The Boring Trip: Day 3

Meeting the Characters...
The girls woke giddy this morning - they were going to be having breakfast with Chip 'n Dale's friends! As we walked into breakfast Don and I quickly realized NONE of us were going to get much breakfast inside of us...the characters were walking around to each table hamming it up with the guests signing autograph books and getting pictures taken and we were all to enthralled to eat... With her eyes bugging out, Autumn was trying to exercise quiet decorum fit for her entire 9 years of age but I felt like leaning over and reminding her to blink! Bizzie shyly stayed by Don but after her first introduction to Dale she quickly got into hugging all of them...Liberty was more occupied with the cases of jam and syrup than anything else, and Don & I were occupied with taking pictures and trying to keep goofy grins off of our own faces over the utter joy that was spilling across our girls'!

Baloo

Koda DaleChip Pluto

The Magic of Disney...
I still have distinct memories of seeing the flower mickey mouse outside Disneyland and thinking this was the most exciting day of my life, but Don and I agree that being a parent and watching your children walk giddy pass the Mickey flowers, wide-eyed onto Main Street, in awe at seeing Mickey/Goofy/Donald in real life and watching them be filled with uncontainable glee as they see the Princess Castle is infinitely better...




Fantasyland...

Dumbo

Casey Jr. (This was Don's favorite ride as a kid and it his dream to recreate it in our backyard as an adult, hence the recording of the ENTIRE ride...)

It's a Small World (Determined to give the girls the WHOLE Disney experience and knowing we would hear from Grandma Olsen if we didn't expose the girl's to one of her favorite rides Don and I reluctantly boarded the boat for this ride...Liberty has been pretty passive throughout all of this trip thus far, her most common reaction is to put her thumb in her mouth and cling to her blankie, but she came unglued on this ride...seriously - she LOVED it! We had a time of it trying to keep her in the boat as she tried to see everything on both sides, clapping and bopping to the music at the same time! Unfortunately the video was too long to download...)

At this point we were pretty exhausted and Don came up with the most simple but ingenious plan EVER - he bought me a Diet Coke. AND he suggested we ride the train around the park for a breather...it was such a nice break and we were ready to trek to Frontierland by the time the train went full circle.

Frontierland...
We found, tucked away at the back of frontierland, a petting zoo complete with "Maggie" the cow, which Don, Autumn, and Bizzie loved...

We were pretty hungry at this point and had been waiting to be served for awhile which is the only explanation I can come up with for the silliness of this video...

Adventureland...

While Don and Autumn rode the new Indiana Jones ride (these two are fast & crazy ride buddies), Bizzie - Liberty - and I went to get our first glimpse of a REAL princess at Jasmine & Aladin's house...Bizzie waited very patiently in line unaware of where it was taking us until she could see in the door and she went still... quietly she walked up to Jasmine who took her hand and began talking to her sweetly, asking questions about what she's seen and what she liked ... It was interesting watching how different my girls are - Autumn wears her thoughts and feelings on her sleeve and true to form was chatting excitedly with Aladin; and Bizzie keeps her thoughts very close, but every now and then you get glimpses of BIG thoughts tumbling around in her mind and it was fun realizing that the thought she was grappling with is "Princesses ARE real"...from that moment on Jasmine was her princess.

As we were on our way to Tomorrowland Fairy Godmother was strolling pass the Castle so we stopped to meet her ... she was pretty funny talking about the hastle of keeping the mice in order and losing her wand this morning...

Tomorrowland...

We rode the Buzzlightyear ride and while waiting for Space Mountain to re-open Don really wanted the girls to try this Jedi training show. He explained to me that if chosen they would get to put on a robe and wave around fake lightsabers... I thought it seemed cute but there was sooo many other things we could be doing, but when Don gets his little boy excited look in his eyes I can't say no. Video camera out and armed we were pleased that both Autumn and Bizzie were chosen to train with the Jedi Masters they did everything Don said they would: they put on robes and trained with the lightsabers (Autumn was a great big sister and the Jedi Masters were kind as they both spent a few minutes helping little Bizzie get her lightsaber to stay out...) and I was just thinking "how cute, that was fun and that must be the end" when Darth Vader music started playing, Stormtroopers came down the ramp, smoke spilled off the stage as Darth Vader rose out of the mist onto the stage, then, jumping out of the pit, came Darth Maul!!! In the background I hear Darth Vader saying that the test of a true Jedi is to fight the dark side and conquer, at that point I looked at Don with a mixture of loathing and anger and said "what did you get my babies into!!!" He just shrugged his shoulders, eyes a little wide but unable to hide his happiness over the coolness of it all! It was pretty cool... and I was so insanely proud of how brave both Autumn and Bizzie were as they faced off with Darth Maul!! Again the video was too long to download but we got some cool pictures...

Young Padawan Bizzie: Young Padawan Autumn: We ended the day with an exhausting trek to the Rain Forest Cafe where we put food in our mouths as fast as we could so we could go relax in the swimming pool. Then Don took Autumn to the movies for a Daddy-daughter Birthday treat while Bizzie and Liberty conked out almost immediately!!! Wow! What a day!