Our Strawberry Harvest

We have finally been able to enjoy the strawberries that we planted last year.

 They have really taken off in our front yard garden and they are quite tasty!

 (Please take notice of the beautiful front yard fence that my hard-working husband has been building the past few months-we're loving it!)

Grayson loves to take charge of the picking and the washing.

Mmmmmm!!  

Mother's Day 2013

I am so thankful to be the mother of these precious children.  This is the BEST job that I could ever ask for and I wouldn't trade it for ANYTHING!

The life of a child is such a MIRACLE and I am so BLESSED to be able to experience it 3 times! 

 

21 weeks

BABY GIRL Hayes will be born in September.  

We give all the glory to our Lord!!

Mother's Day 2013

Day 5- Art of Animation and Pop Century

Our last day, we woke up to rain. But we headed out anyways to explore the resort across from us--Art of Animation. The rain was off and on throughout the morning.

The kids loved all the statues for the different themes--The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and Cars.

Grayson especially loved this little playground...

Seashells!

After exploring the Art of Animation, we headed back across the bridge to Pop Century.  We had stayed so busy the whole trip that we hadn't even seen half of what was at our resort.

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head..

Mickey telephone--look how small Grayson and Caroline look below it!

It pretty much rained the whole afternoon after naps, so we headed to a restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we came back to watch the movie that our resort was showing that night. 

The rain was a bummer towards the end of the week, but the trip overall was so much fun!  I'm so thankful for the first few days of sunshine that we had and all that we got to do!  We will definitely be going back to Disney (hopefully in the near future).  We thought the ages of the kids were perfect--2 and 4- they really did great the whole trip!  

We are so thankful that we had the opportunity to go. Our first-ever little family vacation was truly "magical" !!

Day 4- Caribbean Beach and the Polynesian

 We spent the entire morning playing in the pool at the Caribbean Beach Resort.  They had a great kids' splash area with a pirate ship that had several water slides and a huge barrel that dumped water every few minutes.  I didn't take any pictures, but Chad had taken this one on his phone. Grayson loved it!  Caroline wasn't too excited about it because I was accidentally sitting under the large barrel of water that dumped on top of us unexpectedly.  It pretty much ruined her excitement about the pool.

Oh well...

After swimming, we headed to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for lunch and to take a look at some of the animals that they have in their overlook areas.  So we saw zebras, giraffes, antelope, and ostriches.  Once again, I did not take any pictures for some reason.  

 

 After naps that afternoon, we headed to the Polynesian resort to explore.  Then we rode the monorail around to several other resorts and got off to explore.  We ended up back at the Polynesian and Grayson found these "indians"  that he begged to have a picture of.

 We had dinner and grabbed the famous self-serve Dole whip--please notice the ice cream in Chad's hand.  As I said, it was "self-serve" so he took full advantage of the situation and made sure to get his $4 worth!  I was a little embarrassed but thankful that there was enough to go around for everyone!

 We headed out to the beach area to watch the water parade and the Magic Kingdom fireworks.  It was raining a little so that was a bummer but we still enjoyed watching it all for the second time.

Once we got back to our room, we had a popcorn and movie night since it was raining and we missed the outdoor movie playing at our resort. 

Despite the afternoon/evening rain, we still had a great day!

Day 3- The Magic Kingdom (LOTS of pictures)

The morning that we set off for the Magic Kingdom it was raining, but we figured it was as good of a day as any, so we continued on.  

We were one of the first in line for the park to open.  

Once the park opened, we made a mad dash for Belle's castle and thankfully the rain stopped.

Checking out Belle's books...

the beasts' castle....

Of course when it was time to meet Belle, my kids were being shy, so I joined them for a picture.

We spent the next few hours in Fantasyland, making sure to ride all of the most popular rides first.  There was actually a less than 5 minute wait for every ride all day!  So it was so great!

Dumbo!

By lunchtime, the weather was perfect.  Very hot, but no rain!

We waited under some shade for the Move It, Shake It, Celebrate It Parade while Caroline took a nap.

It was not a disappointment! We loved every single minute of it!

Grayson's little hand waving at all the characters was so sweet!  He was really loving seeing some of his favorites!

Afterwards, we grabbed some lunch and rode some more rides until it was time for the afternoon parade.  Grayson napped while we waited, so we just enjoyed walking around for a bit. 

When he woke up, he requested popcorn, so that held him over while we waited in the hot sun for the parade.  We had a great spot right in front of the castle and it was not crowded at all.

We LOVED the parade- it was so great!  We finished riding all of the other rides that we had planned on riding and saw some shows.  Caroline took another nap, so I sat out with her while Grayson and Chad rode the race cars.

Prince Charming's Carousel...

It's a Small World.. this ride was Caroline's absolute favorite!! It was so cute--she kept smiling and pointing to all the "babies".  She and Grayson both loved it!

Chad had been waiting all day to get his hands on this gigantic turkey leg for dinner.  10 bucks later, his tummy was full and he was a happy man!

We walked around the park one final time just to make sure there was nothing that we had missed that we wanted to ride or see and then we settled down at Casey's Corner for fireworks.There were no crowds at all, so we pretty much could stand wherever we wanted.
Chad and I got our Pineapple Dole Whip;

Grayson and Caroline got a lollipop and glow sticks and we waited for the show to begin.  It started drizzling rain right before the fireworks started, but it stopped just in time for the show.

We were once again impressed and enjoyed every minute!   I guess I was too caught up in the fireworks ( or maybe my dole whip)  because I didn't get any pictures.  It was truly amazing!

We left the park shortly after and only stood in line about 10 minutes to get on a bus.  The kids were asleep on the bus before we got back to our resort.

It was an exhausting day, but truly magical!  The kids did great, the weather held up for us, and the crowds were perfect!  I'm not going to lie, we're already planning our next trip to the Magic Kingdom--we will most certainly be back!