Family Pictures

I like to time my photos around birthdays and holidays - so this time we were taking Penelope's two year old pics (a month early), and for Easter. My friend Emily took these out at the Clark County Wetlands - I think we barely scratched the surface for cool places to take pictures, and the light out there before sunset was awesome. We will have to go back out there sometime soon and explore - ponds, streams, cattails, ducks, rabbits, bridges, all sorts of fun things out at the wetlands.

Random Disney Pics

Because I just can't get enough of these pictures, and they are my souvenirs so I have to share them!

 

Monsters Inc Laugh Floor aka We Were on TV!!

The highlight of our Magic Kingdom visit was getting the VIP treatment at the Monsters Inc Laugh Floor. Becky works with the Monsters, so she met us at the side door and we went into a separate line where we were escorted to our seats - we got to stay there for two shows in a row and didn't have to file out and back again with the "commoners."

The show is interactive - the characters on the screen talk to the audience and make them part of the performance, telling jokes to capture our laughs instead of screams, just like in the movie. In the first performance, Penelope got to be "Boo," the little girl from Monsters Inc. The monsters were trying to get her to do peek-a-boo and I was worried she wouldn't perform, but she pulled through in the end with some serious cute. Becky said normally the Monsters would have moved on to another little munchkin since P kind of froze once she saw herself up on the screen, but they held out for us. The next show, Claire and Miles got to be on the big screen and talked about their Halloween costumes. Claire said she was Princess Leia for Halloween (after some prompting from me) and then the Star Wars jokes were on!

A photo for my blog book - wish I could capture the videos too! 

The rest of the day, and trip, they kept saying - "Remember how we were on TV!" And people who were in our shows would see the kids throughout the park and say, "There's Claire and Miles!" or "There's Boo!" It was so cool! They felt like super stars!

The Monsters told one of Claire's jokes during the show too: What did one math book say to the other math book? Man, you've got a lot of problems!"

So. Much. Fun. Thank you Becky Baird Hiller!! 

More Magic Kingdom

I seriously think we could have left Penelope with Pooh and Tigger and come back at the end of the day and she would be just fine. I cannot express how much she just wanted to lean in and hug these guys - it was so genuine, I was amazed at how she was never scared.

Becky Baird was our tour guide - we had done very little planning prior to the trip since we were consumed with the move. I usually like to be in research mode for weeks prior to a trip, and that wasn't going to happen. I told Becky we would do whatever she thought we would like most, and I think that was the best thing we could have done. We chose which parks we'd see in our four days - two days at Magic Kingdom, one at Epcot, and one at Hollywood Studios. It was just right.

This next picture is to show how hot, humid and sweaty I was this entire trip... maybe we can call it a 'glow' so I feel better about it. The Jungle Cruise actually felt like a jungle for once with the humidity. I am just too used to the dry desert of Las Vegas - I was melting. Even during my conference I was hot. We had one of our lunches outside to get a break from the hotel and it was miserable for me to sit outside, without shade, in my black work clothes. I am used to freezing air conditioning at conferences and had dressed accordingly.

Disney Love

We had two groups on this trip - those who wanted to go on rides, and only rides, and those who wanted to see every walking stuffed animal they could find. Guess who was crazy about Min-Mouse? P loved the characters and was not scared in the least. No hesitation to hug and kiss them, which kind of shocked me considering Claire and Miles were less than thrilled with the characters at that age. So I ended up going with Penelope to stand in line for the characters while Matt went on the rides - though we did switch quite a bit and I got to go on the roller coasters with Claire and sometime Miles. The only one I did not want to ride, that turned into a favorite, was Tower of Terror. No thank you!

Most of the time Penelope was all business when we finally made our way to the front of the line - she was very serious when she walked up to Minnie, Mickey, Daisy, Donald and Goofy. But then she would get a huge smile on her face when we were almost done. We caught her smiling on this one with Minnie, her absolute favorite. We even came back to wait in line again with Claire and Miles. Epcot and Magic Kingdom had some really cool versions of the classic Disney characters that we don't usually see at Disneyland.

Penelope with Vanellope