Thanks to Disney Parks and Mom Select for the opportunity to host a Disney @Home Celebration, and for the goodies that came in our party pack. All opinions expressed here are my own and here is how we showed our #DisneySide.
Last month I received a package in the mail full of goodies and treats. Originally we were going to have a birthday party but my just turned 4 year old was having a hard time recovering from a stomach bug so our party got moved to Valentine's Day which also happened to be the day we were scheduled to have a Children's Fellowship. Part of our topic for the day was learning manners and how we could be kind to others with our good manners.
Is there any better way to have good manners than at a tea party? All the goodies in our party box were just right for a princess tea!
My daughter & her grandma made some super sweet Frozen cupcakes we found at our local Sam’s Club. They were super cute and a big hit with all the kids (and parents).
We had all the boys seat the girls and we all practiced our manners while we ate our snacks and treats.
Even the boys used their manners, they just didn’t use the hats.
After the “tea” party time we played games and activities that were provided in the pack. The favorites were pin the smile on Mickey & Disney Parks Bingo. All the kids participated in the pin the smile on Mickey there were so many laughs and giggles when the blind fold came off.
I loved how classic games like pin the smile on Mickey or Bingo were just as much fun for the kids as if we’d had a video game or something “high tech”. We used goldfish crackers as our bingo markers, I think the kids ate as many as they used on their boards. The bingo games got a bit excited at times and we all cheered for each of the winners.
We all had a great time showing our #DisneySide and playing games and practicing our manners.
The older girls in our group enjoyed making hair barrettes with the craft kit that also came in the box.
The party pack came with a bunch of great goodies to make party favors for all the ladies big and little. The girls were excited to receive the princess goodies and I added a few other treats in there too.
We had boys at the party so I found in my stash a few Disney goodies to make favors that suited the young gentleman in our Children’s Fellowship.
The goodies even covered party favors for the parents. Which they really liked getting a gift too.
Overall we had a great time celebrating and practicing our manners and showing our #DisneySide.
Thanks again to DisneyParks and MomSelect for sending me the party pack.
I just recently found out about the Great American Backyard Campout which is being sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation. The event encourages you to get your family outside spending time together and enjoying the great outdoors.
The National Wildlife Federation also uses this event as a fundraising opportunity:
NWF uses 80 cents of every dollar you raise in the Great American Backyard Campout® to support programs that address the problems of America's indoor childhood and the health risks associated with them. Your funds are used to establish and maintain programs to make outdoor time a priority to protect children's health and ensure their readiness to learn.
Our local community is hosting a huge campout at a local park for families all over the area to participate. So check your area for local events.
Since my main focus these days is packing up all our things I noticed our camping equipment still tucked away in the garage and I thought about making sure we use that sometime soon and remembered this event. I am going to sorely miss our current backyard it is super big, shady all day long, and tons of fun for the kids.
So this Saturday my hubby and the kiddo will be setting up camp in our backyard. We’re borrowing my parents new fire bowl and pulling the tent out of the garage. Here in Atlanta the forecast is showing Saturday as being in the 90’s I think they might have a bit more modern conveniences like a fan in their tent but I know they’ll have fun! Baby girl and I will be joining them around the fire to make s’mores and share stories. We’ve invited Grandma & Grandpa to join us too.
I am running to the store tomorrow to pick up snacks, bug spray /candles. Do you have any favorite camping snacks or activities? How about a recommendation for effective (but not toxic) bug repellant?
Is anyone else excited about this movie? I know a few kiddos my son’s age and their parents who can’t wait to get out to see this movie.
We’ve checked out a bunch of the trailer videos on YouTube and my music loving kiddo is especially loving the Summertime Music video with Bridgit Mendler.
I’ve been given the opportunity to share with you some Arrietty themed activity sheets! Check them out here:
THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY opens in theaters everywhere on February 17th! Are you planning on seeing this movie?
Last week we had my husband’s parents in town for a whole week which was such a treat! We stuck to our normal routine for most of the week--chiropractor, homeschool, errands, etc. Plus it got super cold last week and I don’t like taking my babies out when it is damp and icky. So we stayed inside most of the week.
Friday Ken took off from work and took us all (including my mom) up to the North Georgia mountains to Burt’s Pumpkin Farm and to an apple orchard. He had heard about the pumpkin farm from coworkers and I had just recently read the review from couponsaregreat.net, so I knew it was just the right place to go.
The morning started out a bit rocky, we got out later than we had wanted, and got some breakfast on the way. We got to Burt’s around 11:30am which was a decent time on a Friday the main parking lot was still half empty and we got a spot right up front. Since there wasn’t too many people at this point the pumpkin farm was very stroller friendly (YAY).
There were so many pumpkins!! In all sizes and colors! This was the kiddo’s first time at a pumpkin farm or patch. I had only been to one once before in a church’s parking lot. The kiddo and I were both super impressed with ALL the pumpkins!! Rows and rows of big and small and white and orange pumpkins!
Of course I took a gratuitous amount of photos of the kiddos sitting in the middle of a bunch of pumpkins! Even though it was still super chilly it was pretty nice in the sunshine.
They had a cute little hay stack for taking photos, which we did. Thanks mom for taking these! I was pretty distracted by the cold weather I forgot to take a photo of the kiddos with Ken’s parents. OOPS!
We decided to go on the hayride, I remembered from the coupons are great post that you sat right on the hay, so we verified that there were no seats in the wagons. This was a disappointment, having brought 3 grandparents with us on this trip 2 of them couldn’t ride the hayride because they would not have been able to get up and down, from basically the floor. However I thought the hayride was the best part of the whole place. It cost us $5 a person to ride, and I felt it was well worth the cost. The ride was about 20 minutes with lots of scenery and a pretty comfy ride. Baby girl really loved eating the hay HA! At the end of the ride you go past the parking lot and we noticed it was completely full (about an hour since we’d arrived).
After the ride we grabbed a wheel barrel and went to go pick out our pumpkins. We purchased one for each person in our family. I had fun chatting with the kiddo about what attributes he was looking for in a pumpkin: bumpy/smooth, short/tall, orange/yellow, etc. He did a great job finding a pumpkin with in budget (under $10) and that he liked aesthetically.
We loaded up our pumpkins and checked out. I’ll tell you about our adventures at the apple orchard in another post.
Have you ever been to a pumpkin farm? Do you have a favorite pumpkin patch/farm in your area? Share your links in the comment’s I’d love to see what fun you and your family are having this autumn.
I know you all know how much my kiddo LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine and everything that surrounds the brand. So when I was given an opportunity for 4 tickets to the Day out with Thomas 2011 tour I JUMPED!! Even better I got to pick any location. We had been to the Cordele, GA event two years ago and Bryson City last year, this year I wanted to try a new place. Based on a dates and proximity I chose the Blowing Rock, NC location. The event was held at the Tweetsie Railroad.
I had no idea how much fun this location would make the event, it definitely the best Day Out with Thomas we’ve experienced.
Tweetsie is about 6 hours away from home so we left the night before right after Ken got home from work. We brought the baby, my younger sister, and my mom along with us. We made it to Hickory, NC for the night and stayed a great hotel about 45 minutes from the event. We had no idea what time our train tickets were for so I checked the schedule on Tweetsie’s website and saw that the earliest rides still had plenty of space we knew we wanted to get there early to make the 9 am ride. We got up early and out the door just to make it in time for the 9am ride. We walked through the ticketing and right onto the train.
What a fun train ride!! Since Thomas is not a real steamy and couldn’t handle 3 passenger cars they had paired the 190 with Thomas to pull the cars. We all agreed that the 190 (the Yukon Queen) looked a lot like Emily.
The Tweetsie Railroad has a great little loop that the train goes around and it is a beautiful ride lots trees and in the middle they have a little cowboy and indian show, however it was scaled back with no firing of the guns for the DOWT event. I definitely am interested in going back some time to ride again and see the whole show.
At the end of our ride the park was starting to get busy. Which never seemed too busy as there were lots of activities and space to spread the people out. I’m not a crowd person and I never once felt like it was crowded.
DOWT always has, story telling, videos to watch, coloring pages, temporary tatoos, train tables for playing with different styles of the Thomas & Friends Brand, and of course the gift shop. I absolutely loved that most of these activities were indoors with air conditioning! Tweetsie also had train tables set up through out the facility so there seemed to be places to play everywhere we went.
The first thing on the kid’s agenda was playing trains. We hit up the play station first and he could have spent all day playing with the Track Master train set up. Track Master, or “battery trains” as my kid calls them, are his new favorite and we’re slowing accumulating a collection of that series now too.
They had all together the temporary tattoos, coloring pages, and videos near each other so we did all that around the same time.
The kiddo got a temporary Diesel 10 tattoo while I was nursing the little one he was so funny and told me
“Mom, I got a tattoo! And it didn’t hurt at all.”
That had me cracking up. I’m not sure where he learned tattoos hurt but now he knows that temporary ones don’t. He later told us that he was never going to wash it off and got upset that it started to peel after swimming in the pool.
Each location generally makes the event their own by adding extra activities. Tweetsie had a Thomas inflatable for the kids to jump and play. We didn’t have the opportunity to play this time.
We made our way over to the carnival area of the park and rode a bunch of carnival rides. HOW FUN! All were included in the admission, which was even better!
Next up we took the chair lift up to the top of the mountain to see what Tweetsie had to offer.
The kiddo did great on the chair lift and told me it wasn’t as bad as he thought! It really was lots of fun! I enjoyed the ride talking with him.
First thing at the top of the mountain was the playground! And it had a cranking bridge, just like in Thomas he was super excited to play. By this point it was getting hotter and most of us were ready to eat.
We decided to hold on lunch until after we rode the little train to the mouse mines. This was our LONGEST wait for any activity, about 30 minutes. There was shade while waiting and we chatted with a family who comes each year from Ashville with their son.
It was time for baby to eat so I fed her while we rode the train. The ride was breezy and nice the mouse mine was cute (and cheesy LOL), and was the location where I lost my sun glasses.
By the time we got off the train we were all starving. We had read reviews that the food was pricey, and we had no clue you could bring in your own food. So we went with a large pizza and 4 sodas (in cans) for $20 and we didn’t have to wait in line! That wasn’t bad to us for all 5 of us to eat. The kids were treated with Dip ‘n Dots, my kiddo’s first interaction with them. He thought they were cool!
After lunch we made our way back down the mountain, this time Grandma and Aunt J walked down with the baby and the stroller while the three of us rode down the chair lift. We made our way towards the gift shop and stopped off at the taller kids rides.
We stopped to take a photo at the Tweetsie TeePee, with Sir Topham Hatt, and rode a horse.
Then we hit up the shop and loaded the kiddo down with his new Thomas goodies, we were a bit disappointed that they didn’t have Belle & Den the newest trains we were looking for. Sadly we had pretty much everything they were selling in the Wooden Railway series. We did get a DOWT magnet and a bookbag and a pennant.
On our way to pick up our photos and leave the park I put the family in Jail and the kids rode a horse, it was a super busy day and so very much fun.
We had a blast at Tweetsie Railroad at the Day out with Thomas 2011 Leader of the Track Tour definitely our favorite DOWT so far. If you have a Thomas or train fan we could not recommend this location and event any more it is a fun filled day! Our Thomas fan is already talking about going back next year!
Last Friday I had the opportunity to bring my son and mom to the Georgia Aquarium to preview the new AT&T Dolphin Tales Show.
The previous dolphin shows I’d seen I learned about the different training techniques, like hand signals and the tools they use to indicate different behaviors. Honestly how many times can you learn basically the same thing. This show is completely different it is a real SHOW! The three of us were completely captivated the whole 30 minutes.
Photo Credit: The Georgia Aquarium
The trainers and staff sing and perform a complete musical show. The dolphins are part of the show and come in and out to perform and have roles and parts in the production. Very cool I hadn’t expected that at all.
Photo Credit: The Georgia Aquarium
The kiddo was a little apprehensive at first because he didn’t know what to expect. After the show started he really got into things. There were opportunities for audience participation and he was completely into it and took his part very seriously.
One of the highlights of the show for us was when one of the performers surfed on the dolphin it was very cool. There was a part towards the end where one trainer skied on two dolphins!
Photo Credit: The Georgia Aquarium
I definitely will want to take friends and family to see the show it really was like nothing else I’ve seen before and would definitely want to see again.
After the show we got to check out the Aquarium a bit more. There is a gallery where you can view the dolphins without purchasing tickets to see the show. It’s a nice big viewing window of the dolphins, I especially liked this because in other areas I’ve found it difficult for the kiddo to see into the windows because there are usually too many people and only one window.
Photo Credit: The Georgia Aquarium
I told the kiddo all about the moving side walk in the aquarium and that’s what he wanted to do the most. We did it twice. I was able to snap a few pictures.
We had an opportunity to meet with a representative from AT&T and he shared how they’re developing and implementing barcode scanning throughout the aquarium. You download the barcode scanner and throughout the whole aquarium in each exhibit you can scan the barcode and it will pull up different websites and information facts. I thought was really cool! There are lots of plans to make the exhibits even more interactive.
We made it to a couple other areas but the kiddo was getting tired and it was a Friday in Atlanta which meant lots of traffic so we headed home.
Over all a really great time at the Georgia Aquarium. Let me know if you go see the dolphin show!!
Last weekend we had an opportunity to see a screening of the new Universal movie HOP! The movie started at 10 down at Atlantic Station which meant we had to get up pretty early for a Saturday and load up both kids and get our butts on the road. Since we were going to be right next to Ikea, I knew we had to make plans to basically be gone all day (which we were).
The kiddo loved the movie, he is a HUGE Alvin and the Chipmunks fan and this movie kind of fit the same style. Tons of great music that had him dancing in his seat. Even my husband and I got some good laughs too. The only thing I mentioned to my husband was that we definitely cannot skimp on the kid’s Easter basket this year. HA! We will definitely be adding this movie to our DVD collection.
Let me know if you go to see this with your kiddos.
After the movie we headed over to Ikea for an afternoon of shopping. I think I wore the boys out. Of course little E and I could have kept going. We did find a solution for our little nook in the kitchen and also found a lighting solution to the playroom. I’m excited for the hubby to install everything hopefully this weekend.
This is the last post in the 30 day blog challenge. This whole process was quite a challenge indeed. I have enjoyed being more faithful to blogging and I hope you all have enjoyed reading the posts. I will definitely try and continue to be more faithful to document life here on the blog.
The prompt to close out this challenge is:
Day 30-a picture
I will share with you another photo taken by Tonya Douglas Photography at our photo session on November 20th. I absolutely love this capture of our son it melts my heart.
We had an absolutely wonderful day to get our photos taken and Tonya did such an amazing job!! I can’t wait for my baby girl to arrive and to schedule her newborn shoot.
Are you playing along? Share your blog link with me I’d love to see your 30 Day Blog Challenge posts.
Want to read previous posts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15, Day 16, Day 17, Day 18, Day 19, Day 20, Day 21, Day 22, Day 23, Day 24, Day 25, Day 26, Day 27, Day 28, Day 29
Well I’m nearly finished with the 30 day blog challenge issued by my friend Heather. I’ve kind of fallen off the wagon for a week or so but I’m nearly caught up. The topic for today’s post is:
Day 29-3 Wishes
Hmmm well I’m not much of a wisher, I definitely do set goals and I have a wishlist of items I want.
I’d say some of my biggest goals or wishes would be:
- To build/buy our dream house with cash.
- To have 4 healthy kids
- To get a vintage camper to restore
Hmmm should I have wished for world peace? I thought those were light and fun “wishes”. What are your three wishes?
Are you playing along? Share your blog link with me I’d love to see your 30 Day Blog Challenge posts.
Want to read previous posts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15, Day 16, Day 17, Day 18, Day 19, Day 20, Day 21, Day 22, Day 23, Day 24, Day 25, Day 26, Day 27, Day 28
Today’s topic in the 30 day blog challenge is:
Day 28-Something that stresses you out
![stress[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2_4hyphenhyphenUSnRl4w_I7rQhbDDKZD4jxjPleoEfj90HTSZUWvLYK_aNIRVEKrwbUySc3nv8xVX-hX9XHYekl72wMEycZ8Jwhhsfx71mO4zBCWVeOGJyd4YqJdj3-ZflZm_Q-G81bPrJJVGWnqX/s1600-h/stress%5B1%5D%5B3%5D.jpg "stress[1]")
I can definitely say something that has stressed me out in the past is my day job. It has been quite the struggle to work nearly full time and then come home and try and have energy and effectiveness at home.
I’m so eager to really get home full time and put all the energy and effort that I put into my job into my home life and taking care of my family.
Speaking of I’ve set the date for my last day which will be December 17th. I’ve been working diligently to try and get things communicated and handed over to those who will handle the responsibilities after I leave.
Don’t get me wrong I’m so blessed and thankful that God provided a job for me that I could work the last 10 years. The income I made was a great supplement to my husband’s and has helped us live a very blessed life, providing for our family.
Are you playing along? Share your blog link with me I’d love to see your 30 Day Blog Challenge posts.
Want to read previous posts: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15, Day 16, Day 17, Day 18, Day 19, Day 20, Day 21, Day 22, Day 23, Day 24, Day 25, Day 26, Day 27
