Category: Lexi

Covid-19, Kate, Lexi, William

Covid-19 Week 7

peanutsmiles

Lexi, William & Kate,

The highlight of this week was spending a few days with Kenzie at our house. Auntie Sheila and Uncle Dustin dropped Kenzie off on Sunday evening as they were preparing to go to the hospital to welcome your new baby BOY cousin, Lincoln, into the world. The weather was amazing so you guys had a lot of fun playing on the swing set, in the sandbox, drawing with chalk, running, reading books and just caring for sweet Kenzie.

It was so fun to watch you all interact together, but it is amazing how quickly I forgot how much work little kids are, changing diapers, getting them down for naps, the extra messes they make and watching them like a hawk to make sure they don’t get hurt or put things in their mouths they shouldn’t.

As a result of the extra attention Kenzie needed, I became much more lax about the school work and started doing most of it at night while the other kids were getting ready for bed. But it kind of worked. We also found out that school will officially be over by May 22nd. At first, I was stressed about this as they are supposed to go to school for another two weeks. As I sat on this information the more OK and relieved I became. It is one less thing to keep track of, worry about, and lets be real… it is getting harder and harder for Lexi to focus and be motivated to do her work. We started off doing all of these extra things to keep a routine as much as possible but, now 7 weeks in, we are doing the bare minimum.

Work has gotten much more stressful. Projects are starting to kick off, which means a lot more meetings and the kids seem to be interrupting a lot more and I’m just having a really hard time focusing and being productive when I need to be. I’ve worked late several nights this week in an attempt to get caught up, but I just never feel like I can dig myself out of the hole I’m in. I’m working on finding time to go for a walk, do yoga and just get some endorphins flowing to help with the anxiety.

With all that said, we have so much to be grateful for and continue to thank God for what we have and what we do know.

Love,

Mama

 

 

Covid-19, Kate, Lexi, William Monthly Updates

Covid-19 week 5

peanutsmiles

Kiddies,

I’m a week late in documenting this week, so it is going to be short and sweet. After being off for spring break last week, we moved back into the official distance learning thing again and had to re-learn all of the systems and tools again. By the end of the week, we got into more of a rhythm of the different apps used for different subjects. (Benchmark is for reading activities, classkick is where most of the math activities happen, SeeSaw is the main hub of where you get information and submit most of your assignments)

Although William doesn’t have an official program, he is loving learning and going to school. He is getting really good at identifying his letters and learning those tricky teens.

The Easter Bunny brought him a Nerf gun so we put the teen letters up on the wall and used them as a target shooting practice and it was a BIG hit. He has also gotten very close to having both mom and dad’s phone numbers memorized and loves doing little science experiments.

Kate continues to get into anything and everything she can and has a loud an authoritative personality. You are an observant little monkey and are learning how to role play by watching Lexi and William .

On Saturday, Grammy and Papa came over for an Easter visit and we grilled some brats. They ended up coming inside and eating and hanging out and it felt so good to do something remotely normal, but I kind of felt like we needed to hide what we were doing, like people would judge us for seeing someone or getting together. I hugged Grammy good-bye it just felt good to have that hug in time of so much uncertainty.

Sunday was Easter and that bunny was good to you guys. You each got new helmets, bubbles, chalk and loads of candy. William also got a nerf gun and a Osmo coding game for the iPad. Lexi got an LOL pet and an Osmo pizza game for the iPad. Kate got an LOL pet and a bunny shirt and purple bunny dress. We had a nummy breakfast of monkey bread, fruit, breads and pastries from Grammy. Then, Great Grandma came over for dinner and we had Ham, Rolls, Cheesy hash-browns, and green beans.

Love,

Mommy

Covid-19, Kate, Lexi, William

Covid-19 Week 4

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Lexi, William and Kate,

Technically, this week was spring break, but your mean-old mom made you do school work all week. It is easier to keep you on a schedule and you already missed a lot of school from vacation.

I was much more relaxed with things though. Your school days started later than we had been and I let you play a lot more. I also didn’t prep on Wednesday night, so you guys just had Thursday off.

Lexi, you are starting to push back more on doing assignments and showing some pretty big attitude. We took away you watching Decendents as there is a bit of lip in that show and it seemed to help a little. This week we worked on short and long vowels–specifically long vowels that have words that end in ‘e’. (Cub, Cube, Sam, Same, pin, pine) In math we reviewed some addition and subtraction and worked on key-words like ‘sum’ ‘difference’ ‘total’ ‘in-addition to’ and practiced telling time on a digital and analog clock as well as learned ‘quarter-after’ and ‘quarter-to’. You wrote letters to Grammy and Ivy and the Easter bunny.

William, you were busy re-creating your Big Book of Dinosaurs book all week for your journal and then were working on the letter ‘N’. For math, you’re working on identifying your tricky teens and memorizing daddy’s phone number.

The weather was pretty nice this week so we got some good outside hours logged. Bonus Grammy came over for another drive-way activity and did some Easter activities with you outside, painting rocks, decorating rocks as bunnies, eating some treats, reading books and making some foam bunnies.

Supplies in stores started to regulate a bit. Still no signs of toilet paper, cleaning wipes or hand sanitizer but milk, eggs, bread and canned goods are more accessible.

This Sunday is Easter so we dyed some Eggs this week and are looking forward to seeing Grammy and Papa tomorrow for a little visit and Great Grandma might come over for dinner on Easter (even though it is technically not allowed. She hasn’t been able to see anyone and don’t want her to be alone on Easter.)

Love,

Mommy

 

Covid-19, Kate, Lexi, William

Covid-19 Week 3

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My three munchkins,

Week 1 of distance learning in the books! I mentioned this last week, but the Governor officially closed schools through May 4th, which means teachers and schools are figuring out how to teach kids at home over the next 4 weeks, but likely through the end of the year.

This really only applies to Lexi as Pre-K has paused for William. On Sunday, Miss. Schwartz sent out a guide for the week of the things you will be doing and then each morning uploads the daily assignments into SeeSaw. She records videos of herself providing the instruction or teaching the lesson and then gives you an assignment to do. SeeSaw allows you to write (handwrite or type), draw pictures, upload photos, and even record yourself asking a question as a way to interact with Miss Schwartz. We’re also using a site called class-kick for Math and BenchMark for reading.

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Monday was rough. The SeeSaw app was overloaded with many of the schools using it, I didn’t know the difference between any of these sites or understand the direction to help Lexi know what she was supposed to do. Things took a really long time. She spent over 2 hours doing math problems!

Fortunately, each day got a little easier and by Thursday we were done with assignments a little after lunch time. We’re also learning what works and what doesn’t work. It is really hard to have all three of you working and doing assignments in the same room together. You each need direction and get distracted by each other pretty quickly. Half way through Wednesday, Lexi came into our room and sat at my desk to get some of her work done. I let her listen to some music and it really helped her focus and get through her work faster. It also helped that I was providing her the direction for her assignments verses Daddy. It’s not that Daddy wasn’t being a good teacher, but Daddy hadn’t been going through all of the different apps and schedules and reading all of the emails to figure out what was going on, where I had. So I didn’t have to try and teach daddy who then needed to teach Lexi.

In fact, Daddy has been a great teacher to William. Last week, you were working on the letter ‘T” and the number 9. This week, you were working on the letter ‘R’ and learned almost all of the tricky-teen numbers and is pretty close to having Daddy’s phone number memorized. William, you are LOVING Sampson School. You are eager to learn each day and never complains about your ‘assignments’ for the day and are turning into quite the little artist.

Kate, you are the sweetest tornado you could ever meet. You are constantly snuggling, giving hugs, kisses and tells me ‘I love you mommy’ BUT turns into tornado mode in a flash as she climbs onto the counter and sneaks food, demands to get her way, throws some epic tantrums and can get pretty aggressive (hitting, biting) your two big siblings.

Overall, the week was decent. We had some nice weather that allowed us to get outside. Grammy came over to play with pipe-cleaners with you. She read some stories and you have a snack outside (you all sat in lawn chairs outside at a socially acceptable distance). You kids don’t seem to mind or even notice that you’re not really going anywhere or seeing people and are perfectly content playing at home with each other. There have been very few times where I hear you complain about being ‘bored’. Wednesday was April 1st, which was also the first day of the 30-Day Lego Challenge. Day 1 was build an amusement park.

Lexi definitely gets what’s going on. You have used the analogy of the virus spreading, like the way ink does on paper when you hold it down. The Dot keeps getting bigger and bigger and that is like more and more people getting the virus. But overall, you seem pretty unfazed about the whole thing.

For me, things got a little better at work. It wasn’t as crazy as the last two weeks have been and am learning how to be more productive. Our stores continue to stay closed and we are paying our retail employees another two weeks, but after that we’ll see what happens. There were also some hints about some things changing at corporate temporarily to help manage cash flow, so praying that mine and my team’s jobs won’t be impacted.

Similar to Mom, Dad is adjusting to everyone being home. He had gotten into a good rhythm of figuring out how to get his work done while Lexi and William were at school/ in the evenings and now he has to get everything done at night–which is a lot harder and mentally taxing. But hopefully with Mom teaching Lexi and Dad teaching William that will reduce some of the chaos and noise and make things a little more manageable

Next week is officially ‘spring break’ so we’re switching back into Sampson school for the week. Look forward to another riveting update of Covid-19 Week 4.

Love,

Mama

Covid-19, Kate, Lexi, William

Covid-19 Week 2

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My three little munchkins,

All the days and events are just starting to blur together. The virus, society, the government  and work continue to change at morph speed and you can’t keep up with what is what. Our Best Buy stores closed for customers to enter them on Sunday and we transformed to a curbside only pick-up. Considering I support the mobile business and almost all of our sales are done in store, we had some pretty big changes to make as we modify to helping customers navigate the idea of buying a cell phone online, which is uncomfortable for a lot of people.

Then on Friday–Minnesota officially when to ‘shelter-in-place’, which basically means all non-essential businesses/services are closed. Grocery, gas, connivence, liquor, and hardware stores, daycare and take-out restaurants are open. Everything else is closed and people are encouraged to stay home. The governor also announced that schools will be closed until May 4th, at the earliest. So starting on Monday, we will officially transition to distance learning.

From a ‘Sampson schooling perspective’ I felt like we were starting to get into a decent rhythm. Kids got paint by sticker and do a dot daubers and have been super excited to use them all week. They are fantastic for Kate as she can do little worksheets in her activity book, while the kids are doing their activities. Things we are working on this week: learning our address, memorizing dad’s phone number, learning to write Sampson, telling time, lots of read-out-loud, tons of coloring, spelling words, journaling, each morning, verbs, nouns, prefixes and suffixes, exploding snowman science project, the letter ‘T’ and the number 9, and some good old outside play time.

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Kate’s world has been turned upside down and inside out and she just doesn’t know how to process it all. She is getting the least amount of attention as Daddy and I are focused on learning activities for Lexi and William and she doesn’t understand why she can’t sit on my lap at any given moment throughout the day.  Kate, you have become very attached to Momma and want demand to be carried everywhere. With everything going on, it is hard to stop and remind myself what this looks like from a 2-year-old’s perspective. You’re used to quiet Daddy-time 3 days a week for 6+ hours. To suddenly have everyone home and stealing the attention you used to get can be some tough cookies.

Kate juice

To sum everything up, things could definitely be worse. I feel good we’ve been keeping you on a good schedule and you haven’t been watching a TON of TV–but it is hard to keep you focused and all of you pre-occupied at the same time. It is mentally exhausting to balance working and participating on conference calls, making sure Daddy can work, and you guys do some stuff and don’t watch TV all day.

But, we are healthy, have lots of food to eat, plenty of toilet paper, a roof over our heads and jobs to pay our bills and our faith, which is a lot more than many other people can say. So I’m choosing to be grateful for everything we do have, including the three of you.

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Love,

Mama

 

Covid-19, Kate, Lexi, William

Covid-19 Week 1

peanutsmiles

Dear kiddos,

Check Mark. We survived the first official week of social/distancing–which has really turning into social isolation for Covid-19.

Although SVDP, technically had school on Monday–we kept you guys home. It sounded like it was mostly for people who needed to figure out childcare, get assignments/technology or medicine and since we didn’t have to worry about any of that, we kept you home. I went to work for a half day to get a few things and then came home and got things set up.

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Over the weekend, I explained to you and William there is a virus going around and we can’t go to school for awhile because we need to help slow down the rate at which people get it. BUT, that means we’re going to have Sampson school each day. We will do our best to make it fun, have play time, but we’re also going to have learning time and we need them to be good cooperators with it.

Monday night, I looked through all of the items that were sent home and was completely overwhelmed trying to figure out what your day should actually look like and what work we should be giving you. Thankfully, someone I follow on Instagram has a first grader and is a former teacher, so followed a similar approach to how she was structuring her day. For William, I just guessed on a whole bunch of stuff.

I also worked on setting up and organizing each of your work spaces to make it a little bit more exciting. You each have your rack of activities, a cup of pencils, colored pencils and markers.

Tuesday was filled with a lot of excitement and equal parts groaning and complaining from all parties. Nobody wanted to get dressed, brush their hair or teeth, but were excited about their work spaces and the worksheets. Go figure. I did my best to work, but there was lots of interruptions, distractions etc… and I really didn’t get any work done, respond to any emails, was just on a few conference calls. By the end of the day, I felt so exhausted and defeated. I felt guilty for not being very productive at work and discouraged that this school thing was going to be even harder than I had originally thought. BUT, Daddy did manage to help you decorate and build leprechaun traps.

That evening my leader at work sent an email to everyone sharing her Day 1 experiences and talked about how she wasn’t very productive with all the distractions and it was hard and is going to take time for all of us to adjust to this. I’m so grateful to be working for leaders that are so supportive and understanding in hard times like this. It makes the hard things a million times easier.

After the kids went to bed, I went through the school materials again and put together another schedule, that was similar, but tried to mix up activities and what not.

Wednesday morning was met with some pushback on the usual getting dressed and brushing of teeth and hair, but it was a tiny bit better. Overall, the school part of the day went better. I was a little more productive at work and I could see the kids were actually learning. It also helped that you went on a field trip to Great Grandma’s house to visit and brighten her day.

Wednesday night I prepped again and was feeling more confident in the schedule, how to break the day up how much time it takes for things to be done.

Overall, Thursday was pretty good. There was less push-back from you kids, Kate was wanting to learn, Daddy was doing an awesome time keeping you guys focused and helping you through your assignments. I had a lot of conference calls, which made things tough to stay focused in my chair that long and that I wasn’t able to help out as much with some of the school stuff.

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By Thursday evening as I was lesson planning, I felt like I was in a good rhythm. I was understanding the packets of info better and was getting ideas on how I could start to build different schedules out for each day of the week so it requires less planning on my behalf each night. Work that day went a little better too. We started to leverage the web-cam, which felt awkward at first, but made it so much easier to connect with people. We even had a virtual happy hour together.

As I was lesson planning for the Friday, was reflecting on how much easier things got as the week went on. I also felt like I was spending more quality time with the kids, was actually making decent meals, was decently caught up on laundry and the house wasn’t a complete disaster. So despite all of the really hard and challenging things happening, I’m also seeing some great benefits too. It is forcing us to slow down. We aren’t even half or a quarter as busy as a lot of other families, but the fact that I’m not rushing home to quickly make dinner and run to an activity or get baths done is really nice. If the kids go to bed a little later, that is OK because they don’t have to wake up at a certain time, and if we don’t get bathed tonight, we can easily do it tomorrow. I love having the time to play Sorry! together as a family after dinner or time the kids riding their bikes up and down the sidewalk. I’m hoping these aren’t novelty moments and continue as the weeks unfold.

Finally, Friday was not the smoothest. Daddy took you to Great Grandma’s and Aggies for a visit and a few of you were pretty naughty. Work was also pretty crazy. On Wednesday, they announced store hours were being reduced and starting on Monday, they would limit the amount of customers in store. They were also modifying how Geek Squad, Delivery/Install and In Home Advisors reduce their face-to-face interactions with customers. Then today, some governments decided the products we sell are no longer deemed as ‘essential’ and our stores must close. As a result, starting on Sunday, all of our stores will be closed and only available for customers to pick up products at curbside. I spent the afternoon developing new messaging to support this change as well as reviewing all the existing messages we have in place that need to be updated.

Hopefully the work craziness will subside a little next week and we’ll get into a good rhythm of Sampson school.

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Love,

Mama

Kate, Lexi, William

Covid-19 unfolds

peanutsmiles

Lexi, William and Kate,

I know you’re pretty young to remember some of this, but this is a moment that will be written into history books and talked about for many years to come. The only other moment in my life that is somewhat comparable to this is 9/11. That was sad and scary–but this one just feels surreal and crazy, at least at this moment (1 weeks in)

We’ll start with the basics of what the heck is going on and then get into how we survived week 1.

First, Covid-19 (also known as Coronavirus) is a virus similar to the flu, but is much more contagious and can have some respiratory challenges. It is most dangerous to the elderly 70+ population. It was first identified in China in January of 2020 and turned their world upside down. Then in late February, early March a few cases were identified in the US, but nobody thought too much of it–at least from my perspective. As the days rolled on, more and more cases were popping up–with the first one in Minnesota in early March. Queue some initial discussion and lots of warnings about washing your hands, not touching your face etc…which basically cleared out hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes from stores. Don’t travel if you don’t have to etc…But for the most part, business was as normal.

Then, on the day we flew home from Florida (March 11), things started to get crazy. This was identified as a pandemic–which is a world-wide crisis (verses just a regional one). The cases in Minnesota grew. Each day hour things got a little crazier. Universities started canceling in-person classes and going to virtual only. Major sporting events were canceled (NBA, NHL, MLB, March Madness) DisneyWorld closed (we barely squeaked that one in!) and concerts and conferences were canceled.

On Thursday, my work declared that Tuesday, the 17th, would be a mandatory work from home day to test things out, if we needed to go that direction.

On Friday, March 13th, Lexi came home with a folder of school work to do, in the event that schools close. On my way home from work, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things since our house was empty from vacation. There was very little pasta and pretty much no bread in the stores.

Things kept getting crazier and crazier. The phrase ‘social-distancing’ was introduced, which means they don’t want people within 6 feet of each other and shouldn’t be in groups larger than 25-50 people. With the West Coast schools closing, I had a gut feeling of where things were going, so I headed to Costco 45 min before it opened on Sunday, thinking it might open early and sure enough it did. Outside of chicken and organic ground beef, they had pretty much everything in stock. Toilet paper, paper towels, milk, bread etc…(these items had become scare over the last few days). While there, Auntie Shelia texted saying the Minnesota Governor closed public schools for two weeks, so I added a few more things to the over-flowing cart to make sure we were stocked up. Then, I headed over to Target. The medicine isle was completely empty, no bread, very little pasta and canned goods. I stocked up the best I could, even getting Easter treats in case the stores closed.

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On Monday, I went into work for a video meeting, got my monitor, other supplies and then headed home. I stopped by school to pick up a packet of work for William and we began our time at home, together.

To further explain some of these drastic measures.

This virus is extremely contagious and has a 2% mortality rate, officials are worried terrified if we don’t take these measures and slow the rate down that people interact with one another and therefore, spread this virus, that too many people will get sick all at the same time and we won’t have enough medical staff, beds, or equipment to take care of people. This exact scenario is happening in Italy, Spain and other European countries. Medical officials are literally having to choose who lives and who dies. It is terrible. Medical and government officials are trying to prevent that from happening here. The challenge is, everyone has an opinion. Many of these people are credentialed or at least sound like it and it is really hard to decipher what is going on. You can find a credentialed person to support whatever you want, which makes it challenging to know what the right thing to do is.

Stay tuned for our weekly survival update.

Love,

Mama

 

family vacations, florida, Kate, Lexi, William

Panama City 2020

peanutsmiles

Lexi, Badger and Kate,

Following our whirlwind trip to DisneyWorld that you can read about here, here, here and here, we rented an car to begin phase 2 of our vacation: visiting Grammy and Papa in Panama City Beach.

Daddy took an Uber to the car rental location on Thursday morning and we got upgraded to a TaHoe (we had rented a mini van) and barely squeezed our 2 strollers and luggage in, even though we didn’t bring a lot of stuff.

The ride was about 5 – 6 hours from Orlando to PBC and I was thinking it was going to be pretty brutal. But you guys were awesome and needed very little screen time. You actually didn’t get out of the car for the entire trip. I can’t believe that nobody had to go to the bathroom.

Upon arrival, Papa was of course downstairs waving both arms high up in the air to welcome all of us. We headed up to their beautiful wrap condo and got settled in and shared all sorts of fun stories about Disney.

Overall, this part of the trip was just about relaxing and enjoying the sunshine, the beach, the pool and the golf course. Daddy golfed everyday, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Four rounds at Signal Hills and one round at Windswept dunes. I joined him for 2 1/2 rounds.

William came down with some kind of little bug that had him feeling a warm, pretty tired and just not himself. After about two days of being under the weather, he woke up and complained of not being able to walk, which went on for about 2-3 hours. We were about to head to the Emergency room and he started walking, but had a very funny wobble, almost as if we was trying to walk while sitting on a pole. Dr. Google didn’t have good things to suggest on what this could mean, so around 3:00 we headed to urgent care. The first one we went to wasn’t opened (it was a Sunday) and the second one sent us straight to the ER; which was not a good few hours for your worry-wart mama. After about 2-3 hours they, William started feeling better and even ran down the hallway–so we headed home, un-diagnosed and he has been fine ever since. Very great full it wasn’t something serious and now, looking back makes me wonder if it wasn’t related to corona virus.

Other highlights of the trip were lots of time playing with second cousins Ruby and Pearl, who were just down the hallway from us, Survivor-type challenges on the beach, jumping the waves, feeling the warm sunshine, playing cards, mini-golfing, swimming, sunsets and spending lots of good quality time with Grammy and Papa.

After 5 wonderful days, our week and a half vacation was coming to an end. We left Wednesday morning at 6:00 in the morning, headed to Atlanta and then back to MSP around 1:30 in the afternoon. By this time, things with Covid-19 were just starting to get interesting. My trip to CA had gotten canceled while and most business travel was canceled. The airports were busy, but we were much more cautious than normal about wiping things down, using hand sanitizer.

DisneyWorld, Kate, Lexi, William

DisneyWorld—Epcot (Day 4)

peanutsmiles

Lexi, Badgie and Katie,

You went to 3 DisneyParks in 1 Day. Not to shabby for three kids under 7. We started our last Disney day at Epcot, spent an hour or so in Animal Kingdom before wrapping the night up at Magic Kingdom for extra magic hours.

One of the reasons we made the switch to the Wilderness Lodge hotel was of how convenient it was supposed to be with transportation. Well it didn’t work out so well for us.

Similar to the other days, the plan was to get up early and get to the park just as it was opening. Since Epcot has tiered FastPasses, I had a FastPass to Frozen, but not TestTrack, so I was planning to go straight to TestTrack and ride before the line got too long.

We left around 8:15, about 15 min later than I was hoping. First, we took a boat from the lodge to the Magic Kingdom area, where we then took a monarail to the transportation center, making a pit stop at the Contemporary as the express wasn’t running. Once we were at the Transportation center, our plan was to jump on another monarail to go to Epcot. Well that monarail wasn’t running either, so we had to get on a bus. All this took much longer than expected so instead of getting there at 9, when it opened, it was closer to 10, which meant the line for Test Track was much longer.

Additionally, when we arrived we discovered we had a broken stroller, Test Track, was down and Frozen was down so we went to stand in the hour line to meet Anna and Elsa. It was by far the longest time we waited for anything, close to an hour. But the girls were thrilled to meet the princesses. Daddy and Wiliam worked on fixing the stroller and William even scored some fast passes for being such a good helper to Daddy.

By the time we got through the line to meet Anna and Elsa, the Frozen ride was back up and running and we used our 11:00 FastPass to jump through the lines. This ride is super cute and low key and I loved that our whole family could sit in one row of the boat. When we were done with the frozen ride at about 11:30, and the world showcase was starting to open so we began our journey to very quickly skim the world. You kids did not have the patience for mom and dad to fully enjoy it. It also happened to be the first day of the Flower and Garden Festival so we spent time looking at all the amazing topiaries, which I adored. They smelled amazing and it was fascinating to see how they created characters from different kinds of flowers.

About half-way around, we stopped to meet Jasmine, which was a princess we hadn’t met before. Similar to meeting Daisy, these pictures are brought to you by a dum-dum sucker bribe for Kate.

By the time we were done seeing the showcase, the crowds were really starting to build and our fast pass for mission space was about to run out so Daddy took William and Lexi on that. You guys went on the Orange mission space ride, which Daddy said was pretty scary for both him and Lexi–but William seemed to think it was pretty cool. Go figure? In the meantime, I took Kate over to check out the aquarium and the Finding Nemo ride. Of course Kate feel asleep on the way over there so I explored the aquarium, the Journey to Imagination and ImageWorks by myself with a sleeping baby.

Test Track was back up and running by the time you were done with Mission Space, so Daddy, Lexi and William headed over to ride it. Unfortunately, the ride broke which extended the wait time, but they got it up and running again quickly. You guys went all the way through building your car and were about to test your car and it broke and they shut it down again for the 3rd time that day. We did get some extra fastpasses out of the deal to use at any park on any ride (with the exception of the big rides–Flight of passage, Slinky Dog, StarWars, Seven Dwarfs).

It was about 2:00 at this point, everyone was hungry and the heat was starting to take a toll. We decided to head back to the hotel for a swim instead of exploring any more of Epcot. We stopped at the gift shop on our way out and you each picked out your souvenir. Lexi and Kate picked out Anna and Elsa doll toys and William got a real Buz Lightyear. 

One the way back to the Wilderness, we debated our next steps and the roller coaster junkie was begging to ride Everest at Animal Kingdom. So we booked a FastPass for 7:00 and one for the Dinosaur ride at 6:10 and were going to use our bonus FastPass and the Navi’s River, which always has a long line and one we didn’t get to ride last year.

It was about 4:00 by the time we arrived back at Wilderness. We quickly ate some food and Mom and the kids went swimming while Daddy napped. They had a super cute mini waterpark for little kids with a few slides and then had a bigger waterslide in the big pool. Lexi and William loved the big-kid slide and just kept going down it over and over again while Kate enjoyed watching them and kicking and splashing in the pool with me. After a quick 45 minute swim, we headed back up to get changed and head over to Animal Kingdom,

We waited over 45 min for a bus so instead of getting to the park at 6:00 like we thought, we got there at 7:15, 45 min before it was supposed to close. We took a quick family pic in front of the tree of life, lite up at night and then high-tailed it to Everest.

We got to Everest just as River of Lights was ending. Daddy and Lexi used their FastPass and then Mommy and Lexi went. Lexi was just beaming and loves this ride so much. She was so proud to have ridden it at night in the dark.

We had to skip the dinosaur ride since it took so long to get there and Bill thought we should skip the Navai’i River as there was no way we could make it from Everest to Pandora in 9 minutes. Challenge accepted. I turned on my good old speed walking pace and we arrived there at 7:55. We were the second to last people they let on the ride. The Navi’s River is a super mellow ride through a little river–what makes it cools is the entire ride is dark but glows with black lights. The whole land of Pandora is just amazing. I wish we hadn’t been in such a rush and could have enjoyed it a bit more–especially at night. They have black lights everywhere and the sidewalks and trees are lite up to create this super cool environment.

By 8:30, we were on a bus to Magic Kingdom to soak up our last few hours with Extra Magic hours.You kids were starting to get tired, so I gave you a few suckers to give you a little sugar kick and keep you awake.

Daddy and Lexi headed over to Space Mountain while Mommy, Kate and William went on Winnie the Pooh–another favorite ride. After the ride was over, I knew we had pushed as far as we could with the two littles. They were tired and crabby. We grabbed some ice cream as we walked over to space mountain to wait for Daddy and Lexi. We did a quick rider switch and Lexi got to go on Space Mountain again with Mommy. Although the ride was pretty fun. I was fairly nervous for my Lexi. We were going pretty fast, couldn’t see anything and I was worried about her head bobbling around to much and getting some whip lash.

At was just about 11:00 as we walked off the ride. Lexi climbed into the stroller and was sleeping in less than 5 minutes.

What a day! What a trip! What an experience. Daddy and I took our time walking down main street and just enjoying the beautiful way everything is lit up, listening to the chatter of people reminiscing their days and the smell of the home-made chocolate as we walked down Main Street.

Although we only had 3 days in the parks, we filled them to the brim. We are exhausted and looking forward to the second part of our trip, which should be much more relaxing. But our hearts and our memories are so full. It really was the experience of a lifetime. We have every intention of going back when Kate is older and can go on almost all of the rides and it will be magical then too. There is just this different level of magic, to watch your kids experience this for the first time, the awe from giving characters a hug or having them go on their first roller coaster. It is something I hope to never forget and am so grateful to be able to experience this.

Love,

Mama

DisneyWorld, family vacations, Kate, Lexi, William

DisneyWorld Magic Kingdom (Day 3)

peanutsmiles

Lexi, William & Kate,

Today was a dream. I LOVED seeing the sparkly twinkle in your eyes, hearing the awe in your voices as you met characters and feeling the adventure in your souls as your grabbed a hold of my hand during ride. True Joy.

Today started with us packing up all of our luggage and dropping them at coincerage as we were moving to stay at the Wilderness Lodge for the remaining two nights of our trip. If you do a split stay, Disney will transfer all of your items for you to another hotel free of charge–they even will refrigerate items for you!

Next we hopped on a bus to Magic Kingdom (around 8:00ish), matching shirts and all for our 8:30 breakfast reservations at Crystal Palace with Tigger, Pooh, Eyeore and Piglet. The park doesn’t technically open until 9:00 but they let people in around 8:00 to take pictures, shop around on Main Street etc.. We took advantage of the low crowds and got another family picture in front of the castle, with our family shirts on.

Breakfast was amazing! It was a buffet so I was a little hesitant on it, but it was so good. Bill had a Bloody Mary and I had a Mimosa and the kids each had chocolate milk. The kids had fruit and Mickey Waffles and sausage and donuts and bacon and bill had salmon and this amazing omelet. While we’re eating the characters came around for autographs and pictures and even did a little parade with all of the kids in the restaurant. Lexi and William LOVED seeing their beloved Tigger and Pooh pals, while Kate was slightly moody. However, when Piglet came by, she turned on the charm and gave a big hug and smiled great for a picture.

One thing I continued to be so surprised about is the uniforms that cast members wear, whether they are working the front desk or picking up trash or serving food. They look like they are the original uniforms from 50 years ago. The designs and patterns are pretty hideous and hot and are due for a little refresh.

With our bellies full and excitement to get the day started, we headed over the castle and went on the Little Mermaid Ride. Girls rode in one shell and boys rode in the other and we were brought through the story of the Little Mermaid with the songs, lots of black lights and an overall low-key easy ride, with a 5 min wait. Notice No-née (Kate’s Bunny makes frequent appearances in our pictures)

Next we headed over to ride the beloved Dumbo ride. Prior to coming, I heard that Dumbo was great because the kids can play in an indoor playground while you wait and then you get a buzzer when your near the front of the line. Unfortunately, it wasn’t busy enough for this to be open, so we waited the 20 minutes to ride. William loved controlling our Elephant and bringing us up and down. Kate, whined a bit that she didn’t like it and tried to climb into my lap, but didn’t have a complete melt down so we called it a win!

It was just after 10:00 at this point and Minnie, Daisy, Donald and Goofy had about a 20 minute wait for a meet and greet. The line was moving pretty slow, so Daddy and William went to meet Donald (Goofy was still sleeping) while Kate, Lexi and I waited to Meet Daisy and Minnie. Kate was starting to get tired so I bribed her with a sucker to meet Minnie and Daisy. Late loved Daisy and that she wears purple so she was pretty excited about that. Also, note that having DumDum suckers in the park bag is a total life saver. They are quick, easy, non-melting, non-messy snacks that can make waits a little more tolerable.

It was about 5 to 11:00 so we headed over to Peter Pan’s flight for the first past pass of the day. We made it there 3 minutes before it ‘expired’ even though they still would have let us on. We hopped aboard our ship and flew through London and Neverland to see the mermaid lagoon, Captain Hook, and the tick-rock croc. I’m not sure what it is about this ride, but it is one of my favorite more low-key rides.

Our next FastPass, an 11:00 ride on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was ready. Daddy and Lexi went first, Oats passed on riding as he thought it might be a little to scary for him, since he only just turned 5. We got our Rider Switch set up and William, Kate and I went to get a snack–a Peter Pan Float, which was Lime Dole Whip with Sprint and it was delicious!!

After Lexi and Daddy rode, Mommy and Lexi went and Daddy went to go get some Cotton Candy. This ride was pretty fun. It is the big hot roller coaster of Magic Kingdom at the moment and lines are easily over 2 hours for it. Our FastPass had us in and out in about 20 minutes. The coaster doesn’t have any kind of clicking sounds as it goes up hills and the cars will sway side to side in stead of front to back. Lexi loved it and got so excited to put her hands up. She kept saying, ‘Mom, you gotta put your hands up. Wait until this next part, it is so fun.’ We started to find out we have a little roller coaster junkie on our hands. Your Mom and Dad couldn’t be more excited about this as we both love a little adventure.

Enchanted Tales with Bell was across the walkway from Sever Dwarfs and the wait was about 20-30 minutes so we hopped in line as it was an experience the whole family could enjoy. It was pretty cute. They take you in through what looks like Belle’s home and then bring you to a room that has a huge magic mirror which comes alive and invites you to walk through, it to where the wall disappears. You are then brought into Belle’s room inside the castle where the dresser comes to live and gives out parts to the kids to participate in a mini play. We did a quick dress rehearsal before arriving in the Ball room, where we got to meet Belle take a picture with her and act out the story of Beauty and the Beast. This was a great low-key experience that was also air-conditioned, which was fantastic as it was sunny and starting to get really hot.

After this, Lexi and I had a FastPass to ride Splash mountain at 1:25, we made our way to the other side of the park. William opted out of riding so Lexi and I made our way through the line and rode the iconic splash mountain. The ride itself is pretty long and a little odd, but sitting next to Lexi and feeling her adrenaline rush as her body tensed up as we went down the big drop was exhilarating. She was smiling so big and was so proud of herself for doing it. Such a fun moment.

When we got off, we tried to find our photos, but couldn’t and then discovered that Lexi’s magic band had fallen off. We approached a cast member in the store and they back-tracked through all of the cars until they found our picture. Sure enough, she was wearing her band in the picture, so we new if feel off somewhere between the drop and the photo board. In the picture, they identified the log we were riding and and when it came back around for new guests to ride, they found her sweet pink Lexi band sitting in it.

While Lexi and I rode, William and Kate both feel asleep in the stroller for a little nap. Bill and William had our last scheduled FastPass for the day on Big Thunder Railroad so Lexi took his spot and was giddy with excitement to go on another big coaster.

While they were doing that, I headed over to the Be Our Guest restaurant for our 2:15 reservation. I checked in, but ended up leaving as it was going to be just too much to try and squeeze that in with two sleeping kids.

Instead we went to get a spot to watch the parade. We got a great spot, right on an isle and front row. Holy smokes was it hot though. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was 85 degrees. Don’t get me wrong, it felt amazing, but I was so sweaty and a little crazy with the sunscreen to make sure the sleeping kiddos weren’t getting burnt in the strollers. We waited about 30 min and I even snagged another Peter Pan Float to enjoy since it was so good. The parade was amazing. The floats, the costumes the dancing, the music, everything was just executed perfectly and it was so entertaining to watch. Of course, Daddy was more intrigued with the engineering elements of the floats and how they were doing different maneuvers.

Once the parade was over in our area, we tried to high-tail it to the front of the park and head back to the Wilderness lodge to check it out and get a quick break before Lexi and I had to be back for her Bippity Boppity Botique appointment at 5:15.

One of the nice things about the Wilderness Lodge is it is a 10 min boat ride away from Magic Kingdom. This hotel was beautiful. The detail is remarkable. The lobby is all open with billowing logs that take you from floor to ceiling and a massive two-sided fireplace. The furniture fits in with the aesthetic of huge wingback chairs, fabric that mimics Native American culture. There is also a little creek that begins in the middle of the lobby and the trickling sound and vastness of the space create a very calm and relaxing vibe, it feels very zen.

When we arrived at our room, we discovered our bags hadn’t arrived yet. I headed down to concierge to get two bags. I took a lightning-speed shower to cool down and change into a clean shirt and then Lexi and I headed back to Magic Kingdom for her appointment. When we got down to the boat–one was just pulling away and I thought we were going to be super late to her appointment, but we ended up only being 5 minutes late.

The Bippity Boppity Botique is quite the experience. They doll the girls up like a true princess, have a little photo session and let the girls feel like a true princess in the most magical place on earth.

The first part of the process was meeting with her first Fairy Godmother in a dressing room and picking out a hair style. Lexi really wanted this pink and blue hair (like the descendants) but the hairstyle wasn’t very princess-y, so she picked out another one and then we purchased the pink and blue hair piece separate.

After picking out a hairstyle, you can opt to pick out a princess dress. I had gotten the tip that these dresses were marked up and you should bring your own. Lexi had danced to ‘When you wish upon a star’ the previous year and her dance costume looked just like a Cinderella dress so we used that instead. Throughout the entire experience, everyone was referring to you as ‘Princess Lexi’ and is this your mother the Queen? Can you ask the Queen for this, or Princess, would you like some water. It is these small details that just add to make everything magical.

After selecting the hairstyle and getting dressed into the princess gown, she was whisked away to the salon to get her hair done, nails painted and a little bit of makeup put on. There are photopass photographers there capturing every moment of the transformation. When they are finally complete, they do a big reveal with the photographer where the spin the princess around to see her final look. Lexi, you were shy and conservative during this moment, but as soon as we stepped out of the salon, you couldn’t stop beeming. You loved the whole experience of being done up

The final step was having a mini photo shoot done. I swear my innocent 7-year-old suddenly looked 14. They had a glass slipper and few other props to make the experience complete. On the way out of the store, you discovered this light up bow that you needed to have. You were so excited about to show Mrs. Schwartz and your friends, I just couldn’t say no.

Our final planned event for the day was to enjoy a princess dinner all dolled up. However, the dinner was at Akershus in Epcot at 6:40 and we were probably done around 6:10 or so. You hoped in the stroller and we ran through the park and to the monorail to get over to Epcot where Daddy, Kate and William were waiting for us. This took SOOOO much longer than I anticipated. We got on a the monorail, which brought us to the transportation center. We then needed to get off that monorail, go down the ramps to that and then up another set of ramps to get to the monorail that would take us to Epcot. We ended up being about 30 minute late to our reservation. Again, thanks to the wonderful-ness that Disney is, they quickly moved things around and made it seem like no big deal.

We had another amazing meal. Bill ordered the meatballs and a Norwegian beer and I had the steak and a glass of wine. We were joined by Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, Belle and Aurora. We hadn’t met many of these princesses yet so it was fun to get their autographs and a picture with them and being dressed up as a princess yourself. You received SO many compliments on how beautiful you looked and how much people loved your dress.

The night was concluded with the Epcot fireworks display. These were different but still amazing as they were done over the world showcase lake. Part of the show was having jet skis that had really tall kites on them with fireworks on the end. So impressive.

Kate fell asleep prior to the Fireworks and Lexi and William zonked as we made our way back to the monorail. We then took our first monorail, transferred to the second and then got on a boat to head back to the Wilderness. Definitely not as convenient as I had imagined

When we finally got back to the hotel, our luggage still hadn’t arrived so Bill went up to wait for that while I went to order some food. Although we still had one more day, our dinning plan would expire tonight as our it was linked to our reservation at Pop Century and we couldn’t extend it with our stay at Wilderness. We had 1 unused kids quick service meal and 2 adult quick service meals and a whopping 18 snack credits. I purchased a bunch of candy to save for later and got some donuts, chocolate milk, a pizza and a few other items that we could put in the fridge and eat the following day. As part of our quick service meals, I was also able to get a beer for Bill and I. We enjoyed it out on our balcony and watched some late night Magic Kingdom fireworks. It was the perfect way to conclude our fun-filled day.

Love,

Mama