great time for cell phone games with earphones etc. and some time to rest.
-Thou shalt take the time to sit and watch the live entertainment.
-Thou shalt have a plan in case Heidi does not tolerate a single movie (like gift shopping with her in the stroller or bjorn (so Harrison can stay in the stroller and you don't have to drive the double stroller in stores)
-Thou shalt remember that you've seen all of this before, so it doesn't really matter if you miss something

and finally,

Commandments for Hollywood Studios
-Thou shalt be realistic about what the twins are likely to sit through based on the previous days of touring, not hope for a miracle and then be surprised that they don't sit happily through everything
-Thou shalt lie to Brendan about the height restrictions on Star Tours and Tower of Terror even if he thinks he wants to ride because we will all pay the price if we cave in and let him
-Thou shalt not get annoyed by all of Brendan's questions because this really is a fascinating but confusing place to a 5 year old mind

Boy, oh boy! It's gonna be fun!

Tinkerbell

We picked up Heidis tinkerbell costume for Halloween, it's pretty amazing. It was made by the coworker of our good friend Kim. Heidi was fine with it until we put the wings on. The second photo is a little " we are not amused " and a lot of " the exorcism - Disney style" .

Just 8 sleeps until our family trip to Disneyworld, excitement is at a fever pitch in this house! We will be spending Halloween at Disney, so to match Heidis tinkerbell, Harrison is dressing up as peter pan! You'll have to stay tuned for that photo, since his costume is still in pieces on top of my sewing machine...

I am trapped

I am home alone, literally trapped in this chair with a sleeping baby on my lap whom I dare not move. Perfect time for a blog update! Harrison stirred a few minutes and I thought "oh no, how on earth is this gonna work" but he fell back asleep. Thank the sweet lord.

Life is beginning to feel a little more manageable the last few weeks but Heidi and Harrison seem determined to avoid any sort of nap routine. Morning naps? Maybe, maybe not. Afternoon naps? Maybe, maybe not. No nap at all, but instead fairly constant fussing from 5 until 9 pm? Apparently that was tonight's plan. Go the #!@$ to sleep sweet princess.

Ah, relief... Rob has come and is delivering Heidi to bed... Oh no, there she goes again... No, no, it's ok, she fell back asleep. Oi veh!

Still here

...lest you worry that we'd driven off the edge of the earth, we are still here. I had thought I might post less often, I hadn't necessarily thought weeks at a time would go by without a post. Life is still... hectic. I am now working everyday and we've been galavanting all over the province to visit family most weekends. Were packing up tonight for a Cole family thanksgiving at a cottage were renting up in muskoka, and then we're planning to come home for a rest.

The babies are remarkably similar to the wat they were three weeks ago. Still walking around all over, still getting into EVERYTHING, still eating great, no new teeth. They got a cold which has held on a long time, so sleeping through the night us on a temporary hiatus, but I have a deep abiding faith it will return. It must. That's non negotiable.

So life at the zoo has fallen into a rather predictable, although never boring routine.

Oh yeah, and the babies learned to high five, that was exciting!

And a happy, happy christening to our dear niece Ellie!

Take care, Nancy