August

August was a happy month for our family. Barrett had just returned home from his deployment, and we all had a few weeks to spend together before life got back to "normal". Barrett's parents came to see us for a couple days during the first week, and we had a nice visit with them.
Barrett's homecoming:


We had about a week to hang out and spend time as a family before we were packing up and heading south for our Disney trip. We left on Friday, August 7, and drove down to spend a couple nights with Grammy and Pappy before going to Orlando. We were about an hour and a half into our trip when I had a sudden pannicky feeling. "Oh my goodness, we left our disney tickets at the house!" I had remembered everything, I mean I had lists that I checked off before we left so that I didn't miss anything- except, of course, one of the most important items that I had failed to put on the list! Well, we pulled over and made some phone calls that confirmed that the only way we could get into the park was if we had our original tickets. Thankfully, my friend was watching our dog for us and had our key, so she was sweet to overnight us our tickets to my parent's house, which we got on time (it was a good thing that we planned to stay at my parent's house that extra day!) So, that was a $40 mistake (it cost extra to overnight on the weekends) I hopefully won't ever make again!

When we arrived at our hotel, we were about to check in when the manager came over and told us that we had been upgraded to a different hotel (they had overbooked, apparently). We had plans to stay at the Carribean Beach resort, but they moved us to the Boardwalk instead. I'm sure we would have liked our original plan, but the Boardwalk was awesome! We had a huge room that included a little balcony overlooking a fountain and our pool. It was in walking distance of both Epcot and Hollywood Studios, and we took the bus to the other parks. We brought our handy Disney planner book with us, and mapped out each day with what rides and attractions we wanted to visit. We wanted to make sure that we took advantage of our extra magic hours and that we weren't wasting time trying to figure out what to do all the time. It was definitely worth the planning, because it made the week feel so much more organized. We were able to do everything and more that we wanted to do. We went to Animal Kingdom the first day, and then Magic Kingdom on Tuesday. On Wednesday we went to Blizzard Beach in the morning and then to Downtown Disney that evening. We made reservations at T-Rex Cafe, and we really enjoyed it. We had good seats and the kids loved seeing the dinosaurs move and the meteor showers every 20 minutes. We even splurged and got the "smoking volcano" dessert, which was a lot of fun to see (and eat). On Thursday we went to Epcot and Friday we visited Hollywood Studios. I could spend all day talking about what we did at each park, but I will just mention the highlights. Caleb is quite the adventurer and went on as many roller coasters as he could! The first one he rode was Mount Everest- the scariest- at Animal Kingdom. He didn't want to ride a second time but he liked it! His other favorite rides were Star Tours, Toy Story Mania, Buzz Lightyear, and the Tower of Terror (even though he was pretty scared!). Isabelle was not into the rides as much-as a matter of fact, she was a little scared of almost everything- but, her favorite part was getting to see the princesses. Her favorite princess right now is Snow White, and she brought her snow white costume to wear in the park. The kids each had their autograph books, so they were able to get their favorite characters to sign their books as well as take a picture with them. Isabelle got Cinderella, Belle, and Aurora's autographs in the same location, but was disappointed that Snow White was not among them. However, we found out where and what time she would present herself, and we made sure we were there. I think that was the highlight for her, because she talked about it nonstop after that.






At the T-Rex Cafe:


We all had such a great vacation together. It was a very busy and tiring one, but so much fun at the same time. The kids were ready to go back to Disney World as soon as we got home! They have not stopped asking when we are going back again- especially Isabelle, because she wants to see the princesses again!

The last week of August brought about Caleb's first day of Kindergarten! He was so excited and such a big boy! I can hardly believe he is already that big! He goes to a wonderful school, Rocky Bayou Christian, and he has a great teacher, Mrs. Harris. He is loving school and learning so much. He is doing great with his reading, too! It is so neat to hear him sounding out the words and putting everything together. He will be reading fluently before long!
First day of Kindergarten:

Caleb with his friend, Cyrus:


I guess we all started to get back to real life, with Caleb in school and Barrett going back to work. Isabelle didn't start preschool until September, so we had some girl time to spend together, which was fun and sweet.