Every January, I interview the kids and record their answers.  I can’t remember where I got the list of questions that I use, but they work well for us.  This is my interview with Ava this year (and here is last year’s) .  Any comments I added in later are in {brackets}.

What is your name?  Ava

How old are you? Uh, 5.  {She’s really 4 and she knows it!}

When is your birthday?  March 21st

Who is your mom?  You!

What does your mom do during the day?  Uh, color.  Help fix toys. Eat.  Play with us.  Help the dogs feel better and do treats with them.

Who is your daddy?  Daddy.

What does Daddy do during the day?  Work.  And oh yeah, eat.  He fix toys {his utility knife does get quite a workout repairing toys} and plays with us.  And that’s it.

What is your favorite color?  Black and pink and purple and red.

What is your favorite song?  ABC’s

What do you want to do when you are a grown-up?  Be a fire fighter.  And a tutu dancer.  And a hunter for treasure.  And a princess.

Where do you want to live when you grow up?  Right next to your house.

What is your favorite food?  Eggs and strawberries.

What is your least favorite food?  Green stuff, but I like broccoli, but no peas.

What is your favorite animal?  Dolphin and cheetah.

What do mama and daddy do when you go to bed?  Watch shows and eat when they watch shows.  And talk.

Who does our family love the most?  You.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?  Chocolate with cones.

Where do you like to eat?  HuHot.  That’s my favorite place!

What is your favorite book?  It’s about castles and a queen that doesn’t have a handsome prince.

What is your favorite toy?  Littlest Pet Shop stuff.

How do you like to spend your time?  Running around.  Play the piano when Kelvin’s watching TV.  Oh, and I like watching TV.

What is your favorite thing that happened last year?  Getting puppies.

 

I’ll post Kelvin’s interview next!

I just realized I’ve been very neglectful of posting belly pictures of this pregnancy.  So here are all the ones I have so far.

7 Weeks, 5 Days

11 Weeks

16 Weeks

And here is a picture of our little bean at 7 weeks 3 days

I can’t wait to find out if it’s a boy or girl in just 3 weeks!  I am predicting girl…I will be in major shock if it’s a boy!

Also, yesterday was the first day I was able to feel the baby move with my hand.  He/she was too stubborn to let Chad feel it though (of course).

Somehow, when Melissa & Doug designed this play kitchen, I highly doubt they envisioned kids taking the sink out and getting themselves in this predicament.

There is a hilarious caption just waiting to be thought of, but my tired brain is so not thinking of it right now.

I have to admit, I’ve been enjoying the very mild winter so far.  I am not at all a fan of winter (and yes, I’m from Wisconsin…what’s your point?), so this winter has been perfect for me!  We’ve even had a few days in the 70′s in the last few weeks!

But the kids were happy to see that we finally got a *tiny* bit of snow last week.  It was barely enough snow to consider a snowfall, but they still wanted to bundle up and head out to play!  It’s a good thing they did, because it was gone by the next day.

Ready to play

Scooping snow.  They spent most of the time scooping snow into sandbox buckets so they could bring it in and watch it melt.

Trying (unsuccessfully) to make a snowball

So, now that we’ve had snow, we can have spring, right?!  Wishful thinking?

On our way home from Florida, we happened to be going through St. Louis right after it got light out, so we decided to stop and see the arch.  We had to wait about an hour for the tours to open, but we walked around the grounds and went to see a historic courthouse.

Chad and kids pretending to hold the arch up.  I think if it was up to them to hold it up, they’d need lots of home depot coupons to design something to hold it up!

I had no idea what to expect when we went up to the top of the arch.  They put us in these little capsules with tiny windows and I thought maybe we’d only be able to look through the tiny windows and that would be it.  Luckily, we got out of the capsule at the top and got to walk around and look out the windows.

The view from the top of the arch.  It kinda makes me a little queasy just looking at the picture.  I hate heights!

This is the area that we got to walk around in at the top of the arch

After this, we only had about six more hours to drive to get home!

On our last day at Disney, we went to Animal Kingdom.  To be honest, it was neat and we’re glad we went, but I’m not sure we’ll go back to this park next time we visit Disney.  It was like a really big zoo with some shows and the ability to meet Disney characters.  Maybe it was because we knew we only had part of a day here and we were a little tired, but it wasn’t as much fun as the other parks.

Since it was our last day, I had to make sure to get another picture as we entered Disney

The focal point of Animal Kingdom as we walked in.  We got to go in the tree and see an Ants show and it was a lot of fun.  At one point, there were stingers poking us in the back and bugs running across our seats underneath us.

One of the best parts of Animal Kingdom was the safari.

Hippos

Giraffes

Elephants

Rhino’s

Meeting Pocahontas

Meeting Jiminy Cricket (Ava wanted NOTHING to do with him LOL)

Meeting Rafiki

The kids’ favorite part of the park was the Dinosaur Dig.  It was a giant sandbox with dinosaur bones buried in it so that the kids could search for them.

Ava digging for dinosaur bones

Kelvin digging for dinosaur bones

Daddy burying Kelvin

After this, we got to see Flick.  We didn’t get to meet him, but he walked right by us a couple times.

And then it was time to leave and start the long drive home.  We were all sad to leave and were really hoping that we would be back real soon.

On our third day at Disney, we headed to Epcot.  I didn’t know what to expect since I had heard it’s more for adults, but the kids had a lot of fun too.  The first two days, we took advantage of the Child Swap program so Chad and I could both go on rides that Kelvin was too short for.  But by this day, we had decided not to do any more rides that we couldn’t do as a family, so we missed out on Soarin’ but we still got to do other rides and lots of shows.  After the Finding Nemo ride, there was a huge aquarium where we got to see tons of different ocean animals…and even dolphins that could swim right over our heads!

We mainly did a lot of shopping and eating in all the different countries.  We bought some fans and pajamas for the kids in China, some tea in England, a pearl straight from the clam shell in Japan, and more that I’m sure I’m not remembering!

Our view as we walked into the park

The kids with the Finding Nemo characters

One of the shows along the sidewalk (I think it was in France)

Meeting Mary Poppins

Disney tattoos (I’m nearly positive they got these at Hollywood Studios, so I don’t know why they’re with my Epcot pictures LOL)

One of the few pictures of me with the kids.  I’m usually the one behind the camera!

Eating dinner in France.  This was one of the best meals we had the entire time we were in the Florida.  We also ate lunch in China, but I didn’t get any pictures of that.

Ava eating dinner in France

The only picture I got during the IllumiNations Show.  It’s hard to take pictures of fireworks!

I know there are fewer pictures of Epcot than the other parks, but since we did more shopping and eating than rides and meeting characters, there wasn’t as much to take pictures of!

After a full day at Magic Kingdom, we got up early again to head to Hollywood Studios.  Prior to this year, Magic Kingdom was the only Disney park I had been to, so everything from this point forward was brand new for me and the kids!

At the entrance, we were greeted by Lightning McQueen and Mater.  I love what they do with the bushes at the parks!

Our view as we walked into the park.

The kids loved the talking, interactive Mr. Potato Head while we waited to ride Toy Story Mania.  By the way, before we went, my friend told us to go straight to the Toy Story Mania ride, get a fast pass and then get in line right away.  That way you get to ride it twice (you’ll want to) and the fast passes won’t be gone.  Definitely do that if you go!

Kelvin with the, uh, thing.  No idea what this is, but I think it has something to do with Star Wars.  It was outside the Star Wars ride, anyway.

The “Honey, I Shrunk the Kid” area was a definite favorite.

We went on a behind-the-scenes tour and one of the things we got to see was the Disney World water tower.

The “skyline”

Meeting Mike.  Sully was on a bathroom break.

The family with Buzz and Woody.

Ava with an army man.

The family with Phineas and Ferb.  Oh man, this was the highlight of the day for the kids!

The kids with Lightning McQueen and Mater.

In between meeting all the characters, we got to go on a lot of rides, too.  Tower of Terror was one of them.  Ava went on it with me first (I will never go on that again, by the way!) and was totally freaked out, but didn’t want Chad to go by himself so she went again with him.  She’s way nicer than I am.  He said she was narrating what was going to happen the entire time.  Poor kid!  If she were a nervous eyelash puller like some people I know, she would have needed eyelash growth products after that experience!

We ended the night by watching the Fantasmic show.  It was awesome, but very hard to get pictures of.  This is the only decent one I got towards the end.

Next up…Epcot!

Our first stop when we got to Orlando was Magic Kingdom.  We were only planning to stay for 3 days and get a park-hopper ticket for one day so we could still see all four parks.  However, the ticket lady told us that it was only $11 more per person to go for 4 days instead of 3.  That was a no-brainer….park-hopper passes are expensive!

On the ferry over to the Magic Kingdom

On Main Street in front of Cinderella’s Castle

Meeting Stitch.  We met a lot more characters this time because we had four days instead of just one.

With Chip and Dale (or Chip and Dip, as Kelvin calls them)

Daddy and Ava riding horses with english horse tack on the carousel

Kelvin on the carousel

Sword in the Stone

Meeting Rosetta

Meeting Tinkerbell

It’s a Small World

After a day full of rides (only a few of which are pictured….the lines weren’t bad at all) and meeting characters, it was time to have dinner at Cinderella’s Royal Table.  This is something I had really wanted to do with the kids, but the cost took us back a little.  It was $200 for all of us and I was really hoping it would be worth it.  Chad and I both agreed that it definitely was.  The food was really good (at a normal restaurant, that type of food probably still would have been $100 for how much we got) and the kids got one-on-one time with the princesses, plus other bonuses that you’ll see in a minute.

First we went to the lobby so Cinderella could greet us and welcome her to her castle.  There were a few fun details while we waited in line.

The windows

The picture is a little blurry, but Jacque and Gus were up near the ceiling

We got a picture of the kids with Cinderella, then got a family one done by a professional.  We got several prints and a frame, all included in the cost of the meal.

Then we went upstairs to eat dinner.  This is the view from above of the room where Cinderella greets her guests.

Seated at our Royal Table

Ava with her Royal Invitation and her wand (complimentary with the meal)

Kelvin with his Royal Invitation and his sword (also complimentary)

The first princess out was Snow White

Kelvin got a kiss on the cheek from Snow White

Sleeping Beauty was the next princess

Kelvin got a kiss on the cheek from Sleeping Beauty, too

The next princess was Belle.  Kelvin wanted a kiss from her, too, but she was *ahem* lame and just blew him one.

Ariel was the last princess to come out.  Please note Kelvin’s bulging cheeks in this picture.  He had just shoved a humungous bite of roast beef into his mouth.

Kelvin almost didn’t get a kiss from Ariel, because as he was going over to her, he started gagging on his huge bite.  She told him, “Maybe next time”, but he swallowed it and insisted on a kiss anyway.  Poor Ariel leaned down to kiss him on the forehead, but he kept raising his face up so she would get him on the lips.  LOL  You can barely see the lipstick mark here, but she did manage to get his forehead

And the food!  There were several choices, but we all chose roast beef. This was my plate.

This was what the kids’ plates looked like.  There was cheese and grapes in the bowl on the right, but they ate those while we ate our salads before the rest of the food came out.

For dessert, Chad got cheesecake and I got a sampler of three different desserts (didn’t get a picture of those).  The kids got to choose and decorate either a cupcake or ice cream.  Kelvin chose a cupcake.  All of the sprinkles were already on the cupcake instead of in the bowl by the time I took this picture.

Ava chose ice cream.  She had the same decorations as Kelvin, but hers were already on her ice cream.

As we were leaving the castle, there was a parade going and the kids got to dance with Woody, Jessie, Lumiere, Baloo, Sebastian, and several other characters.

The kids in front of the castle

The castle as we were leaving on the ferry

I was a little disappointed that we had to leave early this time.  Last time, we were able to stay until 10 and see the parade and fireworks.  This time, they had Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party and kicked everyone out at 7.  Oh well, I’m just glad we got to see it once, and I’m sure we’ll see it again.

So we went back to our hotel room and got ready to go to Hollywood Studios the next day…

After being down for over a week, my blog is finally back!  I am so glad my mom handled everything, because when it comes to internet stuff, I’m lucky to be able to put pictures in my posts.  For being part of a generation that is supposedly so technologically advanced, I get overwhelmed very quickly when it comes to anything with buttons or a touchscreen.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even be able to put up new pictures of the kids in my header, so I’m glad my mom did that too!

Now I can continue the posts about our trip to Florida in *ahem* October.  Let’s just ignore the fact that it’s almost January, okay?