Halloween Festival 2013

Happy Halloween!  We celebrated in our traditional way: Trick or Treating at the next door neighbor's house followed by the festival at our church.

We only Trick or Treat at one house, but our neighbor would be sad if we didn't ring her doorbell.

 The festival has many carnival style games.  We played almost every one, although I've only included pictures of some of them.

Sucker Ghosts:

 Bean Bag Toss:

 Ring Toss:

 Froggie Flop:

 Golf:

 Pumpkin Seed Spitting: (This was the first year Emma wanted to try this one.)

 Go Fishing:

 Ducky Toss:

 Rubberband Guns:

 We spent the remainder of the evening in the auditorium in the inflatable games.

Another fun evening with our church family.  We are blessed to have them plan such a great evening for our kids!

Eating Ice Cream and Painting Pumpkins

Since our recent vacation to Disney World, Emma has had a tough time getting back into the routine of school.  I think she is missing having Ella with her all day.  So today, to try to cheer her up, I took the girls out for ice cream after school.  I showed them all the flavors, and they picked exactly what I thought they would, Vanilla.  The lady behind the counter thought it was a bit humorous and sad that I had picked them up and gone through all the flavors with each of them, and they picked vanilla.  So, she dished out their vanilla, but also gave them a sample of birthday cake ice cream.  They both loved it!  We may actually have a new flavor for them for a while.

 After our delicious ice cream, Ella and Emma painted their pumpkins.  They worked hard and did a nice job on them! (Ella is wearing the purple headband, and Emma is wearing pink.)

 Ella's Pumpkin:

 Emma's Pumpkin:

Pumpkin Patch

We took our girls to a pumpkin patch near our house this afternoon.  This patch has several places for photos, which we took advantage of.  They also had some of the large inflatable games.  We purchased some pumpkins, took pictures, and had lots of fun!

 Emma:

 Ella:

 We love to slide!

 Ella wanted to pose for one more picture before we left:

Disney Vacation: Going Home

It's been a LONG day for traveling, but we are finally home.  We woke up at 4:55am Eastern time in order to get to the airport on time.  The first legs of our flight went well.  Ella was my traveling partner, and Emma flew with Daddy today.  Ella slept quite a bit on the first leg, which was good so the take offs and landings didn't affect her ears as much.  Emma slept some, but not as much as Ella on that leg.  We at lunch in Dallas before catching our plane home.  We were all boarded and sitting at the gate for about 20 minutes before the captain came on the intercom to tell us there was a problem with our plane, so we needed to disembark, get our boarding passes back, head to a gate on the other side of the airport, wait for a new plane, eventually board the new plane, wait for our luggage to be loaded, and eventually take off.  (We found out while waiting at the new gate, there was a hole in the baggage compartment of our first plane.)  All of that turned into about a 2 hour delay.  We are exhausted, but glad to be home!

Grammie and Grandy gave the girls a Disney necklace with their names on it as a souvenir of the trip:

Saying goodbye to Orlando as the sun was rising:

This picture of Emma is a pretty good depiction of how we were all feeling:

It's been a magical week!  I'm so glad we were able to spend this time together!  We are blessed!

Disney Vacation: Animal Kingdom

We rounded our trip out at Animal Kingdom.  I had an interesting start to this day as my ticket was denied on the way in.  I had to spend about 30 minutes at guest services getting it all worked out.  It turned out, when we had exchanged our paper tickets for plastic ones on the first day, I had accidentally picked up one of Grandy and Grammie's 5 day tickets while they had my 6 day ticket.  Thankfully the cast member was able to issue a one day ticket for me to join them at no extra charge.

While I was working out the ticket situation, Grandy and Grammie took the girls and got in line for Kilimanjaro Safari, and Daddy waited just inside the gate for me.

Our timing actually worked out quite well.  Just as we approached a spot to see the Kilimanjaro Safari line, Grandy, Grammie, and the girls were passing by in the line.  We were able to join them for the ride.  Many of the animals were out and easily seen this morning.  I was amazed at how close they were to our vehicle.

The giraffes where eating right next to the road:

We next rode Kali River Rapids, getting rather wet, which felt good on this warm day.  We ate lunch before heading over to watch Finding Nemo the Musical.

Grandy and Grammie graciously took our girls to The Boneyard to play while Daddy and I went to ride Expedition Everest.  We went through the single rider line, so the wait wasn't too bad.  We even managed to end up on the same train, just not sitting together.  (Unfortunately, our girls are about 1/2" too short to ride, which made them a bit sad.  However, they loved playing in The Boneyard.)

After playing, we tried to ride Dinosaur, but it closed for repairs right as we got to the the front of the line.  They gave everyone in line FastPasses, so we came back shortly after the parade when it had reopened.  Our girls did NOT like this ride very much.  Too scary!

Grandy and Grammie had secured a great location for us to eat our ice cream and watch the parade.  Several characters came right up to us and greeted the girls!

After the parade, we went to It's Tough to be a Bug.  Then, Grandy, Grammie, and I wanted to see The Lion King while Daddy, Ella, and Emma wanted to ride Kali River Rapids one more time.  So, we split up.

While we watched the show, Daddy and the girls navigated the rapids twice, getting completely soaked in the process.  They LOVED it!  What a great way to end our trip!

Today, happens to be Grandy's birthday.  We decided to eat and celebrate at The Rainforest Cafe at Animal Kingdom.  The food was great, but the air conditioning about froze our sweet, soaked-to-the-bones girls.  So, we took off their wet shirts and let them wear their warm, dry jackets instead.  When the server was told we were celebrating a birthday, she brought him a free cupcake, complete with birthday candle. What a great ending to our day!

After dinner, it was time to pack.  Daddy took the girls to the playground at the resort, so I could get us packed for our early departure tomorrow morning.

It has been a marvelous trip!  I have been reminded time and time again how very blessed we are.  First that we are able to do things like this as a family and with family.  Also, that we could afford to go.  But I think what got to me the most was seeing all the families who had children in wheelchairs.  With all the knots in the girls'  umbilical chords, that could have easily been us.  God has been very good to us!