A Magical Day

Josh and I took Emma to Disney...and it was MAGICAL.  And exhausting.

I have way too many pictures to make this into one post, so sit tight and prepare yourself for the first installment of a ton of pictures...

 DAY 1 - Friday, December 6

I will start out by saying that Emma was devastated that James did not come with us.  She just kept saying, "Why don't you want him to come with us?"  I did my best to explain to her that between his constant snacking, nap time and not being big enough to ride most of the rides that he would decrease her time to spend with princesses and Mickey Mouse.  She didn't buy it.

Nonetheless, she was ecstatic to leave.  She even had fun playing at the airport as we waited to board.

About to take off.  We let her open an early birthday present to help make the flight pass by.  It was a Nintendo DS and tw games.  She got the hang of it pretty quickly.

For our first day, we headed to our hotel near the Disney property and relaxed at the huge splash pad.  We only stayed here one night.  We figured it wasn't worth it to pay the extra money to stay at Disney and pay for park tickets when we were only there for half the day.

Emma and Josh had turned into little prunes by the end of this afternoon at the pool.

DAY 2 - Saturday, December 7

 We checked into the Polynesian hotel at Disney.

And we were off to the Magic Kingdom.

We hit the bibbidi bobbidi boutique...not over the top all!  She got her hair, makeup and nails done.  Clearly she was over the moon at this point.

Naturally, our first stop was to meet Cinderella.

Followed by Aurora.

Off to ride some rides...standing in line which we became very accustomed to on this trip.

Met Gaston on our way to Belle's castle.

Story time with Belle.

Racing cars with Daddy.

Cinderella's castle all lit up at night.

Dinner time at Chef Mickey's.

Emma's face as she is looking up at Goofy.  She was in pure awe.  Before the characters came into our room, she was so excited and anxious that she couldn't even eat.  She was bouncing around and giddy.

I have to pause here for an Emma story.  We got an autograph book and got a couple of signatures the first day.  Everybody signed it that we met that day, with the exception of Belle .  We met her at story time which is more of a production than a meet and greet, so they don't do signatures there.  When we got to Chef Mickey's she kept asking me if I thought Goofy, Pluto, etc. would be able to sign the book.  They all did and I am not exaggerating when I say that every SINGLE time we were in line for an autograph, she would squeal with excitement when she saw them signing somebody's book in front of us.  She would say, "They do it, they do it!!"  It was adorable and just made me realize that this was really magical for her.

Okay, back to the characters.  Goofy!

Pluto - she said, "I didn't know dogs could write their name."  To which I replied with the obvious, "That's one of the reasons they say Disney is magical."

THE Mickey Mouse.

Donald Duck - her favorite {because he is silly}.

Minnie Mouse

On our way to dinner, Emma met a little boy named Jayden on the monorail.  We ended up sitting next to him at Chef Mickey.  By the end of dinner they were great friends.  Even though it was almost 10:00 by the time we were done eating, we all decided to go see the fireworks show at the Magic Kingdom.  Here they are running inside the park so that we can find a spot.

And here they are chatting {about who knows what} while we wait for it to start.

Right before the show started.  Emma was so excited to see Tinkerbell fly down.

 

Emma loved it and I'm so glad we went.  It was a great ending to our day.  

Staring off at the fireworks display.

We jam packed our days so we didn't get back to the room until about midnight.  Somehow Emma still had a lot of energy and was bouncing on her bed with glee.  We finally said, "Okay, you have to go to sleep so that we can get up and do it all again in the morning."  She literally laid down and I think she fell asleep before her head hit the pillow.