Parading 5 year olds - Happy Halloween!

This is Ms. Cathy and Ms. Carmen's preschool class. They paraded around for the parents this morning in their Halloween costumes. It was so fun to talk to Avery and Presley before the event and hear them talk about what everyone was going to be. They were especially looking forward to seeing Connor's tornado costume (he's the one on the end, look for a toy cow attached to his costume!) According to the girls, he loves tornados so much he even even brought a tornado book for show-and-tell! Then when I picked them up from school later, they talked and talked about each person and what their costume looked like. What a fun day!

Gotta have cake!

After we got home from Disney, the birthday celebrating continued because of course there's got to be cake and candles and singing!

And then we took in a treat for preschool friends too...decorated Halloween sugar cookies, yummy!

Turning 5 in Disney World!

Happy five-year-old birthday, girls!  It was dad's idea to surprise them with special hats, so now adorned with pin necklaces, birthday pins AND hats, we set off for a birthday breakfast with princesses at Epcot!

This is one princess we hadn't seen until this day!

Thank you hug for Caleb - of course he was trying to enjoy the setting just as much as the girls, but it was a bit challenging!

We had such a fun day walking around and going on our most favorite rides again and doing some we hadn't done the first time at Epcot.  We even saw Captian EO!  Also ran into a few fun guys while we were at it...

Face painting for our last day - why not?  Two cute kittens and Darth Maul!

Can't forget Daisy Duck!

Then it was back to Magic Kingdom for our last night, and boy, did we live it up!  First, we stood in line forever to see Tinkerbell and her sister Periwinkle.  Good thing Caleb had Lily to hang out with...

After it was dark, the awesome light parade started.  The kids had front row seats...so fun!

Here's the clan while waiting for the fireworks to start behind the Magic Kingdom Castle...

This was not our view of course, we had a better one! Spectacular fireworks and special effects and even live Tinkerbell flying across the sky for the finale!

And then as if that wasn't enough, we HAD to celebrate the birthdays with ice cream! On the way out it was close to midnight, and by the time we got back and to bed it was 1 am!  What a way to live it up until the last minute, huh?  Unforgettable birthdays for the girls and and all-around fantastic Disney trip!

Magic Kingdom at last!

Here was the scene the morning of our Magic Kingdom day. We are waiting to get on the boat to take us over to the castle...We got going especially early because the word was if you get there right for the opening, you get to see some extra special stuff.

When we got there, it turned out they had opened it an hour earlier for people staying at certain resorts (which hadn't been advertised anywhere) and wow, Alex and Rachel were frustrated!  Alex found someone to complain to and for all our grief, they gave us some fast passes and special VIP passes to go meet the princesses - they were all in one place!

I think Rupunzel was my favorite, very genuine and such a fun personality!  Caleb even got a picture with her!

A little later we were happy to see Jasmine - Presley's favorite for sure!

Here we are on the crowded sidewalk leading to the famous castle.  There was fall and Halloween decor everywhere.

 We didn't spend all day meeting famous people and getting autographs, we definitely enjoyed the rides and entertainment too!  Pirates of the Caribbean was a favorite and some of us did Thunder Mountain more than once.  Splash Mountain was awesome and we all really enjoyed watching Philharmagic.  The Peter Pan ride was also an agreed upon favorite.    

They all tried hard removing the sword from the stone...and we got to see the newly-opened Ariel's grotto and add her signature to their collections.

It was a tiring, busy day, but definitely magical!

Our super second day!

We started our day in Animal Kingdom with a spectacular Lion King show - singing, dancing, flying  acrobats, etc!  Then we did the Safari ride to catch a glimpse of some real animals...

We went to a very entertaining bird show where the trainers interacted with the birds and some of them flew right over our heads.

The star of the show for us was Aaron - he was chosen to go up on stage with his camera and take a picture of an owl...he got a pretty good shot of it!

Caleb, Lily, Rachel and I had a blast on a pretty frightening, yet super fun Dinosaur ride!  Here we are as one of the Dinosaurs was about to come at us...

We ended our time in Animal Kingdom with some Mickey ice cream bars and a pretty creepy Bug's Life show.  3D and even 4D effects helped make it a bit too realistic, especially for the girls.  At one point when the theater went completely dark they were both screaming and crying hysterically!   And Aaron talked forever afterward about getting his back poked much too hard!

Then we headed to Epcot!  We were able to meet almost all the must-see Disney characters in one place (kind of nice and convenient that you don't have to go hunt them all down)...

We also fit in the Nemo ride and talking to Crush, some quick dinner and a few rides on Soarin before heading back for the night.  Phew!