Birthday Month is Upon Us

Disney was great...amazing...perfect...everything we had hoped, I must say.  The day went off without a hitch.  Ella was great...though very quiet for the first few hours.  I guess she was just taking it all in.  It can be an overwhelming place for a young child, I'm sure.  On top of that, she had both mommy AND daddy's attention all on her.  That might have thrown her off a bit ;)  She had a great time though.  It wasn't too busy, the weather was mild, the lines weren't too long, and overall the day went great.  Not much else to say about it!  But I will say this--Ella rode on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad!!  It's a pretty decent roller coaster.  That's my girl!  She was tall enough for it and we didn't know what it was going to be like.  I'm not sure who was more nervous during the ride, Ella or Myke.  Probably the latter :)

Ready for the parade 

A little unsure about Elsa & Anna

Tea cups were her favorite ride--we rode them 3x

Tinker bell

Minnie Mouse

Minnie Mouse's house

Goofy!

We met a lot of characters, which was fun.  Got all the photos for Ella's photo book (now I just need to print them out for her...).  She was very shy to meet each of the characters and insisted that either Myke or I go up to the character with her.  The line to meet Anna & Elsa was LONG, probably the longest line of the day, and as soon as it was Ella's turn to meet them she became completely mute.  It was cute though.  They spent a few minutes with each child (hence the long wait) and really made each one feel special.  Ella had a birthday pin on (given out by Disney) and the princesses asked her all kinds of birthday-related questions in which Ella responded with nods or head shakes only.  

In other Hines happenins': 

We put on our "nice clothes" and took the kids to dinner at one of our favorite Thai restaurants.

No, the dog did not go with us.  Yes, Owen did put on shoes before we left.

This is us testing our camera tripod & delay timer.

blondies

First experience with mango sticky rice.

It was a hit!

Heading to gymnastics.

Picking out birthday items at Party City.

 "Sofia the First" is the theme of choice for Ella.

The "princess-thing" still makes me cringe a bit...

but I'm not AS anti-princess as I was with my first.

I'm just going with it...

The visit to Disneyland was Ella's "party" (I'm sure using a lot of "" in this entry) so we aren't doing anything official as far as a birthday party.  However, I'm sure we'll be having cake on the 13th of February when it's Ella's actual 3rd birthday.  Then we have Myke's birthday on the 20th.  Then Kyla's (the dog) on the 27th.  Then Chloë's on the 28th.  February is a busy one in this family!