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.

Abby's 7th Birthday

Happy Birthday Abby! Somehow it's always hard to believe another year has gone by. We were all telling family stories the other night and realizing how fast the girls change. Anyhow, Abby had a traditional birthday-week. She took frozen cupcakes in to school on Wednesday and got to set the menu for dinner (Ham and Mac'n'cheese).

That evening she opened her presents. There were a lot of good ones. Abby and Nora put together a lego set one evening last week. They're turning into little engineers, just a year or two ago I would help them with a set like that for at least a week.

Thursday for small group she set the menu again, corn-dogs and popsicles. Saturday was her party, she choose a frozen theme at the local ice rink. It took a little while to get all the girls the right shoes, but after a few exchanges everyone had a great time. By the end Abby was skating a little by herself, away from the wall. She may already be better than her Dad.

I think she had a great week, hopefully the start of another great year.

Easter 2015

We had another great Easter this weekend. I always especially enjoy the weekends where our family spends a lot of time together. Saturday we dyed Easter Egg's:

The girls got to pick out their Easter dresses this year. They had been dying to wear them all week and put them on first thing when they woke up at 6 am. After church I took them out to the yard with me to rake. They proceeded to start a leaf war and ended up covered with leaves from head-to-toe, I haven't heard that much giggling since at least last weekend. We did get some shots before all the excitement.

In the afternoon we had our hunt. The girls were careful to search together and split the eggs sort of evenly.

At breakfast we had smiley face pancakes, to tease Nora I gave her a frowny face. She just looked at me for a while afterwards and I asked her what was wrong. She said, 'Dad, the next time you make a frowny face pancake could you please not forget the tears?'. Sometimes I wonder about that kid, at least she asked nicely.

How to Paint a Kitchen

Abby has been working on How-To's at school the last week or two. Here is how to paint a kitchen: