Disney - Magic Kingdom

The Magic Kingdom. Today we went to the Magic Kingdom and got to see the castle.

We went to the Mickey's toon town area and got to see Mickey and Minnie's houses.

Leah got to take her picture with Ariel.

Splash Mountain was one of their favorite rides today. I went on it the first time and got soaked. After that I let the kids go on by themselves. :-) You can see the "fall" part in the back. It was a pretty cool ride.

They also went on The Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Here is Ryan with some pirates after the ride.

They had a fun day today. We will be back at Magic Kingdom on Thursday.

Disney - Epcot

Yesterday we spent the day at Epcot. Here are a few photos and things we did:

In the tour of the countries we were in Italy and there were two guys doing a little show. Ryan and Leah thought it was pretty neat and wanted to watch. The guy stacked up the chairs and kept climbing them until he was this high. Then he did a handstand as well.

We had dinner with Chip & Dale. Leah decided that she was going to get all the autographs of the characters and photos so now we have to stop whenever we are near one.

Here they are tasting soda from different countries.
Have to have a photo with Micky!!

This is the entrance to Epcot with the big ball.

Disney- Checking in and Animal Kingdom

Saturday afternoon we jumped on the plane and flew down to Orlando to DisneyWorld. The kids were super excited and were counting down the days. I was looking forward to some warm weather and no rain. We checked into the Port Orleans French Quarter on Saturday evening. It was 86 when we landed and of course the kids wanted to go swimming.

Ryan with the crocodile being silly.

Leah had to pose with one as well.

Today (Sunday) we went to Animal Kingdom. It was a lot of fun and we were able to see and do everything. It was great - going at this time of the year there were not any lines. The longest we had to wait for something was maybe 10 min. It took longer to walk thru the line area than the actual wait. Their first ride was Expedition Everest - scary rollercoaster featuring the Yeti. Leah decided that once was enough. The safari tour was neat - we got to see a lot of animals roaming about. I liked that we were able to see them in their "natural" habitat vs. in a caged area at a zoo. The Dinosaur ride I thought had the best special effects. We also saw The Lion King show, Finding Nemo the musical and A Bugs Life 4D - very fun and great effects as well. Unfortunately I was not able to get a lot of pictures because my camera died. I have it charging and ready to go for tomorrow.

This was a very cool tree behind them with lots of carving on it.

Here they are in front of some monkeys in the "Asian" area.

Tomorrow we are off to Epcot. I am looking forword to that.

Harvest Festival at School

On Friday the school had their annual Harvest Fest. The kids can dress up and they have food, crafts, games, etc. Leah and her friend Kayla both wanted to be pirate maidens (her word) this year. Here is a picture of them.

Ryan wanted to be Joker.

One of the favorite activites at the fest is the "jail" for a small fee you can put someone in "jail". The kids think that this is so much fun and they all want someone to send them in. Here is a photo of Ryan. Leah was also put in jail but I did not get a picture of her.

Happy Birthday Ryan!!

It is hard to believe that Ryan is 11 already. He is really growing up and changing. I am very proud of him and feel blessed to have a wonderful son.

Yesterday he brought ice-cream cupcakes to his cub scout meeting and today he brought chocolate cupcakes filled with caramel to school for his treat. He said that everyone really liked them.

Tonight he went to martial arts and then we went out to eat to celebrate. He chose Kyoto - our favorite sushi place. Ryan has decided that he loves raw oysters. Here he is getting ready to enjoy one.

And they gave him a special little cake for his birthday as well.

Happy 11th Birthday Ryan!!

Hiking Devil's Lake

This past weekend Ryan went camping at Devils Lake with the boy scouts. The weather was not the best but they didn't rained on too badly. Here he is at the camp (black/blue plaid jacket)

A group shot. He is in the front, second from the left.

Here they are on the hike climbing up a rock. Ryan is third from the right waiting for his turn to climb up.

Here he is in the middle.

And a beautiful view from the top!

He had a lot of fun and really likes scouting. On Saturday night they also had a dance. Hmmm... I said - who did you dance with? Apparently they bring in some girl scouts for the boys to dance with. Ryan said tha the danced with some girls (only fast songs - they didn't play any slow ones) and gave a girl his phone number (wow!!). But the girls mom or chaperone ripped it up. I asked where the girl was from and he said Waukesha - that's not that far. I just am not ready for this! My little boy is growing up.

Brownie Fall Festival

On Sunday Leah had her first Brownie outing of the year. They had the Fall Festival at the place where she went to camp this summer. We had 15 of the girls attend and they had a lot of fun. There were different activities all thru the camp. One of them was making tissue paper flowers.

They got to roast marshmallows and make s'mores. YUMMY - I got to make one also.

There was a pen wrapping station and they make shrinky dinks - retro and fun!!

The highlight was the rock climbing walls. Leah made it to the top twice.

Face painting and painting their nails was fun and interesting!

All in all it was a lot of fun and the brownies were happy to get to go on an outing. Our next trip is to the Chocolate House for candy making in November.

Park Clean-up!

Today Leah and I helped out the Connection Point church group with cleaning up Jackon Park. They had a picnic afterwards for everyone who helped. Leah made brownies.

Here we are going out on the canoe to help clean up the river. You would be amazed the stuff you can find!!

I also helped to harvest some seeds - tedious work! But I was glad that we could help. Leah was excited because she got to feed some fish and pet a snake - yuk!

Ryan is camping this weekend at Devil's Lake. He had a 10 mile hike today and now tonight he is at a dance. I was I was there to see it. I will post more on that later once I hear how it went.