April

The beginning of April meant Spring Break for Mom ... which we spent biding our time until ...

We went to Mickey's House!

Although the temps were in the 90s and the Spring Break crowds were in full force, we still managed to have a great time riding the carousel ...

... It's a Small World ...

... Dumbo ...

...the Monorail ...

... and the Kilimanjaro Safari.

Unlike last time, I was tall enough to go on any ride I wanted ... and I didn't need much convincing to give Splash Mountain a try!

When we weren't busy going on rides, we hit our favorite snack stops early and often both at the "Castle Park" ...

(Finn didn't much like the fact that he didn't get his own Dole whip)

... and at "Epcot Park."

We also took in a few shows - Nemo ...

... Beauty and the Beast ...

... and The Lion King!

Aunt Katie and I were even asked to participate and help lead our section in making the biggest Simba "ROAAAAAAAR" that we could!

Despite all the fun and adventurous rides ... all the yummy food ... all the cool shows ... my favoritest FAVORITest FAVORITEST part of Mickey's House was meeting all of Mickey's friends and getting their autographs!  You might remember that last time I wasn't too sure about those characters ... well this time I couldn't get enough of them and wasn't afraid to put them in their place when they played around with my autograph book (especially Pooh Bear)!

While all the characters were my favorite, the best part of the character experience was a special lunch date Mom, Katie, Finn, and I had with all the princesses in Cinderella's castle.  We were treated like royalty and Snow White, Aurora, Belle, and Ariel each came to our table to chat and take pictures with us!  While I loved it ...

... Finn?  Not so much.

He was so syrupy that the princesses tried to keep him at arms-length, which worked out just fine because he didn't want anything to do with them, either.

Here's the recap immediately afterwards:

Final tallies:  8 park entries over 3 days, 2 Dole whips/person consumed, way too many Napoleon's devoured, zero tantrums thrown, very little sleep had ...

... and, because it wouldn't be a trip to Mickey's House without one, 1 light parade.

Since our trip home started a whopping 4 hours after we left the "Castle Park" for the last time (Finn and I were up for good at 3 am), to say we endured a long day of tired travel would be a bit of an understatement.  But we somehow managed to sticker our way through a couple of flights ...

... and we made it home in time to discover that the Easter Bunny hadn't forgotten about us that morning!

That afternoon we decided to decorate eggs ... and guess who was watching us?

After a few days of recovery at daycare, we set out on our next - albeit much chyllier - adventure:  Opening Week at Wrigley!

And finally ... Dad took off the training wheels on the Firefly!  Since I thought I had the balance "thing" down after practicing on my Princess/scoot bike, we decided to see what would happen if we took the ol' FF out for a spin:

This development was, of course, quite exciting, and I've wanted to bike all over the city ever since!  So far we're sticking to the Eastside (the bike shop, the Market, the park, etc) and sticking to the bike path for the most part (except when it comes to biking to swim lessons - below!)

Hooray for Mickey!  Hooray for baseball and hot dogs!  Hooray, hooray, hooray for bikes!