Day 6 - Headed home

I think I've procrastinated posting this "last" set of pictures of our Disney trip because then I really have to admit that its over. Does it have to be??

But, I do have to say, that after an incredibly wonderful, fun-filled adventure, we were pretty ready to get home (and sleep!) by the time Tuesday rolled around. In my attempt to jam-pack our daily itineraries with as much fun as we could possibly tolerate, I somehow had planned for us to have breakfast with Mickey and Minnie, to go Animal Kingdom, and still be at the hotel with our bags packed and ready to leave by noon on that Tuesday. With all 10 of us. Ummm....no. Luckily, in a stupor of exhaustion, I allowed my mom and sister to talk me into ditching the entirety of our plans for that morning, and just letting the kiddos and dads swim in the pools and letting us moms pack at a reasonable pace. Whew! Good decision.

And, as a bonus to an already good morning, I think the swimming was the final straw in fully exhausting the girls, so they both slept during the entire plane flight home. Nice.

I just can't say enough about what an amazing time we had, and how many lifetime memories we made! Anna still regularly asks when this summer we're going back to Disney, and has only backed down on her persistence with the promise that I'm going to fill her room with collages of our Disney pictures (as she puts it "so I can feel like I'm still there"). THANK YOU again to Grammie and Bucko for taking us on this fantastic adventure!!

(And, don't think for a minute that this is REALLY the end of the Disney pictures...we're still awaiting the arrival of our photo pass, so there will be one more round!)

Day 5 - Back to the Magic Kingdom (Part 2 - afternoon)

Now to my second posting for our last day at the Magic Kingdom...

We decided since it was our last full day at the park and we wanted to both see as many things as possible, as well as give the girls a relaxing last evening swimming at the hotel pool (which often was as exciting to them as the actual parks were), we would just "push through" and not go back to the hotel for a rest this day. It actually worked like a charm!

I have no way to explain the picture above. I asked the three girls to smile for a picture, and somehow Anna interpretted that as "give me your best gangsta pose". She wasn't upset or anything about having her picture taken...that was just the stance she picked for the photo. Maybe we let her listen to a little too much Jay Z in the back seat as a baby??

Anna and I in front of the castle waiting for the afternoon parade to start. We had let the girls do a little shopping before the parade, and Grammie and Bucko had given them some money to shop with. Anna is proudly sporting the Sleeping Beauty charm necklace that she picked out...

Next we ventured to Mickey's PhilharMagic, which I thought would be marginally cool, but ended up being one of the biggest hits of the trip (at least for Anna)! She still talks about actually being sprayed with water, and about how Donald flew through the audience into the back of the theater at the end. It was a hit!

Kate and Daddy joined us for the afternoon--just in time for the rain! But, as with most of the rest of the trip, she was a trooper! A little time under the pancho and under shelter, and the rain passed and she was ready for the rest of the day's adventure!

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was hands-down the girls' favorite ride (we rode it every day--thank goodness for FastPass!), so we knew we had to take Kate on it before we left. She loved it too! We're a bit soggy in the pic above from our rain encounter, but happy nonetheless!

Kate's absolute favorite ride that we went on was Its a Small World. I kind of have to agree with her on that one. I'm not sure if she loved the little people from all of the different countries, or just getting to ride it with Grammie, more...

And, we just couldn't leave Disney World without getting a Mickey Mouse ice cream! As you can see, by this point we had some WORN OUT (but still smiling!) kids on our hands. I think that's the sign of a successful adventure...

One last shot before we left the Magic Kingdom for the last time--Grammie and Bucko with their girls. THANK YOU THANK YOU to Grammie and Bucko for such a phenomenal trip! An amazing adventure, and a lifetime of memories....

Day 5 - Back to the Magic Kingdom (Part 1 - morning)

Monday was our final day in the Magic Kingdom, and was such a fantastic day that there's just no way I can capture it in one blog posting! We started the morning by waking the girls up and getting them dressed in their Cinderella dresses (with no information as to where they were going), and then headed to Grammie's room for a little "primping". Grammie had put together little personalized makeup bags for each of the girls, and helped them put on a little blush and lip gloss. My, were they some fancy ladies!

We surprised the girls by arriving at the Magic Kingdom before it even opened (a treat in and of itself!), and going straight to Cinderella's castle for breakfast. Cinderella greeted them at the door, and they were just in awe. I knew the Shuttle launch would make me cry, but I didn't expect this to cause me to tear up. I was wrong. It was so magical to see Anna's face light up when she saw the REAL Cinderella!

The girls thought the "fancy" breakfast was just fantastic! We may need to work on their little princess politeness a bit though...they certainly couldn't be interrupted from their eating and drinking while waving their wands in the air with the rest of that morning's princesses!

Anna is literally IN LOVE with Sleeping Beauty. She always says that that's the princess that "she is", and was just dying to meet her. I think seeing the real Aurora literally took her breath away. She still talks about her multiple times a day, and even started crying in the car yesterday because she misses Aurora. Oh how much she loved getting to meet her!! The whole Princess breakfast was probably my favorite thing that we did at Disney...so special, and so wonderful to do it at this age while the princesses are still "real" to our little ones...

The girls didn't wait long to kick off those slippers and get serious about some rides! Anna loved that she got to drive her own car (with Mommy in tow, of course) at the Tomorrowland Speedway. These are little cars on a track that you can do some basic steering of, and control the speed. With Anna's "steering" back and forth along the track, I think we managed to take the absolute longest route between the start and finish line possible! Afterwards her comment was, "Mommy--that was really fun, but something sure made that ride bumpy!" Yes, dear, yes it did. :-) I think we're going to get our money's worth out of driver's ed for this little one...

After a busy morning with the Princesses and on the race track, the girls took a little break at the fireplace in Minnie Mouse's house. This little house couldn't have been cuter! The girls loved looking through Minnie's fridge, seeing her bedroom, and having "tea" on her porch...

Even though I'm not entirely sure that Anna knows who Alice in Wonderland is, she thought seeing her and the Rabbit was fantastic! She's a sucker for the characters...

And, the ultimate "characters" of course--Mickey and Minnie!! They had such a great setup where the kids could go into Mickey's Judge's Tent and meet with Mickey and Minnie alone (as opposed to fighting mobs of other preschoolers). It was such a neat experience for the girls! Again, I think Anna just loved it, and had her breath a bit taken away by the whole thing...