Vacation - week # 2

Sunday - Halloween

We hung out at the resort for most of the day. We relaxed, swam, etc. Then in the afternoon we went to Downtown Disney to Trick-or-Treat. It was pretty busy, so we didn't stay long but it served the purpose.




Family Halloween photo - the old lady that offered to take our picture clearly had no idea how to use a camera.



Monday -

Another quite morning at the resort. We headed to Epcot later in the day for rides, characters and the fireworks.





Tuesday -

We went to Magic Kingdom. It was a fun day until the afternoon when it started pooring! We were soaked, but took the opportunity to ride Splash Mountain twice since we were already wet. Morgan has discovered a new favorite ride. This was the first time we had rain since we had been here, so we can't complain.

Wednesday -

We had breakfast at the Polynesian with Lilo, Stitch, Mickey and Pluto. After breakfast we went to the Magic Kingdom again for our last day there. We were able to get in the few things we hadn't done yet and do a few favorites again.

Rapunzel and Flynn Rider from the new movie Tangled.


Thursday -

They were calling for rain again, so we decided to make this a down day. We did go to Downtown Disney for lunch and some shopping, but for the most part spent the day at the resort.

Friday -

We started off at Animal Kingdom. It was much, much cooler today than it has been the whole time we have been here. It was a nice change from the heat and I guess getting us ready for the weather we have waiting for us at home. Morgan tried another first for her - Expedition Everest. It was not her favorite, but she seemed to enjoy the ride.

We had an early dinner at the Grand Floridian with Cinderella, Prince Charming, the stepmother and step sisters. We like this dinner a lot and the characters are always great.

After dinner we went over to the Contemporary for something that was a first for all of us. We did the Pirate and Pals fireworks cruise. We all loved this!!! First you are in a room where they have refreshments and you get to meet Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. Then you head out to one of two boats (we were on the Captain Hook boat) where your pirate captain "Patch" takes you out on a cruise of the lagoon. He tells jokes, does Disney trivia, etc. Then you pull up right in front of the Magic Kingdom to watch the fireworks from the boat. They play the music for the fireworks on the boat too. Then when you arrive back at the dock, Peter Pan is waiting to greet you. It was really fun and a great ending to a wonderful two weeks.

Tomorrow morning we will be up fairly early to finish packing and check out. We are going to make a quick stop at Epcot to ride Soarin' one more time before getting on the road for the long ride home.

I can't believe how fast this time went!!

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday

Wednesday -



We woke up early and went to Hollywood Studios. We were able to get right in line for Toy Story Mania and also got fast passes for later so we were able to ride it twice. We really like this ride. We watched the Muppets 3D show, the Little Mermaid Show and the Beauty and the Beast show. We also saw a bunch of characters. We ended up going to Planet Hollywood at Downtown Disney for dinner and then doing some shopping before heading back to the resort.

Thursday -

We had breakfast at the Grand Floridian with Mary Poppins, Alice, the Mad Hatter, Pooh and Tigger. We spent the day taking it easy at the resort because we knew we'd be out late. We attended Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom at night. It was so cool!!! We decided to do a Toy Story theme for our costumes. Joe and I were Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head (since it was the only costume that I could find that would fit over my 8 month pregnant belly), Morgan was Jessie and Victoria was Bo Peep. We rode some rides, saw some characters and watched the fireworks and parade which were both wonderful!

Friday -


We planned Friday as a down day because we knew we would be out late Thursday night. So, we slept in, did some food shopping and just hung out at the resort.


Saturday -


Today we went to Animal Kingdom. We went on the safari ride, saw the Bugs Life show, watched the Festival of the Lion King, saw some characters and did a few other rides. We are planning to see the Finding Nemo show the next day we go to Animal Kingdom.

















We are all having a great time. The weather has been much better the last few days. Almost 10 degrees cooler and no humidity. It's still hot directly in the sun, but there is a nice breeze and it's definitely much more tolerable. I hope this continues for the next week. I am holding up pretty well. My feet seem to be slightly swollen, but other than that I feel pretty good. I'll update again soon with a post that will include Halloween!!!

Let the magic begin

I'm going to attempt to catch you up on the last few days. I will include only a few of the hundreds of pictures I have taken so far.

We left our house Friday evening after I got home from work. We drove pretty much straight through. We stopped for gas in the middle of the night and then for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in SC for breakfast. Then we stopped for lunch once we were in the Orlando area. The girls did better than I expected on the ride and slept a good amount.

After such a long ride, it was great to see this sign!



We arrived at our resort around 2pm on Saturday, but had to wait until 4pm to check in. We killed time by walking around the resort and checking things out. We are staying at Bonnett Creek. It is a really nice resort with playgrounds, many pools with slides, lazy rivers, etc.

We were all really happy when we finally got into our room. We are staying in a 2 bedroom unit

with 2 baths and a full kitchen. We all got baths and showers, ate some dinner and went to bed!

One half of the kitchen

The girl's bedroom


Mom and Dad's room

Sunday was a quiet day to get ready for the upcoming weeks. We went to Downtown Disney for about an hour to buy autograph books and just look around a little. Then we went food shopping to stock up. We spent a few hours in the lazy river and pool before heading to bed.

Monday we woke up early and headed to the Magic Kingdom!








We had a breakfast reservation with Winnie the Pooh and his friends. We saw Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet and Tigger.



After breakfast we headed back to Toon Town to wait for it to open so we could see the Fairies. We got back there a little early, so I waited by the Toon Town entrance while Joe took turns riding the race cars with the girls. They both got their "drivers license".

When they were done with the cars they joined me to wait for Toon Town to open. Just before it opened one of the cast members came over and asked the girls if they would like to help Mickey open Toon Town for the day. It was so neat!!! We got to go back with Mickey and we were the only ones in Toon Town. Mickey gave the girls a personal tour of his house and then we got private meet and greets with Mickey and Minnie.

Of course Victoria's eyes are closed in this picture, but the photopass photographer took a ton of pictures of the whole thing so I'm hoping there are some better ones there.


When we were done with Mickey and Minnie, the cast member took us over to the tent where the fairies were and we were first in line to meet the fairies for the day.

We saw Tink, Rosetta and Vidia.

When we were done in Toon Town we went to ride more rides and see some characters.

Today we went to Epcot. It is the Food and Wine festival right now, so needless to say we ate way too much today.

We had breakfast in Norway with the Princesses. We saw Belle, Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora and Ariel.

We toured the countries, rode a few rides and saw some more characters.

So far we are having a wonderful trip! The weather is definitely hotter than we expected and they are expecting near record highs for the next few days, but we are dealing with it. We have been staying in the parks too long because we have more days to go back to do anything we missed. Today we were back by 3pm and spent the afternoon in the pool. Victoria is having a great time. She loves the characters and most of the rides. There are a few rides she has been unsure of and she really didn't like Snow White's scary adventures. The next 11 days are going to be so much fun!!!!

Wow, it's been a while

Wow, sorry it's been so long since I've updated the blog. Things have been busy here with school and sports.

We are leaving tomorrow for Disney World!!! We are all really excited. People thought I was crazy for flying to Ukraine when I was 20 weeks pregnant, I must be completely insane to drive 16 hours and spend two weeks in Disney at 33-35 weeks pregnant! Oh well - it should be memorable at least.

I still feel very well and things have been going great with my pregnancy. I can't believe this baby will be here pretty soon. The girls are very excited to be big sisters.

Morgan has been doing well in school and continues to do cheerleading. Competition season starts in January and we have our first away trip to CT in Feb. That should be fun with a 2 month old.

Victoria is doing great! She had a doctor visit recently and all of her bloodwork is still perfect. She is doing wonderful with her medicine too. She really likes kindergarten a lot. I sat down with her teacher last week to review how she is doing. The teacher says she is well behaved, doing well socially and really seems to be catching up academically. She is definitely delayed in some areas (letter recognition and what sounds they make) but we feel she will catch up. Her retention also isn't the best, but I think it's just because her brain is on overload. After all, she has only been speaking English for about a year. She can count to 20, say her ABCs, spell and write her name, knows her shapes, colors, etc. So, she is definitely getting there. The teacher is going to refer her for a speech evaluation, which I am happy about. Her English is pretty good, but she is sometimes hard to understand. She knows the words for things, but when she is excited has a hard time getting it out clearly. We are going to be seeing a pediatric neurologist soon too. This is mostly just for an evaluation and to get a baseline because of her history. Victoria was born at only 26 weeks and had a brain bleed at birth. She was also prenataly drug exposed and was exposed to HIV untreated for 4 years during important brain development. She has shown slightly increased tone and tends to be pretty clumsy, so it may be that she has a very slight touch of cerebral palsy. Not enough to really notice, but we would like her evaluated anyway incase there are any services that she might benefit from (physical therapy, etc.).

Victoria's favorite thing right now is soccer! She is doing really well. She is very fast (probably because she is taller than everyone on her team and her legs are longer) and is getting better and better at handling the ball. She scored three goals in one game a few weeks ago and had another goal this past weekend.

I am going to try to post as much as I can from Disney (and to include pictures). Meanwhile, here are a few pictures from soccer.

Please read this!

Please follow this link to Adeye's blog post about Yulia!

If you can, please post this to your blogs, facebook, twitter, etc.

Thanks!

First day of school, first day of school...I love the first day of school

Actually, that is a line from the movie Finding Nemo, and I don't really agree with him. I am not one of those parents that can't wait for school to start again. I enjoy having my kids home with me and don't really look forward to sending them off to school. But, of course I don't have a choice and the first day of school has arrived.


It is strange to me to have two children in school this year. Morgan is starting 2nd grade and Victoria is starting kindergarten. Victoria seemed very excited about school, so we'll see how she makes out. She goes for a half day, so I'll be picking her up at 11:25am. I'm not totally convinced that she was ready to start kindergarten, but I spoke with her teacher a few weeks ago about my concerns and we're going to keep in close contact with each other. If she has to do two years of kindergarten I am okay with that, but she may catch up by the end of the year.

Can it possibly be true????

How can it possibly be true that this picture was taken 7 years ago??? How do children grow up so fast?

This is my sweet Morgan the day she was born, 7 years ago today.

This is the funny, beautiful, smart, loving, wonderful girl she is today. I cherish every minute of the 7 years I have known her so far and look forward to all the minutes that we have yet to spend together.

HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY MORGAN!!!!!!