Roller Skating Party

Each year (beginning in 1st grade), the girls' school has a roller skating party after school. Each grade gets 2 per year and Emily just loves. I was finally able to make it to the end of one this year and see what it's all about. They break it up to have songs just for the girls or boy and then a song for each teacher's class. Em was having a blast skating around the gym with her friends - she really goes quite fast!

She was so disappointed that this was her last one for this year.

Big Boy Bed

So, we've been talking about it for a while, and today we just decided to go for it and put Joey in a big boy bed. Paul went out and got him a Lightening McQueen comforter and sheet set and set up the bed. He was so excited when he saw it in his room.

When it came time for bed that night, he all of a sudden wasn't so excited and asked for his crib back, but thankfully, we were able to change his mind. He even did really well at staying in his bed until he fell asleep.

It's so funny in the mornings now to have him come down on his own and not yell "Get me out mommy".

As much as we talked about it before, I have to admit, when it came time to take down the crib, I was a little sad - no more babies, it's packed up for good.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentines Day! I hope everyone was able to share the day doing something special with the people they love. Instead of going out, Paul and I decided to have a romantic dinner with the kids. Paul grilled some steaks and I made a heart cake with icing from scratch - I've never done that before. Dinner was delicious. Afterwards, we played games - Operation and Trouble. It was a sugar-filled, fun-filled day.

Following in Daddy's Footsteps

Yesterday (and today actually) we were having some unseasonably warm weather for Rochester. Joey and I decided to play outside while we waited for Alli's kindergarten bus to come and when she got home, she wanted to stay outside and play some more. It was so nice getting outside again.

Alli loves to ride her bike and one of her favorite things to do is draw roads on the driveway for her and Joey to follow along. I wonder if she'll follow in her daddy's footsteps and become a civil engineer someday. Here are some pictures of her road designs:

We're Home

Friday was our last morning in Florida :(. We had to leave the resort at about 10am, so there really wasn't much time to do anything. We went for breakfast and then I took some pictures around our resort - I don't know if I mentioned it before, but we were at the Carribbean Beach resort.

Each of the sections had a little "beach" with these big hammocks. Here are the girls goofing around on one. I wish we'd had more time to hang out there - I LOVE swinging in a hammock - so relaxing!



Joey hadn't finished his bagel from breakfast and was walking around with the last piece and this duck and a seagull had their eyes on him hoping he'd drop it. They followed him everywhere, which, of course, freaked him out. Mean mommy here, had to snap a picture. I kept telling him to just eat the bagel and they would leave him alone, but he didn't listen.

This is just a pretty view from around our beach.

Then, it was time to head to the shuttle for the airport. Joey was such a good helper - I thought this picture was so cute. The suitcase is almost as big as him.

At the airport - that's our plane in the background. We found out that the Orlando airport doesn't sell ANY gum - who would have thought. I had 3 packs at the start of the trip, but because of Joey's obsession with gum, it was gone by the end of the week. I thought Oh, I'll just pick some up at the airport, but no such luck, so we got a big bag of starbursts instead - the kids needed something to chew on - their ears were popping alot during takeoff and landing.

Everyone but Alli was sad to go home - she was sad the trip was over, but once we left, she just wanted to get home. She said she had missed her friends.

The flight home was uneventful (thankgoodness). My mom was at the airport to pick us up. It was a great trip!

Disney Day 6 (Thursday)

Our last full day in Disney :( The forecast was another cold day, so we dressed in lots of layers. Paul joked that we're going to be wearing the same clothes in all the pictures - it's because we pretty much dressed in everything we brought lol.

Because of the cold temperatures, our luau dinner for tonight was canceled, so we scheduled a character breakfast instead. We went over to the Grand Floridian (what a nice hotel) and got to meet Wendy, the Mad Hatter, Mary Poppins, Pooh and Tigger.

Afterwards, we headed back over to Magic Kingdom to get to some of the rides we hadn't been on yet - like It's a Small World, Peter Pan, etc. We also wanted to try and get some more autographs. We were able to get Daisy Duck right away and Chip & Dale. It was funny - Alli was all into getting autographs on this trip - no matter how long the line was. I just love this picture of her snuggled up next to Daisy.

She's so good too about posing for all my pictures - I have her trained well - lol - she even will find spots for me to take pictures. Here she wanted to pose for a picture in front of Cinderella's wishing well.

After one of the rides, I had gotten the stroller and met back up with Paul and the kids and Joey was sitting on this barrel and looked so cute, I just had to snap a picture.

All week, we've been seeing kids with these elaborate face paintings and the girls wanted to have it done so bad, so we found the spot at Magic Kingdom. Em picked a mermaid princess design and Alli chose a toon girl. It was amazing how fast the girls painted these designs - Em and Alli look so cute, don't they?

Then, we finally found Mickey and Minnie and got their autographs and a picture. We never did find Donald Duck, unfortunately.

Here we are with Pinocchio.

We wanted to make it over to Hollywood Studios for their afternoon parade, so we left Magic Kingdom around 2pm. We had to take the monorail over to the transportation deptartment and catch a bus from there. Since we were one of the first people to wait for the next monorail, I asked the attendant if it would be possible to ride up front and they said Yes. Unfortunately, only four of us could go, so Paul said he would sit in back. The girls didn't seem as excited as I was though. We even got our co-pilot license :)

With all the transportation we had to take, we got there a little late for the parade and couldn't get a close viewing spot. It was more of a dance party than a parade. We got to see characters from Toy Story and Monsters Inc.

After, we went to the Little Mermaid show (that was one Emily really wanted to see - even though she's not into princesses anymore, she still likes Ariel). Then Paul and Em went to ride the Tower of Terror and I took Joey and Alli over to Playhouse Disney. Joey was excited to see some of his favorite characters from his tv shows "come to life".

After the show, we even got to meet Handy Manny and a couple of the Little Einsteins. Joey was so cute - it was the first time he was really happy and excited to meet the characters - he even wanted to give Lucy (from the Little Einsteins a hug).

Then we had some dinner and went to the American Idol experience. It was supposed to make you feel like you were at a real taping of the show. They had 3 singers (just 3 random people that auditioned during the day at the park), judges that were similar to Randy, Paula and Simon and they each sang a song and we voted for our favorite. The winner competed at the finale show at 7pm and then the winner of that would get a golden ticket to move to the front of the line at a real audition anywhere in the country. It was a lot of fun. Here are the girls posing outside the audition site.

After the idol show, we headed home to pack up. It was a great trip with lots of wonderful memories. As all vacations, it went by WAY too fast - we were looking forward to this trip for months and now it's just about over. The only bad thing was the cold weather, but even that wasn't so bad - we all agreed, we'd rather that than 90 degrees in August.

Disney Day 5 (Wednesday)

The word for today is Brrrrrrrr......... Florida (well at least our part) is supposed to have record cold temperatures today - just great!! I honestly didn't know, it could get this cold in Florida - just wish it didn't have to happen while we were here - we're supposed to be getting away from the cold for a bit. It wouldn't be so bad, except these temperatures weren't forecasted when we were packing last week, so we don't have any of our warm clothes. If we were prepared, 40s would have been fine for us - heck 40s in January is a heat wave for us Rochestarians. It is pretty funny listening to the news and the workers around the parks - the governer called a state of emergency because the night time low was supposed to be around 32 - that's Nothing! ha ha.

This morning while we were waiting for our bus to the Magic Kingdom, we saw 2 Animal Kingdom buses come by. We were just laughing - if you remember from yesterday, we waited forever for an Animal Kingdom bus and saw at least two of every other park go by.

We were headed to Magic Kingdom today bright and early for the girls' appointments at Bibbity Bobbity Boutique. Their princess makeover was a Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa Presutti. They were going to get their hair, makeup and nails done. Alli chose the princess makeover and Em chose the princess diva makeover.

When they were all done, their stylist - their Fairy Godmother in training - sprinkled some magic (glitter) on them and said "Bibbity Bobbity Boo, may all your wishes come true".

Don't they look like the most beautiful princesses you've ever seen....

When we came out of the boutique, we saw the real Fairy Godmother right outside the castle, so we went over for an autograph and picture. We actually were able to get Joey to pose AND smile with her - maybe there's hope yet he'll have fun on this trip.

Here we are in front of the castle.

One cute show we went to was the Monsters Inc. laugh floor. The monsters told jokes and involved audience members to collect our laughs for their city. You could text a joke to be used, so we tried one from one of Emily's joke books - What did Cinderella wear to the beach? Glass flippers - ha ha!! It didn't get on for our show though - too bad.

Then we headed over to the race track - Alli drove our car - she steered, I pressed the gas pedal. Em was hoping to be able to drive her own car, but she just missed the height requirement, so she rode with Paul and Joey.

Here are the girls over in Frontier land.

Then it was time for the parade. We chose a spot in the sun so we could be warm while we watched.

For dinner, we had reservations at the Hoopty Doo Musical Revue. We had to take a boat ride over to the Fort Wilderness camp grounds. It was a really fun show - even the girls and Joey got a kick out of it. We had awesome cornbread, yummy fried chicken and ribs and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

Disney Day 4 (Tuesday)

We decided to go back to Animal Kingdom for the day to finish up seeing the park since we were only there for a few hours on Saturday. We didn't think the bus was ever going to come to get us though. The transportation buses are supposed to come every 20 minutes and the one for Animal Kingdom took FOREVER! We saw at least two of every bus go by before ours finally arrived.

We finally got there though and got to meet up with Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger - even Joey was excited to meet them.

We headed over to Dinoland. There was one great ride that we heard about, but we also heard it was pretty scary, so we skipped it. Unfortunately, the one ride we could all do was closed, so we kept moving onto Asia.

Paul and Em rode the roller coaster Expedition Everest and loved it.

While they were riding that, Joey, Alli and I went on a jungle trek and we got to see a lion, some bats and other animals. They loved finding the animals in each section and Joey would then say, what are we going to see next mommy - it was so cute.

After meeting back up with Paul and Em, we went to the Finding Nemo show. It was like like a mini musical of the movie and we all loved it.

After Nemo, we headed over to the Lion King show - another awesome one. This was probably my favorite, but the kids said they liked Nemo better (to them, Lion King was so different from the movie). Disney really puts on some amazing shows!

The Lion King got over just in time for the parade. We found a great viewing spot and watched all the "animals" and characters go by.

After the parade, we went for one more safari ride. While waiting in line, I noticed that Joey Fatone was going to be on our ride with us! In case you don't know, Joey Fatone was in NSYNC, was on Dancing with the Stars a couple of seasons ago and recently did an episode of Hannah Montanna (so even the girls were a little excited too). Aside from Rochester news people, I've never seen anyone famous in person before, so it took a lot of effort to look at the animals and not at Joey - ha ha. I so badly wanted to turn my camera and take a picture of him, but I didn't want to look as crazy and I probably am. We got off the ride about the same time as him and were walking out "together" and I so badly wanted to ask him for an autograph or picture, but I chickened out :( Oh well.

After Animal Kingdom we went down to Downtown Disney for dinner and shopping. Unfortunately, Florida can get pretty darn cold and we were freezing, so we didn't last long walking between the shops. It was just as well, the kids were pretty tired, and honestly, so were Paul and I.