Nora's Birthday

Hard to believe Nora is 6 years old now. We had another great party, the secret theme was flowers.

Mom went all-out with the games and decorations as usual. They colored flowers, made pipe-cleaner flowers, and pinned flowers to the wall. Of course there were cake and gifts.

Later we celebrated Nora as a family. She got to help decorate the cake, and also received a bike. Maybe next spring the girls will be riding around together.

She really had a great time, she's been on cloud nine all week.

Christmas Concert

Nora had her first school Christmas Concert. She was a little nervous beforehand, but did a super job! I think she was the most enthusiastic singer by a mile.

Thanksgiving Concert

Abby had a Thanksgiving Concert today. They did a great job!

Fall Update

We made our annual trip to Curtis Orchard this weekend. We were laughing remembering when Abby was just barely able to sit on her own with the mini-pumpkins.

As always we headed out to the field to pick our pumpkin. Abby thought that this year the field was closer, apparently in the past it felt like we had to walk for hours to get there. We were a little late this year and some of the pumpkins seemed like 'plants' but the experience is the same I suppose.

After that we visited the petting zoo and had fun with the cut-out pictures.

Halloween updates soon.

Back to School

The girls both headed back to school this week, technically I guess Nora headed to school. Nothing like another life milestone to make you feel old.

Abby was pretty excited to find out most of her friends from last year are in her class this year. Nora was thrilled to have Abby's Kindergarten teach herself. We were a little worried since Nora's been insisting she would have Abby's teacher for the last two years.

So far so good.

Disney World

The girls are working on a scrapbook for our Disney vacation which I'm sure will be the definitive recollection of the trip. Still I'd like to make a little post for our blog.

We started out Sunday flying from O'Hare directly to Orlando. Since both Orlando and O'Hare use a train to get to ground transportation the girls got to ride a car, train, plane, train, and bus all in one day. If only we could have worked a boat ride in there they could have covered all the bases.

We stayed at a hotel in the Animal Kingdom. The rooms surrounded a safari area so you could look out and see some animals, it was pretty cool.

Sharing a room with the girls is an adventure in and of itself. I discovered that sometimes Nora get's up 4 times between 2-3am to use the bathroom, which wouldn't be too bad if she was tall enough to turn on the bathroom faucet. Another time I woke up to the sounds of, 'Abby you have to get off me!', when I went over and picked Abby off of Nora I got a very sleepy reprimand, 'You can't move me, you put me down!'.

We spent the first day at the Magic Kingdom. We started with breakfast at Belle's castle and then headed over to the Dumbo ride. I think the girls had at least as much fun playing on in the water outside of the Dumbo ride as they did anywhere else.

Maybe the best waiting line ever.

Later we met Minnie, Daisy, Ariel, and Belle. Story time with Belle took us up to the evening light parade so we watched that before we went home.

We spent the second day at the Animal Kingdom. In the morning we went on a safari and rode one of those giant raft rides. Abby was a little nervous before hand but she pulled it together as the raft was climbing the first big hill. As she was telling me how this wasn't so bad after all it occurred to me that it had never occurred to her why our raft was going up such a big hill. She figured it out.

After all that we watched a Finding Nemo production and then the girls got to excevate some french fries for lunch.

In the evening we did some character dining, I was surprised how much of a kick the girls got out of it. By the end of the day Nora was spent.

For our third day we went back to the Magic Kingdom. We tried to see a few new things and visit a few of the girls favorites again. In terms of new activities we rode our first coaster - BarnStormer, watched a parade, and met Cinderella and Rapunzel.

Honestly we had a great vacation. I can't remember the last time we all had so much fun together.