Disney

What a wonderful trip!  We had so much fun in Florida this year.  Lucy and I got to leave a few days early to spend some very special time together celebrating Lucy's 5th birthday.

We stayed at the Coronado Springs Resort and it was such a great place to stay.  The first Disney person that we met at the shuttle at the airport was so nice, she gave Lucy a bunch of stickers and got us started on the right foot.  At the resort, every person called Lucy princess, or by her name if she was wearing her birthday pin.  We were upgraded to a suite when we got there as another added perk.  Lucy was delighted to have her own bathroom!  That day we hung out by the pool and relaxed in the warm sun.

The next day, we went to The Magic Kingdom and had a day full of castles, princesses & wishes coming true!

Here is Lucy in her Cinderella dress at the beginning of the big day.

We had lunch at Cinderella's Royal Table.



Once we were inside the castle, we got to meet and take some pictures with Cinderella.



Then we went up a beautiful staircase to the dining room.



They seated us at a table for two by the window.  We had a great view of the new castle that is being built in a new area of Magic Kingdom.
During lunch, Lucy was presented with her own wishing star and magic wand.  She also got to meet 4 other princesses!



Belle was feeling very humble that day and came in her regular attire.  I guess she saves her ball gown for the parade.

Later that day, we also got to see a show in front of the castle, watch the parade and meet a few other characters.



Stitch completely won Lucy's heart.  At first she was a little afraid of him and wanted me to stick with her.  Then, he got down on all fours and came to her with his head down.  After that, she was in love with him.  We went back to talk to him, hug him and just be with him several more times. 



Then, we made our way to Pixie Hollow.



We met Terrence, who is the keeper of the pixie dust. . .



. . . and, Tinker Bell!



The day ended with a spectacular light show and firework display over the castle.

The next day we headed over to Epcot Center





We started a full day of making new friends by meeting Daisey Duck.




Mulan




Marie




Lucy was very excited to meet Duffy.  The hotel played a bedtime story every night about Duffy.



One of the most fun things we did, was become secret agents for the day.  We stopped close to the entrance of the park and got a pass with a meeting time and place.  We were supposed to be in Italy at 11:30.  When we got there, Lucy was given a cell phone and was told to go a safe distance from the meeting place and open the phone.  When she did, there were instructions to complete a secret spy mission.  We had to go to find certain things all over the park.  The phone would only give the next step of the mission when you were in the correct spot.  It was so clever!  Lucy really thought she was completing a real spy mission.

After that mission was over, we headed out on our own mission.  To meet more characters:

Stitch must have really loved Lucy, too.  He followed us to Epcot!



Later that night, after we napped for about three hours, Daddy & Ellen came to join us!  Yay!  The next day, all four of us went to the Magic Kingdom.



The girls met their Fairy God-Mother.




We went on lots of rides.  Ellen had to go on the carousel.
The girls had tons of fun on the Tea Cups, too!





Since the tea cups were from Alice in Wonderland's Tea Party, the White Rabbit was there to greet us.




After that, we needed to take a little break.

Then, we were on a new search.  There were two princesses on Lucy's list that she had not met yet.  It took some coordinating, but we got to meet them both!



We even got to see Buzz as a bonus!


After all of this, we were pretty tired.  We spent one more night at Coronado and had a day of relaxing at the pool before we hit the beach.  We went over to Cocoa Beach for a few days before we had to head back to the snow. 
I think this has been my longest post ever.  There is smoke coming from my keyboard and my fingers are cramping up, so I'll save the beach and the end of the vacation for the next post.  Check back.  I promise I'll get the rest of the pictures up soon.





Day Off

The girls and I had the day off today.  Lucy didn't have school so we decided to take the day off from our regularly scheduled working out, running around, craziness.  The 'girls choice' activities for the day were to get some more red paper and glitter to make hearts (Lucy cuts out her own now) and to have a tea party lunch.

Lucy reminded Ellen a couple of times to keep her pinky up.  Cuties!

Doing a lot, Blogging a little

Sesame Street Live

It is really hard to get two little people to look at a camera at the same time in the midst of Sesame Street characters and hundreds of other people. . .

 The main stage

 Ellen's three favorites

 Our real life buddies, Hannah and Cooper.



Our favorite winter pastime:

Merry Christmas!

A 'Big Girl' Week

Big Girl, Lucy, got her ears pierced this week!  I have been thinking about this for a while, but I wanted to wait until Lucy asked to make sure that she was really up for it.  About 6 months ago her friends told her that they got theirs done and it HURT.  After that Lucy didn't mention it for a few months.  However, now she was sure she wanted to do it, so we talked about it some more and watched a video about how to take care of them and even watched a few 'youtube' videos of other little girls getting theirs done.  Then we made the big trip to the store to get it done.  Thankfully, they had two people working so they could do both ears at the same time.  It did hurt and it took a few minutes for the tears to stop trickling,

Here she is after she got them done.  She said it hurt, but she was still glad she did it.

Here she is the next morning!

 She wanted to wear all of her hair pulled back so everyone could see the new earrings.

Big Girl, Ellen, gave up her pacifier this week!  Yay!  She finally found something that was worth trading it for:

O Christmas Tree

For a third year, we went to Hampton Hills Tree Farm to cut down a Christmas Tree.  This year, we found our tree pretty quickly and Jer and the girls got right to work.

Lucy and Bella carried the tree to the car by themselves!

 Ellen and Elizabeth pretended to help.

 Then the Carters found their perfect tree and Ted got to work.

 The ladies sent it over.

 The girls recruited Lucille to help this time.

Jer recruited a little help to tie our tree to the car.

 Then got another helper.

 And then the shenanigans really started.

 Hans and Ellen are pretty good behind the wheel.

We finished our tree hunt with a horse drawn sleigh ride.  Um, I mean, a mule drawn wagon ride?

The kids didn't seem to mind.

The whole gang was happy.  What a fun day!



I'm A Big Kid Now

We have had a major shift in the Kobie household.  Up until a few weeks ago, if you asked Ellen if she was a big girl, she would say.  'No, I baby.'  Now she says quite frequently: 'I big girl!'  I don't know how it happened, but it did.  Sniff, Sniff.

Since we are trying to embrace the 'big girl' mentality, we got her a Big Girl Bed!

She is such a little peanut that you can barely see her in the second picture. 

I'm trying to love this picture.  It is a real representation of how we are at bed time.  Of Course, I had the beds made and the toys put away.   I even vacuumed, since I knew we would be taking pictures of the big girl bed.  But then, life got in the way and by the time I got back to take the picture, our real life ended up on camera.  The toys are strewn about, blankets are all over and both of my children are in their natural state, which is 'au natural'.

So, this is really the best picture for the blog, right?  It is us, how we really are.  My two silly, energetic, big girls.