The Most Magical Place on Earth

We just returned from a long weekend at Disney. It was Riley's second time there and Kendall's first. We weren't sure what to expect with Kendall being that she's only 3 months old, but she was a trooper. I think the fresh air was the key to our success. She was content to hang out in the stroller most of the day with little-to-no fussing. We took the kids to Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. We bought ourselves season passes to Disney so there wasn't a rush to do everything in each park. We got a late start each morning due to the weather.

Friday at Magic Kingdom it drizzled most of the morning through early afternoon, but we managed to stay fairly dry. No one needed rain gear. Riley's favorite ride was Thunder Mountain Railroad. While getting on the ride, we bumped into friends of ours...what luck! Riley also enjoyed meeting Mickey and Minnie, Goofy's airplane ride, Winnie's honey pots, Pirates of the Carribean, the Tomorrowland Tranist Authority, the race cars and the WDW Railroad.

Saturday we headed out to Animal Kingdom. We took Riley to Dinoland first. We got fast passes for the Dinosaur ride. While waiting, Riley got to play in the Bone Yard, which is a large playground with dinosaur bones, etc. Riley was terrified on the dinosaur ride. Even though he knew it wasn't real, he didn't want to go on it again. Daddy had to ride it alone. We then ventured out to see the tigers and meerkats. If you know anything about Riley, you know he loves to watch Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet. Seeing a meerkat up close was awesome. He also got a chance to meet Jiminy Cricket and Rafiki while we were there. Mom and dad got to ride the Mt. Everest ride...wow, that was fun. We didn't get to ride the safari or check out Camp Mickey and Minnie. We'll do that on our next trip. Before leaving the park, we ate dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. It freaked out Kendall with all the stampedes and gorilla and elephant noises, but she did love the fish tanks.

Once we got back to the hotel, we decided to walk around Downtown Disney. Riley had a blast checking everything out. He loved that the one store had TONS of Mr. Potato Head parts. He thought the LEGO displays were fantastic, which of course they were...check out the pictures of the dinosaur and the dragon. After that, we went back to our hotel to watch the PSU/OSU game. Thank goodness Penn State pulled off another win...can't imagine the mood Andy would have been in the next day if they lost!

Sunday started with breakfast in our hotel with Mickey, Minnie and Pluto. I'm so glad that Riley's not scared of the characters! After that, we packed up, headed out to the car and drove to Hollywood Studios. Riley was excited over riding the trams for the first time on this trip...We had taken shuttle buses earlier. Once we arrived at the park, Andy went to get fast passes for the Tower of Terror and Rock and Roll Roller Coaster. In the meantime, Riley and I went to check out the Toy Story exhibit, but it was a 70 min. wait and fast passes weren't good until 5 pm...it was 11 am at the time! So we compromised and got pics with Woody and Buzz instead. We also got to see Playhouse Disney which Riley loved. They did a live performance of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse including Handy Manny, The Little Einsteins, and My Friends Tigger and Pooh. They sang and danced and Riley thought it was awesome. After that we went and found Mater and McQueen from the Cars movie, then Riley got to watch his first 3D movie at the Muppets exhibit. It was more fun to watch him watching the movie than to watch it myself. He kept putting his hands out in front of him and taking his glasses on and off to see if it was real. We also got to watch the green army men from Toy Story perform and they were hysterical. Riley wanted to follow them around all day, but sadly, we lost them in the crowd.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Mommy...

As you may know, Florida is known for it's citrus fruit. Delicious apples, like what I use to get at Cherry Hill Orchards, in Lancaster, Pa, are no where to be found down here. Thank goodness mom and dad live in western North Carolina and can find apple orchards near their house. Mom brought me a bushel of my favorite apples (Jonagolds) when I met up with them at Kiawah last month.

Riley LOVES to help me in the kitchen. He uses our stool to get close to the action. While making applesauce, his job was to put the cut up apples in the pot to cook and then to mash them through our food mill once they were good and soft. He was so proud of our finished product. We even got adventurous and made berry applesauce like I buy for him at the store. We took some frozen blueberries and heated them in the microwave, then pressed them through the food mill and mixed them with some applesauce. He loves it. The best part is that we made it together!

Sibling Fun

Riley loves playing with his baby sister and making her laugh. He wants everyone to call her "Riley's Girl" instead of Mommy or Daddy's girl. He's very protective of her and likes to be involved with most everything she does. He even helps with "diaper duty" and giving her baths. He shows her his toys and trys to get her to play with her toys. Here is some video of him trying to get her to laugh. Of course Kendall was giggling up a storm before I could find my camera, but she gave us some adorable coo's in this clip. ENJOY!

Here's to trying something new...Scrapblogging!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

No Friends Like Old Friends...

While visiting Lancaster, my oldest and dearest friend Beth and I got together with our kids for Happy Meals and a play date. Beth's oldest son Myles is only a few months younger than Riley. Beth and her family live in Harrisburg and we use to try to get the boys together whenever we could. Now that we live in Jax, it's much more difficult for them to see each other. Beth and I have stayed close since elementary school. Beth and I met at Toddler Gym at my church as preschoolers. Once we were in elementary school, we go to know each other much better. We use to go on family vacations together - I'd go with her to Wildwood, NJ with her family and she'd come to Virginia Beach with mine. We would go to church camp at Camp Hebron together as well as hockey camp each summer. Beth and I both played field hockey and ran track and we would train off season at the track every summer. She'd push me on the distance running and I'd push her on the sprints. We haven't lived in the same town since high school, but managed to stay close all this time. We noticed that the boys are following in our footsteps. They seemed to pick up right where they left off the last time they saw each other - which was Riley's birthday party in April. The two have even talked on the phone a few times. How wonderful for us that our kids enjoy each other as much as we enjoy each other's friendship! We're hoping that Myles and Beth can come down for a visit sometime. It's so difficult to stay in touch with all our crazy schedules. But I'm thankful that I have such an awesome friend who makes great efforts to stay close. (I'm also grateful for email so we can catch up with each other during nap time!)

Riley the Ring Bear

Riley was the ring "bear" in my cousin's wedding this past weekend in Pennsylvania. He was mighty disappointed to discover he was going to have to wear a suit instead of a "bear" costume. He was told that if he did everything that Uncle Jon and Aunt Laura asked of him, he'd be able to get a Geo Trax - which is a remote controlled train that runs on a track. He did a fantastic job so today we're going to head out to Target or Toys R Us after school to get his reward. During the ceremony, he was making the funniest faces - check out the video to watch some of his expressions. He stood fairly still and behaved himself, but loved the attention he got while making people laugh. They had a golf cart there to help get some people as well as supplies from the barn down to the location where they had the ceremony. Riley got to go for rides on with Uncle Jason and then with Daddy. That made wearing a tux more "bearable!" He thought it was especially funny to hit his bowl with his knife and make Jon and Laura kiss during the reception. Of course he wanted to do this non-stop and I did little to stand in his way since Jon did this to me at my wedding! The wedding was beautiful and we had a great time visiting with our family even though it was a crazy and stressful trip. All of us, except Kendall, were fighting colds and struggling from a lack of sleep. I was up for over 24 hours with only a 2 hour snooze at one point. It was rough, but we survived. Kendall was a perfect angel on the flight there and back. Not one peep out of the child. I was anticipating getting dirty looks from the rest of the passengers while she screamed bloody murder, but no such thing. It was much more difficult traveling with two kids verses one...don't know that we'll do it again anytime soon, but we're glad we were able to attend the wedding and see Jon and Laura start their new life together as husband and wife. To see a slide show from the wedding, click on the title Riley The Ring Bear.

Riley's Attempt at Photography

So after Kendall had her photo shoot last week, I decided, hey, I can do this. So I went to Walmart and found a king sized black sheet on sale for $12. I brought it home, rearranged some of the furniture in the family room to get the best natural lighting I could and then started snapping some pictures. Here are some of the ones I took:

This photo below was taken by Riley. He made sure it was centered and cropped the way he wanted it all by himself and then snapped the photo. I think he did a better job than most adults end up doing when taking photos. See for yourself.

Kendall's Photo Shoot

On Friday, a friend who is starting a photography business came over to practice taking pictures of newborns on Kendall. She snapped a ton of shots and these are a few of the ones I really liked. Enjoy!

First Day of School

Riley attended his first day of preschool on Monday, August 18. When he came home I asked him how his day went, if he liked his teacher, classmates, what they learned, etc. In typical boy fashion, I got a lot of "I don't know." After day #2, it was a different story. He started to share a lot of stuff that they had done that day...Learning about the letter "I", using marbles to paint, learning about primary colors, being the helper on the way back from the playground (which earned him an extra sticker!), etc. He really enjoys going to school - and mommy enjoys him going to school! After 3 days of being cooped up in the house with Riley and Kendall while the rains and winds pounded the house last week, it feels good to be back on our schedule!

A Visit to the Fire Station

Last Friday Riley got to visit one of the Jacksonville Fire Stations with some friends. He got to see what they store on the trucks, the hoses, sit in the seats on the truck as well as check out the equipment a fire fighter must wear while fighting a fire. He also got to see a ladder truck with the ladder extended. That was probably the best part...well, except when we got to go inside the fire house and sit in the comfy Lazy Boys and watch the Olympics on the big screen t.v. The kids also enjoyed seeing where the fire fighters sleep and eat. Riley was able to find our house on the large map of the area that they had drawn on the wall.

Is it Riley or Kendall?

After numerous comments on how much Riley and Kendall look alike, I decided to look through some older pictures of Riley. Check out these two pictures. You can view the video below to figure out which one is Kendall, but I thought it was amazing how much they do look alike. Andy and I don't think our kids look like either of us, but we know they are ours.