Our last day at Disney!!

This day started off on a pretty awful note. We woke up early to Parker throwing up in his pack and play and both Jon and I were just so sad. We were supposed to meet everyone at the buses first thing, but we decided to wait a little bit and just see how Parker was doing. He threw up once more and then seemed better, so we chalked it up to him licking every trash can we passed (seriously) and decided to go ahead and head to the park. We got to Animal Kingdom soon after Mom and Dad did.

The first part of the park, we just rode Expedition Everest, which Parker couldn’t do anyway, so we took turns walking him down in the stroller to watch the monkeys play in one of the exhibits while the other rode with Nathan. He never threw up again and acted totally normal the rest of the day, so I’m glad we went ahead and went. 🙂

Expedition Everest! Pops had Parker and Eisley for this ride. 🙂 Note the exhaustion. We LOVE Disney but we always run ourselves ragged and then get excited for going home and having normal life again. Ha!

Gammy’s favorite ride is Expedition Everest, so Nathan made sure he rode it at least once with her.

My favorite ride is not Expedition Everest, but I rode it anyway. Jon likes to scare me on these rides and I told him this was the last time I was ever riding it with him. 😉

Bryant and Kiki. 🙂

The crew!! Everyone is so happy except for the Little Miss, who was screaming her head off. Poor little one.

Parker LOVED giving the characters high fives. 😉

We left Animal Kingdom right after lunch and headed to Epcot for naps for the littlests and to ride more rides. 🙂

He asked me to take his picture in front of this little fence and so of course, I did. He was so cute. And such a trooper. He walked 90% of this trip.

A few of the girls while the others were on a ride. 🙂

Meeting MeMo one last time. 🙂 Love my boys.

This was how Nathan did most of Epcot. There’s a Secret Agent adventure kids his age can do where they search for clues through the countries. We did ours in Mexico and it was actually REALLY fun. Nathan LOVED it. We wished we had more time to do the other ones!! There was several surprises and cute things happened. Highly recommend this one!

I was taking a picture of the ball and saw Jon standing there talking to his baby girl and just had to take this picture. Oh how I love this one!!

And this is how our Disney World experience ended. 😉 Ha! The boys were TERRIFIED of the Epcot fireworks. It probably didn’t help that it was late and they were exhausted, but neither of them made it through the show and Parker couldn’t stop screaming. We’ll try again next time. 😉

We headed home the next morning! We love Aunt Nicole! She and Nathan played thumb wars the whole ride to the airport. She’s so good with my boys. 🙂

The flight home was a quiet one. 😉

We love Disney World!! So thankful to go! We can’t wait until we go back – but we told the boys that we had to wait until at least Parker and probably also Eisley could ride all the big kid rides too. 😉

On this day, Bryant, Nicole, Gabriel and Cayce went to Universal Studios, but since there isn’t very much there for our kids to do, we decided to stay at Disney and do another day at Magic Kingdom.

We got to the park early and headed straight for Pooh, Peter Pan and all the “baby rides”. Oy. 😉

This little Parker Bear LOVES Winnie the Pooh. Like LOVES him. Which is probably partially our fault since Nathan gave him a little Pooh Bear for his first Christmas that he still sleeps with every day. He was in total heaven in the Pooh Bear house!

Meeting Pooh!! He was SO cute and ran right up and said “HI POOH!” and went straight for the hug and then just didn’t let go. Poor Pooh Bear had to catch his balance a couple of times. Ha!

Two happy boys with a lot of snuggly friends. 😉

All of the us! Eisley was completely asleep and missed it all. 😉

My two favorite outlaws. 😉

We did a lot of this on this day – stood in line together in the heat. Parker was on his way to melting down right here. We told Nathan that he could go ride the big rides when Parker was sleeping so he didn’t know he was missing out and he was not super excited about the plan but ended up having a lot of fun. 😉

Everyone’s back!! The others came back in time for the firework show at Magic Kingdom that night! I love love love Cinderella Castle at night!

 Gammy, Pops and their crazy crew minus our sweet Hudson. NEXT TIME.

My little princess in front of the castle. Sweet girl.

Every time we come, we have to get a picture on the bridge between Tomorrowland and Main Street. Best view of the castle in the whole park.

We stayed for the fireworks and this night was a Extra Magic Hours night, so we got to go ride rides after the firework show. Nathan and Parker took off for the rides the second the show ended. Love this of them holding hands while they ran!

Last Carousel ride!!

He was SO happy on this night.

So long, Magic Kingdom!!

Our fourth day at Disney World, we were back at Magic Kingdom to start the day! The boys found the Sword in the Stone and Parker was SO disappointed that they didn’t actually get it out. 😉

Carousel time! Side note: I really cannot stand carousels. Something about the going around in circles while watching the animals move up and down makes me so dizzy. But this kid asked me to go with him and so how could I refuse? I hope you noticed the Jedi Badge on his shirt because he begged to wear it again and I’m pretty sure he showed it to every person we passed. So five hundred thousand people have seen this badge. 😉

Pops and Parker. Parker was very tired by this point in the trip and he had his favorite person of the minute and that would be the ONLY person who would be able to stand next to him without a huge conflict of interest.

Gammy and Eisley. She had to wear her Minnie Bowtique outfit today. 😉

Nathan in Small World: “Mom, we should take a selfie.”

No idea why my kid knows this word (or why he looks 17), but I feel like it should be stricken from the English language. I took one with him anyway. 😉

Coming off the one roller coaster he could ride. So cute. 😉 I think we rode Barnstormer approximately 38 times while Nathan took turns going with people to the “big kid” rides.

In line for… you guessed it… Barnstormer! 😉

We branched out and tried Dumbo but the new play area you wait in is way more fun than the ride, so Parker was kind of bummed it was our turn.

We left the babies with Uncle Bryant and Aunt Nicole and rode the new Dwarf Mine Ride. It was so cute!

Her cheeks. I about die. We found a shady spot to take naps and she was out like a light. Parker took a little longer to settle down but then he slept forever.

Gammy was Parker’s person on the way over to Hollywood Studios. 😉

When you are in Disney World and you are five and a half and about to turn two, you don’t worry about ruining dinner and you just eat the Mickey shaped ice cream. 😉

Cuties. 😉

We had just enough time before Fantasmic to go get Nathan’s one souvenir he got to pick out and shockingly, he picked a Luke Skywalker light saber. It was actually really cute – you got to build the whole thing and it even makes the sound effects when it collides with something or flies through the air. It’s his most treasured belonging.

Fantasmic!!! The kids loved it, but they both got a little nervous through the “bad guy” part of it.

We raced home with all the crowds back to our hotel and the kids were out the second their heads hit the pillows – another day in the books!!

Interrupting Disney World to bring you this impossible post!!

It really, truly is NOT possible.

This tiny love is just the sweetest little girl ever. I have a hard time remembering life before her and at the same time, I can’t believe it’s already been three months!

Eisley is hands down my best sleeper! She loves to sleep. She’s pretty consistently sleeping between 10-11 hours straight at night and then takes a couple of two hour naps during the day. She’s amazing. And coming after her littlest big brother, we are SO thankful and never take a night for granted! Ha!

She smiles ALL the time! We have gotten really really close to a real laugh a couple of times too. She’s done a few soft chuckles so I think a real laugh should be coming any day! She is talking a lot as well and making the sweetest little coos.

Eisley loves to be a part of everything! She loves to be right in the middle of the chaos, preferably being held by her mama and surrounded by her brothers and dad. She loves to be all snuggled close and being carried in the wrap or the Ergo is her very favorite thing.

She is not on a very good schedule during the day, mostly due to her big brothers’ activities but she is on a great eat, wake, sleep routine! We are doing our best to get ourselves back on a weekly schedule so everyone knows what is coming next. When we are home, she is great at taking a couple of good naps. She nurses about every 2-3 hours and spits up the rest of the hours in between. 😉

She has the best cheeks for kissing and they get kissed almost constantly. She’s starting to reach for objects and loves playing on the exercise mat and in the bouncer with the toys on it.

She is just so precious. We love everything about our sweet, tiny girl!

We spent our Disney Day 3 at Hollywood Studios! Today’s word of the day was epic and Nathan woke up asking me what the word was going to be. 😉
We were up and out to the buses as quickly as we could be so we could
get in line for Jedi Training. We didn’t tell Nathan about it just in
case we didn’t get to do it. 😉 Once we got there and found out we’d
made it in time, Jon told him. I think he was a little excited.

😉 He could NOT wait!! Jedi Training was a little later in the day, so off we went to see the sights.

Who
is this kid?? Parker saw Donald from about three miles away and as soon
as it was his turn, he ran right up to him and gave him a big hug. You
could have wiped me and Jon off the floor considering his reaction the
day before at the character breakfast.

I mean, seriously.

Even
Daisy got some Parker love. It was just like a new kid this day. Ha! He
LOVED meeting them! He talked the rest of the day about how he hugged
Donald and Daisy.

Hollywood
Studios, for all the fun rides, does not offer very much for the little
guys to do. So, while Jon and Nathan left to go ride some roller
coasters, Mom and I took the littles for something delicious to drink.
In a heavenly match, Starbucks has joined up with Disney and there’s now
one in every park. #praisehands

The
Star Wars ride!! Nathan LOVED it. And when we went, the “rebel spy” on
board our ship was Aunt Cayce. 😉 I should have known.

Passed out babies while the others rode Rockin’ Roller Coaster. 😉

Some of the girls!! 🙂

Then
it was TIME. Nathan was SO excited!! They got all the kids robed up and
then marched them onto the stage and handed out the lightsabers. Then
they taught them the special commands. Nathan still practices them
almost every day. 😉

As
part of the show, Darth Vader came out and the kids had to use their
special training in the force and Jedi arts to defeat him. 😉

Shockingly, Nathan was the first to volunteer. 😉 Ha! He was SO serious about it!!

After
they defeated Darth Vader, his “sidekick” and Kylo Ren, the kids were
all told to turn to their family and friends and pose as a new Jedi. I
kept mouthing to Nathan to smile and he gave me this look. Ha! Such a
serious little Jedi. 😉

He was so proud of his new Jedi badge and wore it the entire rest of the day. 😉

We
went to the Disney Junior show afterward and it rained down gold
doubloons and bubbles at one point. Parker was exhausted and he still
loved it. 🙂

And who should arrive there but Minnie Bowtique!! I LOVE Parker’s expression here!!

Minnie!!

This was entirely the boys’ idea. These kids are the biggest flirts ever. 😉

And our epic day three was a wrap!

Our first morning waking up in Disney World! The kids were SO stoked. The boys were both up and ready to go early! 🙂

We started the day at a slow pace and the boys went down by the food court and played a little ping pong after filling up on granola bars and hot chocolate. 😉

Then we got ready to go and headed over to the Contemporary Resort to have brunch at Chef Mickey’s! This is the best picture I got of all three kids in their cute little shirts. Parker was not really down with the posing for pictures that morning (it didn’t help that at one point, he flipped over the edge of the couch and landed hard on his head on the floor. There was a half-second there were I could have sworn he’d broken his neck).

Sweet little love was ready to meet the characters! 🙂

The Contemporary Resort has monorails going through it constantly – the boys thought it was about the coolest thing ever.

On our way to meet Chef Mickey! The boys were getting so excited at this point!!

They even had a little chair for Eisley and we all just laughed. Only at Disney World. 😉

“I SEE DONALD!!!”

This is pretty much how meeting the characters went this morning. Nathan about crushed their ribcages from the hugging and Parker clung with white-fisted hands to Jon saying, “I don’t want to. I don’t want to!” He loved them from a distance. 😉

Mickey Mouse and my biggest boy. Nathan still has to sleep with his little buddy “MeMo” every night. 😉 This moment was just adorable.

There’s a little show on Disney Junior called Minnie’s Bowtique and Parker LOVES it. It’s basically like a three minute show mostly featuring Minnie and Daisy but it also has the other characters in it occasionally. It’s perfect for my boy’s short attention span. 😉 But he now thinks that Minnie’s last name is Bowtique, and he was so excited to finally see “Minnie Bowtique” but not really down with hugging her yet.

Kind of, maybe, sort of warming up to the characters… #blessMinnie #sorryaboutyournose

This little man needed absolutely NO warm up time – Gabriel ADORED the characters! So so cute! He started kicking and laughing and flapping his little arms the second he saw one. 🙂

And LOOK!! Parker had finally warmed up and Pluto had him in total stitches!! It was SO cute!

Gabriel loved, loved, loved Pluto. He’s the bestest kind of dog. 😉

After brunch, we packed up our already tired babies and our over-the-top
excited five year old and headed to Magic Kingdom for the rest of the day! Nicole and I attempted to get a picture of us with the littlest boys on the monorail. Hey, at least we’re looking. 😉

On the monorail and ready for a great afternoon!!

We’re at the Magic Kingdom!! Parker and Eisley were both pretty much out at this point. 😉 Every morning of our trip, Nathan and I came up with a word of the day. Today’s word of the day was magical and Nathan and I were determined we would have a magical day. 🙂

My fellow Disney lovers. 😉 I can’t imagine a trip to Disney without these two!!

Parker was just barely tall enough to ride the Goofy roller coaster! He loved it! He puts his hands up in the car now too if we happen to be going over anything remotely bumpy or over 25 miles an hour. Ha!

Sweet face – so much fun!!!

Okay, guys. Nathan was just barely tall enough to ride every single big ride in Disney World. And so he rode every single big ride in Disney World. 😉 He LOVED the roller coasters. Like, he would have been totally content to only ride those and never ride the “baby rides” as he informed me the non-roller-coaster rides were. (My response may have been choking back tears and stopping myself from forcing him into a swaddle so he’ll stop growing up so fast.) Love this face. He had the BEST time.

We ended the day riding all the rides. And I’ll just leave you with this:

It was a magical day. 😀

My sweet little Parker Bear,

Today you are two years old! We have been blessed with two years of your sweet presence and I just can’t believe it’s gone so fast and at the same time, I can’t remember life without you in it.

I look back at the pictures of this last year and you have just grown so much! You started the year as such a little baby in every sense of the word and are beginning this new year as such a big boy!

You love to be in the middle of things but you also love to be alone. You are actually on the introverted side, which is just so different than your big brother. I often find you retreated to your room or somewhere by yourself when we are around friends or a lot of people. You love to have friends come over and get so excited, but you also need your space.

You love to laugh and you love to make us laugh. You are so cute and you have the biggest personality! You are so LOUD. You can yell, sing and talk louder than almost anyone I’ve ever met. There is no volume control yet! Ha! You are such a good talker and you have been using complete sentences for a long time now. You started calling Daddy “Dad” recently and it was just another reminder about how quickly you are growing up. So far I have held on to “Mama”, but I bet it’s not for too much longer.

You have the most kissable cheeks but you can only take so much kissing. 😉 You love to snuggle until you don’t. You love to play with your brother until it’s just been too much and then you are very good at letting him know when you are done. 😉 You have developed quite the opinions over the last two months and you know EXACTLY what you want and you are NOT happy if it does not go exactly like you would like it. Ha! I remember this stage with Nathan too and oh my… not sure if I’m ready for it again! But here we go! You are very happy when you are happy and very not when you are not.

You are still a fantastic eater and sleeper! So thankful! You sleep about twelve hours at night and another 2-3 during the day. You love all fruit and sometimes that’s the only way I can get you inside from playing is to wave some fruit in front of the door. 😉 You love to be outside. You never walk, you always run or hop or skip or do this wearing half-rumba-half-gallop dance move as you go. You know so many songs and you sing them all day long at the top of your lungs. You tried to tell me the Pledge of Allegiance yesterday. You remember everything and you are so good at parroting it back!

I remember how long we waited for you and how hard we prayed for you and I am just overwhelmed at how God has answered those prayers. You are such a blessing to us, my precious boy! You are so loved. You are the best little brother and the sweetest big brother. You are so special because you are the only one in our family who is both a Big and a Little. What a privilege! It has been a hard adjustment for you to get used to a baby sister taking up my time and attention, but you are still so sweet (most of the time!) with her. You love to help and when I ask you for help, you are quick to jump up.

You have the funniest little quirks that make you you and you just make me laugh. You can’t stand for your hands to be dirty and if there is even a speck only visible to you on them, you are immediately demanding a “paper towel”. You only want to wear jackets if they are zipped up. You love to be “nice and warm” and I often find you in a pile of clean laundry that has just come out of the dryer. You are VERY attached to your pacifier. You can’t sleep unless I sing Jesus Loves Me to you, put your blanket on top of you and make sure you have two Pooh Bears and your Mickey Mouse. You are very brave as long as one of the adults you trust is around. You have a very short list of people you will go to and often there is only my name on the list. 😉 You always, always, always have a bruised knee and usually have a lumpy, scraped-up head to go with it. I pray for your safety every single day and often throughout it. 😉

Sweet little man, we just love your cute little self! You are the perfect middle to this crazy train and we cannot imagine how boring our life would be without you in it. You bring so much spark and excitement and joy and tears and sweetness and sass to every day! You keep us on our toes and keep our hearts and prayers filled. 😉 You are such a joy, my precious Parker Bear! I pray that you grow to love Jesus, to follow His commands and to walk in His ways.

I love you so much! Happy birthday, baby! I can’t believe you are already two years old!

Love,
Mama

Oh friends!! We just got back from the BEST trip!! 🙂

We have been planning this trip for almost a year, so it came incredibly slowly and passed too quickly. We had the best time!! Nathan has been counting down the days for about three months. He would randomly pop his head in and say, “Forty-two days until Disney World!” Ha!

So, on the last week, Nathan could barely sit still. 😉 We went with my parents, Cayce and Bryant, Nicole and Gabriel. We missed Caleb, Nicole and Hudson so much!!

It was finally the day!! Our flight was at 6:30 in the morning, so we got to the airport at 4:30am. The kids were SO EXCITED. Love this picture – they thought the luggage disappearing was about the coolest thing ever.

On the Disney bus with Gammy! They were so tired but so excited by this point. 😉

We’re here!!!

Oh my sweet babies! Love this of them in the hotel. They were so enthralled with everything they saw – hotels are SUPER cool. Even if they are only 260 square feet. 😉

After they explored the hotel room, Gammy and Pops took the boys to look around the hotel while Jon and I got beds set up and a few things unpacked. I love these pictures! They had the best time looking around!

We decided to go to Downtown Disney for dinner, which ended up being not necessarily the best decision because it took forever to get there and when we finally did get there, the kids were just done after the early, early morning and the long day. But they held it together fairly well! Parker could not get enough of all of the “MeMo and Minnie Bowtique”s everywhere. 😉

There’s an entire wing of the huge Disney store that is completely dedicated to Star Wars. Nathan thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He was SO excited by it all!

We headed back to the hotel and put our exhausted kids down for bed so we could start our fabulous vacation the next day! More to come!!

I cannot CANNOT believe how quickly the time is going by – she is just getting so big so fast!

Sweet Eisley girl is just such a joy! She is so happy, so content and has the cutest little wrinkled nose smile. We cannot get enough of her!

She is wearing 0-3 month clothes. She loves to be held and feel like she’s a part of the excitement. She is a fantastic sleeper! When we are at home, she takes several good naps a day in her bed, if we are out, she does a great job sleeping in her car seat or the wrap. She loves to be held in the wrap or Ergo!! At night, she is just the best sleeper ever and we are SO thankful!!

She has started getting so interactive! She will try (and often succeed!) at sticking her tongue out when you stick it out at her. She always returns smiles! She loves to stand up and loves to sit up straight. 😉 She’s so happy all of the time!

We had her two month check up and she got a clean bill of health and several shots (which I cried again. It’s now a tradition for each of my kids’ two month shots). She did good with them! She cried a little and was a little more fussy the rest of the day, but she was back to her cheerful self by the next morning.

At her appointment on March 9th, Eisley weighed 11 pounds 9 ounces, which puts her in the 34th percentile. She was 22 inches long, which puts her in the 9th percentile and her head was 38.5 centimeters around, which is the 35th percentile.

She is TINY. Both of the boys have always been in the 80-90th percentile for height. I knew she was smaller than both of them, I just didn’t realize how much smaller! She’s just our sweet little pint-sized girl and we could not love her more!

Oh. My. Goodness.

This blog has been completely neglected over the past six weeks and I am so sorry for that! Things have just been going at full speed and while we are starting to settle into this whole three kid thing, it has definitely thrown us for a loop. 😉 I saw a post on a blog I follow that was talking about which number kid was the hardest transition and I can 100% say #3 has been ours!! Eisley is the EASIEST baby ever, but Parker has had a really hard time moving into the big brother status.

All that to say, I am back! I will be doing some backdating on posts for the next few weeks so I don’t miss anything, but I’m going to do my best to be updating on here way more often!!

So, off to sort through pictures!!! 🙂