check out part 1 of the series here (as well as the reasoning behind the iphone pictures)
and you can see part 2 of the series here :) Go get caught up before you read part 3!
Ok… where we we? Ah, right… we headed back to the resort to grab some lunch and change into our Halloween costumes. I am quite impressed at how quickly we were able to accomplish this. We managed to inhale lunch, run back to the room, change clothes/gather props/resist laying down and going to sleep in about an hour, and we were back in front of the resort, waiting on the shuttle so much quicker than I imagined was possible.
I had been dreading the part of the day where we took the break back at the resort, because I was afraid we would take too long, and I wanted to maximize the amount of time we spent in the park, since we only had a few days. (Funny that I was dreading it, since it was my idea to deal with lunch/halloween costumes by heading back to the resort in the afternoon anyway. I’m fickle like that I guess;)) I seriously turned into a logistics Nazi at certain times on this trip (and I wasn’t even good at it!), so I was SO glad when we arrived back at the park so quickly…
One of the reasons I was so worried about time/logistics, is because we had scheduled an appointment for Addison to have the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique experience before the Halloween party officially began. Nathan stayed with her, while Austen and I went and put the finishing touches on his costume (and then enjoyed some rides, since we had tons of extra time!).
I can’t begin to tell you how much I love my husband for taking so many pictures of Addy during the 30ish minutes that she was in the Boutique. I don’t feel like I missed anything :)
Addy’s Princess transformation…
(I love that you can see Nathan in his Goofy hat in the mirror in this one :))
Seriously, could she be any more excited?
Nathan was seriously rockin’ the Hipstamatic app…
Don’t you want to go have your hair and makeup done in a princess castle?
And don’t you want to know this amazing lady? She had so much character, and Addy just loved her.
A bit of princess makeup…
And some fairy dust to finish it all off…
And the Reveal… Princess Addison!
Worth every penny.
Our beautiful girl…
Okay… so while Addy was undergoing that transformation, Austen was also transforming :) His process was crazy quick though, so I don’t have nearly as many pictures to share…
We found a place to have his face painted (which only took about 5 minutes!), and then he slipped into a bathroom and changed into his costume. (His costume was a bit warm, so we held off putting it on him for as long as we could.)
Doesn’t he look awesome?!?
Every once in awhile I see an image of Austen, and I am just blown away by how grown up he is. This image made me happy because in it, I could see that he’s not completely grown up, but that he’s still our little boy. (Ick, cheesy mom stuff… sorry!)
We managed to make a couple of really cute kids… if I do say so myself (and don’t you dare disagree;) )
Family Halloween portrait :) (thanks again to the Disney photogs for this one…even if it is totally focused on the wrong thing. Sigh.)
Honestly, from this point on we were much too busy hopping on rides with ridiculously short lines, searching for the trick or treat spots, and eating a ton of candy to take many pictures :) You’ll just have to image us traipsing around the Magic Kingdom in our Halloween Costumes riding Thunder Mountain over and over without waiting in line at all :)
My very very very very very favorite part of the trip (not including getting to spend time with my family or watching my kids enjoy the thrill that is Disney) was the evening fireworks dispaly and the Boo-to-You Halloween Parade. I’m such a kid about this sort of thing… I just sit and stare and laugh… I probably enjoyed it more than the kids :)
(I took about a million firework shots… mine were horrible! Another great reason to be thankful for my husband ;) )
It was a truly wonderful day. We drug ourselves to the shuttle at around midnight… after having been in the park since before 9:00 that morning… and after having had basically zero sleep. Although we were tired to our cores, we were also truly content. It was a seriously amazing day.
(And I’ll go ahead and say it… my kids are rockstars… at 8 and 5 years old they rode every ride we came upon, walked for miles and miles and hours and hours, fought very little, whined very little, and seemed to love every second)
Love. I’m in love.
So really, the post should end here… with that image of my children painted and glittered and exhausted (and seriously, do you see Addy is reaching for her brother, even in her sleep?!)… but I have just a few more images from Day 2. There’s not enough for a full second post, so I’ll just do a short synopsis here :)
We gave ourselves a bit of a reprieve on Day 2. We knew the kids (and the adults) had to have a little bit of sleep before being fit to tackle another day at the park, so we didn’t get up ’til around 9:00. (If I’m being honest, even being as exhausted as I was, I still didn’t sleep much… I was still too excited about the day we had just had, and the day we had to come.) We ate breakfast at the resort before we headed over, and we finally arrived in the park at around 11:00. What we were not prepared for was the insane influx of guests who appeared to have materialized overnight. The park was packed! All Austen and Addy wanted to do was ride Splash Mountain, and it seemed like we ran into obstacle after obstacle keeping off of that ride and every other ride:( We dealt with rain, lightening, crazy long lines, and a navigator who managed to keep screwing up the Fast Passes… (yep, that’s me). It was a slightly crazy and emotional morning, but we finally managed to get it all together. The kids got to ride everything they had missed the day before, and we re-rode Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain a couple of times (in addition to all kinds of other stuff).
Fun :) (and yes, Addy still has her princess hair. It honestly didn’t move. It was still looking good the next day when we flew home!)
We rode as many rides as we possibly could for the rest of the day, and then the decision was made to head back over to Downtown Disney so the kids could purchase their souvenirs. (Austen had been dying to go back to the Lego store, and Addy was happy to choose her souvenir anywhere.) We had a flight to catch the next morning at 9:00am (and the airport was about 45 minutes away, so we knew we were going to have to get up early!) and we were already a bit tired. We ate a delicious dinner at Wolfgang Puck, found all of the perfect toys to take home with us, and finished off the night with one more treat from Ghirardelli, and we called it a night.
It was a wonderful ending to a wonderful (if slightly too short!) vacation.
Bye bye Magic Kingdom… we’ll see you again next year!
much love,
-amber
by amberholritz
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