The lost birthday

Yes - it's been a few weeks.  Life Happens.  This week will be all about catch up so what better place to start than with my birthday.

We headed to Disney to celebrate my 40th birthday and Emily's 4th.  This has been a trip that's been in the works for almost a year, and in hindsight, I'm happy we had all of the anticipation because that in itself was so much fun.

The first day we headed to Magic Kingdom, which also happened to be my birthday.  We spent most of our time in Fantasyland.  Emily loved It's a Small World.  We met Pinocchio, which Emily loved despite not having a clue as to who he is (we still have some classics to catch up on).

Em wanted to eat every 5 seconds, so it made the morning a bit challenging and then it started to rain.

And it rained.  By this time my sister had taken Felicia and Lelia off for their own adventures and we decided to hunt the princesses down.  Emily was most interested in seeing The Princess and the Frog, so we found her garden and we waited.  And waited. And waited.  After an hour, it started to rain again but the princess keepers came and got us and led us to a gazebo area that was covered, and there we met the beautiful Princess Tiana.  She was very sweet and had the perfect New Orleans drawl.  

After that, we decided to head back to the hotel while Liz and the girls stayed to enjoy the Electric Light Parade.  

I had not felt great the day before - I slept a lot of the afternoon, so when we got back from the Magic Kingdom, I laid down again, and then proceeded to stay in bed for the next 2.5 days with an oh-so-fun-but-not-so-magical stomach bug.

While I hung out in the room, the rest of the family went on to enjoy the Animal Kingdom on day 2 and Blizzard Beach on Day 3.

The met lots of characters - Goofy was a favorite, and Emily lasted each day until about 2-3pm, which I thought was pretty good for her.  

Heather and Felicia took part in one of their favorite traditions - the eating of the sour candy.  This is something I will never understand, because I long ago gave up the notion that sucking up a bunch of sour powdered candy was fun, but they do it whenever they find the stuff and I do my part by taking pictures.

The last day I was feeling better and we ALL headed to Epcot, and we started it off with breakfast with the princesses.  We met Belle, Aurora and Cinderella.  Watching Emily watch the princesses was priceless.  She was wide-eyed and excited.  When they came up to us, she got a little more shy, but was still thrilled with the whole experience.

We hung out in the land area, and visited the Nemo area.  The most impressive experience of Epcot to me was the Talking Crush show.  Kids and People got to interact with Crush the Turtle from Nemo and it was really really cool how they did it.  Heather, Em, Leila and I headed back to the hotel around lunch time and proceeded to enjoy the afternoon at the pool.

It was definitely not the trip I was anticipating, but it was nice to have a break and overall I think the kids really enjoyed the experience.  I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to go, and look forward to our next trip - probably in a few years - where, with some luck, we'll all be able to enjoy the entire adventure!