October/November Dump

Alright.  It's mid February, and we all know I skipped a few months.  So I'm not going to go back and post about each individual event.  But I do want to remember a few of the highlights.  Here they are for people like my sister and our mom's and my dad who actually care. ;)

Our church had a Fall Festival halfway through the month of October.  This is the first October in our new church building, so it was our first big children's event with our kiddos.  They had so much fun seeing their friends, playing the games, getting tons of candy, and petting the animals.

This picture just makes me laugh--Olivia's face and the Llama's teeth. Ha!

Logan and I were killing time at Half Price Books while we waited to sell a few things.

We all know my daughter was not going to let me get away with anything different than a themed meal.

My sweet friend Heather invited us to come to her house and Trick or Treat with them. 

Both of my kids love Nadia, so this was a win!

It was unseasonably cold for Texas, but we survived!

Logan insisted on holding Heather's hand for most of the night.

Y'all.  When you go to preschool in Texas...  these are your pictures.

Olivia and I ran errands while Logan was at preschool.  She didn't know they were for our big trip!

We set up the tree mid November.  I knew when we got back from vacation it would be the week of Thanksgiving and would get crazy!

Happy Thanksgiving!  We just did our own low key meal at home.

And then I headed to my LAST Black Friday (or brown Thursday) working in retail!!

Honestly, I already want to be a minimalist, but seeing people go crazy for a bunch of junk just because it's on "sale" just makes me want to never shop again.

We took any opportunity with good weather to go out and explore.

Ha ha!  My friends at work would get a kick out of the encouraging texts from Michael, like "Remember not to care too much." LOL! We all know that it is hard for me.  Life would be so much easier if I could care less about things... One night I sent him this picture and said, "So far, so good!"

Daddy Daughter Dance 2018

Olivia has been talking about going to the Daddy Daughter dance since last year's dance ended.  In fact, if you remember her list that she taped to her closet door, another Daddy Daughter dance is on it! (Check!)  The time finally came last weekend!

But before she could go to the dance, she needed a dress.  So one day after dropping Logan off at preschool, we headed to the mall to shop.

I usually just buy her clothes off of the rack when she isn't even with me. So sorting through racks of dresses and trying this on was completely new to her.  She loved it!  She thought every dress was wonderful, and kept exclaiming how beautiful she looked.  (Don't mind the static hair).

She settled on the perfect dress, and then we had to accessorize.  She really wanted a crown, so we found a tiara headband. She got a necklace and bracelet and we searched for silver shoes.

She had the best time.  I am confident there are many more shopping trips in our future.

We painted her nails and curled her hair and she felt like a true princess getting ready.

I love that excited smile!

(I promise her bangs are cut straight.  She has the worst cowlick right in her bangs.  I keep trying to convince her just to grow them out. Ugh.)

She is a daddy's girl for sure!

She was very excited the food, drinks and dessert.  She chose to sit by the dessert table once again this year.

A new edition this year was a cotton candy machine.  You could choose your flavor and watch it be made.  She loved it!

The dessert table!

She did actually dance.  I promise. :)

This year they took a clue from the neighboring city and separated the dance by age.  Because of this, her dance was pretty early in the night.

After the dance was over, they headed to Target to buy her a diner for her doll.  She has been saving birthday and Christmas money for a while and she was finally ready to spend it all.  The purchase was large, so we wanted to do it while I still had my discount.  She ended her night playing with the toy she's been eyeing for months.

While they were at the dance, this cutie and I went on a date of our own.  We had dinner, and then played with the train table at the mall.  We walked the Disney store and had a yummy dessert.  A happy night for all.

Disney Day 7--Magic Kingdom and Christmas party

Our last day was another at Magic Kingdom.  We had tickets to the Christmas party that night, so we also dressed in our Christmas outfits.  We knew we'd be there late, so we took our time getting there in the morning.

I scored Olivia and Michael a fast pass for Space Mountain (their second time on it!)

So Logan and I went and rode the Tea Cups and Dumbo--two of his favorites.

It was our last day, and it was a pretty warm morning, so we treated the kids to their one and only Mickey shaped ice cream.  Outside of popcorn refills, these are the only snacks we purchased in park the entire trip.  We brought everything else in with us.

Michael took the kids on the Carousel while I waited in line to see a character.

We were in line for the Evil Stepsisters, but then it switched to the Fairy Godmother.

I love all of the looks of wonder the photographers captured.  Olivia was really into meeting all of the characters, and she loved getting autographs. I don't think Michael or I thought we'd get as many as we did, but we had a good mix of rides and character interactions.  I think she ended up with close to 30 signatures.

I'm almost positive that we rode every ride in the park at least twice.  Most of them we did even more over the course of the 3 days.  It was so worth it all!

Seeing Merida--another of her favorites

She was so good and her accent was perfect!

And she loved Logan :)

Love!

Getting a picture with Rapunzel's lanterns

The Christmas party isn't cheap, but here are the benefits--- the have different snack stations all over the park where you can get cookies, hot chocolate, egg nog, snow cones, Dove chocolates, and apple cider for FREE.  We got way more than we could possibly consume.  You get to see characters that are only there during party hours.  The crowds are less, so you can ride the rides easier.  There is a special parade and fireworks show. There are dance parties and other activities.  It's just a lot of extra fun.  We figured that we'd probably never be back around Christmas time, so why not?

We added Christmas tree LED lights to our stroller, brought necklaces they had got last year from grandma, and started the night with cookies and hot chocolate.

Then we stood in line to see Nick Fox and Judy Hopps from Zootopia.

Judy Hopps LOVED Logan.  She just kept making gestures about how cute he was, and hugging him. Then she gave him a nose kiss.  I told her she was speaking his love language. It was seriously the cutest thing.  Finally one of the cast members was basically like, "We get it.  He's cute.  You've got a line."  Like... let's wrap this up.  LOL!  Michael made sure he got a hug from Judy too.  He loves Zootopia.  But there was no photographic evidence. Ha!

We watched Elsa light up the castle, rode few rides with short lines, waited in line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train again (no matter how many times we would check it throughout the week, the line was really long, and we only had that 1 fast pass), and got our free food.

We made sure to get to the 10 o'clock fireworks show.  It did NOT disappoint. It was so good!

From there we split up.  Logan and I headed to get a spot for the 11 o'clock parade, and Michael and Olivia went to stand in the line to see Moana.

Moana is another one that is only at the parties right now.  We figured the line might be long, but it was important to us to give Olivia that chance to meet her.

We got dozens of pictures from their meeting.

What a great way to end our trip!

Meanwhile, Logan had fallen asleep in the stroller before I even found a place to park for the parade!  Poor guy.  It had been a long day with no naps, and 10:30 is pretty late for him.

Michael and Olivia joined up with me just in time for the parade to start.  It worked out perfectly! T here was even a part at the beginning where she got called into the street to dance with the pre-parade entertainment.  She had a blast!

We left as soon as the parade was over, since it was fast approaching midnight.

There is no tired like Disney tired!

Our flight the next day didn't leave until the evening.  So we slept in, packed up, checked out right at 11, and then had the day to kill.  We ended up heading back to Disney Springs.  One souvenir that I really wanted was our yearly Christmas ornament to be from our trip.  So we had lunch and then went on a mission to find that.

We did great on budget (using all of the prepaid gift cards) until this last day.  We caved and let the kids choose one more souvenir.  Overall, I'd say $40 over for 8 days at Disney isn't all that bad, though. :)

We headed to the airport early.  It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, so we knew security would take some time.  We had a really yummy dinner.  We were still plenty early. While we waited, the kids did some of the crafts that Tinkerbell had brought earlier in the week.

We got home late. We were all tired, but all very happy!  Overall the trip went better than I could have expected.  All my planning and research paid off, the kids behaved well, and we got to do SO MUCH.  Michael came home and immediately started listening to Disney podcasts and watching You Tube videos of things we may have missed, and had conversations with Olivia about how they wished we lived in Florida. LOL!  He may have been bitten by the Disney bug!  Now we can't wait to go back.