Disney 2014, Day 3, Part I (Epcot)

(Monday, September 22, 2014)
Sorry for the slow posting.  It is partially due to the challenges of posting with resort Wi-Fi but also because we arrive back in our room exhausted each evening and taking the time to post without falling asleep on the keyboard is a challenge!!
Today’s park was Epcot and I had a special surprise planned for my sweet girl!!
Pardon the foggy pic.  The room is cool and the outside weather wonderfully hot and steamy so my camera lens takes a bit to adjust.  I think she looked absolutely beautiful!  Hannah loves that she was born in China and Mulan is currently her favourite princess so choosing this costume was a great fit for her!
Early in the morning as I was getting ready I called in the help of Auntie Trish and Miss Bonnie to help with Hannah’s hair.  (It’s such fun having all 3 families in rooms next to one another!!)

The day was scheduled to be a shared with a friend and her family (Andrea and I work together) but unfortunately a nasty bout of food poisoning kept her in their room.  Wes and Sarah were still up to a day out so we met at Epcot in time for breakfast with the Princesses in Akershus located in the Norway pavilion.
The first princess the girls met dressed in her formal wear was Belle.

Followed by Aurora
Cinderella
Snow White and finally
Ariel.
After breakfast we headed next door to the China pavilion where Hannah was able to meet Mulan!!
So many people commented on ‘Princess Mulan’ as her costume is not easy to find.  (I ordered this one from Disney.com) It was adorable as many people (cast members and other guests at the park) bowed to her throughout the day and some even said they would be over to visit her in China and get her picture and autograph.  So sweet and Hannah soaked it all in!

A visit to The Living Seas is often completed with pictures near the fish of Nemo.
During our travels we met Chip and Dale who also bowed to Her Majesty.  Sweet!

Disembarkation Day and Homeward Bound

(Saturday, March 1, 2014)

We were up bright and early Saturday morning preparing to disembark early.  As with everything else during our cruise, Disney has disembarkation down to a find ‘T’!

Each family dines at the restaurant that they did the last night of their cruise, at their normal table.  Our family was at Enchanted Garden which was neat as this was the restaurant we’d started our cruise at 1 week earlier.  We’d had early seating for dinner so we needed to leave our stateroom for the final time and be in our dining room at 6:45am.    As each family entered the dining room they walked between 2 lines of servers who applauded.  A simple but special touch on a difficult, emotional morning!  (Who ever wants a great vacation to end??) 

There was a set menu for us to select from and we were in and out in only 45 minutes but without feeling rushed.  It was great to see our tablemates one last time (for now ) as well as our servers Tina and Ari. 

We left the restaurant around 7:40 so that they could seat the next group at 8am.  (Can you believe the entire process of disembarking all guests, cleaning all staterooms and restocking the ship would take mere hours?  The next group of guests would begin boarding at 10:30am!!  A fun fact that we learned during our galley tour is that they load every single bit of food that will be eaten during a cruise each Saturday when they ship is in Port Canaveral.  For example, each week they load 100,000 eggs!!!  I cannot begin to imagine the storage area this ship must have!)

We were totally impressed with how quickly and efficiently we disembarked the ship.  We lined up around 7:45 and waited a brief time to scan our Key to the World cards one final time.  From there we went down an escalator where we requested a porter at the suggestion of Tonya and her family.  Wow – what a great suggestion that was!!  He asked us where our luggage was and we said, ‘Tinkerbell Green’.  He took us there, we quickly found our luggage and he loaded up his cart and took us to the customs line.  We fairly flew through customs and were quickly outside awaiting our shuttle to the car rental place.  It arrived within minutes and we made our way there.  Sharon and I were shocked when we  realized that at 9:15 we were already in our rental car with luggage loaded and headed back to Orlando!!  Not bad for a ship that was disembarking 4000 passengers!!

Hannah was pooped and within minutes this was what we saw in the rear-view mirror. 

(Can you tell that i took A LOT of clean clothes home for Hannah?  Once she had her Rapunzel dress it was near impossible to talk her into wearing anything else.  So I didn’t.  This phase will pass soon enough so for now she wears it and her other princesses dresses wherever she wants to!)

Our flight wasn’t leaving until after 6pm so about a month before our cruise I cancelled our Disney transportation to the airport (couldn’t fathom sitting in the airport for 8 hours with our luggage!) and instead we headed here.  Heh…no surprise to anyone I’m sure!

We made our way to Downtown Disney and shared some wonderful final moments there.  SO much better than sitting in an airport!!  We visited the Disney store where Hannah stood in front of a Magic Mirror that tried a number of different princess dresses on her.  So cool!

For lunch we ran okay, walked quickly to Goofy’s Candy Store and ended our trip the way it began, with a caramel peanut apple.  Mmmmm!  We never tire of these!!

We spent most of the morning outside soaking up as much sun as was humanly possible as we knew we were headed back to frigid temps!

We all declared that we didn’t want to go home!  Let’s just call Papa, Grandma and Grandpa and tell them to come down and let’s just stay!  This is Hannah’s ‘We don’t want to go home’ look. 

Sadly we had no choice so we called Papa on Skype to tell him we were on our way home and made our way to the airport.

We arrived in Buffalo late that night but as you can see my rock star traveller was still in great shape!  She made a little luggage fort for herself while we waited for our shuttle to pick us up.

We spent the night in Buffalo and then headed home to Papa first thing the next morning.  (At this time Grandma and Grandpa were still on their Hawaiian cruise so it would be a few more days before we saw them.)

We’re home Papa!  We missed you!!!

What an amazing, wonderful, awesome, great, spectacular cruise we shared together!  We can’t wait to go back!!!

Thank you for sharing this time with us Nana!  We love you and the trip was extra special because you were there!!!

My Little Princess

It’s hard to tell from these cute pics that Hannah was under the weather much of this past week.   She’d been battling what we found out to be strep throat all week and the call from the doctor with the official diagnosis came in just as we were preparing to go out trick-or-treating with her friends Owen, Noah and Grayson.  We’d spent a couple of days tucked away at home awaiting the diagnosis so she was ready to head out for some fresh air…I mean, candy!

I knew she wasn’t well when she willingly missed the Halloween party at school and also took not one, but two hour-and-a-half naps on Wednesday afternoon!   Yes, she was not herself for sure!

But, by Thursday evening her fever was almost gone, and her sore throat was no longer so I bundled her up and we set out for an hour of fun!  Thankfully the rain and wind held off until almost the end of our evening.

You would think with 2 days at home we would have taken the time to carve one amazing pumpkin!  Ummm…nope!  We found this great little pumpkin decoration at Target last weekend so the total time taken to prepare our pumpkin was something in the range of 30 seconds!  Oh yes, that works just fine for us!

As we prepared at home before heading over to Ange’s place Hannah about flipped with excitement when I started to put make-up on her!  I’ve sometimes pretended when putting on my own but this was her very first experience actually wearing it and she was one excited little girl!

We layered her up well and then donned her beautiful Belle gown!

Princess Hannah with 3 handsome men!

A fun evening was had by all!  Later in the week Hannah took stock.  Phew – she cleaned up and I think she’s pretty excited about that!!

Which Princess Shall I Be Today?

Hannah is all about dressing up these days and her favourites are princesses.  I’ve been scouring Kijiji and have picked up a few costumes for her there.  It’s fun to watch her flit around the house wearing a variety of combination of costumes and I’ll admit that she has a pair of pink wings she often asks me to wear too.  No pictures of that though.  Phew!!

Here is my little princess in action over the past few weeks.  You’ll see by the blur in some pictures that it’s hard to catch her still when she’s letting her true princess emerge!

Tinker Bell

Cute Ariel

Sumo wrestler Ariel

Dancing Cinderella

I love 3!  Sometimes my little princess wears her costumes when we go out and the people she makes smile are numerous!  Any reason to make someone smile is a good one.

Right now she’s saying that she wants to have either a Cinderella (her current favourite princess) or ‘princesses in general’ birthday.  I can work with that theme for sure!  Wonder what the chances are of keeping her on track with that for the next 5 months?  Time will tell.

This last picture was one I just had to take.  Hannah was dressed in her Cinderella dress when she noticed that some water had spilled on the floor.  She hasn’t seen the movie yet so didn’t know why mommy was giggling but she sure made me smile when I saw this!

Monday Morning Princess

Many mornings I’m blessed to dine with royalty so I wanted to share pics of the love of my life wearing her royal gown.

I’d like to introduce you to HRH Princess Hannah!

Hannah still has very fine hair and it was beginning to get a bit ‘fluffy’ on the ends of it so when I went in for a hair cut last week, Ruth Anne trimmed hers too and I think it looks really cute!  She took about 2” off the length and it not only looks healthier but a tiny bit fuller too.  She’s also able to see so much better without her bangs in her eyes.

I love you my little princess!

Starting the Day with My Princess

Hannah has just entered the dress-up stage in the past couple of months.  I love seeing her run around in her outfits and role playing with her.  Most often she is Cinderella and Mommy is the ‘pwince.’  It’s not unusual to hear her call out, ‘Oh pwince!  I would like you to ….’  Fun!

This morning (after she helped Mommy choose a necklace which is also a daily event) she chose to wear her Princess Aurora dress to daycare.  I loved seeing her little poufy dress running around the house, reading stories

and enjoying breakfast.

They were made all the sweeter with the crazy bed-head Hannah wakes up with each morning!

Princess Attire is Commonplace in the Salsa Home….and We Loved It!!!

(Hannah and I are now home but there are still some posts I wanted to share.  We had an AMAZING trip with our friends and all too quickly our time together came to an end.  So many wonderful memories and pictures that we will treasure for a long, long time!)

Hannah quickly realized that princess dresses were in abundance in the Salsa playroom and throughout the week she could be found trying on a variety of them.  There were always lots of little helping hands there to dress Her Mini Royal Highness!   Kate and Will may have been visiting Canada while we were in CA but we were amongst the most precious princesses ever!

Ro and Ree have mastered the art of wearing a tiara and know that truly no outfit is complete without one!  Hannah didn’t catch on to the tiara thing but I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time.

Princesses do everything in their dresses including eating

colouring

dancing

chatting with the commoners

shopping

and sharing a tea party

Hannah and Mommy also learned the very important lesson of custom fitting a princess dress.  Who needs trips to the seamstress when chip clips will do the trick?

One evening M3 and I went shopping with Hannah and it was easy to see that she had found her inner princess.  What fun to take her out dressed like this!  We have a couple of princess dresses here at home so I’m hoping there are more shopping trips like this in our future!

M3, Tuba Dad and I were surrounded by royalty all week long….and we loved it!!