A Playhouse and Other Projects

Over Memorial Day weekend we were busy--and by "we", I mean "not me", with building a playhouse we bought for Charlotte's 4th birthday (see this post for more about that). Overall, Chad spent about 8-ish hours on it but was able to get it completed by Sunday evening--squeezing it in before any rain visited.

He started Saturday afternoon and spent the better part of three hours just going through the instructions and laying out every single piece and part in an assembly line before building the roof and two walls. Charlotte was home during this process was extremely excited, asking "is the playhouse done now?" no less that 457 times before the sun set. She even brought her play food out in preparation and insisted on eating dinner out there.

This little house turned out so great--it's just the cutest. Charlotte was gone overnight Sunday into Monday and when she came home she was SO excited to see her finished house. She spent the rest of the day in there--eating lunch and dinner inside.

And my favorite photo--I love how this looks like she's walking into a cute little cabin in the woods:

The cabin was the only project we (Chad) did ourselves (himself), but we had a bunch of other things done this past week, too. We outsourced a lot this year, starting with having the deck cleaned and restained:

I knew it was looking bad but I didn't realize just how bad until it was redone.

And the porch. The porch needed repainting, which is a project Chad and I undertook ourselves four years ago. After painstakingly painting all 300 (it seems) spindles, we swore never again to paint that porch ourselves. We made good on our promise and had it repainted by some poor, unsuspecting college students who decided to spend their summer painting houses. They may rethink that decision after spending two solid days in almost 90 degree heat painting this porch.

The one project that I took on was to repaint Charlotte's picnic table. Several years of use and year round weather left it in need of scraping, sanding and repainting. Before:

And after:

Now all the big projects are done and no more weekends will need to be dedicated to working on anything. Starting with this weekend, when Chad and Charlotte go on another camping trip and I...don't. :)

Happy Weekend.

~Stacy

This Is Happening, Somehow.

Somehow, Charlotte's birthday is already less than three weeks away. I have no idea how that came up so quickly, but here we are. This year we're letting her have a "friend" party--which basically means that I'll invite the neighbor kids and a couple of her friends over on a weekday around lunchtime so they can run through the sprinkler and eat PB&J sandwiches. This party is all about simplicity.

Chad and I have been entertaining the idea of building an outdoor playhouse for a long time. She loves being outside more than anything and she spends hours out there every day, usually with her neighbor friends. We knew they'd have a blast with a playhouse, but we wanted to find one that was A) not ugly, B) sturdy and durable, C) big enough to hold several kids at a time and D) not ridiculously expensive.

Turns out that's a tall order. We could usually check one or two items off that list but not all. I didn't really want anything plastic since most of the plastic ones I've seen are kind of ugly and they have a tendency to fade and look beat up pretty quickly in the sun. Also, those plastic ones that are durable and big enough are expensive--as in, somewhere in the realm of $400-$600. Nope.

After much searching and review reading, we settled on this one by Cedar Summit (purchased online thru Walmart.com):

The kit comes with everything you see here except the children and pretend flowers. It's all cedar and it's pre-stained/painted. It was also about half the cost of one of those plastic ones--though if you buy it now it's a little more expensive than what I paid. I managed to get it on sale, plus I had a discount code and got free shipping. It ended up being a very, very good deal.

I like the size of it--not too big yet big and tall enough to hold three or four kids at once. Also, it comes with materials to put in a small play kitchen/sink area inside. Lastly, it's adorable and not something we will mind at all having displayed in our backyard in the years to come.

Chad will have the lovely honor of building it sometime in the next few weeks...which should be interesting, considering the directions warned that it will take two adults approximately 6-8 hours to build. All in the name of love :)

Charlotte knows her birthday is very soon. She's been reminding me daily that she would "love a playhouse, and food to go in it so I can play restaurant. And Calico Critters--I love Calico Critters!!".

I am relying heavily on this playhouse to occupy Charlotte and her friends this summer while I sit on the deck not wanting to move until I have this baby. And then after, when I sit on the deck and rock the baby while they play--I'm much more looking forward to that part. The fact that the neighbor children never leave our yard, ever, will for once be (sort of) welcome.

Wish us (and by us, I mean Chad, since I'm not building this thing) luck!

~Stacy

Disney World: Part 2

The second half of our week at Disney World started off with a day at the hotel--no parks at all on Wednesday. We were all getting way over Disney'd and overtired and one of us was having some pretty serious meltdowns (spoiler alert: it was Charlotte). We took the whole day off and hung out at our hotel watching cartoons, reading, and hanging out by the pool. And napping. Charlotte fell asleep on the walk from the food court to our hotel room and we actually managed to successfully transfer her to the bed without her waking--a true miracle.

On Thursday we visited Animal Kingdom. I wasn't sure what to expect with Animal Kingdom and honestly did not think I'd care for it all that much, but it ended up being one of my favorite parks. It's really just a big, beautiful zoo with great places to eat and tons of shade--much needed that day since it was super hot and sunny. There isn't much by way of rides there, especially for someone under 40" tall or for pregnant women (those restrictions shut us out of some things) but I'm still glad we went and we had a good time.

One of the funniest/most ridiculous things said during the trip happened at Animal Kingdom when we went to a petting zoo. They had goats there and right outside of the pen was a big bucket full of brushes you could use to pet them. Chad, trying to call Charlotte over, said "Hey! Charlotte! Want to brush a goat?" It's not a question that gets asked...ever.

Brushing a goat while holding her nose to escape the "stinky smell."

Inside the building she got to meet Thumper, who was a big hit:

On Friday, our last full day at Disney, we went to Hollywood Studios. We had planned on staying there much of the day but we ended up only staying for a few hours. It was definitely our least favorite park...there wasn't much going on that appealed to us and it was the hottest and sunniest day there--with no shade anywhere. At that point everyone was completely exhausted, hot, and very tired of walking around. You could definitely say that by this point we were all ready to go home!

The highlight of Hollywood Studios was meeting Baymax and Hiro from Big Hero 6.

We left Hollywood Studios early and headed back to the hotel for a nap. That evening we had reservations at The Crystal Palace at Magic Kingdom that we did not want to miss since A) they were hard to get and B) that's the only place in all of Disney with the Winnie the Pooh characters. And Charlotte definitely wanted Winnie to meet Winnie.

She was so excited when we got there that she stood peeking in the window with rapt attention until our table was ready.

I don't have many good shots of her with Tigger, but it's alright because she was chosen to do something very special--she got to lead a parade through the restaurant with him! That was a big deal :)

After dinner we walked around Magic Kingdom one last time. Charlotte rode her favorite ride again--the carousel.

On the way out, Charlotte got an unexpected surprise when we spotted Princess Aurora in a secluded gazebo area. There was no line, so we thought maybe she was heading over to Fairytale Hall (where the line is always at least 45 minutes). The photographer saw Charlotte and called her over so she got to have a visit with Aurora right before we left.

Saturday morning we woke up early and were on our way--the last shuttle, bus, monorail, train, and airplane ride of the week and we were ready!

It was so nice to get home after a fun but truly exhausting vacation. On top of that, Charlotte's nasty cold that she had during our trip turned into an ear infection, so by Saturday night she was pretty miserable. It's taken until today for all of us to feel somewhat well rested and back to something resembling a normal routine.

Even though I've only visited once, I feel like I could write a book of advice about traveling to Disney World...Chad suggested I write something called "Disney for Introverts" or "Disney for People Without Patience" or "How to Visit Disney with a Child Under Age 7 and Not Kill Anyone."

I don't know about a book, but there's definitely one last Disney post in mind about all of those topics so stay tuned :)

~Stacy

Disney World: Part 1

We're back!!

It's hard to believe that a trip we'd been planning for close to a year has come and gone, but we are back at home after returning yesterday after a whole week at Disney World. As expected, I took a ton of pictures plus we have a bunch more taken by Disney photographers--hence the reason for splitting the posts about this trip into two parts. And they'll still be long :)

We left last Saturday morning with a very excited little girl who was also feeling nervous about flying for the first time. I was too--I wasn't sure how she would do on the flight and just crossed my fingers that she liked it, didn't get motion sickness, and didn't have ear issues. Thankfully she was just fine; she held our hands from the minute we got on until the plane lifted off the runway and then she let go and announced how much fun it was, and that was the end of the airplane fear. Also, the giant bag of gummy bears we let her snack from helped.

We had a nonstop flight and arrived thirty minutes early (score!). We hopped on board the Magical Express bus and went to our hotel--the Caribbean Beach Resort. It's on Disney property so we were able to get buses to and from the parks and airport as part of our stay.

We didn't go to any parks the day we got there since we figured that would be pushing the limits of everyone's energy and patience levels after traveling all day. We had our first special dining experience that night, though, at Chef Mickey's. Apparently this place is a must-do because we had to get reservations months in advance. I'm glad we did because it was a great introduction to Disney World and Charlotte was SO excited to get to meet some of the characters. It set the tone for the next day and made her look forward to our first day at Magic Kingdom even more.

Our first day at the parks was Sunday, at Magic Kingdom. We took a bus there and I'm glad we chose that park as our first one--it was far and away the best of the four and the most exciting for Charlotte to see. They don't call it "Magic" Kingdom for nothing.

Her reaction to seeing the castle the first time:

On the way to the castle a Disney photographer took some photos of her (and added a cute little Tinkerbell effect):

We had breakfast reservations inside the castle at Cinderella's Royal Table. This place is harder to get into than the White House--you have to make reservations six months in advance or forget about getting a table. Thankfully our travel agent handled this for us because Charlotte got to meet Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White, Princess Aurora and Princess Jasmine all during breakfast--pretty much the princess jackpot.

We spent the better part of the day here--until late afternoon. There are people who probably think it's crazy that we consider "spending the day" to mean 10am to 5pm, but after a full day of travel followed up by a day of walking around in the Florida sun with one person under the age of four and another person 7.5 months pregnant, that is definitely a day. Our last stop this day was to visit Tinkerbell:

The rest of the day was spent back at the hotel at the pool, Charlotte's most favorite spot in all of Disney World.

On Monday, we went to Epcot. Epcot...was not my favorite place, mainly because it's just not designed for kids under about age 8 or 9. If Chad and I were there alone my opinion would probably be different, but there just wasn't much there that appealed to Charlotte. Also, by this time she was headed for full blown Disney meltdown and we were dealing with some major over tiredness and the beginnings of a nasty cold. Yay. We spent maybe 4-5 hours at Epcot before heading back to the hotel for some more pool time.

The next day, Tuesday, my parents left for home so we said goodbye early that morning. We decided not to go into a park as planned an instead do Downtown Disney and keep things as relaxed as we could since we had FastPasses for Charlotte to meet Elsa & Anna that night (past bedtime).

Downtown Disney was a neat place--it's mostly just shopping and restaurants but there's plenty to see and it's just a nice area to walk around in. We visited the Lego store and had lunch before Charlotte crashed and Chad walked her sleeping self around for almost two hours (hallelujah, finally a nap!).

When she woke up she talked her Daddy into going into a store and then this happened:

We headed back to Magic Kingdom that night--our passes to see Anna & Elsa stared at 8:20, so by the time we got to the park at 8pm it was already past her bedtime. But that evening ended up being one of the nicest ones of the whole trip. Seeing Magic Kingdom at night is so cool and Charlotte loved meeting the Frozen princesses and riding the carousel at night. We got to see some of the parade while we were there, too, plus walking around was much more pleasant in the cooler evening than during the hot and sunny afternoon.

So there's the first half--back tomorrow with the second half!

~Stacy