22 Months!

My sweet baby has turned into such a big girl! We got to experience so much this month! While they were not all "first" experiences, they were the first ones in which she was able to truly participate! 

We celebrated Halloween! We dressed up and went to one of our local neighborhoods and trick or treated for an hour or so. :) Sophia got a ton of candy! Afterwards, we headed to the Cone to visit with Doug and Chell.

We celebrated Daddy's 29th birthday!

We went to Disney's Magic Kingdom!!

We celebrated Mommy & Daddy's 7 year anniversary!

We went to the park!

We celebrated Thanksgiving!

And she was submitted for consideration for a clothing line.

We bought our Christmas tree

and put up the Christmas lights. She talks a ton now! Her favorite foods are french fries, chicken nuggets, cheese and rolls. She is very independent, and very strong. She still LOVES to dance and sing. She really enjoys playing with her dollies, playing in her playhouse, and loves watching Disney Jr., but especially Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Her favorite songs are Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Rock-a-bye Your Bear. She can count to three, but knows other numbers (just not in order). She knows all of the main colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, white & black). She knows several of her shapes (circle, heart, star). Her favorite movie is Monsters University. She can put on her own shoes. We're fairly certain she's teething again (most likely two year molars). She brushes her own teeth, brushes her own hair, and can take off and put on her own clothes. She's very opinionated. She loves Disney, and loves Christmas, and still really likes to be mommy's little helper. 

Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving this year was a little bit different for us. Instead of splitting it between the two families in town, we went out of town to spend it with some of my extended family. It was actually quite a nice change of pace. :) The weather was beautiful, although a little chilly. Here are some photos from our day!

It was a lot of fun and I was so glad that everyone was able to be included in the activities! David got to ride dirt bikes and a sidecar, Sophia got to play with her cousins, and we got to eat lots of food. :) It was a really nice Thanksgiving, and the thing that I am most thankful for is my family. 

Disney!!!

So I'm a little late, but as I'd mentioned previously, an amazing friend of ours got us into Disney for the day, so we took Sophia to Magic Kingdom!! On top of that, we had another great friend who gifted us a hotel room the night before so that we wouldn't have to get Sophia up as early that next morning. So on Saturday afternoon we jumped in the van and headed to Orlando for the weekend! We got to the hotel pretty early and I personally was starving because I hadn't had anything to eat all day, so we took the giftcards that David got for his birthday, and we headed to Bahama Breeze for an early dinner. It was absolutely delicious! 

Afterwards we didn't really have any plans, so we decided to go check out City Walk since Sophia had never been there. We got there and she immediately loved all of the travelators that you get on between the parking lot and the main area. Then she saw lots of Minion merchandise which had her super excited, not to mention all of the lights! We watched a juggler for a minute or two, listened to a live band, and took her down the stairs towards the water. She really enjoyed the stairs. Then we walked around the perimeter of it and ended up over by Blue Man Group. They now have some cute little roller coaster right there, and Sophia thought that was just the coolest because it was lit up all pretty. Shortly thereafter, fireworks started. She really liked them, but we couldn't see them all that well. By this time, it was only like 7pm, so I had my sister confirm Disney's fireworks times for me, and we decided to head to the Contemporary hotel to watch the fireworks over there. 

We got there with just a little time to spare, so we walked through the hotel. David had never been there before. Sophia caught site of one of the gift shops and had a blast playing with the plush toys. She grabbed a stuffed Daisy and started singing and dancing. 

After letting her play around for a little, we made our way over to the outside breezeway (that definitely lived up to its name) and waited for the fireworks to start! They did, and they were beautiful, but the noise of them was upsetting Sophia, so we went back into the building and finished watching them from there. 

From there I could see that Water Pageant had started at a hotel across the way, so I said we should get on the monorail and try to make it to Magic Kingdom to watch before it got there. Unfortunately, the monorail stopped at 4-5 other places first, and we missed the pageant. :( But it ended up okay, because Sophia really liked the monorail too. After that, we ran out to Walmart real fast to pick up a thick permanent marker that I'd forgotten to get earlier, then headed to the hotel for the night. 

The next morning, we woke up bright and early, packed our stuff back up, and headed downstairs for a quick breakfast. (Check out the super cute dress I made her!)

Then off to Magic Kingdom we went! We got there 20 minutes later than planned because the monorails were down, so we had to take the ferry, so we missed the opening show, but that's okay! 

One of the very first things that we did once we got there, was headed to Fantasyland to hopefully avoid the incredible lines later. And look who we found!! Sophia LOVES the Fairy Godmother! I told her that she is one of Sophia's favorites and she just thought that was the greatest! She even signed our book! Instead of doing the typical autograph books that most people do, I grabbed three of Sophia's $1 Disney books from Target that she loves, and had most of the characters, and I just had them sign their own page in the book. :)

After that, we got our fastpasses for Peter Pan, and jumped on It's a Small World because it was only a 5 minute wait! She really liked it, which made me so happy because it's one of my favorites! Next we headed over to the new part of Fantasyland and went on the new Under the Sea ride, followed by the updated Dumbo ride. 

Then it was time to go meet some of the characters from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! We headed to the big top, and saw Daisy Duck, Minnie Mouse, Goofy & Donald Duck, but Minnie of course was her favorite!

After meeting the characters we decided to head back a little to go get the fastpass for Winnie the Pooh and to go on the Prince's Royal Carousel. Along the way, we saw Pooh and Tigger, so of course we had to stop and say hello!

Oh, P.S. the stroller sign I made worked beautifully!! I am so happy that I did it! While nobody seemed the have the stroller we decided to borrow from my mom, it made it so much easier to find in the sea of strollers, especially at night when everything is just a big blog of black!

This is me and my friend, Jessica, the one who got us into the park, and was also nice enough to hang out with us for the day until the party started. :) We had a blast!! 

We still had a little bit of time to spare, so we went to meet Cinderella and Aurora. We'd planned to come back later to meet Rapunzel and Snow White, but they had a minimum of an hour wait at any given time, so we decided that we can do that the next time we go back. 

(Taking a peak at the new Snow White miner's ride that is coming soon.)

Afterwards, we headed back to Main St. to pick up our lunch from our locker, and to secure our spots for the Castle show and the 3pm parade, and man were they GOOD spots!!

Several characters stopped and hugged Sophia, including Tweedle Dee (or Dum?), a field mouse, and Lilo! 

But even cooler than that, was when Cinderella's float came by, and the Fairy Godmother spotted Sophia in the crowd and remembered her from earlier and waved big waves at her! That was really cool to watch!!

After a nice lunch and the show/parade break, we headed over to meet Tiana and then off to Adventureland. 

The longest line that we waiting in all day was the Jungle Cruise. We'd actually gone to go get the fastpass but it was only a 30 minute wait so we decided to go ahead and just do it. About 2 minutes before we were going to get on the boat, Sophia crashed on me. :) She stayed asleep through both the Jungle Cruise ride (which was done up super cute for Christmas) and Pirates of the Caribbean (with the exception of a small stir when we got DRENCHED in FREEZING COLD WATER, that never used to happen and they didn't warn us about despite a sleeping baby and a really expensive camera.)

After she woke up, we headed to the Tiki Room to watch the show, and I was happy to see that she really liked that one as well! AND they got rid of Iago, which made me happy because I thought they really ruined the show when they added him. Afterwards, we headed back to Main St. for the street dance party. 

Followed by the beautiful castle lighting ceremony.

Shortly thereafter, we rode Pooh and the Teacups, then we said our goodbyes to Jessica, and headed off to enjoy the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party! We ate dinner while watching a dance party in the "club," with Chip n' Dale, 

went on Buzz Lightyear, sat through the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor (it was sooooo cute!!!), 

drove racecars, drank lots of free hot chocolate and ate lots of free Snickerdoodle cookies, rode Aladdin's Magic Carpets, watched the Country Bear Jamboree and the Christmas parade. 

After all that we decided it was time to finally work our way back to our locker and head home. It'd been a VERY long day that started at 7:30am and we didn't get out of the park until around 11:45pm. She'd had a short nap, but not much, but was incredibly good the whole day! I was soooo proud of her!! Lastly, on our way our, we stopped in to give our good friend Mickey a big hello! She was very tired by this point, but thoroughly enjoyed herself!

We hopped on the monorail and headed back to the van. Luckily she crashed a little ways on the drive home, but seriously, it was the most amazing trip ever, and I'm so incredibly grateful to my friends for making it all happen! Nobody will ever know the joy it brought to me to see her experience it all and enjoy it so much. Two weeks later, she still talks about it almost daily! She loves telling everyone what she did and what she saw. It's amazing, and I can't wait to take her back again!!! Although, now I really want to take her to MGM, er....Hollywood Studios because I learned when we were at Magic Kingdom that now they have the Disney Jr. stuff there, which Sophia LOVES! So that is my next goal!! For my birthday and Christmas this year I am asking for Disney giftcards. (Yeah!!? So apparently they have Disney giftcards that you can buy at Walmart and stuff. I had no idea!!?) It appears that you can use the giftcards on tickets, food, hotels, shopping, etc. So I'm hoping to start saving them up so that we can take her to Hollywood Studios while she is still free. :)