A Magical Thanksgiving

Sorry for the long silence. It's been busy 'round here. Home with a sick girl today so I'll try to do a little catch up:

We were lucky enough to celebrate Thanksgiving this year in Disney World. Typically we host Thanksgiving but we were happy to take a year off and have fun in warm Florida. The big kids were so excited about this trip, they are at the perfect age for Disney right now. Still into characters, still excited about the parades and shows, and now big enough to ride mostly everything! We went to Jacksonville the day before to see my dad and the beach. Unfortunately the beach was like this:

so cold and windy, but it was still fun for the kids and they loved chasing the sea foam. We loved having our hotel doors open and hearing the (loud) ocean, eating coconut shrimp, and having a quick stop to break up the drive, thanks Dad! :)

Everything was already decorated for Christmas in Disney which was nice, we've been there at Christmastime before so it wasn't as cool as the first time, but it made everything pretty. I won't be able to post all the pictures here but I'll do some highlights:
Epcot:
One of our favorite places to just walk around and enjoy. Playing with the fountains, seeing the countries, etc.

Everyone (except little Miss M) finally got to ride Soarin' and the kids loved it! We enjoyed lunch in France and got to see Remy on a tray. (H) finally discovered he likes Spaceship Earth like the rest of his family, and we enjoyed a few fun International treats and drinks.

My always stylish girl 

Birthday Buddies!

Hollywood Studios:

Enjoying the ride in Mexico

Cousin love!

Waiting for a LONG time for the Toy Story ride

Me and my babies

She loved taking naps with her uncle

Magic Kingdom:

Everyone was so brave and rode Space Mountain!

Using your tongue helps!

We got there way to early so we rode the monorail over the the Polynesian and had some Kona coffee, then back to MK for the opening of the park show. Never knew they did this, it was great to see many characters come in on the railroad at the front of the park and then fireworks in the morning! Headed to Space Mountain first thing and the kids were moving too quickly to question the scariness of the ride, so they rode it and LOVED it. So fun! It was a long, busy day and unfortunately we didn't get to do everything, but we did have to leave early because of a very special Pirates and Pals boat ride to watch the fireworks. It was one of the highlights of the trip and well worth it. The kids got to meet Smee and Cptn. Hook before the ride and enjoy all kinds of snacks then we boarded a boat and got to watch the fireworks how over the MK. When we came back, Peter Pan was there waiting for us. It was awesome!

Animal Kingdom:

Took the morning off to sleep in and go to a character breakfast. 

1900 Park Fare for Thanksgiving brunch. Super fun and the mimosas weren't bad either! Plus strawberry soup which is my favorite. Mmmmmm!

Then we headed to Animal Kingdom for the rest of the day, my kids had never been to this Disney park, so it was fun to experience it with them for the first time. It was much less crowded today with it being Thanksgiving I guess so we were able to pretty much do everything. We even had time for an hour at the Bollywood dance party in Asia. *A* and her cousin danced it up big time!

I don't have any more photos of our time in this park for some reason, a few went back early, but the rest of us had a blast, rode rides multiple times and enjoyed an almost empty park after dark. That night poor (H) got sick and none of us slept well, but we were just thankful it happened on our last night there.

We headed home the next day, tired and over-stimulated, but before we left, we headed to the LEGO store in Downtown Disney:

The most amazing lego sculpture!

so hard to choose! 

Apple(donut) Festival

Last year we had a blast picking apples in the mountains but what really drove us there was my super-pregnant desire to eat an apple cider donut so I researched farms that offered apple picking plus apple cider donuts, and we headed to the mountains and loved it.
This year since we're trying to save money for our upcoming trip to the land of the mouse, we decided not to drive 2 hours to the mountains, but to try the other farm I found a little closer. It wasn't as picturesque and most of the apple were off the trees so we couldn't actually pick, but we all know why were were there...

 mmmmm, donuts.

Seriously, they are so good. And it didn't matter that we couldn't pick apples at all because there was plenty more to do: Pigs to pet (and feed weird baby bottles full of milk), hayrides, goats and geese (which scared Miss M with their honking), orchards with free roaming chickens to chase, and a giant pile o' hay!

There was also a lot more goodness to eat (and drink). Cider in fun pumpkin bottles, caramel apples, and fried pies. We chowed down to the sounds of a great bluegrass band. They were also selling hard cider and giving samples but unfortunately we left our licences in the car. Oh well, that'll be a new thing to discover next year when the cider donut craving strikes again!

In Pictures

Just a glimpse into our week, it's been busy but good. Hoping for more of the same this week...

10 Months, how?

Time flies when you're having fun. And life with this girl is all about fun! She is really starting to show her personality: lots of real and fake laughing, growling when her siblings take something from her, trying out things because she knows they're silly, and dancing, dancing, dancing!

She's cutting 3 teeth on top and loves pretty much any food you put in front of her (except bananas). The kid can eat, often more than her brother at a given meal. She's sleeping more consistently during the day with a big morning nap, a mini afternoon nap, and mostly through the night. Anyway, she just pretty much rocks.

Here's some photos from the past week. I've been practicing using my camera in manual mode and I'm pretty impressed with the results, if I do say so myself. Having this model sure does help though!

A week in pictures

Reading furiously for bookclub next week, the national blue ribbon award at Montessori school, a picnic dinner at the park, m's check-up.

Settling & School

With week 1 of a new school and new school schedules under our belt, it seems things may be starting to get into a daily routine. A busy daily routine, but routine nonetheless. With A's new school, she starts an hour and a half after H (and gets out an hour and a half later), which I thought was going to be a real pain but I've found I really enjoy it. This gives me some time with each of them individually and stops that afternoon bickering we've been having. The only downside is that A doesn't get much time at home before the dinner, books, bed routine, but it's actually working out.
H is thriving in his Kindergarten class but after attending parent night at the Montessori school last night, I am sad he's not able to be in Montessori yet. Starting next year will be a good transition for him though, and already he's starting to read and write phonetically so I can only imagine how his reading skills are going to grow in the next few months. He's gotten back into reading picture books at night which I of course love! He's pulled out some old favorites this week: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, The mixed-up Chamaleon, If you give a Pig and Party, and many more. Ones he's really familiar with he wants to read himself (fill in the words as I read most of the sentence) and I'm so excited his interest is growing!

At A's parent night, we were very impressed with her teacher who is "old-school" Montessori and it was fun for J to hear her telling parents the same thing he used to say to parents. Things like, "don't bring them their backpack, if they forget it, that's their responsibility!" and "I don't even know what their spelling words are, that's for me to find out when they take their test at the end of the week". It was so GOOD to hear these seemingly harsh but totally normal Montessori approaches! I can't imagine what parents who aren't familiar with the child-led approach would be thinking, but we loved it! We peeked in her journal to see what she's been writing this week and found an amazingly long story the day they were supposed to write a fable. It was 2 full pages front and back, single spaced! I have NEVER seen her write so much. She told me today she wasn't finished and was going to work on it some more, and that's the great thing because they will actually let her do that!! I'm planning to go work in her classroom garden and have lunch with her today. It will be fun to see her with her new friends, apparently she's thriving socially, which we knew wouldn't be a problem!
Here's our big girl on her first day with Maria Montessori, love.

New Beginnings

Tomorrow our eldest heads back to Montessori school. The last time she was in a Montessori classroom she was 3, we lived in Georgia, her father wasn't a priest, and she had one less sibling. Times were very different back then but our love for the Montessori philosophy has remained the same.

It's funny how not having the option of something makes you forget how important it was to you. When we moved to TN, I was so broken-hearted our children wouldn't have the option of attending a Montessori school. Luckily they still had a few years left of preschool and I ran the preschool program they attended so I made it as Montessori-influenced as I could, but I knew once A started attending "real" school, we were stuck with the local public school as our only option. I knew we wouldn't be able to afford anything else and could only hope the places we lived in the future would have great public school option. Or I considered homeschooling, often.

In TN I wasn't thrilled with the local elementary school's policies (corporal punishment is just not for me), but I did like that the school was so small and so much a neighborhood school, it was Sewanee after all! I hoped the small class sizes and population of university families would help the bad reputation of Middle TN schools. But, even though it was just Kindergarten, it just didn't measure up and her reading skills were lacking.

When we found out we were coming to Charlotte, I researched schools and was amazed to discover Charlotte had 3(!) public Montessori schools! But they were only accessible by lottery and we had missed the cut-off. Luckily we moved into an area with an amazing school and we were very happy with our situation. I wanted to just be able to put our name in for the lottery though, just in case, and ended up going on an interview last year knowing our chances were slim entering as a 2nd grader. We never heard back though, and started school happily as now a Kindergartner and 2nd grader.

Then, on Thursday, they called to say they had a spot for A, and they needed an answer by the end of the day. This was amid a pretty crazy day that included J getting stung by 10 yellow jackets and going uptown during the DNC for a taping of the Daily Show (awesome, btw). That night we told A she got in and we thought it was a great thing and how excited we were. She was sad to leave her school but I could tell she was trying hard to be brave. She said goodbye to her old school Friday and took it all so maturely. I am so proud of her. We are beyond excited to be back in the Montessori mode and can't wait until they have an opening for H (but he'll be able to go next year, and M can start when she's 4!). It's the start of something new but also a remembering of something old, but not forgotten. A philosophy if life, education, and parenting. So happy to be there again with our amazing girl to lead the way!