Disney World--Day 6

Day 6 was yet another great day. But how could any day in Disney World not be? In fact it was on this day that I saw a woman wearing a t-shirt that said, "Too blessed to be stressed". Although I probably wouldn't wear it on a t-shirt, I couldn't have agreed more!!

We started the day off by going back to Epcot. We got there early to walk around and see the countries and go on a few rides (the kids had been begging us to go on Spaceship Earth, the ride inside the 'big ball')

Enjoying a few pastries in France...notice the activities of everyone in our family (Sadie tending to baby--this became a point of contention when she would insist that baby needed to ride and actually Blake needed to! Matt enjoying a good cup of coffee--one thing that is seriously lacking in Disney. Wyatt focused on eating and Blake watching whatever Matt is doing!)

Not too many pictures from Epcot....we went on the Spaceship Earth ride, which the kids loved and was EXACTLY as I remembered it. Then we headed to this ride called Soarin', where you sit in a seat and feel like you are hang-gliding over all different landscapes of California....it was truly amazing and the kids loved it. Blake wasn't big enough to go, so Matt took the kids and then when the ride was over, they gave him 3 FastPasses so I could go with the kids. So Wyatt and Sadie got to go twice! The ride is in a room with a 180 degree screen and although the rest is pretty hard to explain, let's just say that you really feel like you are going to crash into the mountain and fall into the ocean. It's one of the new 4D rides, as they call them, where various scents (orange scent when flying over orange groves) and sensations (wind, cold, etc) are a part of the experience. I was surprised that Wyatt and Sadie liked it as much as they did because parts of it were a bit 'thrilling' (not scary), but they did!! Blake was really tired at this point in the day, so while I went on the ride with the older two kids, Matt headed back to our hotel to get Blake down for a nap. Once we finished on the ride, we met them there.

(love this picture....Wyatt had picked out a Donald Duck stuffed animal the day before and he brought it everywhere)

We had to get some good naps in, however, because we had 4:30 dinner reservations with the princesses inside the castle at "Cinderella's Royal Table". This was the other reservation that we somehow got, but people make these reservations up to a year in advance! How crazy is that?

I had to get a family picture in front of the castle with everyone looking 'nice' for our big dinner.

And for those of you wondering or who have asked me, we didn't constantly ask people to take our family picture (and if we had, they certainly wouldn't have turned out like this!) We did this thing called the Disney PhotoPass which allows you to have all the pictures taken by Disney photographers on one CD when you get home. So we had a card with our photopass ID on it and everytime we asked one of the hundreds of photographers standing around to take our picture, I just handed them that card and then we had all the pictures when we got home. It was so great and well-worth it!
And photopass photographer that we had this evening asked Sadie to hold out her hands because she had seen Tink flying around and knew that if she took a quick picture, we might be able to see her. The kids didn't really get it at the time, but once we got home and they saw the picture, they thought it was incredible!
I love how Blake is looking at her too!!

Now on to the much-anticipated dinner with the princesses!

I couldn't remember ever having gone inside the castle and Sadie was SO excited for the evening. She had asked that I bring along her princess dress and boy was I glad I did, because just about every little girl in there was wearing one!

When we first walked in the castle, Cinderella greeted us.

(They asked for just the kids in the picture and I didn't realize what was going on, but I really wish I had just had them take it with Sadie. The boys could not have cared less! Oh well.

Part of the meal is that they gave us an 8x10 and 2 4x6s of each of these pictures. The girls also got a wand and the boys, or princes, got swords. Now that was a hit!!

Now on to the princesses. The whole thing is a bit funny because Sadie has never seen any of the princess movies and we don't even talk about the stories, so we had to explain who some of them were to her, but thankfully it's Sadie and she doesn't care one bit. She was just as happy to get to meet them as if she had seen every one of their movies!

Snow White and Sadie

Princess Aurora

(now this one was even funnier because this is who's dress Sadie is wearing....but the only reason we had this dress was because Sadie told me at Halloween that she wanted to be a pink princess and this was what I found on ebay....we had no idea there even was a Princess Aurora or anything about her story..I still don't even know what movie she is in...so when she started talking to us about it, I just smiled and nodded....once she left our table, Sadie turned to me and made her classic Sadie 'puzzled face' and asked, "What was she talking about?" to which I replied, "I don't know")

Not a great picture but I thought it was cute how Sadie had picked up on the princesses poses and help her skirt out

Blake screamed throughout the entire meal except when a princess would say hi to him or hug him.....thankfully Sadie didn't notice his crying as she was so enthralled with the princesses

Again, not a great pic since it's not in focus...but you can see how adoringly Sadie looked at those princesses

Ariel and Sadie

Belle and Sadie

She was probably the sweetest and gave Sadie the most time and attention and asked all about our trip...just look at how sweet her hug was?!

Enjoying our last few minutes inside the castle, pretending to be a real princess

(dancing, of course...isn't that what all princesses do all day in their castles?)

The boys were dying to get outside and this is what took place over the next several minutes....

My attempt at getting a picture of Sadie with her wand on the back side of the castle...notice her brother behind her, sword in hand!

Our plan, since it was our final night, was to see the fireworks at 8pm (another reason the naps were so key). So we had some time to get in some last minute rides we hadn't yet gone on.....

The teacups!! (Blake is still telling people about these!)

Be prepared, because these pictures fully captured the joy and excitement we all had that night.....you can't even look at these without smiling!!

After the teacups, Wyatt wanted to do the go-karts. I told Matt and I didn't think it would be that much fun since we do it every summer at Kart-Way up at Stormy Lake and these cars are on tracks that don't allow you to go more than a foot to your left or right. But the kids really wanted to do it, so we did. And they loved it!! Go figure! But they were able to drive the cars on their own, so that was the exciting part.

You can tell how focused Wyatt was...

We ended up going on the cars two times (as you can see) because the lines to everything were so short. People were getting in 'position' to watch the fireworks, so we just kept going on rides!! We walked over to see the fireworks about 5 minutes before they started and it was just perfect. We had a great view of seeing Tinkerbell fly out of the castle and into Tomorrowland and seeing the fireworks over the castle, just like at the beginning of all Disney movies, was truly magical. The kids were in awe and I will never forget the moment as we all watched the fireworks together and I held Blake in my arms, Matt with his arm around me, and Blake whispered, "Beautiful.....Booms beautiful Mommy". What a great end to our last night at Disney!!