We planned our Disney trip with the Boyd family, and Keri and I put our heads together to plan some special times for the girls to meet up and have fun playing at Disney together!  Here are the girls posing with Donald Duck all together before our action-packed day at Animal Kingdom!  It was so great because we divided up during our days at the parks so that each family could go at our own pace (their girls are a little older than ours), but we met up at special times, and the girls loved chatting it up about their days!

When we walked into the Tusker House, this is what we saw!  It is located in the Africa section of Animal Kingdom, my favorite.  I could live in this section!  The buffet wraps around the entire room and includes literally every breakfast food you can imagine and then some!  They even had Krispy Kreme donuts.

But there was no time to eat; not yet!  Mickey surprised our room right off the bat with a lively instrument parade to start our morning!

 

Noelle and Rose jumped right in!

But Anna Kate wasn’t quite sure about all of the action!  I love this sweet picture of Anna Kate with her Daddy! (and Rara watching Rose and Noelle having fun together while Mickey enjoys the spotlight, ha!)

 

The mini Mickey Mouse waffles were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, all packed into one bite sized piece of heaven!

Anna Kate was starting to warm up to the characters, but once the food arrived, Rose was totally preoccupied!  If we had gone to Disney when Anna Kate was 2, these meals would’ve been disastrous!  Anna Kate used to have a fear of anything dressed up in a costume when she was Rose’s age, especially the Chick-fil-A cow.  If the cow would come anywhere near our table at CFA, she used to panic and jump into my arms, but they don’t phase Rose.  Not much does!  It’s so interesting to watch their little personalities interact with the world around them, each so special and unique in their own little ways!

The only thing I knew about Disney 6 months ago is that there is a castle with princesses, there’s a big giant ball at Epcot, they have an animal park with a big tree, a Hollywood themed park with a big blue hat, and there is a ride called, “It’s a Small World After All!”  Other than that, I was pretty much clueless.  But, thankfully, lots of friends helped me out during our planning and told me that we had to get autograph books for each of the girls for all of the characters to sign as we meet them throughout our vacation.  I thought that was pretty cool, but once I found out that if you went 30 years ago or if you go 30 years from now, each character’s autograph will be the same, I was like, "Wow!  This is so neat!”  We can take our grandchildren someday, and anticipate the same signature.  Disney has lots of traditions to be/feel a part of; that’s what makes it so special to each generation.  I’m getting it! 

 

Mickey and Rara are so cute together with their matching scarves and khaki!!!  Another super fun tradition and something we really got into is pin trading!  I ordered our Disney pins off of eBay and once we got to Disney, we began trading.  You can trade with anyone, but the staff have to give any pin on their lanyard that a child wants, up to 2 per child.  So, we were always on the lookout for lanyards with princess pins.  We got a Daisy Duck pin, and that’s what the girls are showing her in this picture.  They were so proud to share that with her.  And this moment will be forever attached to that sweet little colorful pin.  For the rest of our days at Disney, we were constantly trading pins in between rides and shows and of course, dining!  It was like a scavenger hunt for pretty sparkly things.  We loved it and if you go to Disney, I would highly recommend participating!  That was one of my favorite activities!

 

I think Daisy met her match with these girls!

 

Rose was SO excited to see Goofy!  He’s definitely her favorite!  We even traded two goofy pins for Rose she spotted during our trip! 

A match made in heaven, lol!

Goofy’s whiskers made it all better!  Anna Kate was very stand-offish with the characters until Goofy said she could touch his whiskers, and then it was all fun and games!

Heading into the streets of Africa!

Right off the bat, Noelle got picked to do an African dance with the drummers on the streets of Africa!  The djembes were so loud and rhythmic, you couldn’t help but dance to the beats, and Noelle was in her element, of course!

 

After feeling like we were walking down a street in Africa, from street carvers to food stands, next stop, Kilimanjaro Safaris!