breakfast with cinderella

i'm skipping ahead to tuesday morning of our disney week because it was a special day for the girls! after a super long day at magic kingdom on monday, we were up bright and early to have breakfast at cinderella's castle! this was another first for us during this trip. none of us had ever been inside the castle... caroline had no idea that you could even go in the castle until she received cinderella's breakfast invitation for her birthday. so this was a special day indeed. it was tough getting up early that morning... but it was definitely worth it.

one of the best parts about our breakfast reservation was that it allowed us to enter the magic kingdom before the park opened. the guys were at the front of the park waiting for it to open in about 20 minutes (they had zero interest in a princess breakfast!), and once i realized that they did not actually check our reservation details to let us in the "breakfast reservations" entrance, i was incredibly bummed that the guys weren't with us. :( i mean, how often do you get to actually stroll down main street with no one there?


and knowing we did not get a great family picture in front of the castle the day before, i was wishing we could have gotten one this morning. but i got over it. :) and i enjoyed my time with the girls! here are caroline and nana on main street without thousands of our closest friends! love it!!


once we were in the park, we had all kinds of time to kill before our breakfast reservation... so we slowly walked down main street and soaked in the beautiful surroundings. we are usually busting it down this road to beat all the other double-stroller-pushing-families to dumbo! :) i love the classic look of main street...


and here's the castle in all its construction glory! (fantasyland is undergoing a major expansion project.)


the girls are ready for our breakfast in the castle!


caroline was ready for me to be done with the clicking... let's head to the castle!


ok, just one more for daddy. did i mention that i loved that there were not a million people behind this statue?!?


as we walked into the bottom of the castle, caroline looked so tiny against the giant mosaic and massive arches.


well.. she found the shining armor-- now where's the knight?


i couldn't convince the guys to let amelia tag along with them (something about racecars and minimum height... blah blah blah), so we armed ourselves with cheerios and hoped they'd last till we got to our table. we waited in line to meet cinderella for a little bit, and we managed not to lose amelia. it was a successful morning thus far.


and finally! meeting cinderella! cinderella was so sweet to notice all the details on caroline's princess dress. she talked with her for a good little while and made sure to tell her happy birthday.


here we are with cinderella! notice that caroline is holding her dress just like cinderella. and notice that amelia is still a bit skeptical of the character idea.


after meeting cinderella, we went upstairs for breakfast. the winding staircase was neat!


my dainty little lady climbing the stairs. :)


we're almost there!


we made it to the top and were shown to our table. the restaurant upstairs is cozy, and your attention is immediately drawn to the beautiful windows overlooking fantasyland.



before each princess comes out to greet the guests, her story is dramatically told over the loudspeakers. it doesn't take long to guess which princess will be arriving next, and she comes out with much applause and excitement! unfortunately, our table was next to a huge pillar that blocked our view of the princesses' entrances. we saw them before too long, but i was a little disappointed about our table location. at least we did have a nice view of the windows...

and here are the princesses! jasmine was first, and i was so happy that she was teeny tiny (if ya know what i mean!). can i get an amen, hannah!??!?! :)


sleeping beauty was next-- they were all so sweet to try to say hi to amelia too, even though i told them she was not too keen on characters. i'm cracking up at amelia's look on her face. she is not amused. i guess she's thinking, "aren't you supposed to be sleeping?!"


"there's ariel!"


caroline has never met ariel (we've tried to clear of the bikini-clad character greetings), so she was especially excited to see her. and i was especially excited to see her in actual clothes. (caroline hasn't seen her movie either, but she still knew who she was and loved meeting her.)


belle is always full of hugs...


after all the princesses made their way around the restaurant, the girls were given a wishing wand and a wishing star... i didn't quite follow all that the announcer said, but they got to make a wish and touch the wand to the wishing star. it was cute, but honestly, i've never made a big deal about making wishes and such with our kids... not trying to get on my soapbox here, but we take our requests to God. :) so i don't think caroline got the whole "make a wish" thing... but she enjoyed waving her cute purple wand around in the air.



sleeping beauty came over to help out... gotta make sure that wish gets heard ;)


what was pretty neat is that after the whole wishing ceremony, lights flashed randomly across the ceiling of the dining room. i think it was supposed to be the wishes being granted... here's caroline trying to figure out what's going on. :) ha!


amelia had fun playing "bibbity bobbity boo!" with nana!


it was an extra special treat for nana to join us for breakfast in the castle. she also shared her stuffed french toast with me. :) thanks, nana.


as soon as the princesses exited the dining room, caroline was ready to go drive the race cars. (sigh.) from princesses to race cars in a matter of seconds! and she was definitely done with pictures. but after a little tickling, i got a picture of me and my girl.


we were finished with breakfast, but i just didn't want to leave the castle yet! so caroline humored me, and we snapped some pictures by the windows overlooking fantasyland. i love this one of my four year old girl.


enjoying a unique view of the carousel...


after watching the carousel go round-and-round a few times, caroline was ready to hop on her own musical horse.


"c'mon mom! let's go ride the carousel... and then the racecars!"


so it was off to the carousel before meeting up with the guys!


this special birthday breakfast at the castle was definitely one of the highlights of our week at disney! i have much more to share about our disney days, but it will have to wait until after christmas. i want to spend this week focusing on the precious christmas memories we are making as a family... and hopefully i will be sharing those pictures soon. christmas is rapidly approaching, and our kids are excited about celebrating Jesus' birth in just one week! more disney posts to come in january, and some christmas blogging should be happening soon.

breakfast with mickey!

so blogging about disney during the christmas season is kind of hard to do! there is so much i want to share! and there is so much going on right now at home! so i'll do my best to cruise through this post. :) we spent our first day at disney outside the parks. this was a really nice way to ease into our week! we "slept in", if that is possible with 3 kids in your tiny hotel room... and then we headed to a late breakfast with mickey and his friends at chef mickey's! this was our first character meal ever, and we all loved it!


it was such a treat to have the characters come right to your table and interact with you! we needed a little "non-syrup zone" on the table for the camera and autograph books, though. :) so i said we all loved it... i guess that wasn't entirely accurate. amelia was not so sure about the characters. i expected this, but it was still pretty funny since the poor thing was trapped in her high chair! she did ok for mickey, who was first....


and then donald "kissed" her, and that sent her over the edge...


so when pluto stopped by, amelia did her dead-level best to get away from him! she never got upset, but it was obvious that she did not want an autograph!


ethan and caroline were so eager to hop up and meet the characters.


goofy was tickling ethan here-- ethan loved it. i have a whole series of pics with goofy tickling ethan and then goofy acting like he didn't do it. really cute. and i just realized that it looks like goofy's ketchup is pouring out onto caroline's head! even goofier! :)


pappy missed the first time pluto came to our table, and he was determined to find that dog. so right before we left, pappy finally chased him down for a picture. :)


this was ethan's response to, "hey! show me your mickey waffle!" that little stinker. but those were some delicious and cute waffles!


ethan, nana, and pappy joining in on the napkin waving hoop-la song


and here's the second birthday cupcake in less than 24 hours!


the kids' favorite part: the chocolate mickey on the cupcake. and thankfully, pappy shared his with ethan. :)


i love this one of nana and pappy with the kids!


after our big breakfast, we took a little ride on the monorail. this always is near the top of my kids' disney favorites.



we stopped off at the monorail resorts to look around. i'd never been to the polynesian... it was nice but did not have the spectacular christmas decorations i was expecting. brian did snap this shot of some pretty plants in the lobby.


i knew the grand floridian would be all decked out for christmas. i remembered this resort from our visit without the kids in '07. what a beautiful place!


the kids were really amazed at the huge gingerbread house but did not want to take this picture. tooooo bad! get used to it! our week has just begun, kiddos!!!


this fancy place was begging for a girl picture!


we spotted this sea of poinsettias as we were leaving the grand floridian. wow. beautiful.


we headed back to our resort (not quiiiiiiite the grand floridian!) for a much-needed afternoon nap. and as resident-travel-agent, i had the sad duty of waking up every single person in our family. we couldn't sleep the evening away! it was on to downtown disney! we ate at wolfgang puck express for dinner, which was fabulous. yum. if you are on the dining plan, i think this is your best use of a quick service credit. look at my salmon. this is not fast food, folks.


i want to say that i will not post food pictures from the whole week, but that would probably be a big fat lie. so just get use to my food pictures. we ate well. :) and after my salmon was mmmmmmm....... creme brulee! it was so. very. good.


so good that neil got up from his spot on the other end of the table so we could pose with our delicious desserts. :)


brian ordered creme brulee as well, but of course, my non-rich-dessert husband could not finish his... so amelia helped him out! she loved it! and notice that she has a bite of cookie in her other hand. she probably had more sugar that week than ethan consumed in the first two years of his life!


after our fantastic dinner, we went on to shopping! caroline loved seeing the princesses, even if they were fake ones.


and here she is dancing with "spanish mode buzz" as she called him.


never mind that we saw the real deal earlier that day... the kids wanted to pose with this mickey and minnie. amelia was much more comfortable with these characters! :) (the last time my kids posed with these guys, caroline was almost the same age that amelia is now!)


thank you, ethan, for the goofy face. this was his default face for most of the week. no problem. mommy will just take more pictures of you until you can cooperate! i think he surrendered by the next evening. :)


and heeeere's what ethan (and brian) had been waiting for since we left orlando in may. the lego store! these guys love picking out legos on the pick-a-brick wall. and my husband was just a little bummed when he thought he left his lego-brick-list at home. mmmhmmm. a list. complete with pictures and dimensions.


so ethan got his legos and then begged all week to go back to the hotel to play with them. note to self: buy legos on the way out of town.

i want to say that the kids got to bed super early because we had a big day at the magic kingdom the next day! that was my plan. but the late nap lead to some semi-late shopping at downtown disney, and by the time everyone fell asleep in our little room, it was nearly midnight. not how i wanted to start out our park days, but we rolled with it! it was an early morning for our first day at the magic kingdom! i hope i can come back in the next couple of days to share that day.

(also... i have really narrowed down my most favorite pictures for these posts... if you want to see more, click on over to my disney flickr album!)