Making Comet-Balls with Auntie April

Today Auntie April had a very special surprise for the girls!!! Auntie April is an Art teacher at the local elementary school, so today she brought all of the fun materials over so the girls could create the most recent project: comet-balls!!!

April is a GREAT teacher! (Who would have ever thought that there would be TWO teachers in the family!?!)
Annie especially liked Auntie April's signal that she does in school when the kids are finally ready to begin. She raises her arms and says, "GO!" in a really funny way. Gosh, Annie loved it! This is her reaction.

Are my kids expressive, or WHAT!?! Here is Annie's reaction to catching a comet-ball.

And the most fun? Playing with them!!! Thanks Auntie April for a really fun evening AND a really great party idea!!!!

The Festival of Lights

Every year, Tradewinds Park puts on one of those fun drive-through festivals of lights to go through and enjoy. Tonight we did that and had SO much fun! As soon as we entered the park and paid, the girls got to ride on Daddy's lap & Oma's lap! Kids in the front seats!!! Wow!!!

But (and does this sound like me, or WHAT), Leia Rose and I ended up watching the whole thing from the sunroof!!! AWESOME!!!

Or actually, it was Oma and Leia Rose who spent most of the time up there. It was important to allow them to share this special Oma and Granddaughter moment! : )

And, yeah, guess what Leia's favorite part was. : )

Thanksgiving Traditions at Oma's & Papa's

As always, our Thanksgiving morning started with the complete and total viewing of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with the family. For us, the grand entrance of Santa at the end of the parade truly begins the Christmas season!

And Leia Rose made a really nice Thanksgiving picture for Oma and Papa complete with a turkey, corn, and an Indian "HED BEND" (headband)! : ) It says, "Happy Thanksgiving," of course. : )
And at the end of the parade, Daddy carried out his very special Thanksgiving tradition of setting up the "Rudolph Guys" in a parade for the girls to find. They were SO excited! They haven't seen these favorite toys for a whole year!
And then Daddy did a puppet show of the ENTIRE rudolph story, using the Rudolph Guys. The girls LOVED it!!!

What a special Daddy!

But when it came to watching the real story of Rudolph, Leia Rose was STILL a bit scared of Bumble (the snow monster), even though she said she wasn't.

Special Reading Moments

Oma and Leia Rose found a very special book to read together over the vacation: Where the Sidewalk Ends, which is a very special collection of fun poems. Leia Rose would continually come to Oma and say things like, "Could you read me the one about . . . " and then describe another fun poem they had read together.

It was a very special time for them, and it also made Mamma REALLY happy because I don't know if I had ever seen Leia Rose this interested in good literature! Yay! Perhaps we found a format that she really likes!

And there are just so many times these days where I catch Leia Rose reading to Annie of her own accord. Such special sister moments (even here at the hotel by Sea World).

Fun in Florida with Oma & Papa

We finally arrived to visit Oma and Papa!!! And because it was 70 degrees outside, the girls immediately started running around with palm fronds, pretending to be birdies! : )

There was lots of fun tower building with Papa with the cool early lego version of the Fisher Price Farm. And Annie always loves a good game of "Run Away" or "Gonna Get Ya" with Oma!

And Oma created this game that the girls found REALLY funny. She would put a section of palm frond on the swing set, telling it not to move. When it DID move, there was always lots of laughter.

Palm fronds are even good for making kitty whiskers!

Experiencing T-Rex!

T-Rex: the new restaurant at Downtown Disney that became the highlight of Leia Rose's entire trip!

Even the outside was SPECTACULAR!!!

And as soon as you entered there was a life size T-Rex dino mamma with her two babies, . . . roaring and roaring at you! Leia LOVED it!!! (Our hostess told me that kids either LOVE it or HATE it and SCREAM!!! Ha!!!)

And, we took a brief look in the store, before which my attitude was, "There's NO way that there's anything here that we don't have already." We walked away with a pink T-Rex shirt, a roaring dino, a roaring dino book, and a pink winter T-Rex dinosaur winter hat. Ha!

And as you sit there eating your dinner among the din of the constant dinosaur roars, . . . you realize that the most special thing about the whole place is that every set of dinosaurs is a FAMILY! So sweet! Here is the room we were sitting in: a very centralized location where you could see every single other room. It was GREAT! Every single dinosaur is life-size, and there is a dinosaur making its special roaring sound and moving at all times. It's a LOUD restaurant! In fact, Annie was banging on the marble table with her spoon HARD, . . . BUT WE COULDN'T EVEN HEAR IT! Ha!

Plus, every fifteen minutes the world "ends" by the big asteroid hitting the earth and ending the dinosaurs lives (before it all starts over again). The sky lights up with the asteroid. The dinosaurs all roar at the same time. The ice cave, which is usually ice blue, turns red with fire like you'll see in the next picture. This one is of Annie's reaction to the asteroid coming to town. (And, yes, she REALLY enjoyed the macaroni and cheese. But the food item that Leia couldn't stop talking about was the dessert called "The Chocolate Extinction" which was supposed to feed four people: four huge pieces of fudge cake, four mountains of ice cream, drizzled with all sorts of goo, and a big smoking volcano in the middle! Ironically, we didn't get that dessert because it was FIFTEEN dollars!)

Heck, even the trip to the BATHROOM was exciting! Look at what they called the girls' room: She-Rex (and the boys' was He-Rex)! Love it!

Does this say "Leia" or WHAT!?!

And afterward, we headed over to The World of Disney in Downtown Disney to visit the Lego Store and see all the HUGE lego structures there!

Second Day at Sea World

This morning our breakfast extravaganza was at Boma at the Animal Kingdom Lodge at Disney World. Again, SO fun! And we got to try Boboti & Fare & Natura: really cool African foods! (So sorry I probably spelled them wrong, Sarah.) I was a big fan of Fare, . . . it was like African grits!

Then it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to see the African spoonbills & pink flamingos.

AND THEN LEIA ROSE RODE HER FIRST ROLLER COASTER: THE SHAMU EXPRESS! And you know what?!? She LOVED it! : )

At the state fair it's the "Froggy Hopper," but at Sea World it's the "Flying Fiddler." Leia Rose loves this ride, . . . especially when she could go on it with Auntie April. Funny story about this ride. Annie could go on it, too. And Annie DID go on it once. BUT the ride has one of those black harnesses that come down over your head, . . . and at the end when it didn't come right off, Annie freaked out. A bit of claustrophobia, I'm guessing. We didn't go on again. And I think Leia Rose could have played all day on the huge net playground hovering above the kid area. I had never seen anything like it before! Then we went to see Clyde and Seymore, the sealions. It was a really funny show!

And finally it was time for us to see "Believe," the real Shamu show. Only, because of their "deal" with the animals, to never MAKE them do a show, . . . we didn't get to see much. I guess Shamu didn't want to perform today.

And my poor first-born! I always end up scarring her in some way. When she was two it was showing her Snow White. And today it was taking her on the log flume called Atlantis. I should have previewed it first. (At least I was smart enough to do this ride at the very end, . . . with all of our dry clothes within walking distance.) It was like Sea World's version of Splash Mountain, . . . except it featured a Gorgon lady with the snakes for hair through the whole thing. We sat in the third row in order for us not to get wet, . . . and we didn't get wet on the big drop. And I was just saying, "Look, Leia! We didn't get wet at all . . . . " when this huge water canon dropped a HUGE amount of water on us and we got soaked. All the people watching from the sidelines laughed. Well, Leia Rose immediately started screaming bloody murder: "I HATE THIS RIDE!!! GET ME OFF NOW!!!!" [The people only laughed harder.] I took my own advice at that point and laughed, and gave a thumbs up to the people watching. It was hard to tell what part of it bothered Leia Rose: the Gorgon? the big drop? the surprise of being soaked? the actual wetness? or most likely the LAUGHING? Probably the horrible combination of the three. BUT she was still brave enough to take her little soaked self and pose for an "I did it" picture! Good for you, Leia Rose! Mamma felt so bad that I bought both girls HUGE lollipops on the way out. ; )