Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Monsters Inc
Back out to the El Capitan we went for the chance to see Monsters Inc in 3d and do a meet and greet with none other than Boo herself! As always it was super fun and made seeing the movie an experience not to be forgotten.
Our traditional marquee photo
and with Mickey!
Boo was soooo cute!
All ready for the show! I love the Christmas decorations in the balconies. They gave all the kids jingle bell bracelets so they could jingle along with the stage show.
The pre movie stage show was really cute and included several Christmas songs and then, at the end, "snow"!!
Making silly faces with Daddy at the soda fountain afterward.
Fun as always! We already have tix for Peter Pan and Mulan!
Back out to the El Capitan we went for the chance to see Monsters Inc in 3d and do a meet and greet with none other than Boo herself! As always it was super fun and made seeing the movie an experience not to be forgotten.
Our traditional marquee photo
and with Mickey!
Boo was soooo cute!
All ready for the show! I love the Christmas decorations in the balconies. They gave all the kids jingle bell bracelets so they could jingle along with the stage show.
The pre movie stage show was really cute and included several Christmas songs and then, at the end, "snow"!!
Making silly faces with Daddy at the soda fountain afterward.
Fun as always! We already have tix for Peter Pan and Mulan!
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Sweet & Sassy
One of the moms from G's preschool organized a fundraiser at one of those "tea"/dress up places that have become so popular. We'd actually gone to this same place last year with a friend and had a great time. This was a bit different because it was a larger group. It was a little chaotic but G had tons of fun choosing a purple dress (of course!), getting made up, doing her modeling walk (holding hands with a friend) and then eating little sandwiches and a mini cupcake.
This one put the "fun" in fundraiser ;-)
One of the moms from G's preschool organized a fundraiser at one of those "tea"/dress up places that have become so popular. We'd actually gone to this same place last year with a friend and had a great time. This was a bit different because it was a larger group. It was a little chaotic but G had tons of fun choosing a purple dress (of course!), getting made up, doing her modeling walk (holding hands with a friend) and then eating little sandwiches and a mini cupcake.
This one put the "fun" in fundraiser ;-)
Friday, December 28, 2012
Preschool Holiday Party and Sing
The holiday sing at G's school is one of the cutest things they do. All the kids in their holiday wear, up on the stage, singing their little hearts out. Adorable!!! Yes, I get there super early and grab a dead center front row spot... I'm totally THAT mom :-) I can't help it. They're all so cute and G is really into it. Just like last year, after each song she'd look directly at Bobby and me with this HUGE smile plastered to her face. Sweet girl.
The other great thing is that after a quick holiday-themed snack and about a dozen mixed holiday (Christmas, Hanukkah, etc) songs, vacation would officially begin. Yippee!!!
I just love Gs teacher this year. Mrs Martino has been awesome!
How cute is that enormous bow on Gs head?? I gave her a choice of that one or something much more reasonably sized and she chose the huge one without a second's hesitation.
There are about 50 or so kids in Gs school every single one of whom was wearing red, green, and black/grey except G. No worries! She was very easy to spot in her pink Cindy Lou Who set.
G was thrilled that we won one of the raffle baskets. I was hoping for the "Spa" basket but G was happy we ended up with "movie night" instead. Yes, that entire basket was filled with candy, popcorn and DVDs of kids movies.
This was our last preschool holiday program. Next year G will be going to kindergarten which means an entirely different experience. I have mixed emotions. Sigh, can't she just stay little forever??
The holiday sing at G's school is one of the cutest things they do. All the kids in their holiday wear, up on the stage, singing their little hearts out. Adorable!!! Yes, I get there super early and grab a dead center front row spot... I'm totally THAT mom :-) I can't help it. They're all so cute and G is really into it. Just like last year, after each song she'd look directly at Bobby and me with this HUGE smile plastered to her face. Sweet girl.
The other great thing is that after a quick holiday-themed snack and about a dozen mixed holiday (Christmas, Hanukkah, etc) songs, vacation would officially begin. Yippee!!!
I just love Gs teacher this year. Mrs Martino has been awesome!
How cute is that enormous bow on Gs head?? I gave her a choice of that one or something much more reasonably sized and she chose the huge one without a second's hesitation.
There are about 50 or so kids in Gs school every single one of whom was wearing red, green, and black/grey except G. No worries! She was very easy to spot in her pink Cindy Lou Who set.
G was thrilled that we won one of the raffle baskets. I was hoping for the "Spa" basket but G was happy we ended up with "movie night" instead. Yes, that entire basket was filled with candy, popcorn and DVDs of kids movies.
This was our last preschool holiday program. Next year G will be going to kindergarten which means an entirely different experience. I have mixed emotions. Sigh, can't she just stay little forever??
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Holiday Dance Recital
We might have stayed at Disneyland an extra day if G wasn't having her dance recital that weekend also. Busy, busy, busy.
G's quite the little ham so having an opportunity to perform her dance up on the stage is a thrill! They did a ballet this time dancing to the Nutcracker music. Cute!
G started talking about the flowers that Daddy was going to get her several days earlier. Apparantly those are a must!
We might have stayed at Disneyland an extra day if G wasn't having her dance recital that weekend also. Busy, busy, busy.
G's quite the little ham so having an opportunity to perform her dance up on the stage is a thrill! They did a ballet this time dancing to the Nutcracker music. Cute!
G started talking about the flowers that Daddy was going to get her several days earlier. Apparantly those are a must!
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
"DL Work trip/Finally" cont'd...
5:30am came around pretty early but we were anxious to give the magic morning hour at DL a try. Yes, once again, we found ourselves standing at the gate waiting for the park to open at 6:45. We headed straight to Fantasyland and hopped into the Peter Pan line only to find that they were still testing the ride. Annoying. Finally got on then hit a couple of the other rides. We then headed over to Nemo (not my fav but Bobby's never ridden it) and stood in line for awhile before we told it was also down. Ugh. Kind of frustrating but what can you do? Anyway, even with the delays we still got lots of stuff done before we headed back to the hotel to eat breakfast at Storytellers. This one was on my list because it was the ONLY character meal in any of Disney's 6 parks (Disneyland, Calif Adventure, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom including breakfast, lunch and dinner if available) that we hadn't done! I know, I'm a complete dork but I wanted to scratch it off our list :-)
We arrived early for our ressie, checked in and were told it would be just a few mins. Somewhere along the way they lost our ticket and we were never called. By the time we cleared that up and were seated it was really late which is bad because the characters leave at a certain time and I'd already booked the latest reservation possible so we'd have the most early morning park time. We enjoyed the food and the characters but got skipped by one of the Brother Bears. I politely advised the handler we'd been skipped and she told me sorry but there was nothing to be done. The characters were "in for the day". Bummer. However, as a consolation they provided us with a single front of the line pass to be used at the ride of our choice! OK, now you're talking! Actually they told us there was only one ride it couldn't be used for RSR. Uh, ok.
Armed with our "front of the line pass" which, btw, says nothing about excluding certain rides, we headed straight to RSR. Posted stand by wait time: 180 minutes!!! Yes, you read that right, 3 hours!! We handed the little slip to the CM at the front of the line and he said "ok, enjoy your ride!" Yay!! I'll gladly skip a pic with one of the Brother Bears for a front of the line pass any day. BTW, I asked someone who was just getting on the ride with us how long they'd been in line (mostly because I wondered if that 3 hr wait time could be even remotely accurate) and they confirmed they'd been in line for 2:45 mins! Yikes. Its a great ride, it really is, but 3 hrs?? That is some determined Disney folk.
Because it was a Saturday the park was really crowded. We did what we could including two visits to G's all time fav ride Soarin'. At that point our little girl was exhausted and it was time to call it a day. Last stop on the way to the car was a visit with Santa in the lobby of the GC. Georgiana was asleep before we pulled out of the parking lot.
This has become one of G's favorite faces to make... goof!
It was pretty chilly. The princesses were in their winter wear
I guess G didn't want her picture taken :-)
G loves the bubble people. I'm always trying to get a picture that captures her joy she expresses while playing in them. This one comes closer than most.
We spent some more time in the Jingle Jangle Jamboree. Where there had been no line to see Santa a few weeks earlier, it had now increased to over an hour! I told G that I'd wait in line for her while she colored and enjoyed the other activities but she passed. Luckily there was no wait for Mrs Claus!
From this Santa visit we learned that each of the elves makes thousands and thousands of toys each year. G was wondering about that :-)
What a great little trip it turned out to be!
5:30am came around pretty early but we were anxious to give the magic morning hour at DL a try. Yes, once again, we found ourselves standing at the gate waiting for the park to open at 6:45. We headed straight to Fantasyland and hopped into the Peter Pan line only to find that they were still testing the ride. Annoying. Finally got on then hit a couple of the other rides. We then headed over to Nemo (not my fav but Bobby's never ridden it) and stood in line for awhile before we told it was also down. Ugh. Kind of frustrating but what can you do? Anyway, even with the delays we still got lots of stuff done before we headed back to the hotel to eat breakfast at Storytellers. This one was on my list because it was the ONLY character meal in any of Disney's 6 parks (Disneyland, Calif Adventure, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom including breakfast, lunch and dinner if available) that we hadn't done! I know, I'm a complete dork but I wanted to scratch it off our list :-)
We arrived early for our ressie, checked in and were told it would be just a few mins. Somewhere along the way they lost our ticket and we were never called. By the time we cleared that up and were seated it was really late which is bad because the characters leave at a certain time and I'd already booked the latest reservation possible so we'd have the most early morning park time. We enjoyed the food and the characters but got skipped by one of the Brother Bears. I politely advised the handler we'd been skipped and she told me sorry but there was nothing to be done. The characters were "in for the day". Bummer. However, as a consolation they provided us with a single front of the line pass to be used at the ride of our choice! OK, now you're talking! Actually they told us there was only one ride it couldn't be used for RSR. Uh, ok.
Armed with our "front of the line pass" which, btw, says nothing about excluding certain rides, we headed straight to RSR. Posted stand by wait time: 180 minutes!!! Yes, you read that right, 3 hours!! We handed the little slip to the CM at the front of the line and he said "ok, enjoy your ride!" Yay!! I'll gladly skip a pic with one of the Brother Bears for a front of the line pass any day. BTW, I asked someone who was just getting on the ride with us how long they'd been in line (mostly because I wondered if that 3 hr wait time could be even remotely accurate) and they confirmed they'd been in line for 2:45 mins! Yikes. Its a great ride, it really is, but 3 hrs?? That is some determined Disney folk.
Because it was a Saturday the park was really crowded. We did what we could including two visits to G's all time fav ride Soarin'. At that point our little girl was exhausted and it was time to call it a day. Last stop on the way to the car was a visit with Santa in the lobby of the GC. Georgiana was asleep before we pulled out of the parking lot.
This has become one of G's favorite faces to make... goof!
It was pretty chilly. The princesses were in their winter wear
I guess G didn't want her picture taken :-)
G loves the bubble people. I'm always trying to get a picture that captures her joy she expresses while playing in them. This one comes closer than most.
We spent some more time in the Jingle Jangle Jamboree. Where there had been no line to see Santa a few weeks earlier, it had now increased to over an hour! I told G that I'd wait in line for her while she colored and enjoyed the other activities but she passed. Luckily there was no wait for Mrs Claus!
From this Santa visit we learned that each of the elves makes thousands and thousands of toys each year. G was wondering about that :-)
What a great little trip it turned out to be!
Friday, December 21, 2012
Official title: Work trip :-)
unofficial title: RSR finally!!!
My firm was having their annual client party at Catal in Downtown Disney. Disney? What the heck?? As an added perk they put us up at the Grand Californian (GC) hotel which was super nice! So back to mousetown we went. Bobby and I are normally really cheap when it comes to hotels so we'd never pay what it costs to stay someplace like the GC. But with one night free and the next at a super great conference rate, we were all over that!
We drove out on Thursday afternoon --the day of the party. We got checked into the hotel in just a few minutes and then hit Calif Adventure. It had been raining that morning and it was mid week and the park was really empty. In just a couple of hours we were able to do all sorts of stuff including ride 2 or the 3 new Carsland rides. Not Radiator Springs Racers (RSR) of course. That silly thing always has a wait of 90mins-3hrs. After that Bobby hung out with G at the park and got some dinner while I attended my work function. Even still, we were able to get G to bed pretty early in hopes of being up super early for the magic morning.
One of the perks of staying at a Disney hotel is the ability to get into the parks an hour before the general public. For me, that meant the opportunity to finally ride RSR. Its been open since June and we've been probably 6-8 times since then but the waits are crazy! At 6:45 we arrived at security for the 7am opening. We were second in line to enter the park and I thought "this is it! we're finally going to ride that stupid ride!" But when we walked in we were immediately informed that it was down. Bummer. So we continued to make the most of our early hour and rode some other stuff with no wait.
At about 7:40 Bobby got into the ever increasing line to get a fastpass to ride RSR sometime later in the day. It was shortly after that I was exiting a ride with G and I heard a man say to his son "its open, let's run!" while looking in the direction of RSR. I grabbed G's little hand and said "let's run too!!!" When we arrived at the entrance the posted wait time was 30 mins. OK, no problem, that's a line I'm willing to wait in. It only ended up being about 20 mins, yay!! It was great! What a fantastic and truly special ride. The animatronic cars are fantastic! By the time we got off Bobby had not only gotten the fastpass (yay again!) but had hopped into the single rider line because it was only 5 mins! Super yay!
Having accomplished our most important goals we hung out around Buena Vista street, visited some characters (and Santa), did the animation academy, etc and then we were zonked. We decided to go back to the hotel for a nap. This is something I've heard about people doing but have never accomplished. Staying at the GC made it really easy though because its only like a 5 min walk from rides to room. We crashed out until about 4pm then decided to head to DL. When we got there, it was PACKED! Super crowded. We made the most of it by hitting pirates, etc but it had gotten cold. My original plan was to go to Blue Bayou for dinner but we weren't really in the mood. Then it started to rain. This required finding an indoor place for dinner fast! We ended up at River Belle Terrace. It was fine. The food was ok and it was dry. Within 5 mins there were no empty seats. After dinner we were about done. It was cold and rainy and so, so crowded. Plus, we knew we wanted to do the early entry the next day so we headed back to the room.
Georgie was super excited to be at DL. The GC hotel is really nice. Our room was decorated in a very subtle Snow White theme.
Taking a spin on the world's slowest bumper cars. G thinks they're fantastic!
yes. we arrived at DL when it was still dark :-) yes. we are crazy.
we had breakfast at Flo's. The french toast was amazing!
On our second trip through Radiator Springs! I love fastpass!
We finally caught the characters on Buena Vista Street. How cute are their costumes!!!
G had been wanting to try the Animation Academy for awhile. This is her interpretation of Oswald the Rabbit. I thought she did pretty well. I wish they'd slow down the instruction just a bit. It was a little too fast for her to keep up easily.
I'm pretty sure I didn't take any pix at DL after our nap. Did I mention it was cold and rainy and really crowded?
unofficial title: RSR finally!!!
My firm was having their annual client party at Catal in Downtown Disney. Disney? What the heck?? As an added perk they put us up at the Grand Californian (GC) hotel which was super nice! So back to mousetown we went. Bobby and I are normally really cheap when it comes to hotels so we'd never pay what it costs to stay someplace like the GC. But with one night free and the next at a super great conference rate, we were all over that!
We drove out on Thursday afternoon --the day of the party. We got checked into the hotel in just a few minutes and then hit Calif Adventure. It had been raining that morning and it was mid week and the park was really empty. In just a couple of hours we were able to do all sorts of stuff including ride 2 or the 3 new Carsland rides. Not Radiator Springs Racers (RSR) of course. That silly thing always has a wait of 90mins-3hrs. After that Bobby hung out with G at the park and got some dinner while I attended my work function. Even still, we were able to get G to bed pretty early in hopes of being up super early for the magic morning.
One of the perks of staying at a Disney hotel is the ability to get into the parks an hour before the general public. For me, that meant the opportunity to finally ride RSR. Its been open since June and we've been probably 6-8 times since then but the waits are crazy! At 6:45 we arrived at security for the 7am opening. We were second in line to enter the park and I thought "this is it! we're finally going to ride that stupid ride!" But when we walked in we were immediately informed that it was down. Bummer. So we continued to make the most of our early hour and rode some other stuff with no wait.
At about 7:40 Bobby got into the ever increasing line to get a fastpass to ride RSR sometime later in the day. It was shortly after that I was exiting a ride with G and I heard a man say to his son "its open, let's run!" while looking in the direction of RSR. I grabbed G's little hand and said "let's run too!!!" When we arrived at the entrance the posted wait time was 30 mins. OK, no problem, that's a line I'm willing to wait in. It only ended up being about 20 mins, yay!! It was great! What a fantastic and truly special ride. The animatronic cars are fantastic! By the time we got off Bobby had not only gotten the fastpass (yay again!) but had hopped into the single rider line because it was only 5 mins! Super yay!
Having accomplished our most important goals we hung out around Buena Vista street, visited some characters (and Santa), did the animation academy, etc and then we were zonked. We decided to go back to the hotel for a nap. This is something I've heard about people doing but have never accomplished. Staying at the GC made it really easy though because its only like a 5 min walk from rides to room. We crashed out until about 4pm then decided to head to DL. When we got there, it was PACKED! Super crowded. We made the most of it by hitting pirates, etc but it had gotten cold. My original plan was to go to Blue Bayou for dinner but we weren't really in the mood. Then it started to rain. This required finding an indoor place for dinner fast! We ended up at River Belle Terrace. It was fine. The food was ok and it was dry. Within 5 mins there were no empty seats. After dinner we were about done. It was cold and rainy and so, so crowded. Plus, we knew we wanted to do the early entry the next day so we headed back to the room.
Georgie was super excited to be at DL. The GC hotel is really nice. Our room was decorated in a very subtle Snow White theme.
Taking a spin on the world's slowest bumper cars. G thinks they're fantastic!
yes. we arrived at DL when it was still dark :-) yes. we are crazy.
we had breakfast at Flo's. The french toast was amazing!
On our second trip through Radiator Springs! I love fastpass!
We finally caught the characters on Buena Vista Street. How cute are their costumes!!!
G had been wanting to try the Animation Academy for awhile. This is her interpretation of Oswald the Rabbit. I thought she did pretty well. I wish they'd slow down the instruction just a bit. It was a little too fast for her to keep up easily.
I'm pretty sure I didn't take any pix at DL after our nap. Did I mention it was cold and rainy and really crowded?
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