Happy 6th Birthday, Sweet Cici!

Love this sweet girl so much!
 

Oh, Hello...

So yeah. It's been awhile. Turns out, we went on vacation again.

But we are back!  And now I have an ear infection!  That's right, those happen to adults sometimes.

Anyway, I have other vacation pictures to share and stories to tell, but not now. What would make you think I had time for that now?  Because I am here? Writing?  Well, that's logical. But really, I am just here writing because it hit me it has been SO LONG since I posted, and like, if I didn't do it right this minute I might just never do it again...

How's that for an over reaction?

Anyway, I will be back soon. Maybe.
 

Disney!

So now that we have posted wedding pictures, how about we move on (or back) to Disney?! I know I am not doing any "real" blogging here, but it is sorta a now or never situation because, ( I am almost embarrassed to admit this) we are heading on vacation again on Saturday and once we get home from THAT it will really seem like the opportunity has passed. So DISNEY!

Our first day of the trip was spent in Magic Kingdom!

I realized on this trip that Magic Kingdom is BY FAR my favorite park.  I had never been to any others, and while I really enjoyed them, MK feels like Disney to me.  For that reason, we will probably always have this park be our final day from now on. I love it so much!

 You may remember (don't you remember everything I post on here?) that we spent two days in MK last year.  Because of that, we planned this day as just a fast run through of all of our favorite rides.

 We actually got to the park around noon because we drove in from Nick's parents house that morning. 

 This is also the day we met up with this crazy girl :) 

 I am sorta amazed with how much we managed to do from 12pm-10pm.  WE DID SO MUCH! Which, when I stop to think about it, IS TEN HOURS.  Maybe it wasn't as impressive as I thought...

 But in the middle of summer, with crazy big crowds, we managed to ride  14 different rides!  FOURTEEN! Plus we ate two meals and watched a parade. I feel like that's worth being impressed with.

 I know I already posted this picture, but I love it!

 Last year Pirates of the Caribbean was shut down for repairs, so this was his first experience with it.  It was a hit :) He picked the sword as a souvenir ... just add it to the epic weapons collection.

 The castle at night.  Good lord, I love this place!

 Look closely and you will notice an added family member that joined us for our trip :) :)

 Love this one!

On Day Two we headed to Animal Kingdom.

 None of us had ever been to Animal Kingdom, and it was pretty amazing!

 We started the day on the safari, which was perfect.  We got to see all of the animals!

 Hello there, Mr. Giraffe

 I made the boys take multiple family pictures until I found one I liked..

 Checking out the fish

 Hello there, Mr. Sun

 Now we got it!

 We ended up really loving the show on birds, which was random and not something I would have even thought to go to if it wasn't for our amazing Disney planning book!

 When planning this years trip we made the decision to get some decent food while in the park. They have a new restaurant in AK, Tiffins, where you can sign up for a dinner package which includes tickets to the night time show.

 The entire experience, from atmosphere to food, was AMAZING, but at the same time, we will never go back while Henry is young. It took around two hours from start to finish, and Henry was NOT into his food.  Nick and I on the other hand, LOVED it!

 Also, this happened.  Table for four, please :) :)

 AK used to close at dark, but a few weeks before we went the extended their hours to 11pm. It was great!  It gave us time to ride a ton more rides. I don't really have pictures of rides, but we rode/saw nearly everything in the park! Some of it with more success than others. The dinosaur ride was a little intense.  Expedition Everest was a favorite of Henry's in the day, but when we rode it at night it was too much for him (and almost too much for me. It was scary!) The water rapids ride was a family favorite, and the Bugs Life and Finding Nemo were also hits.

We also got to see the limited time night time show on The Jungle Book, and Henry and I both thought it was GREAT!  Nick wasn't that into it, but you know, you can't please everyone!

 We also caught the Tree of Life coming to life, which was AMAZING.  We were just watching it change colors when an actual show started which was projected on the tree. I had heard the show runs a few times a night, but it isn't on any schedule.  If you go, I hope you catch it.  It was great!

Our final day we spent at Hollywood Studios!

Nick had been to HS when he was younger, but it was mine and Henry's first time.

 The park is apparently going through some changes as they are prepping to open a new Toy Story land and a Star Wars land.  It did feel smaller, but we never ran out of things to do (and actually had a few things we missed because we ran out of time) so it was all good.

 Tatooine Traders!

 We all really enjoyed the Star Wars ride.  It was made better by the fact that we rode with an adult man who was like, SO INTO IT.  Like, I can't even describe it.  He was SO FULL OF JOY.  And while that could have been distracting, it made the entire thing SO MUCH BETTER.  Everyone was like "Man, that dude's right, this IS AWESOME!"  I am smiling just thinking about it :)

 Next up we road the Tower of Terror. Not the best picture, but it needed to be documented. Especially since Henry, who is pretty fearless when it comes to rides, says he will "NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER RIDE THAT AGAIN".

 Random picture with a snowman

 Oh look, it's Kylo Ren.

 On this day and our AK day we went back to the hotel in the heat of the day to relax.  This was taken waiting to head back to the park for the evening

 And this is what it looked like when we got to the park.  It was epic, but luckily only lasted around 30 minutes

 Second time on the Toy Story ride. That thing is awesome!

 We did a lunch package at HS which gave us tickets for Fantasmic, which was awesome!  I highly recommend signing up for that if you can (we did lunch at the Italian place for the tickets)

 The boys waiting for the show to begin

 Henry LOVED the dragon

We also happen to be there for the summer special Star Wars Fireworks and Nighttime spectacular!  It was awesome!  And a perfect way to end our Disney vacation!

As a final note, I think I said this last year, but in case you are planning a Disney trip and don't want to go back and see my old Disney posts, I will say it again. Everyone visiting Disney should get the Unofficial Guide to Disney.  I swear, it is so helpful!  Their app is also insanely useful and I honestly think the combination of the book and app is what helps to make our trips to the the most magical place on earth so magical.  I do a ton of prep work before we go and we have a complete itinerary for each day loaded on the app when we get there.  It takes away all of the "I don't know, what do YOU want to do??" conversations and it also prevents you from walking to a ride only to realize that OPPS! The wait is two hours! Do we wait? Do we come back?  WHO KNOWS!  The app has real time wait times worked in, and it takes your list of rides and tells you what to ride next to get it all in. IT IS AMAZING!

 

Candice and Lucas Get Married!

There is a lot going on in the world right now, but rather than talk about that (because I feel like I have been talking about that non-stop in other social media spaces) I would prefer to just spend some time focusing on something good. Great, even. Because this happened last  weekend:

I really (REALLY) want to borrow the professional photographers pictures for this blog post, because they are SO AMAZING, but you know, I didn't take them, so I will just give you the link to THEIR website to view them in all their glory.  I actually didn't take nearly my normal volume of wedding pictures because, well, I was in the wedding. And every time I turned around there was family and friends I love and wanted to talk with, so I seemed to run out of time.  But still, I DID manage to take a few worth sharing (plus a few more worth "borrowing" from FB from family) :)

Normally I would try to be logical with the order of these pictures, but instead, for this wedding, I am going to just start with some favorites. We all know how weddings work, right?  I assume you will know that the getting ready pictures happened before the reception pictures.  I mean, we are all pretty smart. With that, here are the bride and groom with the cutest ring bearer ever to bear rings!

Along with the cutest flower girl to ever toss flowers.  I can't even with how much I love this picture!

And this one...

And this one...

And this one...

Maybe we should make these two dress like this all the time because I swear, every picture of them is a favorite!

But let's get back to topic at hand.

Everything about the day was amazing, and a lot of that was because of all the hard work put into the planning, but I think it was mostly because I have never seen these two this happy before.

What a wonderful day to celebrate the start of their new life together.

I feel like I should say something after every picture, but it turns out I want to share more than I thought, and I am running out of words.

So, from this point on, I will just drop all the pictures here for you to enjoy, and assume you had already stropped reading anyway!

Congratulations Candice and Lucas!  We are so so happy for you both!