Let’s see, last we spoke, I told you about Halloween, even though it was after Thanksgiving when I was posting.  And now this blog will be about November and December but won’t be much about Thanksgiving proper. I don’t think it was intentional, but I didn’t photograph Thanksgiving at all.  I don’t think I even had the camera with me.

It was a nice time.  An overnighter at my parents from Wednesday to Thursday which included dinner out on Wednesday followed by an impromptu visit to the bowling alley, sleeping at a hotel, and early Thanksgiving dinner at my Mom’s house.  This was done with as many of my extended family as could make it.

I used to love the big extended family get togethers. Would rush headlong into the midst of everyone, laughing, joking, bringing food, asking for participants for game playing. I felt at home, like one should with family.  But slowly, over time, things changed. Family dynamics shifted; obligations and priorities reorganized.  My jokes seemed less appreciated, so I didn’t make as many.  Innocuous comments I made were taken wrong, so I grew less willing to converse openly.  I showed up, but I held back.

Now I feel I’ve worked my way to a mddle ground where I don’t let my feelings get hurt as much.   I’ve done my best to accept that not everyone wants things the way they used to be so there was no sense trying to rekindle that.  The realization that maybe I’m not as Fab as I used to be.  Or thought I was.  Ha.

So what do you do when you realize certain people aren’t as open to being around you?  You turn to the people that you know ARE willing to be there for you, to love and appreciate you.  And you spend your time with them.  So that’s what I did.

One of the bigger accomplishments done in November was all of our Christmas picture taking!  Once again I bought Riley and Kaiden matching holiday dresses and took them to get their pictures taken.  This year I strayed from the traditional holiday reds that I had chosen for the past 3 years and went with lovely Christmas… BLACK.  Yes, it’ll be a Goth Christmas, everyone.  Sounds that way, right?  But not so much.

Put 2 pretty girls in black formal taffeta gowns, spruce them up with gold ribbons and bows and what do you get?  A couple of kids who look like sparkly enough to be hanging from the Christmas tree, that’s what! Look at these pics:

Then the photographer had Mike put on a “Santa hand” and hold a plate of cookies and milk.  The girls thought this was really funny, mostly because Mike was making weird faces and some decidedly Un-Santa like sounds while interacting with them:

Now that we had that picture taken, we were able to get those added to the Christmas card/newsletter that we sent out, which also had our family picture on the front.  We took this over Thanksgiving weekend, when Ryan was home.  He was only home from Friday to Sunday, so we had limited time to get it taken!  Only 9 or 10 tries to get this shot, which is pretty good for us.

I like this pic, although I’m squatted down which makes Ashley and Ryan appear taller than they are.  Foreshadowing of me in about 20 years due to bone loss and osteoporosis.  Yay.  Happy thoughts.

I’m sad that it printed kind of dark on the front of the card.  It looks like it was taken at dusk… or right before a tornado, for those of you in Tornado Alley who can relate to that.

Another good thing about Ryan being home for Thanksgiving was that he was able to do all of our front yard Christmas decorating, so we were again able to be seen from space.  You’re welcome, NASA.

The original decorating:

Including the newly added new light up dog, which replaced some random snowman that the Crazy Kid had taken out when he hit the house last year.  Riley asked me to take a picture of her “petting the new dog”  hahahaha:

After Ryan went back to school, Riley and I scouted Big Lots and added a new Santa:

But he was a very VERY BAD SANTA and after a week, spent most of his time like this:

Eventually he wouldn’t hold any air at all, so he became a quick casualty of Christmas.  Buh-bye Big Lots Santa.

We took a break from Christmas the week after Thanksgiving to go to Kaiden’s birthday party.  It was held at a place called Going Bonkers, and boy did we!  It’s one of those indoor, bouncy, climby, loud places that kids love and parents shudder over.  But that’s what we do for our kids… we go deaf.

Here are a few pics from the party:

Opening presents:

with some friends:

with Ashley and Scott:

with Grandma and Grandpa (who?):

Then it was quickly back to the Work of Christmas, which is what the rest of December was all about.  We spent a few days decorating inside.  Here’s the “formal tree” which I added black to, in addition to its usual silver, gold, and white.  Unfortunately the black ribbon didn’t show up on film so it looks like I have only sparse gold ribbons.  I added thicker ribbon later but never took a pic.  Imagine thick black ribbons in between the gold ribbons.

On top of the piano:

The Nativity on top of the dining room armoire, which Riley stood on a ladder to set up and which we acccessorized with lights–the modern day version of the Star rising in the East:

The girls’ Christmas pictures on the buffet:

And a random display of Christmas pictures, past and present, which was a new thing to set up this year:

One of my favorites is this one of Riley and her classmate Cohen as Mary and Joseph in a picture from last year’s preschool.  I like that Cohen is helping to right the baby Jesus that Riley has tipped head down a little too far:

And I love this picture of Michael taken at his school a couple of years ago:

And here’s the family room, aka THE SNOWMAN ROOM.  I still like it, but I almost hated it this year.  Not sure what that means for next year.

You’ll notice in that last picture that an Elf is sitting in a tree amongst all of the snowmen.  Mike brought home the book The Elf On The Shelf last year which is a book about an elf that comes to a child’s house to spy on that child and go tattle tale back to Santa with a report on that child’s behavior.  Awesome, bring one of those spies to our house!   And he did.

So, this year, like last year, an elf appeared every morning, in a new spot, after having disappeared the night before to take her report back to Santa regarding Riley’s behavior.  Last year we had Buddy the Elf flitting throughout the house; this year was Jovie, a girl elf (named after the girl in Riley’s favorite Christmas movie, Elf).  You can tell she was a girl because she had a skirt and ribbons on.  And she peed sitting down.

Here she is close up in that tree:

She was quite fun to find every morning. Riley would jump out of bed and announce she had to find Jovie!  Occasionally she was stumped as to where she might be, so I had “look” for her myself.  Together we would always find her.  I only had a problem once when I had an early morning lapse as to where she had been placed.  Remember Mike is the one who was in charge of all of this and he was only home 2 mornings a week when she woke up.  I was the advent calendar filler for the month of December and was doing an admirable job forgetting that half the days.  How could I cram “elf rememberance” into an already ailing memory?  Plus it was MORNING, for elf’s sake.

Here are a couple of the places Jovie was found:

Riley still talks about Jovie, wondering if she comes by to visit, if she’s happy at the North Pole.  She knows Jovie gave Santa the letter that she wrote (hand drawn pic of Jovie at top of Santa letter):

because she got everything she wrote about.  I love that she included her brothers in there.  And no, I didn’t lead her to write that; I just transcribed the words as she said them.

One morning Mike took Riley to Home Depot for one of their Free Crafting Mornings, or whatever they call it.  It was so busy, they ran out of the mini orange Home Depot aprons.  Sadness.  But here she is painting her Snowman napkin holder:

And here’s the final product, set alongside the salt and pepper set we’ve had for years:

And what would Christmas be without a warbly preschool Christmas program?  I guess we’ll find out in a couple of years.  Meanwhile, here’s how it looked this year.  Dressed and ready to go:

Riley with her teacher:

Their art projects on display that I looked at before the show started… which one is Riley’s?

This one!  When I see it I picture Santa dancing and chanting something rappish about chimneys and getting all “up in here, up in here”

So here the kids are ready to sing… or be called out in a lineup:

All of the songs had gestures and pantomimes:

And some had props:

It was a fun little program… little as it lasted no more than 15 minutes.  The theme was Christmas Around The World, so we were treated to 3-5 year olds’ interpretation of Feliz Navidad in Spanish, and Stille Nacht (Silent Night) in German, as well as other standard Christmas fare.

My child, ever the Texas Rangers fan, asked at one point during the Christmas season if Feliz Navidad was us singing Merry Christmas TO FELIZ.  She was referring to Neftali Feliz, one of the Texas Rangers pitchers.   So now when I hear the song on the radio, I imagine a big group of carolers outside of Feliz’s house serenading him.  I think that’s what she was imagining too.

Our other December Christmas activities included multiple trips to Grapevine.  Main Street in Grapevine is all decorated and lit up and a fun, festive place to be.  We will definitely make going there an annual tradition.  Here are a few pics from that evening out:

Riley with some of the decorations on the lot:

Then Michael got in for some posing–here he is FREEZING like he really is with a polar bear:

and random shots of us at the various displays at “Santa’s Workshop”

Then Riley asked to go in and look at one of the stores that sold toys and Christmas decoration and ornaments.  Just as we stepped in, we were startled to see this guy, so we snapped a picture:

Then next night we went back to Grapevine, this time to spend some time at the Gaylord Texan Opryland, or whatever its full name is.  They had the Shrek Ice Exhibit there, so we saw all of the decorations in the regular part of the hotel (which included–for a nominal fee–a character meet and greet with many of the Shrek Characters and lots of Christmas decorations), stayed overnight at the hotel, and saw the Ice exhibit the next morning.  It was fun, but way too crowded.  If we do it next year it will NOT be on a weekend.

Here was our first indication that we’d see Puss In Boots throughout the weekend.  He is, by far, Riley’s favorite of the Dreamworks characters.

Real candy house inside the Gaylord.  This is the side:

And this is the front:

They had each of the 8 reindeer made into various characters.  We didn’t find all 8, but here’s Donner having issues with his outdoor lighting.  Definitely could relate to him:

And here’s an elf making a balloon animal for Riley.

You’d definitely know he was an Elf, even if you sneaked up on him and saw only his shoes:

She picked the rare Candy Cane animal for him to make for her, ha.

We found the area for the Character Meet and Greet.  Riley was a Pro at this, after having done the many Greets at Disney, and she was SOOOOO excited to meet Puss In Boots.

Then she made the rounds and met Po, of Kung Fu Panda fame:

The lion and two of the Penguins from the Madagascar series:

In Madagascar, I love you most of all, Penguin:

Then we left the Gaylord and went into Grapevine to eat.   The food at the Gaylord is very expensive and not really that great.  I don’t mind paying for really great food, and I don’t mind mediocre food if it’s reasonably priced.  But expensive and marginal together just pisses me off.  So we decided it made more sense to eat off site.  We tried a couple of places before finding Love & War In Texas, which used to be Traildust Steakhouse way back in the day.  Looked pretty much the same in there, but no big slide running down the middle of it.  Too bad.

I tried to take a couple of pictures.  Both of the ones I got of Michael show his nose running, and who wants to see that?  Riley was starting to get tired of smiling for pics, as you can tell in this self portrait I took.  I had no idea what she was doing (as I’m the one taking the picture of us) until it was taken and I turned the camera around.  She did this 3 different times, in varying poses, so I quit.

To pass the time we drew a nautical picture on the back of her kid’s menu.  Every sea creature she could think of is in there somewhere:

Then back to the Gaylord for one more quick walk around, a stop for a snack to take back to eat in the hotel room, and then bed.  The next morning we went down to see the Ice Exhibit that we had purchased tickets for 2 months before.  We were in line just before 11:00 when I dug out the sheet with our reservations printed on it… and Mike and I realized our tickets had been for 10:00 that morning.  Holy crap.  How had we both missed that?

I had a horrible sinking feeling that we were going to be told “too bad so sad” and either have to leave, or cough up another $90 for 4 tickets.  My head was swirling, thinking of various excuses, stories, plans… when the lady took the paper, squinted at the time and told us to get in line, quickly, for the 11:00 show.  Thank you, baby Shrek!  Whew.

The line to get in, even with a reservation, was very long.  Riley got very antsy, as did Michael.  And did we mention Michael’s nose was running?  Like a leaky faucet.  Just kept a-comin’.  And the cold air in the area before we got to the Ice part wasn’t helping.  Once we were actually in the Ice area, all noses stopped running as they were frozen shut, but then they started again with a vengeance as soon as you walked out.  Luckily the Ice people know that, and had supplied tissue dispensers all along the path to leave.

But before all the snot started a flowing, we had to get through.  So here we are, just about to go inside.

Once inside we were free to take as many pictures as we wanted, although we were warned to keep our cameras close to our bodies as the temperature was cold enough to mess with the internal workings of some cameras if left waving out in the cold too long. I didn’t take a lot of pictures because it was hard to take a picture with my gloves on, and hard to get my fingers to work with my gloves off. But I got a few.

Here’s Riley with Shrek and Donkey.

Notice the parka? Unless you are wearing a very heavy coat, you have to wear the ones they give you. Actually you might have to wear one anyway. I can’t remember if anyone was wearing a “non regulation” coat in there. The parkas they gave us were warm, and they had hoods but they had no pockets. I had brought hats, gloves and scarves for whomever wanted them. Michael was good with a hat, but refuses gloves. I had on my scarf. Riley pulled up her fleece hood. Mike wore none of the proffered items. I stopped asking why years ago.

Here’s Riley posing with Puss In Boots again:

And a couple of us with random characters:

The last thing we did before leaving the freezing part of Ice, was go down the free ice slide.  Well, Riley and I did.  We didn’t try to get Michael to maneuver the ice steps with the ice railing to go down the ice slide alone.  You couldn’t go down in pairs.  There’s no photographic evidence that Riley and I slid as I’d given the camera to Mike but hadn’t reminded him to use it.  The slide was fun, but enough was enough.  We were cold.

We all left the freezing part of Ice, wended our way along the path to take us out of that area, wiping and blowing our noses as we went.  We walked through the gift shop where Riley searched in vain for a Puss In Boots keepsake, but had to settle for a Donkey plush animal.  We did find the real character of Shrek, and Riley posed for a pic.  She was a little nervous with Shrek as he was a REALLY big dude, but after only a moment’s hesitation, she walked up and gave him a hug.

My overall review of Ice as an activity is that it’s very impressive.  They show a video explaining how labor intensive carving all of the ice characters and settings are.  You are literally walking on, under, and by ice carvings.  All the sets, the props, the characters, everything–all made of ice.  The drawback was it was a very VERY long line for this exhibit.  And it was very VERY crowded once we were inside. So again, very cool thing to see… very COLD thing to see… but we will never again do it on a weekend. Just stupid on our part.

Back out in the Gaylord, we opted to do the Gingerbread decorating.  We bought a Gingerbread Family kit and sat at a table to work on our creations.

Here Riley and I show off our two Gingerpeople:

Mike and his Gingerbaby:

And the whole Stinkin’ Gingerbread Family, puppy and kitty included:

Included with our Gingerbread purchase were two coupons to go and see Gingy, the Whiny Voiced Gingerbread man from the Shrek movies.  Anyone else think he sounds like Mr. Bill from the old Saturday Night Live skit?

Michael had no interest in seeing Gingy (he was just enjoying getting warm again, after the hellish experience that Ice had been for him, ha) so I took his ticket and got a couple of Gingy pics with Riley:

Then we went home and Mike went to the last home game for the season for the Dallas Cowboys, while I did laundry and fed everyone grilled cheese sandwiches.  Busy weekend.

Later that week we went BACK to Grapevine to Outdoor World to see Santa.  We had gone there last year and it was the first time Riley had walked right up and sat on Santa’s lap and talked to him about what he wanted for Christmas.  I will keep that picture in a frame forever!  This year was no different, and Santa was actually the same Santa, so up she walked.  Here you can see her having a good convo with the jolly fellow:

Of course when I asked her what she’d asked him for she said something that turned out to be a completely NEW item.  She’d never mentioned it before EVER.  So I was having to remind her that she’d already sent a letter and talked to Santa earlier in the week and maybe it might be too late to change her order.  This was one of those weird parenting moments when I felt more than a little awkward compounding the regular Santa lie with another Santa lie.

After seeing Santa, Riley rode the free carousel they have there, just like last year:

Then we played some random Outdoor World shooting games and looked at the fish swimming in the indoor pond.  Not so Christmassy, but the place is what it is.

The next day, after school, I took Riley to Highland Village (what?  not Grapevine?) to do what has become a tradition for just she and I.  We go see the decorations including ”the big tree” and eat a cookie at the Nestle cookie store.

That weekend was my extended family’s Christmas get together.  “Real” Christmas was supposed to be spent at everyone’s In Laws, if they had them, so we had to find an alternate date to have our Christmas.  We had it on Sunday the 18th, at our house.  I had decided on a Mexican theme for dinner, as I figured everyone would have a traditional Christmas dinner the following week.  I volunteered to make pulled pork tacos, chicken enchilada casserole, regular beef tacos, beans, rice and various desserts.  I get a little stressed out just hosting things at my house for large groups, much less making food for large groups of people when I don’t think of myself as a very good cook.  So the few hours before everyone got there I was not exactly a chippper little elf.  Nope, Jovie wanted nothing to do with my grumpy little ass.

Luckily all of the food was good.  We shall not speak of the rice that did not turn out well, and was replaced with authentic rice from the Mexican restaurant across the street at zero hour.  Thank you, Anamia’s.  Although with the amount of food we had, the rice probably wouldn’t have been missed if we had skipped it all together.

Since I was so busy being stressy and cooking, I didn’t get a lot of pictures.  But here are the few I did take.  This first one is always my fave pic to get:  the row of people on the couch, watching the mandatory football game on the TV that most of them could not give a fig about:

with my new nephew in law, Alan… Junior.  Junior

and with my niece, where he belongs:

Riley and Kaiden in front of the mound of presents.  Believe it or not, they each only got one from that ginormous pile and did not squawk at all.  They were very good about helping to “deliver” presents and “help” anyone with unwrapping who needed it.

Riley’s gift:  BABY ALIVE!!!

with my nephew, Jason, who doesn’t like taking pictures with me… but he did a good job here:

That night, exhausted from the housecleaning and food prep and serving and interacting and talking, all I wanted to do was put on my jammies and veg in front of the TV.  Ryan’s thought?  LET’S MAKE A CAKE!!!

Not just any cake.  This was a cake to take to his girlfriend’s house when he went to spend Friday afternoon with her and her family for Christmas.   Eat dinner, do a gift exchange, decorate some cookies.  Bring a cake.  Bring a cake?  Okay fine, bring a cake.  On Friday.  Today was Sunday, plenty of time.

But Ryan’s brain doesn’t work with the same clock as mine.  Once an idea is implanted in his head, it must be carried out as soon as possible or… or… or WHAT I have no idea as I’ve never been allowed to find out.  So he started taking out pans and ingredients for a snowman cake.  Round pans?  Got ‘em.

I thought that would be cute–three circles, in varying sizes, making a snowman on a flat board.  NO no no no no no no no…  he wanted vertical.  3-D.  He even drew it out:

And he stayed up, alone (cuz by God I was getting into my jammies and vegging), baking layers of cake.  When I suggested getting a couple of boxes of cake mix to make the cake, he did everything but spit on the floor he was so appalled by the suggestion. Why not just make a cake with garbage and rat feces, the expression of disgust on his face said.  So, with  a home made cake recipe that he had in his HEAD from some other time he had made a cake, he stayed up until 1:00 in the morning constructing the body of the snowman, layer by layer.

And after I brought home the candy pieces from the list he had left for me (see notes by snowman sketch up there) he had this beautiful creation

to take to his girlfriend’s house. On Friday. SO glad it was done by Monday afternoon. Whew! Just in the nick of time.

It was pretty impressive.

Meanwhile earlier on Monday, we had gone to Michael’s school for a little Christmas party.  Since my parents were still in town from the Sunday family gathering, they came along.  We saw a slideshow of all of the activities they’ve done throughout the year, got a gift for each of the students, and had some refreshments.  It was a nice little gathering.

Here’s a picture of Michael’s class, that we all got in a frame.  You can see he’s the only ambulatory (walking) child in his class:

And here he is, watching the slideshow in the recliner chair, and falling asleep quite often as he had just been put on an antibiotic for a sinus infection 2 days earlier.  Yeah he had a really crappy weekend, while we had the family Christmas party, poor kid.

Loved the blanket they gave to each of the kids.  We knew Riley would love a “Jaggy” blanket, so Michael’s teacher stitched her name on a piece of material I sent in, and Mike tied together a blanket for her.  Here they are side by side on the bed:

Had to sneak this pic in here.  Somewhere during the week, Riley decided to dress up as Santa and of course she needed a reineer.  So here is Snickers being the best Reindog ever, with Santa Riley. 

On the last day of school, Riley’s class had a party.  The kids had fun eating pizza and cupcakes and then making two crafts.

This was the first craft they made–a stickered picture frame, complete with a photograph taken sometime earlier during classtime.  She liked the random hat and scarf stickers she got to put on all of the characters:

Then the kids all made reindeer antlers.  Some of the kids used leftover Red dots to make themselves into Rudolphs.  When the red dots ran out, the kids improvised:

And the whole class, some with colored noses, some not:

Riley posing with her friend Cohen.  I love that he’s looking at my camera while she’s looking at his dad’s camera.

Now that school was out, we did the regular last minute Christmas stuff like wrap presents and make more cookies.  And Riley is always good about entertaining herself with art projects.  She dragged out the paints and paper and painted this free hand.  Can you tell what it is?

When I guessed it was The Nativity, Riley said, “No, it’s the Baby Jesus play.”   I told her that particular scene–Jesus, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, etc–was officially called the Nativity, so we’ve expanded our Christmas vocabulary this year.  And it’s awesome to be able to recognize what she’s drawing now.  No more of that stuttering, staggering, hope-I’m-right-and-don’t-hurt-her-feelings-being-wrong guessing!

And now it was finally Christmas Eve, so let the festivities begin.  Because obviously, up to this point, we’ve been really short on festivities.  Ahem.

We had Ashley, Kaiden and Scott over for Christmas Eve brunch.  Nothing traditional about that, it just happened that was the only time that worked.  They already had plans for Christmas Eve proper and we were driving to Oklahoma on Christmas Day, so if there was going to be any interaction, it had to be Christmas Eve during the day.

I made a couple of new recipes which turned out to be quite tasty and are now in the rotation for the future.  Seriously, a potato dish with bacon, cheese, sour cream and ranch dip mix?  Bring it on.   Often.

We did our gift exchange, and our gift to Kaiden was a “treasure chest” (Riley called it) with clothes, toys, puzzles and dress up clothes including an awesome red sparkly dress.  Kaiden wanted that put on immediately.  Then she and Riley went upstairs so Riley could plunder in her own treasure trove of dressup items.  They came down looking like this:

Sweet little princesses!

With Round One of Christmas weekend over, they went on their way and we got ready to go to Christmas Eve mass.  Of course it was drizzly and yucky out (this seems to happen a lot on Christmas Eve around here, oddly enough) so the pics you’ll see reflect flattened hair, etc.  Well on me anyway.  We made it all the way through Communion, which is big for us, especially since we’d gotten there 30 minutes early to get a seat.

After church, we went out to dinner.  That IS a tradition that we’ve had as long as I can remember since we’ve been married.   Church, out to eat, make cookies for Santa, watch a Christmas movie, go to bed.  Here we are, eating at Romano’s Macaroni Grill.

That toy is Riley’s Zhu Zhu pet that she got from Kaiden for Christmas.

After we got home, we took off our damp clothes and Riley and I changed into our matching Christmas Eve pajamas.  2 years ago, when she was 3, I started this tradition with her by buying matching fleece pj’s in red with polar bears on them.  They fit her for 2 years, but this year started to look a liiiiittle short in the sleeve, so I got another pair that will hopefully last another 2 years.  This year’s model was blue fleece with snowmen.

You can’t tell in the picture, but those things STUNK.  I mean, I’ve had clothes that have a “new clothes” smell.  Something in the dye or whatever.  No.  This was a weird, deep, funky, awful smell.  Had traces of garlic mixed with an unidentifiable heavy chemical smell.  I can’t even describe it other than to say it was nauseating.  I wore them for the picture and for part of the evening, but I couldn’t make it through the night in them.

I tried washing them, but the smell clung.  I wrote to the company, but they never responded.  So after we got back from Oklahoma I just kept washing them.  I made the mistake of washing them with other clothing items and that made the whole load smell, so I separated them and washed them on their own after that.  The smell grew fainter and fainter with each washing, but it took at least 7 full washes, including 2 times with a small amount of bleach, to get them to the point that I could wear them again.  I knew I was taking a chance with the bleach, but I figured better splotchy than stinky.  But you know what?  You can bleach polar fleece and nothing happens.  I do it with Michael’s pajamas all the time, so I don’t know why I was worried.   Actually with the weird unidentified smell I was concerned they might explode in the washing machine with the bleach interaction.  But no.

Goodbye Weirdest.  Smell.  Ever.

Okay, so now sans stinky pajamas, we set about making Christmas Eve what it’s all about–greed, avarice and a visit from the Big Guy, Santa.  Last year Riley got a video from Santa on Christmas Eve, telling her he was coming to see her and talking about whether she’d been good and what she wanted for Christmas.  This year she got a video from Santa again and this time they added a section where a machine in Santa’s workshop tells if a child has been naughty or nice.  Here’s Santa talking to Riley:

And here’s the part where she was waiting to find out if she’s been Naughty or Nice:

Oh no!  The Suspense!  It is too much!!  (she looks worried, ha)

YESSSS!  On the Nice List!!

Another “techie” thing we did was to ”Catch” Santa in our home.  A friend of mine sent me a link with a code so that we could get a picture of Santa “visiting” our house.  You upload a picture of the room Santa should be in, put their picture of Santa in there and Voila!  Instant intruder!   Look!  Here’s Santa peering into his bag in our family room!

You might recognize that picture from previously in the blog when I showed a pic of the family room.  That’s the pic I used.  We actually did this on December 23rd and what I realized AFTER we had already downloaded Santa was that I should have taken a NEW picture because some of the stuff in the room wasn’t exactly the same.  And you couldn’t do a redo on the picture without paying for it.

There were two things I noticed.  First, the small picture in a frame sitting on the right side of the hearth was now on the breakfast bar.  Second, the Santa plate on the fireplace hearth was the one we use to put Santa’s cookies on when we set it on the coffee table.  Putting the picture back on the hearth was easy.  But the plate was trickier.  So after we did the cookie thing, I put the wooden plate holder on the hearth and said something to Riley about us needing to remember to put the plate back on the holder to stand it up on Christmas morning.

But then, lo and behold, SANTA must have put the plate back himself after he ate the cookies because there it is in the picture and there are the cookie crumbs all over the coffee table.  We laughed at Silly Santa being neat enough to put the plate back onto the plate holder, but not neat enough to clean up his cookie crumbs or put his glass in the sink.  Ho ho ho… er hahaha.

Of course then Mike had to have an explanation as to HOW he got that picture taken.  Basically the story started with “Well I had to get up last night to pee…” and ended with him sneaking the picture from in the kitchen.  It all sounded very plausible, as we are a big middle of the night peeing kind of family.

So what did Silly Santa bring her?  Her Disney Princess Castle–the one she’d seen at Disney World back in September and had been coveting ever since.

Her two faves from her stocking: baby Bolt and baby Merrick (she has these same stuffed animals in “regular” size but she liked that they were puppies for their dads)… and yes, her pajama shirt is on inside out and backwards.  Apparently she got hot while sleeping and took it off and then put it back on later.

This is the only picture I got of anyone else before the camera died.  I didn’t feel like stopping the unwrapfest to go find the other battery.  Besides, you can’t tell, but Ryan is saying “Don’t take my picture; don’t take my picture” in this picture.

Later, after she had played with the castle for awhile, I took a picture of it with all of the characters she got. It came with 5 princesses (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Belle and Jasmine) with their princes, plus a bunch of accessories (bushes, lamp posts, a carriage, a wishing well, etc) and then she also got a second set of princesses that included the 5 other “lesser” princesses in the Disney lineup–Rapunzel, Pocahantas, Tiana, Mulan and Ariel.  AND she got a small collection of Toy Story characters wearing Hawaiian gear that she insists on including with the Castle Collection.  So you can see it’s quite an eclectic mix at the Castle most days:

Our gift from Riley from the preschool class was this:

When we unwrapped it, Riley literally shrieked with laughter.  “It’s a PIECE OF WOOD!!” she yelled.  She found this hysterically funny and we have no idea why.  She would just laugh to herself and then point and say “See?  It’s just a piece of WOOD.”  When we asked if she had painted the Santa face, she nodded and said “Yeah. On that WOOD.” I’m snickering remembering how oddly funny she found that.

We had a leisurely breakfast of scrambled eggs and cinnamon rolls.  We stuck a candle in a cinnamon roll and brought in the Nativity Jesus so we could sing happy birthday to him.  Usually we have some cupcakes in the freezer, but the cinnamon roll made Jesus part of Christmas morning with us.

After breadfast we let Riley play with her toys for awhile, before we left to drive to Oklahoma and see Mike’s parents.  I didn’t mind driving on Christmas Day (we do almost every year) but I wanted her to play for awhile with her new things so she got that full “Christmas Morning” experience.  Plus it gave us time to shower and pack and clean up the mess that Christmas brings.

We got in the car just after noon, and drove to Bartlesville.  We were going by way of Broken Arrow, so that we could see the lights at Rhema Bible College.  Seriously the most awesome display of lights anywhere.  And it gets bigger every year.  Here are a few pics of the place.  The bridge:

A ton of trees wrapped in lights:

The American Flag, which was Riley’s favorite:

In front of the duck pond, which used to have 2 swans swimming in it.  Wonder where they went:

Me and my two boys:

Me and my man… hahahaha… man he looks tired from the drive in this pic:

After that we drove the last hour to Mike’s parents house.  His mom had made us homemade enchiladas and rice and beans.  So we ate our fill of those, plus desserts, and did our gift exchange with them.  Here’s a pic of Riley with Mike’s parents:

We stayed overnight there and ate a muffin filled breakfast the next morning.  We headed out about noon and drove through Tulsa to meet Mike’s friend Joe for some lunch.  Just can’t go through Tulsa without eating at Ron’s Hamburgers.  Ryan won’t let us.

After lunch Joe had a surprise for Riley.  He got this out of his car and handed it to her, with a big red bow over the player’s face.  As soon as she pulled off the bow, Riley hollered, “Nelson CRUZ!” without even pausing for a second.

Yep, a signed, framed picture of Nelson Cruz, one of her two very favorite Texas Rangers players.  We hung it next to her bed, over the fish tank.  So now, twice a day she feeds Goldie and looks at Nelson.

We took a couple of days to do nothing except hang out and play with Christmas toys.  Riley did a few more artsy projects, including this Santa pic that she pieced together from scraps of construction paper.  In case you were wondering, the “pile” to the right of Santa is all nine of his reindeers: 

I guess she remembered that Rip Rappin Santa from the preschool concert that they had made and wanted to attempt to assemble another one, on her own with scissors and glue. I was quite impressed when she brought it in to show me one morning–even more impressed that it was accompanied by toast and orange juice to eat in bed.

Then on Thursday, we put our Activities Caps back on and went to 6 Flags for Holiday in the Park.  Riley had never been to Six Flags (whuuuut?) and she was very excited.  We took Ryan’s girlfriend, Raye, with us.  It was a nice time, although the line to get in and get through security was beyond ridiculous.  We stood in a crowd trying to funnel through the security checkpoints for 45 minutes.

And when we went through the security scanners, guess who beeped the machine?  Riley and then Michael.  Not a piece of metal on them, nothing in their pockets, but those things beeped like they had artillery rounds strapped across their chests.  I lifted Riley’s shirt, patted her pockets, held up her feet so the guy could see she was “clean” and Mike did the same with Michael.  The security dude let us through.  I guess they didn’t look too dangerous.

Riley was very excited by the rides:

Michael a little less so, although he does enjoy them all… as long as they’re not too spinny

And here are Raye and Ryan waiting in line with us for the Runaway Mine Train, I think.  Right after his picture, my camera died.  I need to get he pictures Ryan took with his new camera that he got from Santa!

After Six Flags, we went to Cici’s for their pizza buffet dinner and then home.  I think we were only officially IN Six Flags for about 4 hours and rode about 6 rides, but that was enough to have Riley declare “This was the best day EVER!”  We’ll remember that the next time a Disney discussion comes up.  The Flags are much cheaper and closer!

So that officially ends Christmas and all of the hoopla leading up to it.  We had a good month of fun activities, but boy we paid for it.  We were drained by the time month end came and we opted out of hosting our annual New Years Eve party.  We debated it for awhile, but the thought of cleaning, cooking, interacting and being festive just sounded awful.  Ha.  And besides, would you want to come party with a couple who had become so frazzled, so overstrung and overdone, they had been reduced to looking like this by the end of 2011?

I didn’t think so.

So here it is, one year later, to the day.  January 6th.  Epiphany.  The day that marks the end of the Christmas season on the church calendar.  The day the 3 Kings, or Wise Men, are remembered for their pilgrimage to find the baby Jesus.  Although I have read that he was about 2 years old by the time they finally found him.  They didn’t show up the same night as the shepherds were there, despite what our over-crowded Nativity scenes would have us think. 

Long time to be walking, following that star.  And a LONG time for that to be shining so brightly.  Can’t you just imagine the people around the area Jesus was born, living with the star shining over head every night:  Turn that thing OFF already!  We can’t SLEEP!

I like to add my own little bible embellishments. 

But for us, today will forever be remembered as the anniversary of the day “that kid” (as we still refer to him, sometimes nodding in the general direction of his house just across the way) got into his car, drove away from his house, jumped the curb and slammed into our house, causing medium damage, extreme inconvenience and intense emotional upheaval.  Repairing the house, with the permits and labor and materials involved, took just under 5 months–that is a long time to be at the mercy of other people’s schedules and noise inducements.  Repairing our peace of mind, our sense of security, took longer… and may never fully reach the level of blissful ignorance we used to maintain.  Because, really, once someone randomly hits your house with their car, you’ve lost your equilibrium in the “what are the odds?” department. 

I’m not saying we dwell on it, curse about it, cry over it… not lately anyway.  We do get a little reminder every time we leave the neighbhorhood and drive by “that kid’s” house… which is pretty much every day.  And another reminder when we check the mail, or drive home, and see the pretty new stone columns that now grace our home as the upgrade we received upon discovering our existing brick was unmatchable… which is pretty much every day.  A small niggling little “we were really lucky” crosses my mind a lot.  A constant need to smash a lid down on the “what could have beens” is there too.  I don’t want my brain sifting through those embellishments.

We made sure to have all of the Christmas decorations down and out of the yard this year before this date rolled around.  And it worked out that Ryan left the house this morning to head back to A&M, as he’s going to spend 6 days on a work project in Alabama, helping to clear some areas that need rebuilding after last year’s tornadoes devastated that area.  And Mike went to work and will stay there, not coming home early to catch a flight to Houston like he was doing last year around this time.  I am fully clothed, not sick in my pajamas, and plan to stay that way. 

It’s weird to have mentally gone through this “preparation” (if that’s even what it was) as I don’t even think of myself as superstitious. But maybe, in the words of Michael Scott from The Office, I’m a little ‘stitious.  Nothing super.  At any rate, I’m playing the odds (heh) that nothing like that will happen to us today.  That our Epiphany will consist of nothing more enlightening than remembering to hug a little tighter, hold on a little longer, love a little deeper.

And for those of you who have no idea what I’m even talking about, here’s last year’s blog on our crazy End of Christmas… be forewarned, there is some bad language.  It was a bad language kind of day.

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Wrecking Christmas

It was one of those things you can’t anticipate. That you can’t safeguard against. That you can’t prepare for. Because if you tried to prepare for every possible contingency in life you’d never be able to move, or watch TV, or work on the internet, or eat a snack in your kitchen, or play the piano. And those were the things the five of us were doing in our own home on a Thursday afternoon when the unimagineable happened–a car crashed into our house.

From a damage standpoint it wasn’t that bad. The teenager driving the car smashed some of the brickwork on the front of the house. He realigned the front of our bedroom wall. He crushed a really nice tree we had just put in a few years ago. He tore up some other landscaping and some sections of the yard. He flung bits of his crashing car all over the lawn. He did a major assault on the 2-foot retaining wall between our house and the neighbor’s house. And he lent a decidedly unChristmas-like pall to our still decorated yard by trashing many of the lights and standing decorations.

Of course I say this “wasn’t that bad” not knowing what the actual dollar amount is to the house and yard. That bit of information will emerge next week when the adjustors start their estimates.

But most importantly “wasn’t that bad” meant nobody was hurt. Not even the driver.

The dogs were crated in our closet which received enough impact to buckle the lower part of the wall and snap the 10 foot hanging bar of clothes into 3 pieces raining clothes down on the dogs’ crates. Ryan was the first to remember they were in that part of the house when he saw where the car had hit and raced back to check on them. They weren’t even barking. I guess the sound of the impact cowered them into silence.

Mike was in the study, which was the room at the very front of the house that was actually struck by the car. While working at his computer, sending something by email for a meeting that was scheduled the following day at work, he says he heard “something” happening outside and thought there was an accident happening on the bigger street that runs parallel to our house. The Christmas decorations prevented him from looking out of the study window, so he ran to the front door after hearing the horrific crashing sound and realized that what he thought was happening a street over was actually happening in our front yard. As he ran outside he was yelling at me to “call 9-11″ although at that point I didn’t know what I was supposed to be telling a 9-11 operator.

Ryan was at the front of the house also, playing the piano as I said, but that was on the opposite side of the house from where the crash occurred. He did see the woman, whom we now know was the mother of the driver, come walking up the street immediately after it happened. But he never saw the car she was following coming around the corner, or the careening path it took through the yard. I think that may be a good thing.

Riley and I were watching TV in the Big Red Comfy Chair because I had been sick with a tummy bug and had been resting all day. The noise I heard that brought me running to the front of the house sounded like something really hard hitting the front door and my first thought was that Mike had decided to take down some of the outdoor Christmas lights and had lost control of the ladder. The “something hard” I heard would turn out to be car parts and landscaping rock flung to the front of the house hitting the door and walls.

Michael was the one eating a snack in the kitchen and was oblivious to everything. Sometimes I envy him that.

I’ll show you some pictures of the yard and what happened, as best we can reconstruct. The police concurred with everything we pieced together. The kid driving was too far gone to say much. I’ll get to him in a minute.

Here’s what the diagram shows on the police report, as to the trajectory the car took down the road and onto our property:

Here’s a picture of the front of the house so you can see the yard. You’ll notice we are all about the PEACE around here… ah, sweet irony:

…

The tiremarks as he entered into the yard, about 10 feet to the left of the mailbox:

Here is where he scraped the front walkway, taking off some chunks of concrete:

And here is where he took out a few more Christmas decorations as he hit the highest point of the yard:

…and went airborne. Yes, during this stretch of the yard he was apparently airborne, as evidenced by the lack of any tire marks or damage between the landscape damage in the last picture and the place where his car landed:

HERE being where the car landed, square on a Vitex tree and then running into the 2 foot retaining wall between our house and our neighbor’s house:

Damage to his car:

Damage to the house, on the wall outside the study and the front of the master bedroom. The post took most of the impact, knocking off brick and exposing the wood underneath:

.

.

this is the vitex tree on the left side of the house… the one on the right side used to look like this…

 

until the driver landed his car directly on it and crushed it and now it looks like this:

and the damage to the retaining wall between our house and our neighbor’s house:

Then there’s just a bunch of automotive pieces all over the yard. Hubcaps, bumpers, a side view mirror, we can’t take a step without getting tripped up by a piece of glass, plastic or metal… Volkswagen in case you were wondering:

a piece of one of the hubcaps I was talking about:

shattered glass in my azalea bushes from the rear side window:

Sigh.

So anyway back to the kid. I’ve heard various things about him since he landed in our front yard. He’s apparently one-third of a set of triplets. His mom commented that of these 3 teens he’s the only one who’s ever given her any trouble. He has been described as “the druggie” in the family (although the police report showed no drug or alcohol involvement at the time of the accident) and we know now that the last thing he said before he ran out of his house and jumped in his car was that he was going to kill himself.

That last part seems consistent with everything we saw and heard from him in our yard. When he climbed out of the car he was screaming, “Why didn’t I die? I should be dead. Why can’t I be dead?” and things of that nature. Not knowing this boy at all, I didn’t know at the time if he was just being highly dramatic about being involved in a freak accident, or if he seriously had a death wish that had not been granted in my front yard. What I did know was that he was imbalanced enough to make me afraid to go near him and I didn’t want Riley exposed to the things he was saying and doing. So Ryan and I took turns keep an eye on her and Michael inside until things were calmer outside.

Then a little while later, the police came and the driver began hollering random things and they had to restrain him and cuff him and hold him down on the ground, while he screamed “Just shoot me! Just kill me. It’s what I want anyway.” Hearing that confirmed to me that he was fairly earnest in his desire to die. And made me doubly glad we’d made sure to keep Riley in the house until this kid was safely in the squad car.

What we don’t know is whether he intended to use our house as an actual instrument of his death, or whether he was on his way to a different location and lost control of his vehicle, veering into our house as he was coming around the corner. I don’t know how much of an exact plan he had formed when he ran out of his house away from his mother with whom he had just had an argument.

I saw in the police report the number “1″ in one of the boxes which indicated he was wearing his seat belt, specifically a shoulder/lap combo. Which of course got me (and at least one other neighbor) wondering: do you set out to kill yourself in a vehicle and buckle yourself in with a seatbelt first? Was his plan to drive somewhere else to do himself in, somewhere that didn’t even involve the car? Or was he on autopilot when he got into the car, and buckled it out of habit. Then I started wondering how the police knew he was buckled in in the first place. By the time they got there, he was out of the car and in a fetal position beside my trash cans on the other side of the yard so how would they know if he was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident? So maybe the “1″ was just referencing that that was the type of seatbelt that the car was equipped with. I don’t know.

So many pieces of the puzzle that we may never have to solve this. Answers we may never get. And does it make a difference? Would I feel differently if I knew he HAD been aiming for our house, or if he HADN’T been aiming? And differently how?

I have run the gamut of emotions since this all happened. I’ve spent time feeling frighteningly vulnerable by the violation. This was my HOUSE we were in. The bricks and mortar and wood that protect me from the outside world. That protect my family. You’re not supposed to be that exposed to the outside world while doing inconsequentional things inside your house. Yet there we were.

The fear of what could have happened has caused me to spontaneously cry at varied and random times: while pulling up the Christmas lights in the yard so the tow truck could get the car out of the yard without causing any more damage to our once festive decorations; while letting a neighbor give me a reassuring hug; while trying to gather a semblance of normal and eat dinner a mere 2 hours after the crazy afternoon began; while driving by the totalled car which now sits in their driveway, a single block from my house; while reading the police report; while typing this paragraph….

And there was a lot of anger. I was angry at this teenage man-boy-child who was so wrapped up in his own small life that he didn’t care if his selfishness bled over onto us. How DARE he inflict himself on our family! How dare his issues become something we have to deal with! How dare his crap trail into our yard!

Yet as a mother I wavered and couldn’t harden my heart entirely to his plight. He was just a child. A child with obvious demons. I know that getting to that point in his life where he felt he had no recourse but to end his life, has to be a dark and dismal place to be. And I know that by me saying I wished he had thought about what he was doing when he decided to endanger my family with his recklessness doesn’t make a lot of sense. How much sense does it make for me to wish that he had been more rational during his most irrational mindset. If he didn’t care about the pain he was going to inflict on his own family, I highly doubt he was thinking about what might happen to my family.

Also as a mother there was a part of me that felt empathy toward his mother. How we who have parented or are parenting teenagers hope to never have to deal with all the things she was having to deal with with her child: drugs, rebellion, suicidal thoughts, losing control… the nightmare road we all pray to never have to travel.

And troubled by the almost treasonous nature of these empathetic feelings, my emotions fled back yet again to Mama Bear anger, sometimes bordering on blind rage: these are my BABIES in this house–do NOT cause harm to my babies, you stupid mother fucker teenage asshole.

You………Child.

Sigh.

So I’m still not quite where I want to be with all of this yet. We’ve done our best to see the obvious bright side: only material things were damaged; things that can be repaired quickly (hopefully) and painlessly. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was killed. And hey, we were planning to thin out the landscaping on that side of the house this year anyway… okay, maybe not quite ready for the levity yet.

I took this picture the morning after it happened. The juxtaposition of the items pretty much encapsulates the title of the blog. And no, I didn’t stage it–it just was what it was. The whole ordeal happened on January 6th, The Epiphany in the church calendar. The day the Christmas Season officially ends. And boy did Christmas come to a screeching halt for us.

We did a lot of fun things during the month, many family Christmas things.  Some were so fun I look forward to making them an annual tradition for as long as the family wants to do them.  Some were okay for a one time thing, but won’t bear repeating.  And some were mistakes we should never have made, but who knew?  We also eliminated some things that we normally do.  I’m still mulling whether those choices were good ones or not. 

I’ve come to realize that I’m enjoying certain things less and less.  Actively socializing with people takes a LOT more out of me than it used to.  I used to look forward to get-togethers and parties and small gatherings and meals with friends and family.  Now I go only if I feel an overwhelming obligation to be there, or if I’m in a super good mood.  Otherwise, meh, I let it go. 

I’m not sure when the change happened; when the mood shifted.  I’m finding close family activities to be my preferred way to spend time, with complete solitude running a close second.  I’m also learning that too much complete solitude tends to make the sad feelings push harder and last longer, so I don’t allow myself too much of that.  Enough quiet time to recharge; not enough to wallow. 

I thought about saying I’d make a resolution to blog more often.  But I hate resolutions.  The resolve to be better–healthier, stronger, more patient, more kind… whatever… I am what I am and the “ers” and “mores” come as they come.  Plus I don’t want to be the sad sack in next year’s New Years cartoon with the caption “I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I didn’t become a better person.”

Although that does make me laugh.

So here is my first blog entry in 2012.  Not so much peppy and perky.  Not a single photograph.  I’ll get to that next week when the house routine goes back to “normal” and I have some free time.  Until then–hey–I got my fingers on the keyboard and pecked something out.

In recent years the outdoor decor has consisted primarily of hand cut/hand painted tombstones embellished with cracks and clever commentary and even some dripping blood, then set in front of masks stuffed to look like decapitation victims.  We wheel out the wagon and drop a skeleoton in it, as though it’s being delivered to the graveyard… or maybe trying to escape from it.  We have things that scream as you approach the house to ring the bell–it used to be a doormat, now it’s a small LED blinking tombtone.  We don’t really sugarcoat Halloween too much.

The house has looked like this the last 3 years or so: 

(you’ll have to imagine it at night with the small white lights and orange pumpkins lighting your way up the path)

I’ve also been creative with costumes.  In years past, I’ve put together costumes for my kids that have garnered accolades, and a couple that have even won Major Awards.  This train costume that I made for Ryan out of a single cardboard box and pile of construction paper won 3 different contests in various places in Tulsa, including a $25 mall gift certificate.  Go paper, scissors, and glue! 

Although I think my favorite costume that he wore, which was much less labor intensive, was when he went as Captain Hook.  I dyed a white jacket red, pinned ruffles to one of his white shirts, put him in black tights with white knee socks pulled up over them, glued felt “buckles” to his shoes, and handed him a 99 cent plastic pirate hook made for just such a costume.  But the piece de resitance (accent not happening) was the hat.  I took a straw hat, and pasted black tissue paper pieces all over it, using a watered down Elmers glue solution–basically I papier mached his hat to turn it black.  And because it got all wet with the gluey water, it was malleable and I changed the shape to be higher on one side so that the feather–OH THE FEATHER–stood up and looked awesome.

Here he is, so proud and happy in that costume.  The feather is hidden a bit, but you can see it waving around back there.

He wore that costume two years in a row, ages 3 and 4. And that mustache still makes me laugh.

I have even put together costumes that still have people saying “I can’t BELIEVE you wore that” while others say “I can’t believe that was YOU.”  And of course they are referring to this masterpiece:

THAT mustache makes me laugh as well. 

So the point is, I can make costumes if a kid asks for one to be made.  But nobody did this year.  Not that it would have mattered if someone had, specifically RileyG.  Because in addition to being creative, I am fairly frugal.  And the money we laid out for the Belle costume at Walt Disney World back in September was definitely going to cover Halloween. 

I was a little sad that I didn’t get to put needle and thread to… wait a minute… that I didn’t get to staple or glue any parts together to create a costume.  Yes I said staple.   I actually made a balloon curtain for one of the kids’ bedroom windows out of a stapler and a glue gun.  Nobody could tell.  It’s just that I don’t sew.  I’ve tried; it’s not worth the frustration and the knots.  And the blood.  Oh, the blood.

But this year all I had to do was gather Riley’s hair into a beribboned bun, slap a little lip gloss and glitter on her face, throw the dress over her head, and secure the Belle crown.  Ta da!  Princess Belle.  

But hold on.  Before we got to the Big Day where she wore the costume, we had a few other Halloweenish events that I’m sure you’d like to hear about.  Two weeks before Halloween her preschool had a field trip to the pumpkin patch.  Here are a few pics from that:

Then, during the next couple of weeks at the house, we carved some pumpkins and did some decorating.

Then on the day before Halloween, we took Kaiden with us to another pumpkin patch.  Kaiden had spent the night with us on Saturday and the girls modeled their (who knew?) “matching” princess nightgowns:

I dressed their hair the same, ha:

And then they had fun in the pumpkins, on the rides and on the ponies:

THEN on Halloween, which fell on a Monday, Riley’s class had their Halloween party.  Mike and I were both able to attend the class party, although you can’t tell since I’m not in any of the pictures!

They had pizza for lunch, then frosted a cookie and decorated it with sprinkles:

Then they reached into the bucket of “brains” for a small prize. 

Ta da!!

And then that evening Riley got dressed for trick or treating, with her Hello Kitty basket from Easter.

 Kaiden came over and the girls went trick or treating together:

A Panda and A Princess.  Could be a book waiting to happen.  I’ve been known to dabble in story telling too, ya know.  I told you I can get creative.

Waaaay back in February we went to Glen Rose, Texas to see the animals and had THE BEST time.  Yet I never put virtual pencil to paper to blog on it.  I’ll dredge up the pictures to show you.  I’m sure they are now dusty with age… heh.

Fossil Rim Wildlife Center is a place in Glen Rose where you drive through an animal preserve and hang your head out the window, encouraging the animals to eat an $8 bag of hard, turdy-looking food pellets from your hand.  Animals with teeth.  And wet noses.  And globs of stinky, stringy spit oozing from them.  But this is nature and you will LIKE it.

From the side view mirror, you look like this, anxiously waiting for the animals to walk up to the car:

And suddenly this happens:

and you’re doing this:

or this:

which makes you do this:

and sometimes you don’t do this fast enough:

which makes some of you scream when they do this:

But all of you will be amazed when these:

actually do this:

At the midway point, you will all scramble to use the bathroom to wash off all of the animal spit and snot and food residue that has built up on your hands, so that you can sit and eat lunch:

(see how old this is? I’m still wearing my braces)

SO much fun.  We highly recommend Fossil Rim, and we plan to do it again in the spring, or maybe over Christmas break.

Next thing I failed to blog on was the Krewe of Barkus Mardi Gras Dog Parade in McKinney that we’ve attended for the past 3 years.  LOVE what people do to their dogs.  Er, with their dogs.  Er, um, from a costuming perspective… don’t make this sound worse than I’m trying to discuss here.

This is the parade that happens on the Sunday before Mardi Gras every year, and as I said, this is the 3rd year we’ve gone and I’ve blogged on the last two.  This year’s theme was Texas And The Wild West.  Or something to that effect.  So we saw a lot of cowboy hats and boots and saddles and leather and fringe.  Why are we so fringey in Texas?

Here’s the Grand Marshall/Queen Bee of the parade, Belinda, whom Mike used to work with:

This entry represented the Alamo in San Antonio.  The girl pulling the wagon is the niece of a lady Mike currently works with:

this made me laugh:

as did this one… although it’s not a monkey on his back, like I had originally thought:

Before the parade started, Riley and Kaiden had fun just petting random dogs and puppies:

I took a pic of this guy because he was awesome:

and with his owners, because together they were even more awesome:

and then Riley and I posed with the big awesome “steer”

which was fortuitous because the group ended up winning Best In Show, which was, dare I say it: awesome!

These True Texans won a prize and were very excited, although this dog’s horns were a bit on the sad side… and see? more fringe:

Yee Haw, y’all!  Seriously, you were inspired to say that at least once during the event.

I did blog on Riley’s birthday in March, and the Grande Ball in April, both very big events in the Spring. But I don’t think I mentioned our trip downtown to see Toy Story On Ice. 

We went with my friend Becky and her daughter Sydney. 

Riley and Sydney together:

Riley getting cold and agreeing to wear her sweater:

After the show, with their souvenir snow cone cups:

Also in April, Riley got invited to a Princess Birthday party. I scavenged in the closet and found this Cinderella dress-up dress in a box of things I’d bought for Riley.  Luckily it fit.  You’ll recognize it from the Disney blog:

the feet were my fave:

It was a fab party, wherein they decorated buckets to collect all manner of princess loot:

Got their faces glittered and their nails painted:

discussed Princess Hair with each other “Look at my princess hair… no, look at MY princess hair”… hahahahahaha:

broke open a pinata

and ate a beautiful castle cake

My, my, how quickly this group of beautiful princesses

 transformed into THIS group of silly princesses

And we shall probably never see any of these girls again because they were from last year’s preschool class.  All of them moved on to kindergarten in their own schools.  Goodbye Zoe and Mary and Callie and Anna and Kiersten and Elise…. Such is life… and such is the blog, to record these memories.

Did I blog on her Cheerleading Pep Rally?  I can’t remember, but I don’t think so:

She spent 2 semesters in Cheerleading and went from the shyest one in there to the LOUDEST one in there.  She has come out of her shell so much in the last year.  People, including classmates, who knew her in her 1st year of preschool, are now seeing her in her 3rd year of preschool, and commenting on her changes.  She’s more sociable, more comfortable, less bawling.  All good stuff. 

She opted out of cheerleading this year and is taking gymnastics instead.  I’ll do a blog on that in December when the semester ends and I get some good pics of her doing her gymnastics thing.

Did I blog on Mother’s Day?  I can’t remember, but I don’t think so.  We went out to Mother’s Day brunch with Ashley.  She’s a daughter AND a mother and here we are together:

I took a few pics of the two little girls, and then Mike took some of all of us girls.  None of the pics are great, but some are okay and others are downright weirdly funny.  Like this one of the four of us is okay:

while this one is on-purpose funny:

and this one is weirdly funny:

then maybe Kaiden got tired of all of the picture taking and sent me a subtle one-fingered message, hahaha:

In the afternoon it got really warm so we did an unplanned trip around and in the pool (Riley in; the dogs and I around):

then for dinner we went out to Snuffers.  This is a bad picture of Michael, but in this picture Riley looks a LOT like Ryan at that age, and Ryan wasn’t with us (sniff sniff), so I guess she was channeling him for me for Mother’s Day:

better picture of Michael… Riley who?

Then here was a day we had one of the few measureable bits of rain and Riley went a little nutso on the rain gear, stomping and dancing and singing… yes, singing in the… well, you know:

I mentioned all of the summer travels, including the beach trip to Galveston for my niece’s wedding that I blogged on, and I know I also blogged on my parents’ anniversary party, which brings us to Labor Day.  Not sure why I felt the need to get away for the weekend, but I did.  Maybe because August had been more chaotic than fun with school starting again and all of the energy that goes into that. 

At any rate, we ended up at Great Wolf Lodge for an overnighter.  This place is very well run (except for the concessions area, oy) but very expensive and very loud.  But I’m glad we did it, as we’d heard so much about it.   Here are a few pics from our stay there.

The Great Wolf himself… well, one of many really… but the only one who makes a water cascade happen every 5-7 minutes:

playing in a fountain:

attempting to cross on the ropes… which were too high so she ended up leapfrogging across the pads while Mike and Michael watched:

the big tube slides we all went down many times… yes, even Michael:

Mike and I lounging:

Michael lounging… he takes it to the exreme and within minutes was actually snoring:

the bloody knuckles he got doing… something!  We have no idea what happened while we were there to cause the injury–going down a waterslide?  scooping water in the shallow area?  no clue:

Me with the kids:

And Riley’s souvenir, a made-on-the-spot Great Wolf Wolf.  He came with a spa robe and slippers, hahahaha:

In October we attended a new event.  Well, for us it was new… apparently it’s been held in Grapevine for a number of years.  The Flutterby Butterfly Something Something.  I’d read about it in an email I’d gotten from the City of Grapevine.  Kids and animals dress up like butterflies, walk in a parade, see butterfly exhibits, do some crafts.  And it’s all FREE!  Woo hoo!  So we went. 

I dressed her in a frou frou skirt and butterfly wings.  She wanted her face painted, so I looked online for a butterfly face paint picture to use as a guide and thought her face came out okay for a first attempt.  Here she is ready to go:

Walking to the parade:

Quick history on the butterfly wings.  I ordered those from Gymboree years ago as an after-Halloween item that got discounted to $4.99.  Way back when I was buying Newborn wear.  They ended up being the wings she wore for her very first Halloween, when she went as a fairy.  Anyone remember this?

Ah, sweet girl.

Okay, back to the present day.  Here’s a close up of the makeup, so you can see all of the errors. Yes, I’m aware it was a bit lopsided:

Riley petted a bunny dressed up in its butterfly costume:

And a dog dressed as a… what else?

Getting in line for the parade, behind the fife and bagpipe corps.  They played that Scottish Anthem thing many many times.  Or maybe they were playing 14 different songs and I just thought it was the Scottish Anthem being played many many times.  Bagpipe music kinda all sounds the same to me. 

After the parade she rode the ponies, with a number of other butterflies:

And then they had a butterfly release.  The idea was that they would open all of these pouches of butterflies and the butterflies would all rise up into the sky and we would OOH and AAAH at the beauty of the spectacle.

Except nobody gave the butterflies the memo.  Because when they opened the envelopes, some butterflies did fly straight up, but most went sideways or around in circles, and a few sad ones went straight down.  Bleh.  The ones who flew around ended up landing in various places, like on people’s hats and hands and even their coffee cups:

and on my hand and my jeweled pouch purse:

and on Michael’s back (Mike said there were 3 on him at one point, but we were separated and I was taking pictures of the butterflies on my arm and my purse and didn’t see his back when there were 3 on him)

While we waited for them to announce the costume contest winners (I didn’t even know there was a costume contest til we got there, so Riley wasn’t in contention for that) Riley danced and jumped around on the staging area with some other butterflies:

I wasn’t impressed with many of the winning costume entries.  There were a couple I thought were really good, but they didn’t win first place, so I’m not sure what they were looking for. Riley’s bunny friend didn’t win for the animal category.  A dog dressed as a caterpillar did.

But overall the event was awesome and we will go back next year, soccer schedule allowing.  We were lucky enough this year to have a 1:00 soccer game and the butterfly thing started at 9:30, so we were home by 11:30.  Just in time to scarf some lunch, metamorphosize her from butterfly to soccer player and head back out the door.  And yes, she DID wear her face paint to the game. 

So that catches us up pretty much to Halloween.  I’ll do a separate blog on that because it was basically a 2 week series of Halloween activities that is worthy enough to consolidate into one blog.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing the various events and activities we’ve participated in.  We try to keep things interesting and take advantage of what’s available to see out there.  Chronicling these things in a timely manner is another issue all together.  Better late than never, I say.  What else is there to say?

Mike has always been a big sports fan, watching all 4 of the major sports for the Dallas/North Texas teams.  Luckily he’s not the kind to silence everyone in the room and commandeer the main TV for the duration of an entire hockey, football, basketball or baseball game (or heaven forbid multiple back to back games as often happens in the fall).  But within the house, on one of the TV’s, those games are on.  And he is watching, continuously if he’s able, intermittantly if other things need attending. 

On the main TV, we often take turns.  Daddy watches for awhile, Riley gets a turn for awhile.  And she stays in the room when the sports are on.  She cheered some when the Mavericks were making their run for the Championship, she knows that the Cowboys are the football team, and while she’s not so interested in the Stars or hockey,  she knows how to tell that Dallas is winning or losing by looking at the scoreboard on the screen. 

Baseball, however, took a different direction.  Over the course of this past season, Riley has become increasingly interested in and a fan of, The Texas Rangers baseball team.

I’m sure the fact that she has been to some of the games has helped fuel her passion for the game.  It definitely lends relateability when you SEE Nelson Cruz warming up right in front of you from your right field seats.  And knowing the homerun hit by Adrian Beltre that went RIGHT OVER THERE is what made everyone stand up and yell, and for the fireworks to burst forth.  She’s been to 6 games her whole life, 4 of them this season.  One on Easter weekend, one on the 4th of July, one during the League Division playoffs and one during the League Championship playoffs.  

Somewhere just before the playoffs started, however, it became apparent that she was not just randomly cheering for the Rangers, she was VERY into the game.  She knew players’ names, first and last, and she hollered those names at the top of her lungs from her seat in the stands and sometimes from her seat on the family room couch.  Her goal each of these times was for the players to hear her. 

She knew the Rangers batting order.  Ian Kinsler always batted first, followed by Elvis Andrus, Josh Hamilton and (wait for it, this is the loudest and proudest) MICHAEL YOUNG!  Then Adrian Beltre, Nelson Cruuuuuuuuuz and usually Mike Na.Po.Li.  Almost impossible to say Napoli’s name without the three syllable chant.  After that the last 2 batters could be anyone:  David Murphy, Mitch Moreland, Craig Gentry, or Torrealba (he doesn’t get a first name because the last name was difficult enough to pronounce and she was quite proud to have mastered it).  She can also name 2 or 3 pitchers but since they don’t bat in the American League, she’s not quite as interested in them.  Batting is where the action is.

Her playtime activities soon included setting up her blocks to form 2 dugouts and filling them with her plastic animals, to represent the Rangers and an opposing team.  Often there was a parade after the game, or (my favorite) an airplane ride before the game started because she knows the teams fly to get to different teams’ fields.

An infield of four square blocks was set up with  a giraffe as the umpire, standing behind “home block.”  She used road signs from her train set as bats and a super ball as a ball, making it fly across the family room, as Texas Ranger after Texas Ranger hit one “over the fence!”  The games always ended with a resounding Texas victory.

She asked us to write down the names of the Rangers roster, as well as the opposing teams’ roster.  She’d put the names into 2 hats and draw them out, having them bat by lottery as she read the names.  She is barely reading at all, but she could read every Rangers name as they were pulled out.  Mike and I were sent to the computer many times, trying to dredge up the names of the Yankees, Rays, Tigers and Cardinals lineups for that day.  She found it quite funny when her “animal team” had the same member batting as the “people team” did on TV.  I told her she could just follow the TV and have the animals bat in that order, but NO, for the animals games it HAD to be in the order they were drawn from the hat.

When we attended the games, she followed the batting order, cheering on the players as they came up to bat.  She would start a long line of commands:  “Come on, Josh Hamilton, hit the ball!  You can do it.  Hit it hard, Josh Hamilton.”  or “Nelson Cruz!  Hit another homerun, Nelson Cruz! NO, don’t hit it like that, Cruz!”  etc etc

Whenever Michael Young came up to bat, she would turn to Mike, grab his sleeve and say “Daddy!  Michael Young!  That’s your shirt, Daddy!”  Every.  Single.  Time.  As though Mike would forget that he was indeed wearing his #10 Michael Young Tshirt. 

During the games we attended she swung her fan towel like a windmill, endangering eyeballs everywhere; she chanted each and every “Let’s Go, Rangers” when it blared over the sound system, yelling it out on her own if it had been too long in between chants; she tried to master the Clap-Clap-STOMP that was another thing the “audience” did; she adored the Rangers mascot, Captain, and could spot him from anywhere on the field (although she freaked out a little the one time she actually got to meet him during a game); she fell in love with Cab Calloway’s rendition of ”Heidi Heidi Heidi HO”;  and more often than not she picked Blue to win during the Dot Race.  She was content with snacks brought from home after she had had her requisite Sundae Helmet and sucked on some salted peanut shells from the concession stand before cracking them open and eating the nuts inside.  

She asked us questions about the game, ranging from “How come the pitcher doesn’t bat?” to “Do you think the other team gets mad when we score a lot?”  She mixed up the idea of balls and strikes, but knew we needed to get the other team out 3 times, yelling for the Rangers outfielders to “catch it, catch it” when the other team popped up and for the other team to “drop it, drop it” when the Rangers popped up.  She had been so spirited at the 2nd playoff game that the people in front of us complimented her on her enthusiasm and offered her a cupcake decorated like a baseball.  Score!

She watched enough of the Detroit Tigers playoff games to say “I like seeing his face” when Cabrera came up on the screen; and enough of the Cardinals in the World Series games to say “You don’t want to watch when this guy bats” when Pujols was on deck.  She told me during the World Series game she hid her face in Mike’s shirtsleeve whenever Pujols batted so she wouldn’t have to see if he hit the ball.  She even said, upon seeing Molina from the Cardinals, “He looks like Victor” referring to Victor Martinez from the Tigers in the previous series.   Wow.

She has a new Nelson Cruz Tshirt because she knew he hit the big homeruns in the ALCS games including the grand slam in the bottom of the 11th inning to win the game game we were at (although she doesn’t really understand the records he set) and an ALCS Championship shirt because she wanted a shirt with “all the Rangers names on it” and that shirt lists everyone on the back by position.  She has a 2 year old “plain” Texas Rangers shirt that I ironed the letters Y-O-U-N-G on the back along with the number 10 last week because she desperately wanted a Michael Young shirt “like Daddy’s” and I could not find one in her size.

She wore her various shirts to school on playoff game days, and her teacher called her the Rangers #1 Fan in her classroom.  She had conversations about the previous night’s game with the teacher’s aide in her class who was a fellow fan, celebrating when the Rangers had won, commiserating when they had not.   She would say “Go Rangers” when any of her classmates’ parents commented on her shirts or the games, and would remind kids as she was leaving for the day “Don’t forget to watch the Rangers tonight.” 

She followed the Rangers progression through the playoffs.  She understood that they had to win 11 games from the time the playoffs started in order “to get the big trophy” and she understood that the last 4 games to win were done during a series of games that she called “The World Serious” which I refused to correct because I thought it was awesome.

So when the Rangers won their way through the playoffs and ended up in “The World Serious” for the 2nd year in a row, we discussed the possibility of attending a game.  We had gotten tickets on Stub Hub for a reasonable price for the ALDS game #2 (which we won) and had gotten very lucky getting a good price on tickets for the ALCS game #2 (which we won) but that was only because that was a rescheduled game on a Monday afternoon due to a rainout on Sunday.  World Series tickets were at a much higher premium.

There was no way all 4 of us would go; it was just too expensive.  Mike had a friend coming in from out of town who had a ticket and Mike had planned to buy a ticket and go solo.  But he knew Riley really wanted to go to a game.  She had actually thrown herself face down on the couch and cried when she heard there wouldn’t be any more games until April.  We got to hear “AAAAPRIL???  That’s tooooo loooooong to waaaaaait!” in between the sobbing.

So he opted to buy two “lesser” quality tickets instead of one “better” ticket for himself and took Riley to Game #5 of the Rangers-Cardinals 2011 World Series. 

Does she understand the full implications of where she was?  The significance of the event?  I don’t know.  The whole “world” factor she probably doesn’t comprehend.  She does understand the tickets were hard to get, which is why we all weren’t able to go (“I’ll miss you, Mommy.”) And she understood that the Rangers needed to win 2 more games to get “the big trophy” and she really hoped they would win while she was there to watch them.  So she understood enough. 

But more importantly she was enthusiastic enough.  Spirited enough.  Supportive enough.  And definitely loud enough.  All the important things a real fan needs to be.  With her Daddy by her side, she made what might be a once in a lifetime memory.  Combined with everything else, those were plenty reasons enough.  Let’s Go, Rangers, indeed!

Here are some pics of her journey as a fan this season. 

With her animals and blocks, set up for a game.  This is where they’re lined up, before they go into their dugouts.  See the Rangers cap in the middle?  That’s the helmet from one of her helmet sundaes.

At her first game this season in April, wearing her “plain” red shirt and her pink Rangers cap:

Ryan made it to this game, and here’s a pic of the 5 of us:

meeting Captain:

scaring people with her spirited towel swinging at the ALDS game:

eating her must-have helmet sundae:

going into the ALCS game:

at the game, which went 11 innings and ended with the unprecedented 11th inning grand slam homerun by Nelson Cruz:

with that cupcake from a fellow fan:

in her new Nelson Cruz shirt, ready to head to the World Series with Daddy:

And here they are with Mike’s good friend, Joe, at the stadium before the game began:

And in their seats waiting for the game to start, way up high but right behind home plate:

Doesn’t that grin just say it all?  I asked Mike how she had done during the game.  He said she had done as well as she always had, participating in all the chants and cheers, hollering encouragement for the players, impressing the people around her with her enthusiasm and involvement in the game, all the way through all nine innings.  He said she high fived and fist bumped strangers when good plays happened.   Although, really, at those games, there are no strangers.

I talked to Riley after the game, after the crowds and the noise, when they had just gotten to the car and she was still flush with victory and adrenaline.  “Hi, Mom,” she yelled into the phone, “Did you watch the game? We won, Mom, we WON!”

When I assured her I had watched the whole game and that I was pretty sure I had heard her yelling “Na.Po.LI!” when he was up to bat, she sucked in her breath and said, “You could HEAR me? Then that means Napoli could hear me too!”

Which, if you remember, has been her goal all along.  So she’ll live awhile believing her cheering helped Mike Napoli hit the double that brought in the two go-ahead runs… that she helped the Texas Rangers win Game #5 to go ahead in the series 3-2.  And I know in my heart of hearts that that belief, that spirit, is the reason my 5 year old belonged at that World Series Game.

I had asked Riley way back in May when we started making plans for this September trip, what was the one thing she wanted to do, who was the one person she wanted to meet while at Disney.  Her immediate response was “The Princesses.”  Specifically, she wanted to meet Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Belle.  And if any other princesses wandered in or around, that would just be gravy on her Disney cake.  Or some other positive mixed metaphor.

So we arranged with the Disney Specialist Travel Agent to book us where there would be princesses.  According to her, the best place to meet princesses was at a Specialty Dining option known as Cinderella’s Royal Table.  Apparently it’s a VERY POPULAR option because when we booked it in May, there were only 2 meal options left during the whole week we would be there in September.  One was at 3:00-ish on our 2nd day, and one was at 9:20 on our 4th day.  We took the breakfast option.

Hmmmm… what to wear to such an auspicious occasion.  Our plan was for Riley to get double duty out of her Cinderella dress.  Remember she had worn it to the Mickey’s Halloween Trick or Treat thing on Day 2?  She was also supposed to wear it to meet Cinderella and all of her Princessy friends.  Except the dress decided to shred and fall apart as Riley trick or treated into the night. 

I thought it just wasn’t right to meet Cinderella in RAGS.  The birds and mice might come right out of the walls and try to sew her back up, and that would be quite embarrassing.  Cool as hell, but still embarrassing.

We knew Riley wanted to be Rapunzel for Halloween, so we decided to buy her Halloween costume early.  Right off the Disney rack.  Of course you pay premium when you’re buying AT Disney World, but we sucked it up and bought her the dress she picked out:  Belle.  Wait, what???

Yep, we went in for Rapunzel and came out with Belle.  The Rapunzel costumes just didn’t have the same oomph and pizzazz and (as Riley said) “Glitter!  Look at the Glitter in the dress” that the Belle dress had.  Plus Riley looks much better in gold than in pale purple.

See?

Here’s a closer picture of the crown wrapped around her hair bun. 

Yes it’s the Cinderella crown, but we had no yellow ribbon and the only crown they were selling with the Belle dresses at Disney was the kind that hurts her head.  I figured no on would notice.  But guess what?  One of the photographers in the castle actually said, “Nice repurposing of the Cinderella crown.”  I guess when you deal that many hours of every day with a constant stream of princess wear, you get to know the product.

And here she is with her dress all stuffed up into the stroller:

Oh yeah… the t-shirt?  Our little princess has very delicate skin and that glittery tulle was ITCHY.  Someday she’ll sacrifice comfort for beauty.  But not this day.

At any rate, little Belle was ready for her royal debut. 

We had gotten to the park early because we wanted to make sure we were at the castle in time for our reservation.  The monorail doesn’t run that early (WHAT is with the monorail not running early and not running late?) so we had to take the ferry across to the entrance.  While on the ferry a lady asked if we wanted a group picture.  Why certainly:

I know, you’re thinking, “Hey, Char, where did THOSE sunglasses come from?”  Yes, tis true, those are new sunglasses.  Tote bag zipper broke, I got a new tote bag.  Sunglasses get lost, I get new sunglasses.  I don’t buy souvenirs so much as replacement parts. 

I can’t live without sunglasses when it’s sunny.  I mean I can LIVE, but you don’t want to be around me.  I look like a mole, all squinky eyed and mad at the sun and within an hour I have a headache.  So for 20 bucks I made us all happy and bought a new pair at the store by the ferry. 

Here’s a pic of the earpiece up close.  I call them my Mickey Hardy’s.  Ha.

Once at the castle, we checked in and YES, our reservations were there.  I always get nervous about stuff like that.  “I’m sorry, we don’t have your name on the list….”  But nope, there we were. 

And lest you wonder if we had gone overboard with Riley dressing up to meet the princesses… no.  No no no no no.  Every girl there had on some sort of princess dress.  And some had come directly from the Bibbety Bobbety Boutique where they had been coiffed, poofed, glittered, dressed and made up into shiny laquered princesses.  The princess dresses from the Boutique were even more hoopdedoo than the one we had bought off the Disney rack, and I imagine cost even more.   I have no idea what the cost was for the full Bibbety Bobbety Boutique experience, as we never checked into it.  Riley can barely tolerate us brushing her hair and she still fusses at my hair lady who cuts her hair. I can’t imagine how she’d react to strangers pulling her hair into an eyelid-stretching topknot and dousing her with hairspray and makeup. 

Not to mention that the show Toddlers and Tiaras kept running through my brain as I watched these girls parade out of the Boutique–epecially since they all got diagonal sashes to complete the ensemble, like they had just won a pageant instead of a makeover.  

But Riley looked fine.  She fit right in with all the girls in the castle and we got in line to wait for Cinderella.  A person on the speaker announced each Royal Family, very much like they did in the Ball Scene in the movie Cinderella.  Remember the veddy British guy saying, “Anastasia and Drusilla Tremaine… daughters of Lady Tremaine!”  Subsitute a southern woman with a penchant for misprounouncing surnames in place of the veddy British guy, and there you have it.

The line moved quickly and soon Riley was meeting Cinderella and asking her to sign her autograph book.  She was so nervous, she could barely make eye contact:

and posing:

The Disney people also took pictures and during breakfast we got a complimentary portfolio with a photograph of the castle, an 8X10 of Riley with Cinderella and 6 smaller copies of the picture.  I didn’t even know that was part of the Royal Table Package, so that was a nice surprise.  Here’s one of the small copies of the picture they took, now residing in an awesome Disney princess frame I bought after we got home:

After we had formally met Cinderella, we climbed the curved staircase to the breakfast room upstairs.  It looked just like what you’d expect an old castle to look like inside: brick and high ceilings and beams and flags and stained glass.   Here’s a shot looking up at the highest part of the room:

Here’s Riley seated at the breakfast table.  Here I am, ta daaaaaaa!

The waitstaff took our order, always staying in character and referring to Mike and I as Lord and Lady, and to Riley as Princess.  Breakfast was very good.  Plenty to eat: sausage, eggs, potatoes, french toast sticks, lots of fresh fruit, pastries, juice, coffee… and finally, water.  All Riley wanted to drink was a cup of water and for some reason it took forever to show up.  We asked our waiter twice and two other people before finally getting her some water.  “Please, just a cup of water… please.”

While we ate breakfast, various other princesses were making the rounds to all of the tables where they would stop to visit with the families and pose for pictures with the girls, and the occasional boy who was there.  Our first visitor was  Aurora, whom most of you know as Sleeping Beauty.

Riley poses:

and waves goodbye:

Our next princess visitor was Snow White. 

Snow White was in SERIOUS character.  Remember Snow White’s voice in the movie?   High pitched and fast talking?  Like Disney on helium?  That was this Snow White too.  She tried to get Riley to talk, but Riley was too nervous to say much to any of the princesses.  Snow White decided the cat must have Riley’s tongue, so in this next picture you can see her trying to check Riley’s mouth to see if the cat did indeed have her tongue:

I’m sure Riley had NO idea what this crazy woman was chirping on about.  But she posed with her, smiling big:

Since Riley was dressed like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, she had really hoped the Princess Belle would be there, but we hadn’t seen her and you never know which princesses will make an appearance from day to day.  I was very happy (and Riley was very excited) when they announced that Princess Belle was in the castle.  And eventually she made her way to our table:

You’ll notice that Belle is wearing her “regular” clothes from the movie.  Her outfit when she’s at home, in town.  Not her golden ballgown.  This of course led to some jokes by the waiter that maybe Riley had gotten into Belle’s closet to borrow her ballgown, and a comment by Belle that she only wore her yellow dress when she planned to go dancing and was Riley planning to dance (she gestured to Mike) with her prince?  Riley shook her head no, so Belle asked if he was a beast and Riley got big eyed and shook her head a bigger NO… and Belle said she was relieved to hear that.   Out of the clear blue sky Riley asked me yesterday why Belle had asked if Daddy was a beast.  4 weeks later and she’s still mulling over the implications.

Picture posing:

Because Belle is one of my favorites, I asked to get in a picture too.   Obviously my ballgown is at the cleaners… or still in Belle’s closet:

Our last princess to meet was Ariel, the princess from The Little Mermaid.  Ariel, too, was in character and she said that since Riley was in a golden dress, she must be a goldfish.  And she asked to see Riley’s goldfish face.  Riley was happy to oblige:

Ariel said, “I knew it!  Excellent fish face.  Fins up!” and she held up her hand for a high five.  Hahahahaha.

Posing with Ariel:

That chick was tall… but maybe it was the boofoo hair:

We had been there over an hour, eaten a lot of good food,  met all the princesses that were there for the meeting, scored those bonus pictures AND gotten a Wishing Star Wand.  So we left along with all of the other little princesses. 

We made a pitstop at the bathroom to change Riley out of her glittery Belle clothes back into mere mortal clothes.  I didn’t want her Belle costume to go the raggedy way of her Cinderella dress, especially since she needed to wear it at least 2 more times for Halloween events.  So wand, dress, crown all came off and went into a big bag which Mike volunteered to take back to the car so we wouldn’t have to keep up with it all day.

While he was gone, Riley and I rode a bunch of rides in the area by the castle, including the carousel:

and the Dumbo Ride:

By this time Daddy was back, so we wandered around looking for more rides.  We rode Space Mountain, and Riley said she wanted to ride it again since the line was short.  But my head said “No, you shall not ride again” so I did not.  I hung out resting on the bench and looking in gift shops.  I spied these two guys coming down the lane:

and watched them fumble with the gate (really, hairy paws, leave it to the humans):

And then Riley thought Mike’s back and neck needs some re-aligning, so they jumped into a car on Mickey’s Speedway:

you can see how excited she is to be doing permanent damage to Mike’s spine:

After that we went back to the hotel to swim for a bit, but it started to rain.  A LOT.  So we hung out in the hotel room to watch some TV til it passed over, then went to swim for a shorter period of time than planned. 

That evening we decided to make good on our promise to take Riley back to ride Test Track at Epcot, but as soon as we got off the tram and entered Epcot’s gates, it started to rain again.  Nay, pour again.   So we got some dinner at a restaurant whose name escapes me.  Then we wandered through some of the interactive exhibits that are geared for kids a little older as they have to do with a lot of science properties that she doesn’t comprehend yet.  We also noticed that science is stinkin’ loud, so we didn’t stay too long in that building. 

We decided to change our plan of purchasing souvenirs on our last day, and use this downpour time to shop.  So we let Riley pick out the souvenirs that she had been thinking about all week.  The winners were two small to medium sized stuffed animals: the kitten Marie from the movie The Aristocats, and Bolt the dog from the movie Bolt.  Soooo far down on the list of marketed popular Disney movies.  Seriously, other than the fact that these animals were in bins in the Disney gift shops to pick from, you’d never know they were related to Disney at all.  No posters, no cups, no tshirts, no rides, no nothing.  But those are two of her favorite movies so there you go.

Another thing she and I got were warm clothes.  We had gotten soaked just walking from restaurant to exhibit to gift shop, so we each bought a long sleeved shirt to wear:

Wow, that is some seriously wet stringy hair I’m sporting.  But isn’t the shirt cool?  I wear it as a pajama shirt all the time.

By this time the rain had stopped, but it was still cool, especially in the air conditioned ride waiting areas, so we were glad for our warmer wear.  Here she is getting strapped into the Test Track ride:

And ready to ride!

and with me… we’re sitting 3 across:

After the ride she “drove” this new Chevy Malibu:

And then we shared a delicious ice cream sandwich made with 2 toll house cookies and chocolate ice cream.  YUM!  You can see how big it is next to her hand, for size reference:

What a perfectly decadent way to end Day 4–one that had been full of princesses, rides, swimming, eating, a downpour, shopping and more rides.  See?  THE BIGGEST DISNEY DAY EVER.   It wasn’t overhyped: this Disney thing CAN be all it’s cracked up to be.  Well except for that downpour thing.  But that’s not Disney’s fault.  We’ll have to blame God for that part….

Back to the hotel we went from Epcot.  We were in the “getting ready to wind it up” mode that we get in as a vacation nears its end.  Sorting dirty clothes from clean, throwing out old paperwork, doing a preliminary “will the souvenirs all fit” panic, counting out what was left on our dining plan, etc.

My summary of the Dining Plan.  The dinners we had were all made by reservation and were all very good and worth the money.  Not that we paid any money, since our Dining Plan had been free, but when I looked at the menu prices it definitely worked out to be less expensive than the Dining Plan’s cost.

The Quick Service meals still leave me confused.  Every time I went up to a QS counter, I still wasn’t sure what I should be ordering.  And the Disney people didn’t do a lot to help me through the process.  I’d always have to ask:  Is this place a quick service establishment?  Does the entree come with a side, or just a dessert?   Am I supposed to order a dessert now or do I pick one out of the case somewhere?  Does Riley get apples and a cookie or chips and carrots?  Can I rearrange any of those options?  And most of them would look at me like, “Really?  You don’t get this?  Duh.”  Gah.

As for the snack a day, that was a laugh.  People who had used the Dining Plan before us said we’d have so many snacks left over, we’d be buying popcorn to feed the ducks.  But, no.  We are apparently very snacky, very thirsty people and each of us easily ate/drank two or three “snacks” every day.  And that was with me bringing in some snacks and water.  We would have been better off asking for a quick service meal to be converted to 3 snacks.  But I know that wasn’t an option.  We learned about halfway through to pay cash for any snack under $3 and use the snack credits for those items over $3.  So, popcorn pay cash; mango smoothie get “free” with snack credit.

As I mentioned, we had picked a Disney Vacation Package that included the Dining Plan as free, so I think that worked out to be a significant savings and it’s hard to complain about all that free food.  But I was trying to look at it as though I had paid for it.  Would we have gotten our money’s worth.  I say yes we would have.  I just wish I wasn’t so confused by that whole Quick Service thing.

Little bit of TV, quick peek at the plan for the next day, and we were asleep by 11:30 I think.

We got up about 8:00 on our last day because we were going to Animal Kingdom and they’re only open from 9-5 each day.  Something about needing time to bring the animals in each evening or something.  I actually got nervous the night before we went to Animal Kingdom, because I knew this was a one time shot.  We didn’t have any more days left of the vacation to bring her back to this park if it rained or if Expedition Everest (the ride she had been talking about riding since before we left Texas) wasn’t working or the Safari wasn’t being offered.  If we didn’t do it on Day 5 it would not ever get done.

I remember when we took the boys, Ryan was only mildly interested in Animal Kingdom.  Remember we went when he was in middle school, so he was all about the fast, thrill rides, so tromping around looking at a bunch of animals wasn’t high on his “fun” list.  And I remembered that that was the park where Michael had had a HUGE seizure so we had ended up renting a wheelchair for him to make it through the rest of the park.  So my memories of the park weren’t particularly shiny glossy happy ones.

What dawned on me that night before was that she was probably going to totally LOVE Animal Kingdom because she’s totally animal crazy.  The child who acts like a dog, loves the zoo and has over 100 plastic animals that she still regularly sets up and plays with in various play acting scenarios.  This was who we were taking to a park entirely devoted to animals in one form or another.  They may as well have named it “Riley’s Kingdom.”

And we were right.  She did love Animal Kingdom.  Here she is waiting for the tram, all decked out in her frou frou tutu skirt.  It made for some cute pics:

and we arrived at the entrance:

There were animals everywhere, so to Riley this was an elaborate zoo with not just a traditional train ride, but a safari and a huge roller coaster ride.  The huge roller coaster is Expedition Everest.  I had read various things about this roller coaster, and I knew that at some point the Yeti Monster would growl loudly in an attempt to try to scare the riders. 

So to prepare Riley for the ride, I had donned a Yeti costume the week before we left and would hide under her bed popping my head up over the side, waking her in the middle of the night; or randomly jump out of closets and the pantry, scaring the bejeezus out of her, but definitely getting her ready for Disney. 

Ah-hahahahaha, that made me laugh. 

NOOOOO, no no no no… what I did was show her the videos online that people had taken while on the ride.  So she could see that part of it would be in the dark, part of it would be backwards, and part of it would involve the loud Yeti Monster.  And she said she STILL wanted to ride it, even knowing (or maybe just by knowing) that all of that was coming. 

She loved it.  We rode it twice.  With her arms up in the air… except when her hands were clasped over her ears during the Yeti growling/shrieking part.  She always puts  her hands up on roller coasters.  For a week after we got home, she’d put her hands up in her booster seat in the car when we went up or down a big hill or overpass. 

We saw a lot of animals, including many ducks, which are one of Riley’s favorites.  She actually fed some while we were eating a snack and was doing fine until one grabbed her finger instead of the chip she was trying to give him.  Big tears; bad duck:

Still loving the animals?  Big smile says YES:

How about some more?

Omg! Baby ducks.  “Mom, they are aDORable”  hahaha

STILL liking the animals?  Big smile says “Yes!”

Then let’s take a Safari tour!  Hop on the Truck:

These giraffes walked along side us and then decided to cross in front of our Safari Truck.  We had to wait and because of the delay we were 5 minutes late for our late lunch reservation.  “No, seriously, it was the giraffes.  Yes, the giraffes made us late.”  I bet they hear that all the time.

Omg!  Baby elephants!  “Mom, they are just SO cuuuuute!”

Riley likes the “Hamingos”

We jumped off the Safari tour truck and ran to the restaurant, as we knew we were going to be late.  But the restaurant wasn’t full, so we were fine.  It was a buffet place.  No characters but the food was good and plentiful and it was cool inside.  Riley was a little goofy at the table while we waited for our drinks to get there:

And goofy with dessert:

After we ate, Riley said she wanted to go to the Petting Zoo area she had heard about.  She was very excited to find that the only way to get there was by train:

On the way to the Petting Zoo:

Finally!  The Petting Zoo… where they had goats!  and sheep!  so exotic!

We were there for almost an hour.  We had to drag her out of there, pouting.  Child, we live in TEXAS–you can brush a goat on every street corner.   Well not quite, but you know what I mean.

But we told her there were a few other things to do and this was the park that closed early, so we needed to hurry on.  We saw this tree, which I think is called The Tree Of Life:

And got our picture taken in front of it by the Disney Photographers:

And they made us do this, which was funny:

She played drums again with some other kids, and then with Mike and me:

And then she did the one thing she’d been asking for for a couple of hours: she got her face painted.  Let me say that this was not just a face painting, this was a milestone.  Those of you who knew her 2 years ago know what a big deal it was for her to have strangers in her space, much less in her face.  I mentioned it earlier as a reason we didn’t do the Bibbety Bobbity Boutique.  And while I still don’t think she would have tolerated the hair manipluation required of the Princess Transformation, she did allow this woman to convert her face from ordinary citizen into Princess Kitty.  Before:

During:

and after:

Of course right then it started to rain, so Riley rode in the stroller with her head hung down looking sad and depressed to anyone who passed her by.  We stopped in a gift shop to buy a few things and to ride out the worst of the downpour.  Still looking good in the gift shop:

and on the tram back to the car:

It was about 4:45 by now and Animal Kingdom was closing, so we had planned to go over to Magic Kingdom and ride some rides and eat.  What we didn’t realize was that they were having another Trick or Treat party thing, like the one we had gone to our 2nd night, which meant the park was closing at 7:00.  So Mike and Riley did this one more time:

And Riley and I did this one more time:

Since we had no intention of buying wristbands to do the Trick or Treat thing again (once was great, but defintely plenty) we had to leave the park by 7:00, so we decided to go visit Downtown Disney.  We stopped at an information counter so Mike could ask if any of the restaurants in Downtown Disney accepted the Disney Dining Plan, since we had some Quick Service meals left.  Here he is asking. 

He had no idea his head was in front of those Mickey Ear Cutouts, hahaha.  Turns out that yes, quite a few places take the Dining Plan, so we ended up here, eating a late dinner:

Waiting for our food:

And what is dinner, without dessert?  We have no idea because Riley wouldn’t let us find out.  She picked… surpriiiiise:

Mike and I didn’t order anything.  He because he wasn’t hungry and me because I knew I’d be finishing this bad boy:

Which I did! 

Another successful day at Disney World.  We were content to head back to the hotel and pack up our stuff. 

Overall in our 5 day vacation, we had visited all 4 of the Disney parks, gotten some great pictures, had had fun riding the rides and meeting so many special characters.   We were exhausted, achy and a bit wrung out… but all of those things together are the Disney experience.   As long as your good outweighs your bad, you’re good.  We were very good.

And now when we thumb through the memory book I created with our special pictures, we’ll relive those fun times.  The smiling good memories.  Thanks, Disney.

So we had obviously gone to bed angry with each other and we were still okay even having done so.  This is one of those things that seems to fly in the face of conventional marital wisdom.  Most people tell you to not go to bed angry with your spouse–you need to hash out whatever is bothering you because if you sleep on it then… then… then what?  You obviously didn’t think it was really a big problem and you don’t care about healing your relationship?  The issue grows a hardened shell during the night and can’t be revisited? Wrong on both counts. 

First of all, for smaller arguments, being exhausted loosens your tongue and you say petty, argumentative things that you wouldn’t say in your rested state, just because you’re cranky.  So a really good reason to give it up and go to bed is to cap some of your (okay, my) sailor mouth tendencies.  And sometimes you’ve discussed or argued about something for so long that exhaustion clouds the issue and distorts it into something bigger and uglier than it ever really was to begin with.  Seeing it in the morning with fresh eyes will either make you more able to discuss it rationally; or make you realize it was a stupid, mostly inconsequential thing and you’ll be willing to apologize for your part and move on.

This event was obviously one of the 2nd types.  But, hey, if all of you married people want to dredge up and “work through” your petty little Disney argument into the wee-er hours of the morning, have at it.  God forbid you go to bed angry that night.  Or at all.

With no alarm set to get us up and force us into a schedule, we slept hard til 9:00 and then rolled over and slept a bit lighter til 9:30.  I got up to shower, leaving Mike to check his Blackberry and Riley to keep right on snoring, with Mickey and Minnie tucked in beside her.  Wow, that child can snore.

She was up by 10:00 and seemed very confused as to where she was and why she was sleeeping so late, when we were both showered and dressed.  I told her we all needed some good sleep, and sometimes part of vacation was sleeping in and relaxing.  She seemed skeptical, but perked up when I said we were going to eat breakfast at… IHOP!  Yes, we totally disregarded all Disney dining plan options and Disney queues to go sit down at IHOP and get a smiley face pancake for her, and a ridiculous amount of breakfast food for Mike and me. 

And THEN we drove to Target to buy a small stroller.  Just a little umbrella-type, fold up stroller for those moments when she grew too tired to walk.  After last night’s marathon walking session while carrying her, Mike was all about the stroller.  Even great Daddy’s have backs that spasm. 

It was $15 per day to rent a stroller at Disney proper.  And I’d read you could use an external stroller service and it would cost about $9 per day.  We got a stroller at Target for $15 that would last us the next 3 days.  Sold!

Here she is in the stroller:

We also bought a six pack of Dr Pepper for the room fridge, because Disney is apparently Coke’s bitch and can only sell their products.  It’s like being in freakin Mexico.  I don’t mind Coke and I do drink Coke, but my first soda love is Dr Pepper so it was nice to have some in the room in the evenings.  I do that in Mexico, too. 

By then it was about 12:30 so we headed over to Epcot.  We had 4:40 dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant, but other than that we had nothing on the agenda.  So we got a map and checked to see what was what.  We stumbled across a Meet N Greet that is apparently an All Day, Every Day thing at Epcot,  meeting the Fab Five of Disney: Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald and Goofy.  All in one place–kind of like a reception line at a wedding, but with animated backdrops and autograph books.

Here she is at the front of the line, ready to meet Mickey:

Hugging the Big Man himself again, this time in his traditional Tuxedo, as opposed to his Socerer’s Apprentice garb from the day before:

And here she is posing for pictures. On the Disney PhotoPass site there are lots of pictures of Mike and I with her with the various characters, but on my camera all I got was her with the characters.  I just now realized I could do a “screen shot” of the PhotoPass pictures by taking a picture of the computer screen while on their site. They are not good quality being done that way, but you can get the general idea. So when you see clear pics, those are mine; weird pixelated pics are from the stingy Disney people who won’t let me copy and paste:

Next in line was Pluto.  In this picutre, he is trying to tell her to put the book on his nose so he can see it to sign it.  She (and we) had NO idea what he was trying to convey with his paw gestures:

But somehow it got worked out and here he is signing her book:

Posing:

And Minnie:

And Donald, who signed his “Donald Duck: #1″  hahaha:

And Goofy.  Riley couldn’t believe how tall Goofy was.  She still talks about that.

Love this pic of Mike with Goofy–he’s laughing and looking at him because he (Mike) had just done the hyuck-hyuck Goofy laugh TO Goofy.  I’m wondering if the guy inside the costume was impressed or rolling his eyes.  We will never know.  I was kind of impressed.

and then a regular pic, with Mike still smiling… he doesn’t smile big for pictures very often, so this definitely was a Disney Magic Moment.  Apparently I need to hire a Goofy for our Christmas family picture each year:

That took a good hour to get through, but well worth it!

Oh, before I forget.  Here are some of the Disney PhotoPass pictures that I’d wanted to put in the first two blogs but had said I couldn’t access.  Since I took pictures of the screen, I’ll show them here.  Here’s Riley when we first got to the Magic Kingdom, with Tinkerbell put in with some more Disney Magic:

And the pictures with Alice In Wonderland from Day 2:

A group shot from Day 2 at the entrance to Hollywood Studios:

And all 3 of us with Mickey the Sorceror:

Okay, back to Epcot.  Our next stop was the Finding Nemo ride, which is one of Riley’s favorite movies.  It turned out to be very loud.  They put the speakers right inside the cars that you’re in and everything Dory and Nemo and Marlin said sounded like Don Pardo with a megaphone right in your ear.  Riley cowered with her hands over her ears for the duration of that one.  This was also a dark ride, which she was better with than I’d thought she’d be, but I know a lot of kids don’t like the dark, so what’s up with that, Disney people?

Pics from the ride… NO FLASH of course; I read all the signs and warnings:

Then after the ride, posing in front of a tank of “Nemos”

We walked over to another pavillion and got a fast pass for Soarin.  I vaguely remembered it as a ride we had done with Ryan and Michael, but couldn’t remember much about it.  Turns out it was really a cool ride and once I got on it I remembered being on it before.  It’s a ride where you are supposed to be in a hang glider and you “glide” across mountains, oceans, lakes, rivers, cities, etc via a giant screen.  Riley will tell you it was the ride “where the golf ball almost hit us” because someone tees off on the screen and it looks like the golf ball is coming right at you.

By now it was close to our dinner reservation time, so we wandered through the countries of Epcot.  Or, as cyncial Ryan called (still calls) them, “Fake countries.”  He was all, “How is fake Mexico?  Enjoying Fake Germany?”  etc, when I texted him that we were at Epcot.  Actually the first thing he texted was, “Have a good time with the fun facts and dioramas.”  So you can see, over all he’s NOT a big fan of the Epcot Experience. 

He did love Test Track and Soarin, so it wasn’t a total bust when we took him there.  Close.

Here was where our dinner reservations were:

and the food was soooooo good.  Not just “Disney good” but really really, restaurant anywhere, good.  The basket of breads were varied and had an oil to dip and a garlicky spread for spreading.  Riley had mozzarella sticks (that she didn’t like, but Mike and I chowed down on) and  cheese pizza which was very good.  I had spinach/cheese canneloni; Mike had seafood risotto and we shared each other’s plates.  For dessert, Riley had chocolate gelato that I helped her finish, while Mike and I each had a parfait with fresh fruit, lady fingers and zabaglione.  So SOOO good.  We waddled out of there and didn’t eat another thing for at least 4 hours.  We all needed strollers at that point.

But we persevered and took some pics at the “Fake Countries” like Italy:

Riley took this one:

And then she said “Silly face!” so I started to do silly face, but then thought Mike was going to lick my ear so it turned into “ewwww face” instead… it’s a cute pic though

Italian street performer:

In Germany:

This was where she found a souvenir for her preschool teacher who is originally from Germany.  It was an antenna ball shaped like Mickey ears, colored like a German flag.  This was also where she had the Gummi Bears meltdown.  And I hadn’t said “No” I had said “After dinner” because I knew if they were in the bag, that’s all she would ask for during dinner.  So this was us after dinner, going back to get the Gummi Bears for her snack, after she had apologized for the temper tantrum.

Here’s Riley in front of the little German model town that Riley loved.  Seriously, she would build one of these in our family room:

Banging the drums with some random kids in Africa:

By now it was getting dark and we had seen/done most everything we had come to do.  And then we remembered Test Track, so we walked over there and got in line.  It was only a 15 minute wait.  And she LOVED it and wanted to do it AGAIN right NOW.  It was starting to rain a bit, and we were afraid they’d close the ride once we got to the front of the line (which now had a 30 minute wait) so we told her we’d put that ride on the list of things we wanted to make sure we did again before we left and she was good with that promise.

So we ended on that high note, went back to the hotel so she could watch a movie on her DVD player and get ready for the next day which was to be THE BIGGEST DISNEY DAY EVER (NOT TO OVERHYPE IT OR ANYTHING) and we wanted to make sure she got a good night’s sleep.  I think she was asleep by 10:30 which is late in the real world for a 5 year old, but pretty good on the Disney Clock!  Ah, sleep, glorious sleep. 

Next up:  THE BIGGEST DISNEY DAY EVER (NOT TO OVERHYPE IT OR ANYTHING)!

I had packed small boxes of cereal in our carryon and Riley had gotten that bowl in her gift bag the night before, so ta da!   Cereal for two.  After breakfast, we had Riley go to the bathroom before we left the hotel room.  Did I mention that she had some sort of irritable bladder thing going on during the entire trip?  It had started on Saturday before we left on Monday–peeing every 10-20 minutes.  It so concerned us that Mike had taken her to the after hours clinic to have a urinalysis done because we were sure she had a UTI or a bladder infection.  Nothing.  But obviously something.  Just not any sort of bacterial issue. 

While it was good to rule that out, it didn’t stop her needing to pee (or feeling the need to pee) far more often than was normal.  Constantly stopping at bathrooms.  I am personally NOT much of a public restroom user, so this was quite the Mother Challenge for me.  Trying to be patient, trying to be understanding, trying not to squirm or wrinkle my nose at the dirt and smell inherent to public bathrooms.  Even the cleanest ones have that lingering odor of Harsh Chemicals Mixed With Strangers’ Pee in the air.  Ugh. 

After her potty break, I put some random snacks into my zipper totebag as well as the camera, Riley’s autograph book, and our magic KEY TO THE WORLD cards and we were off.  Mike had programmed the various parks into the GPS and between that and all the signs, we found the Hollywood Studios park pretty quickly.  After parking in the lot, we grabbed a quick tram ride and were at the front entrance by 9:30. 

All of the parks require a bag check before you can get in, and it was completely random as to how thoroughly the security guard checked your bag.  Some barely glanced inside; some shone a flashlight inside and poked around a bit; some made sure to check each little pocket; and some checked all pockets as well as running their hands under the bag, squeezing it looking for hidden objects.  No metal detectors for us to walk through, though, so I guess if you wanted to bring in a gun or a hamster or whatever, you could just carry it in your sock or under your shirt, instead of putting it in your carryon bag to be discovered at the bag check.   I guess I don’t really get the whole idea of a bag check, at least not from a safety standpoint.

Once through the gates, we took the obligatory Sorceror’s Apprentice Hat pic:

and then we followed everyone’s advice and headed right for the Toy Story interactive ride, because THAT was supposed to be THE ride at Hollywood Studios.  The wait was already an hour, and the fastpasses said to come back at 1:20 in the afternoon, and it was barely 9:45.  So we tucked our fastpasses away and looked around for something else to do.

After the barrage of rides at Magic Kingdom the previous day, Hollywood Studios seemed to be a bit of a letdown for Riley.  We knew she was too short for the Rock’n RollerCoaster, which had been Ryan’s favorite ride when we had taken him.  And I knew the Tower of Terror would be too much for her to deal with.  So we did the Big Movie Adventure ride which is a ”ride” only insomuch as the vehicle you are in is moving, but it’s more of an organized look at a bunch of movie sets.  Movies which are very old and not very Disney, which means a 5 year old has a very hard time relating.  Plus they have some real life interactive parts involving gunfire and explosions.   Two things NOT favored by our sound-sensitive child.  She cowered in her seat and halfway through said, “I want to get OFF this.”  I knew how she felt, but my desire to be off the ride had more to do with boredom than loud noises. 

After that was done, we stood in line to watch The Muppet show and as we got near the entrance, Riley suddenly realized it was for another “show” type of attraction and stopped dead in her tracks, saying quite loudly, “I don’t want to SEE those puppets.”

Mike corrected her with “Muppets” like the M might have been the problem, but that letter change did not change her mind one bit.  She had no idea who any Muppets were, other than a few that are on Sesame Street, but none of these particular ones in this show ever show up on The Street anymore.  So zero interest for her there. Although she was willing to take a picture in front of the Muppet Fountain:

Okay, now what?  It wasn’t even 10:30 and we were all 3 rather grumpy for different reasons.  We happened upon a short line to get a picture with Handy Manny and Riley said she wanted to meet him.  Mike said, “Who?” and I thought,”Now you know how she feels with the Muppets” but all I said was, “You know!  Handy Manny!” even though we’ve never watched the show.  I did know he was on one of the Disney channels and I guess Riley knew him somehow.  Anyway, here she is hugging and posing with him:

Afer that we saw a sign that suggested a possible Character Meet And Greet and took a chance.  Happy chance, as it turned out, because Mickey Mouse and Winnie The Pooh were both in one location.  Yay, we’d get to see the elusive Pooh from yesterday AND see the Big Mouse himself.  And we ALL knew who THEY were!

The Winnie the Pooh section wended through a room decorated with pages from the Pooh books written on the walls, with pictures.  And a few interactive items to pass the time.  I was surprised how patiently Riley stood in the lines to meet the characters.  We waited in those lines anywhere from 15-40 minutes, longer than any of the ride lines, and she was fine.  Here she is with her autograph album, ready for Winnie (I often call him Winnie instead of Pooh; weird I know) to sign:

And finally!  A big Pooh hug!

And now to meet Mickey (I was actually a little too excited)

Mike and I got in the picture, too, but that was captured only with the Disney cameras and the Disney site will NOT let me cut/paste any pictures to put on here.  Greedy punks.

There were some cool Artsy things to do in this particular building, so Riley checked out some of the offerings:

And then we went to get some lunch at a quick service restaurant that I don’t know the name of.  But when we walked in, we recognized it as a place we’d eaten at with Ryan and Michael and we even found the table we’d eaten at, so we sat there.  Riley thought that was very cool and took turns sitting “where Ryan sat” and “where Michael sat.”  Ha.   Here she is in Ryan’s seat:

and helping Mike decide where we should go next:

I don’t remember where we were heading, but we stumbled across a Meet and Greet with Lightning McQueen and Mater from the movie Cars.  No hugging for these guys.  And no autographs either, obviously.

Those two were just loud, gunning their engines and honking randomly.  So she suffered through the photo op and then we went to play in the Honey I Shrunk The Kids playground.  And speaking of “Who??” moments… seriously, how many kids have seen Honey I Shrunk The Kids?

We headed over to the Toy Story ride because it was getting close to our fast pass time, when we saw this guy in the street, so Riley ran up  to him with her autograph book:

I was curious to see how he would sign the book, and I jokingly said to Mike, “It’ll probably say ‘Green Army Man’ in the book”… and sure enough, that’s how he signed it: Green Army Man!

Finally it was time to go on this ride:

So we put on our 3D glasses:

and got in line behind this guy:

Apparently it was his birthday and he was The Birthday Princess.  He and his 3 friends had on Tshirts with his face imprinted on them under the words “Happy Birthday, WhateverHisNameWas”, but only he got to wear the tiara and tutu! 

Riley really liked the Toy Story ride and posed with Buzz and Woody afterwards:

Then we wandered through the Walt Disney tribute museum thingie.  I figured if she got bored, we could just zip back out, but she actually really liked it.  They had models of the park before it was built, models of the castles at various Disney parks and early pics of many of the characters.  Here are a few pics:

Getting some Castle Love:

Then we went to a gift shop to look around.  I couldn’t believe how much she LOVED looking through the gift shops.  Of course she wanted one of everything, so I told her she could look at each thing and then decide which was THE MOST special thing because that was the thing she could get on Friday to take home as a souvenir.  That actually worked really well because when she’d say she liked something I’d say, “Do you think that will be the thing you want on Friday?”  and she’d say “Maybe!” and then look some more.  It kept us from ever having an argument or a meltdown about a souvenir she wanted RIGHT THEN because she knew she was going to get the bestest thing on Friday.  Well, except for the Gummi Bear incident.

For awhile hats were in contention as a possible take home souvenir:

And of course Mike and I had to get in on the action:

Love that Goofy pic of Mike, ha. 

Actually our main purpose in that gift shop was to buy a new tote bag for me.  The one I had brought was the perfect size, but the zipper broke off and without the safe zippered pocket it was pretty worthless.  It was something free I’d gotten for sending in a charitable donation to some organization, so I wasn’t out any money, but I wanted to protect the money we’d brought, so I got a cool Disney bag with TWO zippered areas.  Love it. No pic of it.

By this time it was about 2:30 and we were very hot and there wasn’t anything pressing left to see at Hollywood Studios, so we decided to drive back to the resort for a swim break.  Riley said in an amazed voice, “You brought our swimsuits??  That’s GREAT!” 

Lots of fun on the boat and down the slides:

silly face!

We swam for an hour or so and then it was time to get dressed for the Not So Scary Halloween Party that we had ordered tickets to.  Basically they shut down Magic Kingdom at 7:00 to the general public and there is trick or treating and Character Meet n Greets and a special parade, just for people wearing the official wristbands.  And yes, they DO check for those wristbands.  After showering the pool off of us, and polishing off a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos in the room, we got dressed for the Big Event.  Here is Riley dressed in her Cinderella dress that we had brought from home just for this:

and her glass slippers, heh:

We got to the park early and saw the end of yet another parade:

And then Riley found her true calling: being a terrible, terrible driver:

Oh it was bad, bad, bad!  She kept hitting the middle guard that keeps the cars from going off the track.  So the driving would be: to the left BUMP… to the right BUMP… to the left BUMP… to the right BUMP… all the way around the whole length of the track which was a couple of miles at least: whiplash extraordinaire.  She was so excited:

She just HAD to do it again:

Then we got some dinner here:

And we found a spot to watch the Halloween Parade.  This turned out to be Riley’s favorite parade AND it was our best seat for any parade.  Those two things might be tied together, or it might be because at the end they threw candy in her trick or treat bag.  She’s still singing the theme song to the parade.  Here was our spot on the parade route:

Parade starting:

The only bad thing about our spot on the parade route was this huge light in our faces the whole time.  I kept making interrogation comments like, “I see you have vays of making me talk, Goofy” and “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Mickey.” (cuz I am fun-nay that way)  Quite blinding, actually.

Goofy and the gumballs:

Have no idea what this dog had to do with the parade, but you know Riley and dogs, so here’s his picture:

After the parade, we headed over to the area that was supposed to have some Character Meet and Greets.  We found Aladdin, Jasmine and Genie and got in line.  By the time we got to the front of the line, Jasmine and Genie were gone (poof!) and Abu was there with  Aladdin.  Because Jasmine bailed on us, she turned out to be the only “major” princess Riley did not meet on this Disney trip.  Ah well, at least Aladdin was friendly:

And Abu was kinda cute… yeah, not really:

I snuck a papparazzi shot of Cap’n Jack Sparrow who was having  a Meet N Greet across the way.  He ain’t no Johnny Depp, though, so I wasn’t too disappointed that Riley didn’t want to stand in line to see a scary PIRATE!

Then she wanted to ride the Magic Carpet Ride again, so we got in line.  And just as we got on the ride, the fireworks started. 

They would explode overhead as we were circling on our magic carpets, which Mike and I thought was cool… and Riley thought was terrifying.  So she started to cry.  The ride ended and we found a bench to sit on, but the fireworks went on for about 5 more minutes and they were RIGHT THERE overhead, so much louder than any recent fireworks we’d been to.  And because she’d done so well with fireworks the last 2 times we’d seen them, we weren’t prepared for this.  No headphones, no shelter.  Just hands over ears, crushed against me on the bench. 

One of the Disney cast members (they insist on calling themselves this, even at the Disney Stores) felt bad and came over from her trick or treat station and offered Riley another handful of candy, even though we’d already been through her line.  Riley hiccuped a “thank you” and then screamed when another round of fireworks shot off. 

Finally.  Over.  Peace. 

She settled down and wanted to trick or treat some more, so we did that.  And then we went on a manic ridefest, including Cinderella’s Carousel again, the Dumbo ride again, Peter Pan’s ride, the scary Snow White ride (which I think she went on because she thought it was a Halloween ride and refused to ever go on it again the rest of the week), the Teacup ride and It’s A Small World again.

We also stood in line to meet Alice In Wonderland.  Riley had met her a year or so ago at the Gaylord Hotel here in Grapevine and she said, “Do you think she’ll remember me?” which is one of those questions that make you squirm as a parent because of COURSE it’s not the same person playing Alice, so of COURSE she won’t know who she is.  But I took the easy path and said, “I don’t know… she sees a LOT of children every day and it’s probably hard to remember everyone.” 

Now the weird thing is, I have no pictures of her meeting Alice, even though I thought for sure I took some pics on my camera.  I do know they’re on the Disney website, so I have those for her Memory Book, but nothing on my camera.  Anyway, it was a cute picture.

By this time we were mostly exhausted, and Riley’s dress was unraveling in the front due to all of the activity (including continuously having to throw it over her shoulder at the frequent bathroom breaks).  Of course one loose thread eventually became a whole front panel shredding and she was starting to look like the “Before” picture of Cinderella instead of magical “Princess” Cinderella, so I knew that dress was toast.  And WHAT would we do when it was time for our special Cinderella breakfast in two days?  We decided we’d figure that out later, but right now we were so achy and tired all we wanted was to get back to the hotel.  So we had Riley pick one last ride which turned out to be Space Mountain.  But Space Mountain was closed, so we told her we’d come back and do that on Thursday, and she was fine.

Then we trudged to the front to get a snack and get on the monorail and head home.  By this time it was 11:15 and even though the magic would last until midnight, we knew we wouldn’t.   We found the snacks okay, but for some reason the monorail wasn’t running that night.  And neither was Riley.  She flat out gave up the ghost, pooped and drooped.

Since the monorail was broken, and so was Riley, Mike had to carry her for quite some distance to the ferry landing dock, because the ferry was the only way back to the parking lot.  They only have 2 ferries that go back and forth from the Magic Kingdom to the Parking Area.  And while they do hold more people per load, they are much slower than the monorail.  So this process was the longest and most aggravating part of the trip, I thought.  

Especially without a stroller.  Poor Mike.  I couldn’t even volunteer to help carry her because about 3 hours prior, my right foot had decided it was done with this vacation and was filing a protest.  Serious pain in my arch and ankle.  I kept adjusting my shoe, and retying the laces, but no it was just painful and ugly so by 10:00 I had a prounounced limp.   You can imagine THAT didn’t help my mood any.

This was when the lowest of lows set in.  The worst of times I referenced earlier.   The long walk, the long wait, the hurt foot, the late hour.  By the time we trudged off the ferry, to the tram, to our car, to our resort, to our room… we were beyond exhausted.  It was almost 1:00 in the morning when we got into the room and Riley, who had been asleep in awkward positions for the last 90 minutes, had one of those unreasonable cryfests that only an exhausted child is capable of having.  Didn’t want to get into pajamas, didn’t want to pee in the toilet, didn’t want to brush her teeth.  And all we could say was “Shhhhhh” because we had really close neighbors in the hotel and we were trying not to disturb them. 

Finally she got into bed and then we got to bed after a few badly placed, decidedly NON DISNEY words were exchanged.  After 17 hours of back breaking, foot hurting, mind numbing Disney Happiness your spousal filter tends to get clogged and niceties sometimes get lost in the shuffle.  It happens.  You just try to not let it happen too often.

So I checked our schedule for the next day and realized there wasn’t anything we HAD to be at until 4:40 in the afternoon for a dinner reservation.  So we revised our big plan for the morning to be this: A) sleep in  and B) sleep some more.

We figured after we were done with that sleeping, we could have a little more sleep… then go buy a stroller.

and Mike and I taking a self portrait.  Took us 5 tries just to get this one:

Plane was on time, we found the Car Rental area… wait, what?  Car rental?  When Disney offers the Magic Express free bus service and there are free shuttles and free monorails all over the place?  Yes, we rented a car.  Last time we did Disney World (6-1/2 years ago) we did the shuttling system, so we thought we’d try it this way and compare.  It was very convenient having a car at our disposal.  Now, of course, what a car DOESN’T do is make the parking lot closer–you still have to ride a tram and a monorail or ferry to get to the Magic Kingdom, for example, and I don’t remember how that compared with a bus or shuttle from a hotel room.  What I do know is that we never had to sit at the bus stop waiting for the bus, so that was defintely one less thing to wait on.  And we zipped back and forth from the parks to the hotel to swim, or to Target (can’t do that on a Disney bus) without relying on anyone else’s time schedule.  On the downside, the bus/shuttle drivers probably don’t ever get lost.  Enough said there. 

At any rate, somehow we ended up with a nice little SUV, even though we only requested a mid sized vehicle.  We followed the Disney packet directions to the resort where we picked up our packet of information and our KEY TO THE WORLD passes.  Those little cards were our tickets to all the parks, our dining plan credits, our hotel key, and even had our credit card number on there so we could charge things at the stores.  Not nervous about losing THAT thing at all!  Zoiks. 

We drove to Magic Kingdom, because Riley wanted to see Cinderella’s Castle first!   We had a parking permit from the hotel, so we never had to pay for parking at any of the parks.  Thank goodness, because that was $14 a day per park.  Here’s Riley on the first of what would be 327 tram rides:

and her first excited look at Magic Kingdom and the Castle… isn’t her expression breathtaking?   Pure Disney Magic:

hahahaha… she was already tired of picture taking, because the PhotoPass people had already snapped 3 or 4 (at my request) and she was all “We can take pictures at home, let’s get this show on the road!”  But she posed for a couple more, including this one:

Yes I am aware of what my legs look like.  Shut UP.

Here’s a different view of the castle… I took way too many pics of the stupid thing, trying to capture WHAT, I do not know.  The crane definitely takes away the “Oooooh, aaaahhh” factor.  Apparently they’re putting up Christmas lights.  During the Halloween celebration. 

So we quickly got Riley on a ride, the Astro Orbiter.  Here she is, piloting her plane, with Daddy in the plane behind us:

Then in line for (gulp) Space Mountain. 

Riley talked about this ride off and on for a long time.  I had told her that it was mostly in the dark, but I’d forgotten how long the ride lasted, so I hadn’t prepared her for that part.  And the seats are one behind the other, which means she wasn’t next to me to talk to her during the ride.  So for quite awhile afterwards she would make comments like, “That made my stomach feel weird.”  or “That was really dark and scary.”  Then about 3 hours later she said, “I’d like to ride that ride again.”  ha.  In total she rode it 6 times, over the course of our 3 visits to Magic Kingdom, and if you ask her she will tell you it was her very favorite ride.

We had late lunch/early dinner reservations at Crystal Palace, so we started to make our way over there, only to be blocked by this:

Yep, a parade had broken out while we were on Space Mountain, so we had to wend our way and then wait and wait and wave and smile and check our watches.  Finally!  We made it to the restauarant.  It’s a buffet place, but the Winnie the Pooh characters wander from table to table to greet all of the guests.  So here is Riley (and the rest of us) with her first character meetings:

So that was Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore.  But where was Pooh?  There was some weird mixup in the rotation because we ended up (as you can see from the order of the photos) with Tigger twice and Pooh never.  He made it to the table next to us and then had to go lead the parade around the room.   Here’s Riley trying to get his attention:

but no luck… so we left… and she posed with “Fake Pooh” (as I called him) on the way out:

So then we meandered around and took some pics:

lots of ducks at Disney:

Riley loves ducks:

and then we happened upon Peter Pan.  By this time we’d gotten Riley an autograph album, so Peter Pan was her first signer.   The only bad thing about this is when Riley told him her name and he misunderstood (she still has a problem saying “R’s”) and called her Molly.  So from then on she wouldn’t tell ANY of the characters her name and I had to tell them.  But Peter Pan was a nice guy, despite the mixup.

I struck the classic pose myself:

On the Magic Carpet ride… it started to rain.  We got rained on each day we were there, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.  I blame us not buying ponchos.   If we’d had them, I’m sure it would never have rained:

sometimes ya just gotta make a silly face:

but then ya get punished for it:

Riley loves carousels, and the one at Disney was no exception:

and here’s she shows how she does not appreciate Dwarf music:

Grumpy Contest: who’s the winner?

yeah, probably the photographer, you’re right!

Here one of custodial staff guys asked if we wanted him to take our picture.  Cast/crew at Disney were always nice and helpful:

Beside the Dumbo Ride:

and she really liked It’s A Small World, even though she’s never heard the song before:

And another parade, this time the Classic Electric Parade:

By then it was almost 9:00 and we’d been up since 6:00, so we decided to head back to the resort and get into our room which we hadn’t seen yet.  We had seen an offer from Disney to have a basket or bag made up and delivered to your hotel room as a Welcome To Disney type of thing.  The cheapest we found was about $70.  So for about $30, I packed the components for one for Riley that was tailor made for her.  While she was watching a movie in the room, I put the bag together and hid it behind the pillows on her bed.  When she pulled the covers back, she found the bag:

which she was excited to open:

It had Mickey and Minnie stuffed toys, a Tinkerbell ceral bowl, a princess trinket box, a pair of Jasmine pajamas, a princess Tshirt, a Toy Story puzzle, a princess night light, a big rice krispie treat and a giant lollipop all in a big Toy Story bag that she could use for Trick or Treating at the Mickey Halloween Party the next night.  She loved the bag of goodies, especially these two, whom she slept with each night.  Here she is after her first night sleeping with them:

And thus endeth day one, and beginneth day 2, wherein we do far too many things, tax our child far too much, yet still create some fantastic Disney memories, as evidenced by the next blog’s pictures!