Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Paige's My Little Pony cake and fun at Serenata Beach club



Today, we celebrated Paige's birthday with some friends at our beach club. The cake was delivered this morning and Paige was very excited to see it. It turned out awesome! Andrea always does a fantastic job coming up with cute cakes and our cake lady does an amazing job creating them.


Twilight Sparkles was very detailed and cute.


Paige loved it, she wanted to taste it before we left, but thankfully she kept her fingers out of it.


We got to the beach club and our table had a good view of the beach and was nice and shady with a cool beach breeze. The weather was in the mid 80's and it was a perfect day.


Grandpa Rick and Grandma Alice arrived right when we did, so we snapped a pic with them.

 
Gail and Reid showed up next, Reid and Connor took a cute pic while they were drinking their lemonade.



Clara, Bella and Sofia showed up last, and once they arrived we ordered lunch.


After lunch, it was time for the cake!


After we finished with lunch, we went down to the beach to relax and play in the ocean.



Connor and I played with the scoop ball throwing thing. Not sure what the name of it is, but the scoops cracked. We had fun with it, we'll have to buy a decent set.


The ocean was still a bit too cold for me, but the kids had fun jumping in the waves anyways. Dan and Danny arrived while we were at the beach.


After we played at the beach for a while, we went up to the pool and swam. It was a good temperature since they heat it and it wasn't too busy. Paige enjoyed pouring water on Mr. Dan's head.




Paige had an awesome time at her birthday celebration! We're glad we could share the day with our family and friends.

Paige's first tennis lesson


On Easter Sunday, everyone still had their tennis lessons and we decided to let Paige give the 5:00 lesson a try. Coach Jeff typically only lets kids participate that are at least 5 years old, but the PlayBall teacher at Paige's school said Paige had good hand-eye coordination and Jeff said he'd let Paige give it a shot to see if she'd be good and do well enough to make it worth the time and money.

We told Paige she'd get to do tennis at lunch and she was very excited the entire day. She kept asking us when it was time for the lesson. We're very glad we took her, she listened as well as any of the little boys at the group lesson and really enjoyed herself.

After stretching, their first drill was to run to two orange markers and hit a ball over the net that was thrown to them. Paige hit about half of them and the other half bonked her on the head.



The kids earn tokens for doing good things during the lesson and Paige loved grabbing them out of the bag. She ended up with fifteen tokens at the end of the lesson.


Connor's lesson was after Paige's, so he came along and helped Coach Jeff by picking up balls during Paige's lesson.


The last drill they did was to balance a ball on their racket and walk on the lines. Paige struggled a little with it, so they put her ball on a cone and she balanced it all while she walked the line.



Overall, we were very pleased with the lesson for Paige. She listened well, had a lot of fun, and it was good exercise for her. She's looking forwards to next week's lesson already!

Easter Morning


On Sunday, the kids were very excited to see the goodies that the Easter Bunny brought them in their Easter baskets. They got all kinds of goodies and some new clothes and toys. Andrea got them some cute baskets this year and always is very thoughtful to fill them with things they'll love!

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Paige's Princess birthday celebration at Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique



On Saturday, April 19th (Actually Andrea's birthday), we went to Downtown Disney in Orlando for Paige's birthday appointment at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.

That morning, Paige opened her birthday presents and found her beautiful new dress, along with matching shoes, gloves, purse, and scepter.


She posed with her fancy new dress, but it was a little too big to put on right away. We ended up exchanging it for an XXS size once we got to the Disney store.


We drove to Orlando, and of course we ate at Andrea's favorite restaurant Uno's! They even gave us a free cookie dessert since it was her birthday.



Once we got to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, we had to wait for a while before Paige's appointment started.


It is always very busy in there! I think they need to double or triple the space, it was surprisingly smaller than I thought it was when we went inside.


Paige's fairy godmother Morgan was very sweet and she started off by getting to know princess Paige. She was very cute about asking Paige's opinion on the different options. Thankfully Paige picked the traditional princess makeover rather than the "punk/rocker" princess options.


Her fairy godmother started off with the nailpolish, and Paige loved having her nails done. There were two options for colors (blue and pink) and Paige picked pink. It was kind of a light pink and really didn't show up very well, but it matched her dress well and Paige loved it.



Paige was very careful with her newly painted nails and kept very still so they would dry well. Her fairy godmother told her to keep her hands on a little purple mat and Paige was very serious about her responsibility.




Paige was very in to her appointment and cooperated 100% and was very serious. At times, she'd crack a big smile if we caught her eye, but mostly she concentrated on sitting very still. During her appointment, Paige would get annoyed with us if we talked too much, or if Connor was distracting her. She shushed us a few times and I got a picture of her giving Connor a reproachful look.


We were thankful she enjoyed it and cooperated, you never quite know what ideas Paige will end up with in her head, or how she'll act.

When she was getting her hair sprayed, she had to hold up a special plastic shield over her face.


Connor liked to watch for a while, but then he got bored. I got a picture of him yawning while he waited. Connor was very sweet about the entire thing, but it was definitely too girly of an event for him to enjoy. He was very patient!


Almost done!


The makeup was one of the last touches. Paige picked out some very pretty colors.


The final step was for the fairy godmother to sprinkle pixie dust (about fifteen pounds of glitter) on Paige's hair, while she cast a special magic spell.


Throughout the appointment, Paige tried to turn around a few times to sneak a peek, but her fairy godmother wouldn't let her. At last, with the pixie dust in place, Paige was allowed to turn around and I filmed the big reveal!



While Mommy paid for the appointment and for a stuffed animal for Connor, I took Paige outside to snap a few pics. She posed with Sleeping Beauty (I know she's standing on a "No Climbing" sign, I'm a terrible dad).

She also posed nicely in front of the "World of Disney" store, where the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique is located.


Paige closed her eyes to show off her fabulous makeup.


She was very pleased with the way it all came together!


We had some time before dinner, so we walked around Downtown Disney for a couple hours and got some drinks. Paige did some spinning with her fancy dress.









Mommy, the real birthday girl, posed with the princess. Paige had a "Birthday" button and a "Birthday Princess" sash, and many people told her "Happy birthday" throughout the day. Connor was cute about telling everyone that it was really Mommy's birthday.



After we left Downtown Disney, we drove to the Grand Floridian Resort for dinner.


We'd never been inside the Grand Floridian resort, it had a huge lobby!


We snapped a quick family pic before we sat down to eat.


The dinner was a buffet style setup, and it wasn't quite what we were picturing. Since it was Cinderella's Royal Ball, we were expecting something setup a little more elaborate. The restaurant and seating area were pretty plain hotel-type tables and it wasn't fancy whatsoever. We really weren't hungry either, since we'd had a big lunch, so we hardly ate much.


The characters were all very cute and played their parts well. For the Royal ball, Cinderella, her stepmother, and her two stepsisters all came around the tables to talk to everyone and take pictures.

At dinner, we asked Paige who she was most excited to see and she said she was excited to see all of them!


While we waited, Paige did a little dance and got all of her fancy accessories put together.

Drizella was the first step sister to arrive, and she gave us a wicked smirk instead of a smile when we took her picture.


Anastasia was gave us a nice smile, but we knew she was not to be trusted.


The evil stepmother scowled when we took her picture. She was obviously a mean one.


Cinderella was sweet as always and we all took turns getting some pics with her.




It was nice to have the characters come around, but Andrea commented that we have been spoiled lately on the cruises. We've seen so many characters recently and also have had beautiful backdrops for the pics. All of the pics we got yesterday had the tables and random guests in the background. Not super picturesque.

Paige loved it all though, and that's what really counted. They brought her out a special birthday cupcake. She liked it, although she mostly just ate the frosting. It got all over her face and when Mommy went to clean it off she said "Don't wipe off the yipstick Mommy!"


After dinner, we walked around the resort and checked it all out. We definitely look forwards to staying at the Grand Floridian sometime in the future.



Happy birthday to both my beautiful girls!