Easter celebrations

I hope that everyone had a truly wonderful Easter.  The haztwins most certainly did!

We woke up at our usual time and I told the kids to go wake Daddy and tell him that the Easter Bunny came so that we could go see what he brought.  Summie immediately asked "something pink?"... her usual question these days.  They went and told Jim to wake up and we all meandered downstairs.  They were very excited to see that he brought them each SUNGLASSES (Summer = pink Minnie Mouse, Cole = blue Nemo), a bathing suit, a mini color wonder book and markers, and the piece de resistance.... a toddler digital camera!  While they were both very excited by this gift... Summie is obsessed.  She carried it around the entire day, through meals and egg hunts.  As of today she has filled the memory at least 4 times. 
Mom-mom & Pop-pop stopped over for a bit of a visit with some more presents. 
Then it was off to Nonna & Poppy's for brunch!  We had a delicious meal with TONS of good food.  Got to see some special visitors.... Aunt Denise, Uncle Jimmie & Emilie (or Emi as the kids call her) and new baby Owen!  We also celebrated Kiernan's 2nd birthday with cupcakes... yummy!  Then it was outside for an egg hunt.  Summie decided that any blue eggs that she picked up or the ones that looked like sports balls needed to be given to the boys in exchange for their pink eggs.  Noah wasn't especially into this concept so she gave up on him and traded with her brother instead. 

After we finished up... it was off to Grandma & Grandpa's for dinner.  Dinner was great and then another egg hunt!  The kids had so much fun ALL DAY.   Once we were finished, we stopped at Mom-mom & Pop-pop's for a quick visit to wish Uncle Chris (or Kiss as they call him) a Happy Birthday!  The kids went last week for egg dying and an egg hunt there! 

We are so blessed to have so many wonderful family members.  I tend to get a bit overwhelmed with how we will fit everyone in and make everyone happy and not feel left out.  This year, I think I finally found the balance and did my best to go with the kids' flow and spread things out.  It went much more smoothly this time, which makes me very happy.  Maybe I'm finally figuring this out!

The tale of the broken washing machine...

Our saga began late Wednesday night or quite possibly very early Thursday morning when I arrived home from my SJMOMs (South Jersey Mothers of Multiples) meeting and headed to the basement to change the laundry, only to find that it was BROKEN.  Full of water and not wanting to spin at all.  Ugh... of course I'm never as caught up as I'd like to be with the laundry and with 2 year old twins the laundry just continues to pile up.  Especially with Cole starting to wear underwear at school now. 
Thursday, I had plans to go to my friend Katie's with the kids for dinner.  Another friend was there with her 3 year old daughter and once Summie & Cole warmed up to the situation, they had a blast playing together.  Unfortunately, I forgot the Cole had underwear on and he has not quite learned to ask to go so he had a bit of an accident.  I brought a load of laundry with me to do while we were there since I needed some things to hold us over until the weekend. 
Friday night we decided to go and buy a new washer when Jim arrived home from work.  Summer was really excited to go shopping for a washing machine and of course asked if we could get a pink one, but Cole decided he would rather stay home with Mom-mom and Pop-pop and they were quick to oblige his request.  Summer had a great time out with Mommy & Daddy for some alone shopping time. 

Saturday was consumed with traveling around to different family members' houses to do laundry and let the kids play.  In the morning we headed to Nonna & Poppy's house so that we could walk to the playground while the laundry washed.  Kate came with us to the park and boy did we have a great time.  They had so much fun running up and down the stairs and sliding down the slides.  After about a million times down the various slides we headed to the swings.  Summer was so excited on the swing that she happily squealed "Mommy look at me... I'm flying!"  Cole tells everyone when asked about the swings that he "fell down two times".  Poor guy :(  Oh and Summie was quite the fashionista in a grey dress with colorful polka dots, black leggings, pink Mickey crocs and non other than a cheetah print fur (faux) coat un-zipped of course! What the people in the park must have thought about the mother that allowed her out of the house like that :)
We had lunch before leaving and Cole followed Poppy around like a little puppy.  It was so cute!  He wanted to sit down right next to him and watch everything that he did.  Giggling when he thought things were funny. 
We headed home for a nap and then went to Mom-mom & Pop-pop's for dinner and more laundry.  The kids have their own room here with lots of toys so they had a ball playing and eating all of Mom-mom's treats.  Our new washer is to be delivered on Wednesday and I am so excited for it to come!  Hopefully this will be the end of our laundry saga, but we made the best of it and tried to have fun in the process.

A visit with Emi...

In my post vacation blur... I completely forgot to write about our stop in North Carolina on our way home from Mickey's House.  My Aunt Denise, Uncle Jimmie & cousin Emilie moved from Georgia to North Carolina a few years ago and when I mapquested how far off our route home they were... I was so excited that it wasn't far at all!  We arrived around dinner time so unfortunately didn't have too much time to spend with them and my uncle was away on business so we couldn't see him, but it was still nice. 

Summie & Cole always love to see Emi and she always does a great job playing with them.  Jim had bought the kids boxes of Mickey books on the last day of our trip and they decided to pull these out for Emi to read to them.  I have rarely seen the kids fight over one person's attention (well except Mommy's), and it was really so cute.  Cole jumped right into Emi's lap with a book and as she read to him, Summie decided that it was not going to be okay for her to just sit on the floor next to them and hear the same book.  She went to get her own book and stood oh about 10 feet away from them staring and pouting as she waited for her turn.  After dinner and some books the kids went to bed and Jim fell asleep on the couch.  This left the girls up to chat and catch up, which was great since we don't get to see each other too often.

The next morning we got up and had a great breakfast and the kids got some more time to play with Emi before we left.  Look at this fun they had...

A chilly day at the zoo!

I got a new stroller this week (the one that I rented and fell in love with in Disney), so I decided that I wanted to plan an outting for th weekend to take it out for a proper stroll.  We also have made one of our New Years goals for this year to use either our zoo or aquarium memberships at least once a month.  We decided to venture to the zoo since we haven't been there yet this year even though it was only supposed to be in the 30s (but at least it was sunny).  We told the kids we were going to see animals and immediately they asked if we were going back to Mickey's House.  We had to tell them that no, Mickey's House was very far away but that we were going to the ZOO.  Cole especially LOVES zoo animals.
We got to the zoo at just about opening time and the parking lot was almost empty which was AWESOME!  There were a lot of animals that had not ventured outdoors due to the weather I assume, but we still had a great time.  We strolled around for about 2 hours checking out all of the animals.  Here is Cole's description of our day:
Cole... what animals did we see at the zoo?
Pengins (trying my best for his pronunciations).  Y-ons and Tigers.  2 bears, sleeping.  No rafes (giraffes - they weren't out). 

A Toy Story Day!

Well it has taken me quite a while to get back into the swing of post-vacation life, but I think I'm finally getting there and now have time to finish blogging our trip.  Here is what we did on Friday!

We got up at went straight to Hollywood Studies at got back to the Toy Story Mania ride at 9:30 (only a half our after the park opened!).  There was already a 60 minute wait to get on the ride and the fast past wasn't until 1:20.  We got them anyway, just in case we made it in the park that long before the kids started melting down.  While Jim got the fast passes, I got right in line with the kids to see Buzz & Woody.  The were both very excited to see in while we stood in line and were really very good since we had a pretty good wait.  Summie was now becoming quite the ham and went right up to Woody for a picture, but Cole was still a bit unsure of the characters so Jim had to hold him for the pictures.  After we got our pictures, we went to search for the real live Lotso since the stuffed one can't be found (I can now happily tell you that I was able to find one at the Disney Store when we got home to NJ).  While we waited for Lotso arrive to his picture location, we got pictures with Sorcerer Mickey which were probably the worst pictures we had the whole time we were there.  Since we were in the animation studio we played with the digital coloring games and then went to wait in line for Lotso.  We luckily were very close to the front of the line!  Summie loved Lotso and gave him big hugs and gave him her book to be signed, but Cole was again not too sure.  We got a family picture with him and it wound up being our favorite picture of the whole trip!  Next we saw Handy Manny.  Cole decided that he didn't want a picture, but Summie happily posed for a few.  Next we went to play on the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set playground.  Cole loved going down the BIG slides, but Summie would climb to the top and then decide that she didn't want to go down.  We finally found a little slide that she happily slide down!  It's so very funny how different they are.

For lunch we went to Pizza Planet which was very yummy!  Summie saw some people posing with a pretend snowman next to the Christmas store and decided that she wanted a picture too!  By this time the next Disney Junior show was about to start so we headed in.  The show was great because it included all the shows that the kids watch on TV:  Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, Little Einsteins and Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  After this it was about time for our Toy Story Fast Passes.  We walked around to kill time a bit and then headed over.  Cole had fallen asleep in the stroller and then we realized that we had lost one of the fast passes.  I took one for the team and sent Jim and Summer on the ride and I stayed with sleeping Cole and the stroller.  Jim liked the ride, but said it was not as good as his favorite Buzz Lightyear ride! 

We headed back to the hotel for nap time, which did not go so well.  I wasn't so worried about Cole because he had a decent nap in the stroller, but Summer has issues if she doesn't nap.  We headed off to our last dinner of vacation at Ohana in the Polynesian Hotel.  This has always been one of favorite restaurants.  We started enjoying our family style dinner right away and then Summer, Cole & I went to join in when they were doing the hula dance and we all got pretty flower leis when we were finished.  When we got back to the table, Summer started to meltdown due to her lack of nap and Cole was also ready to go.  This was really the first dinner issue we had all week, so we finished up quickly and I headed for the stroller with the kids and waited for Jim to take care of the bill.  We headed back to the hotel to pack up for our drive home.  We really had no idea what to expect from this trip, but we really couldn't have imagined that it would be this great! 

Today was a Fairytale

We had great plans to get up early and get into the Magic Kingdom at 8am for their extra magic hours, but when Summie & Cole came bouncing into our bedroom and asked to see the castle we opened the drapes to pouring rain! We staying in bed a bit longer and watched the weather to see that it should clear up by the afternoon.  We waited for Downtown Disney to open at 9:30 and headed to my FAVORITE store in Disney World, Disney's Days of Christmas!  After not finding anything that I have liked at home the past few Christmases, I decided that I wanted to get the kids Disney Christmas stockings with their names embroidered on them.  We also always get a Christmas ornament from every trip that we go on for our tree so that our tree if full of wonderful memories.  The kids were not very happy to part with their stockings to have them embroidered, but the woman traded them stickers to let her "borrow them".  They were ok with this option, so we headed off to a yummy lunch at the Earl of Sandwich.  On our way out, Summie decided that she wanted to get out of the stroller to take a picture with this fountain.  She's finally getting into taking pictures...

While the kids and Jim took a nap in our room, I walked around the resort for some quiet ME time and got myself a nice sweatshirt.  Once everyone was up we started getting ready for the Princess Storybook Dinner in EPCOT.  Summer decided that she did not want to take off her pink Minnie Mouse dress from Aunt Chele to put on her Snow White costume for dinner.  Luckily I was able to bribe her into the dress since I had a matching hairbow for it and her new Cinderella shoes.  Once we arrived at EPCOT Summer received tons of attention from the people that we passed.  She sat with absolute perfect posture with her hands folded looking quite the part of the princess in training.  We went on the Nemo & Friends ride which Cole loved, but Summie did not like that it was so dark.  This is typically one of my favorite times of year to visit EPCOT as it is the Flower & Garden show and they have large topiary displays of characters.  I have to say that I was very disappointed in the opening display that was featuring Toy Story.  All of the press releases stated the display would feature Woody, Buzz & Lotso, but Lotso was no where to be found.  Usually this front display is gigantic and impressive.  In years past it has featured such things as a gigantic pirate ship with Captain Hook & Peter Pan & the crocodile.  Another year was Donald & Daisy in a row boat going down the tunnel of love, so to have 2 little characters at the front with a ball and blocks (that weren't even topiaries) at the back and just some simple planted flowers in between this large bed was rather disappointing.  The expanded Butterfly House with the Bambi character display was a nice new addition however!  We went to Tinkerbell's garden but were too late to get pictures with her.  We were able to get on the Donald Duck boat ride in the Mexico pavillion before dinner and both kids seemed to enjoy it.  Then we were off to the Princess Dinner.  On our way into dinner we had a meet & greet with Belle and got some really great pictures with her. 

Once we got to the table however the meltdowns began.  I actually thought that we might have to leave, but we were able to get everyone situated and happy and the rest was great.  We ordered our food which came very quickly, thankfully and the characters started coming.  We saw Aurora & Cinderella and the kids pretty much decided that they weren't interested in them at all.  I was kind of thinking now that maybe we overdid the character thing.  Then Snow White arrived in her matching dress and declared that she had found her "twin".  That was all it took and Summie followed the lead of the other little girls that she watched and got down from her seat and posed for her royal subjects to take some photos.  Cole was more interested in eating his and Summer's pizza.  Last to come for a visit was Ariel and Summer was an old pro at this picture thing now!  Cole & Jim joined in for their own pictures too.  I decided that this was my favorite meal of the trip.  I had some wonderful mushroom stuffed pasta in a creamy sauce... delcious!  We walked around and took a few more pictures and got Jim the funnel cake he had been craving all week and sat down and shared it with the kids, which they just LOVED.   I was really bummed at the beginning of the day when I saw that the rain had spoiled our plans, but I think it worked out for the better actually because the rest of the day was SO wonderful!

No Lick Me Pluto!

Wednesday morning, we got up and drove to Animal Kingdom early because we had 8:25 reservations for the Donald Duck breakfast.  While we checked in for breakfast, Jim got fast passes so we could enjoy the Safari again as soon as we were finished.  The breakfast was great!  The kids LOVED seeing Donald, Mickey, Daisy & Goofy in their Safari gear.  Summie was especially excited to get a cup with a coffee cup top since they do not allow plastic straws in the park because of the animals (although some places do now have paper straws, but they are kind of weird to use).  We got a really nice picture with Daisy.  Summie got down and took a very nice picture with Mickey, but Cole wouldn't take one by himself.  He did shock us however by taking a picture with Goofy all by himself (the only time on the trip).  Then we road the safari and we saw many more animals than on Monday.  Go figure that Summie was more excited to see the baby ducks than anything else as our tour guide told us how the majority of them were eaten by the vultures on the safari, except for the ones whose mothers were smart enough to hide them with the flamingos.  After this we headed to Camp Minnie Mickey and got pictures with Minnie Mouse who they did really well with and Chipe & Dale who Summie wanted no parts of.  Jim took Cole to see Chip & Dale and they tickled him and that's all he kept telling us for the rest of the day.  Cole really liked the stroller and got in the habit of asking me to let him lay down and just falling asleep throughout the day, which he did today and fell asleep by 11am!  We had a family picture taken before we left complete with Cole snoozing away, if only Summie would nap in the stroller.  She wouldn't even let me put her sun visor down because it blocked her view of all that was going on.  This vast difference describes their differing personalities to a tee.
We returned to our hotel and played in the pool for a bit and then had a nap.
Since the kids were up early enough from their nap, we decided to head to EPCOT quickly for a free Meet & Greet and picture with characters from my Disney Visa.  It was a surprise of who we would see and it wound up being Pluto & Mickey.  Summie was by this time very into seeing the characters and giving them her book.  Pluto came up and pretended to lick her and Cole yelled at him "NO LICK ME!".  It was hysterical! 

Aunt Judy & Uncle Bob came over to stay with the kids for a few hours so that Jim & I could go out for a bit.  We headed back to EPCOT to get some snacks and margaritas.  Unfortunately, not long after we got to the park it started to DOWNPOUR!  We decided to duck into a store and browse around a bit to see if it would let up.  It wasn't happening so we decided to head back to our hotel.  We wound up going to the Top of the World Lounge which is on the top floor of our hotel and has an observation deck to see Magic Kingdom.  It was really nice to have a few hours out by ourselves on vacation even if the weather didn't cooperate.