Weekend Wrap-up

On Thursday Luke got to bring home the class penguin, King Snuggles.  His assignment was to write a letter to class, from King Snuggles, about what they did together that afternoon.  Luke wanted to make snowman cookies because King Snuggles missed the snow.  Thankfully I had some cookies leftover from Christmas that were about to expire and some white icing.  The kids had fun decorating with the icing and sprinkles.

Then Luke wanted to take King Snuggles to the park so along the way we went on a nature hike and then played at the park.  The teacher sent home an iPod for him to take 3 pictures of their adventure.  I forgot to take pictures with my camera because we were busy trying to find ways to take pictures with the iPod for him to share with the class.  When we got home, we spent time working on a letter to class.  Writing is not one of Luke's strong subjects so we worked together to put some detail into the letter.  One thing we will definitely be doing this summer is writing in a journal daily to hopefully improve his writing skills.  Here's his letter:

Friday was another Upward Cheerleading game for me so the kids went to dinner with my parents and then wanted to spend the night.  Brett and I usually try to take this time to go out to dinner or a movie but we were so tired that we just went home and watched Kate & Leopold on tv.  :)

Saturday Lily had an Upward Cheerleading game so we met for lunch and headed to her game.  She  is doing really well for a 4 year old and is loving Upward Cheerleading!

After her game we went home to do some work around the house and decided to go vote early.  I want to teach my children about our great country and our values and one of those is the right to vote.  No matter who you vote for - let your voice be heard and vote!

The kids were so quiet and respectful while we voted so we rewarded them by taking them to dinner and the movies.  We saw Kung Fu Panda and we loved it.  I think it might have been the best of the 3.

My father-in-law drives the carts at church every 3rd Sunday so we got a special ride around the parking lot after church Sunday morning.

After lunch we ate lunch with my parents and went home for some glorious Sunday afternoon naps.  :)  We went to dinner at Fuzzy's Taco Shop and my little man had to wear his Luke Skywalker outfit, glove and lightsaber included.  The guy who took our order was super sweet and asked Luke for his autograph and made a big deal about getting a jedi's autograph.  Luke thought it was super fun and then the guy hung it on the wall.  It was such a fun dinner for our little jedi.  :)

So that was our weekend.  Upward ends next weekend and we will be able to do some more when we don't have practice once a week, two games a week and other things.  I am looking forward to getting some stuff done around the house and doing some special things as a family.

Weekend Wrap-up 

We started our Valentine's weekend Thursday with Lily's school party.  She was so excited to get to pass out Valentine's to all her little classmates. 

She dressed herself and had all the necessities: bow - check, fur vest - check, fur boots - check, sequin skirt - check, sassy pose - check.  Yep, that's my girl!  :)

Friday afternoon was Luke's class party.  I am the room mom for his class this year so I got to host the party.  At Luke's school, all the room representatives for each grade plan the parties together so all of 2nd grade did the same party.  The party is 45 mins so we needed a few activities.  We decided to give them time to pass out their Valentine's, eat their snack (provided by the school), give them a heart balloon (deflated) with a strip of paper that said "LOVE" on it for them to write a note to someone special to place inside, and then they divided up into teams of 2 to wrap each other in crepe paper streamers.  They LOVED it!  The person wrapping had 3 mins to use as much of the streamer as possible to cover as much of the other person as possible.  We chose a winner and then we switched and the other person got wrapped and chose another winner.  We had 2 streamers left so the 2 winning teams got to wrap the teacher.  There was a boy team and a girl team who won and man did they use different methods to wrap the teacher.  The girls were so sweet and gentle and the boys tried to cover her whole face.  haha!  I had to keep telling them that she needed space to breathe and to not wrap her neck tightly.  Boys!  I didn't get many photos because I was trying to supervise but the kids loved the party and the parents had a fun time watching.

Luke wrapping his partner.

The kids wrapping Mrs. Shinn.  She was a good sport even though they almost choked her when they tried to rip off the paper.

This goofy kid makes my heart so happy!  We snapped a quick photo after the party craziness slowed down and school was letting out.

Lily and I are both participating in Upward Cheerleading at our church.  I am coaching the 5th/6th grade team and she is on the Kinder-2nd grade team, they have 2 preschool girls this year (Lily is one).  My game was Friday night at 6:00 so I dropped the kids off at my mom's house and headed to get some Starbucks on my way to the church.  I am so thankful that she can watch them for me and that they love playing with her.

Lily loves coffee and steals mine all the time so I enjoyed getting this one all to myself!

Lily's game was at 10:00 Saturday morning.

Next year I am going to coach Lily's team and I can't wait!  She is already recruiting friends to join the team.  :)

We ate lunch with my parents and then spent a lot of the afternoon at Lowe's and Home Depot, I know super exciting day.  :)

I love to make holidays special for the kids so Saturday night I set out their little Valentine's Day gifts.  We don't do a lot but try to get them something special and of course everyone needs some chocolate.  :)  Major props to my hubby who came home Friday night with flowers and when I went to set out their Valentine's stuff he pulled out the cutest little itty bitty toys for the kids and cards for all of us.  I hate to put expectations on him for holidays but he did good this year.  We are very lucky to have him!

After church, we met Brett's family for a hibachi lunch and then worked around the house the rest of the afternoon.  My parents offered to watch the kids for us so we could go out for Valentine's Day so we packed them up and took them over to spend the night.  They are so good with the kids and play lots of games with them.

Brett and I went to see Zoolander 2 for our date and it did not disappoint.  It was hilarious in a completely ridiculous way!  :)

Love this guy so much!

It was a great weekend with lots of family time and a little bit of crazy!  :)

Today I would like to share some of my thoughts on Disney World, the things we really enjoyed, what we packed, etc.  This was our first trip so I feel like I learned a lot.

I packed everything in two suitcases, three days in one suitcase and two days and toiletries in the other.  I figured that if one bag got lost at least we would have some clothes for a couple of days.  I like organization so each day's clothes were folded together in the suitcases.  Usually I pack everyone separate and we end up with lots of extra clothes but this helped me stay with just what we needed so that we had room for our treasures from Disney.  I checked the weather almost daily for a week before we left and most days it looked like it would be cooler in the morning and warm up into the 60's or 70's during the day.  For this reason, I brought layers and each child had a light jacket and their rain jacket.  If we will be somewhere for a week or longer then I unpack our bags when we arrive.  I put one suitcase in the closet and I left one out for our dirty clothes.  I didn't want to pack our toiletries and anything we bought with our dirty clothes.  When we would get back to the room and get ready for bed, we would just throw our dirty stuff into the suitcase.  It made packing to go home a lot easier as one whole bag was already packed.

The kids each have a small rolling suitcase that they packed with books, their phones (they have old iPhone 4's that you can only play games on), and their Mickey/Minnie.  We did not let them take toys because we knew they were going to buy stuff and there just wasn't time for toys.  We pulled Luke out of school for a week to go so his teacher sent some homework for him to do during the week.  We worked on it during the flights since I knew our days would be long.  He wasn't super excited about it but I want to make sure we emphasis how important school is and make it a priority.

We live off a pretty tight budget so we put a lot into this trip thinking we would not be able to go back for a while.  We wanted to see each park and since we were going to be there Sunday through Saturday we had a extra day and decided to spend 2 days at Magic Kingdom.  We went back and forth about going to the Christmas party and didn't decide until we got to Florida.  Since we went to the Christmas party, we could have done without one of the days at Magic Kingdom.  We spent every day at a park and I wish we would have taken a day in the middle to rest.  If I had to rank the parks: 1) Magic Kingdom, 2) Hollywood Studios 3) Animal Kingdom and 4) Epcot.  There isn't a bad park.

We heard both positives and negatives about the dining plan.  We decided to do it because we didn't know anything about the park so this way our planner, Brooke (www.bookwithbrooke.com), could get us some great meals without us having to worry about it.  She did an amazing job!  We enjoyed every meal and have fantastic memories from all of them.  It was much easier than us trying to find somewhere to eat for every meal.  We planned our snacks and ended up using every meal and every snack, we even took some home with us to enjoy!  We kept track of each meals cost too just to be able to compare and we saved about $100 by doing the meal plan.  It includes drinks, meals and desserts and most of the time we ate everything because we were so hungry from walking.

We didn't buy an autograph book.  I had a friend tell me that she just brought blank paper for the characters to sign and then she put a picture of the child with the character on it and made a scrapbook.  I loved that idea!  I went and bought 100 pieces of card stock paper and some sharpies and I put them in a gallon size ziplock bag in case we got rained on and to protect them from the wet rides.  I had heard that it was a good idea to put a line at the bottom so each character knew where to sign but Brett didn't want to limit them so the kids would just hand them the paper and ask them to sign at the bottom.  It probably would have been easier to just draw the line but i like that some signed really big at the bottom and made it special.  I made one for each of them.  The kids love their scrapbooks and looking at all the fun characters they met on our trip.

Picture of Cinderella signing the paper

We chose not to rent a stroller and even though I went back and forth about it, I am glad we chose not to rent one.  The kids were so excited that they did a great job walking and I was glad we didn't have to park it for all the rides.  By the end of the day the kids were beyond exhausted and almost every night Lily passed out before getting to the bus but the stroller just felt like one more thing to deal with and it was just easier to carry her.  Since we didn't have a stroller, we carried a backpack every day with a few snacks, rain jackets (if there was rain in the forecast) or they wore a light jacket in the morning and we put it in the backback in the afternoon when it warmed up, wipes, bandaids, a brush and our autograph papers.  I wish we had thought to put some activities for the kids in the backpack because they were super bored in most of the lines which always means trouble.  :)  Just some small thing to color or word searches or something to keep them busy would have been nice.

We are about 2 months out now from our trip so those are things that stick out the most to me about planning and enjoying our trip.  I hope you will find some of this helpful.  I would love to answer any questions you have.  Just leave one in the comments!  :)  I was so stressed about planning the trip and making sure everything was perfect for the kids but our planner, Brooke, helped me relax and just enjoy it!  Things will go wrong or plans will need to be changed but just relax and have fun!  This was the best trip we have ever taken as a family and I will hold on to these memories forever!