Once Upon a Dream, part 1

I just saw Zelda do the cutest thing while playing.

She is in her playroom going through her toy chest and she came across a tiny Barbie microphone. She started passionately singing "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty, which caused me to look over at her, and she was holding it between her finger and thumb, close to her mouth. It was adorable!

I went and got the video camera just in case if she would do it again, and as I was typing this I lucked out. I got a little video of her doing it until she caught me filming...I'll post it as soon as I can.

Disney!

One of the best perks of living in central Florida is our proximity to Walt Disney World. Being a resident also enables us to discounts, which helped us to get 3 day passes this year. Our first day was used back in January on Ryan's dad's birthday, since people can get in for free on their birthdays this year. We used up our last 2 days in the past month, before it started to get too hot.

So, for our second day, in the beginning if April, we decided to start off in the Magic Kingdom. Zelda starts getting excited when she sees all the Mickey Mouse images on the drive into the park and the parking lot. As soon as we got into the park, she saw the castle, exclaiming "wow!" I told her it was the "Princess Castle", and she said "OH! Princess castle!" We tried to get a few pictures taken on Main Street USA which heads to the castle, but it was very difficult to keep her eyes off it. Our first planned stop was to get some corn dog nuggets which they serve at the end of Main Street, but the second we diverted our path even a few feet from going straight to the castle Zelda started to cry. She got worse when we got into the snack stand, so I told Ryan to take Zelda to the castle and I'd meet them there with the food. We were hungry, and the corn dog nuggets with cheese dipping sauce are so yummy and some of the best things served in the park...one of the items we get every time we go there. I bought some for us (very thankful by this time for having the large stroller, it was a perfect portable tray) and made my way over to the castle. The park was not terribly busy, and when I shortly arrived at the front of the castle I saw Zelda having the time of her life running around with other kids, and in bubbles which a 'cast member' was blowing around. It was so sweet to see her enjoying herself so much. I sat down on a nearby bench and watched her play, and also watched her trying to get right up to the castle. Unfortunately it has been closed off for several years since they did productions in front of it several times a day. She was determined to get up there, though.

After a little while I told Zelda that we were going to go see Pooh Bear. I knew it was the only way I could get her away from the Princess Castle. We walked around to the back of the park where there is a Winnie the Pooh ride. The wait was 40 minutes so we picked up some fast passes and made our way to the other end of the park for Pirates of the Caribbean. When I told her we were going there she was excited and started singing the pirate theme song, which she has learned from a Disney sing along vhs a friend of ours, Jen, bought for her. There was hardly any wait in this line, that is until it stopped a few minutes for technical difficulties. I noticed that the time was running late and if we wanted to get to Animal Kingdom & have a good amount of time to do things there we would have to leave after this ride, so I gave our fast passes for Pooh to a woman behind me and her little boy. Zelda just loved the Pirates ride, and when it got stuck while we were on it she just joined along in the song. After Pirates we walked to a nearby stand where they serve pineapple soft serve in pineapple juice (pineapple float), which is amazing and the other item we always try to get in the park, so we all shared one of those then made our way out of the Magic Kingdom. Towards the exit they had Pinnochio in a little corner for a meet and greet. The line was unusually short (2 people, perhaps because it wasn't very obvious he was there), and since Zelda has recently been introduced to Pinnochio I thought she'd like to meet him. She was happy to see him, calling him "Nochio". She was a little shy, but gave him high 5s, and though she motioned she wanted to give him a kiss, she never quite completed that. She talked all about "Nochio" on our way out to Animal Kingdom.

By this time it had actually been a few hours and Zelda was getting a little tired. She had a 5 minute nap on the drive to the next park, but it surely wasn't enough. Entering Animal Kingdom I told her that we were going to go see dinosaurs and pet some animals. She perked up when she found out about the dinosaurs. So we headed to that first. There is a dinosaur ride that is pretty much for adults, so we didn't go on that, but around that ride are dinosaur statues in the trees. She loved seeing all of them. While she was playing amongst the dinos Ryan went over to ride Everest, which is a killer awesome roller coaster that has the smoothest, craziest drops and eventually takes you backwards in the dark, but with me being prego I couldn't go on it.Video: Zelda playing on the Dinosaur, and saying her famous "Rawr, Dinosaur!"

So while Ry was enjoying that I took Zelda to go see Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Eeyore, who were conveniently camped out near the dinosaur area. Animal Kingdom is a great park to take the little ones to meet characters since the lines are not nearly as long as those in Magic Kingdom (we are talking 15 minutes vs 45). Along the pathway towards the character spot they were playing songs from the Pooh bear cartoons, which Zelda and I sang along with. When she saw the characters she got very excited, and talked about each one, saying that she wanted to give them hugs, especially Eeyore, who she repeatedly commented about giving a hug. She got a bit shy when it was her turn to actually go up to each character, but she did quite well so long as I held her and stood between her and the character. After meeting the 3 characters she said "Bye Tigga, Bye Eeyore, Bye Pooh Bear" loudly, perhaps making up for how quiet she had been while actually meeting them. She talked about them the way back up the path, along with singing a bit of the songs.



After this I called Ryan and he was just done with his ride so we were going to meet in a section of the park called "Asia". However, when I got to the bridge that takes you over to where he was we were blocked by people and ropes....a parade was about to begin. I called Ryan and told him it could be a while, and then Zelda and I chilled out and waited for the parade, which started just a few minutes later. Since there were quite a bit of people in the way I put her up on my shoulders (not an easy feat..she wouldn't open her legs to let me do it so it took several tries) She was a bit intimidated by her new position and she held onto my hands tightly, but she was exclaiming "Wow" or "Birdie" or whatever animal based float passed us bye. She got a bit more secure on my shoulders as was evident by her waving at people on the floats by about the 5th one, then suddenly she spotted Minnie Mouse. She got so excited she started waving like crazy, yelling in her cute little voice "Hi, Minnie! Hi, Minnie!". She was now greatly enjoying the parade. Next character that came by was Goofy, and she did the same, but this time waving with two hands "Hi, Goofy!". Soon after followed Donald Duck, and Zelda exclaimed repeatedly "Hi, Duck! Hi Duck!", waving both hands. In a few minutes came her favorite, Mickey, and she got even more loud (I didn't think it was possible at this point), and very enthusiasticly waving with both hands exclaimed "Hi Mickey! Hi Mickey!" She was so excited and having such a wonderful time with this parade, it just made my day. Mickey's float was the end of the parade, so I put her in her stroller and we followed Mickey out over the bridge to Asia, all the while Zelda waved and told Mickey "Hi!".

We waited a little and soon met up with Ryan. As we were walking to the back of Africa, which is next to Asia, we noticed there had been a little bit of rain on the ground. I looked up and saw some ominous clouds not too far away. However I had no idea which direction I was facing so I couldn't tell you if they were coming or going. We caught a little train in "Africa" to a petting zoo, but when we arrived at the petting zoo they had closed it due to the clouds. I was a bit bummed because this was one of the other reasons we specifically came to Animal Kingdom...but they advised us to check back in 15 minutes. There were only 30 minutes until they closed that section of the park for the evening, so I wasn't too sure we'd get to let Zelda pet the goats, but they did eventually open it up. Yay :D So Zelda got to have some fun petting goats and sheep, which were very active since it was close to feeding time. She had a great time with that.

After the petting zoo we headed out of Animal Kingdom to go to Epcot for dinner. The place we like in Epcot is clear in the back of the park, but well worth the walk. It is a Moroccan restaurant, extremely good and quite affordable (most of the food in Disney is way expensive). We all enjoyed some refreshing sawarma, cous cous, hummus (which Zelda loves), pita, and tabbouleh. We then meandered through the nearby 'countries' until we arrived in France, where we decided to splurge one last time and treat ourselves to some French desserts. Kenna was enamored with the strawberry tart that we both shared. We were all beat at this point so called it a day. What a great day indeed!

Microphone

Zelda is growing up fast and learning lots of new things including riding a bike.  She has a little big wheel that she loves to ride.  Funny thing is that she calls it a "microphone."  I am not sure how she started that, but I think it might be because it has a little speaker on it.