Epcot Flower & Garden Show part 1

Two weeks ago Saturday, we went up to Disney's Epcot for the Flower and Garden Festival that they have every year. We got up early that morning and drove up to Orlando and then came back that night so it was a LONG day but it was worth it. The weather was about perfect and the park was absolutely beautiful. Epcot is one of Disney's four amusement parks (that our passes are good for). It's a cool park anyway but it was unbelievable to see all the plants and topiaries and things set up just for the F & G festival. There were topiaries of MANY different Disney characters, both classic and a few more recent ones. I don't know what some of the parts of the topiaries are made from but obviously most of it is plants. There was a special fairies area (based off the newer Tinker Bell movies) complete with a butterfly house filled with plants as well as the butterflies. There were flowers and plants ranging from common plants to ones from different places around the world. There were a couple special play areas brought in for kids just for the festival as well as gardening demonstrations, hands-on projects, etc. It was all so amazing. Of course we did some of the normal rides and saw characters as well.
One of the funniest parts of the day was Kaelyn's "camera". They were giving out seed packets in the fairies garden area for kids to take home and plant . We had just taken a picture of Kaelyn by one of the topiaries and she was trying to get Kevin and I to stand in front of it and then she walked away. We didn't understand what she wanted at first but it finally dawned on us that she was pretending to take our picture. She held the seed packet up in front of her face and said, "Say cheese!" Then she made a clicking noise. She said, "One more" then turned the packet the opposite way and made a clicking noise again. She said, "That's perfect! Good job!" Kevin and I couldn't stop laughing. And so went most of the rest of the day. We tucked the packet in our pockets and tried to make her forget about it but sooner or later, she would beg and beg for it and make Kevin and I "pose" for her. It was funny and a little embarrassing all at once. When she "took a picture" of Kevin and I with Mary Poppins, we sheepishly explained what she was doing and of course, Mary Poppins took it all in stride and told Kaelyn (in her very British accent) that she LOVED her imagination. After we would get pictures of Kaelyn, Kaelyn would say, "Everyone now." So we would all get our picture taken and then she would run in front of us before they could hardly get a picture of all of us so that she could take our picture with her "camera". When she took a picture of Kevin and I with Pooh and Tigger, Kevin could hear Tigger laughing inside the costume (and you NEVER hear the costumed characters make a sound). Kevin muttered, "She's been taking pictures of us like this all day. I can't wait to see how those ones turn out." He said that he could hear Tigger really trying to keep from laughing then. Had I known that was going to happen, I would have taken one of her disposable cameras from home but we weren't about to pay Disney's prices to buy one in the park. At least it wouldn't have looked quite as ridiculous though. We laughed so hard but I could feel myself blushing so many times. Gotta' love her and the way she thinks! Overall it was a great day and we had so much fun having family time and just walking around and having so much fun together!

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Epcot Flower & Garden Show part 2

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Video clips of Kaelyn

I put together a slideshow of some video clips of Kaelyn at Epcot this past Saturday. I still might decide it's a dumb thing to have posted and decide to not leave them but anyway... It was just so funny and cute to see some of the interactions with her and some of the characters. She LOVES seeing the characters and has never been afraid of them but sometimes she's not sure what to say or do (particularly with the uncostumed ones that actually talk to her) because of her lack of conversational skills. So when the characters take extra time to interact with her, it's really special to her. When we went to see Tigger and Pooh, "Tigger" was the funniest one we've ever seen. She wanted to bounce with Tigger because some of the Tiggers have done that with her before but she's not usually sure how to "get them to" bounce with her on her own without coaxing. When Tigger saw her come "bouncing" over, he crouched down and started bouncing all over the place. Thankfully, Kevin was videoing it with the camera. You can hear several other people in the room laughing. I could never bounce around while being crouched on my knees like that, let alone in a big costume. It was great and Kaelyn was definitely amused! The second time she went to see Mickey they had to do a switch out right before it was her turn. The workers say that Mickey "has to go eat some cheesecake and he will be right back." The worker told Kaelyn that he was back eating and that if she called to him, he would come out. So after he had walked back and double checked :), he had her yell for Mickey. When [the new] Mickey came out, he peeked around the corner at her and she thought it was so funny. You'll also a couple other clips with Pluto and K dancing with Minnie. Kaelyn was waiting her turn to see Donald after she had seen Minnie and the next people had not made it to Minnie yet. Minnie was "dancing" to the music in the background so when Kaelyn walked back over to watch her, she took Kaelyn's hands and danced with her. I posted each clip a few slides apart so hopefully each one will be loaded by the time you get to them. There is a lot of background noise in them just because there are so many people around. I'm also guessing that it might take a bit for the smilebox to load since it's videos (depending on the speed of your internet).

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Odds -N- Ends

Back a few weeks ago, Rod did some landscaping work in our front yard and it looks SOOO nice. For some reason I kept forgetting to get pictures of it in the daytime. It's a BEAUTIFUL day outside today and I actually thought about grabbing the camera when I got home from picking Kaelyn up from school. Most of my 6 blog readers probably won't find this interesting but there might be about 3 of you who have been to our house and will be interested to see the difference. Everything you see in the front yard is new with the exception of the two potted plants. It's kind of a pain that the window is not centered but we can't exactly change that so Rod just centered the rest of the stuff around the window rather than the real center of the front. I am very pleased with the way it turned out!


A view of the whole thing.


closer up views

A cute lawn ornament. :)

Ahhh----finally warm enough to wear new

spring/summer clothes.

Mommy's little cutie indeed!