CeCe's time in Olive Branch

CeCe was able to do so many fun things while she stayed with my parents last week!

She was so excited to go to the zoo!  She's been asking about a zoo for months now (and there is not one close to us!).  

I heard she got nice and wet at the geyser! 

The Memphis zoo is wonderful.  

They also went downtown to visit my parent's apartment (this is in the lobby)

And of course take a trolley ride!

She and Cappy made delicious brownies to take to the lake

Going shopping with Cappy

She went fishing while waiting on us to get to the lake on Friday.  

Memorial Day weekend

These first three are from before Memorial Day.  CeCe was showing Papaw Duke all about Cappy's iPad!  

While Cappy and Bryce cheered on the Grizzlies!  

Tuesday morning I drove Cappy and CeCe to Jacksonville for them to fly to Memphis.  CeCe was so excited to be going to Cappy and Papaw Ruff's house all by herself.  And was excited and nervous to ride on an airplane!  Cappy told me her favorite parts of the flights were the take off and landing, she loved going fast!  What should have been about 7 hours worth of travel time turned into over 10.5! Thunderstorms in JAX, mechanical problem in ATL, torrential rains and wind in MEM (had them flying in circles over the MEM airport for 45 minutes) and flash flooding (to the point of roads being closed between the airport and my parent's house, including a few in their neighborhood so the police could rescue a women whose car was floating away!) were some of the stories from the day!  Cappy said CeCe was a trooper though!  We missed her so much.  Even though she was only away from us for 3 nights, it felt so much longer.  I was lonely during the day while Bryce was at school.  I may not let her start Kindergarten next year!  Thankfully she is only going 1/2 days for Pre-K this coming up school year.  

Bryce, Anthony and I drove to the lake Friday after school and were so excited to see this sweet thing!  

 We had 2.5 gorgeous days to enjoy the boat, swimming and playing together.  

The kids had fun swimming with Reagan! 

On Saturday around lunch we realized that we were less than 2 hours from the SEC Baseball tournament in Birmingham so my boys made a quick decision to drive up there for the MSU v. Vandy game.  It was a terrible game to watch and Bryce was disappointed that they lost by so much, but has decided it was worth it to get to see them play.  

The water was cold but it was not cold enough to keep the kids from swimming!

On Sunday afternoon my friend Robin and her kids drove over from Atlanta for the day.  CeCe and Sam love playing together!  They are two peas in a pod.  I wish we lived closer because I just know these two would be BFFs!  

All the kids swimming together

CeCe got really brave and decided she was ready to jump in all by herself (yes, she has on a swim vest,  and Anthony was there to 'catch' her but this is still a HUGE deal for her, she still doesn't like getting her face wet!)

Sunday night we all rode on the boat to the new restaurant on the lake

CeCe, Sam, Bryce and James

Robin and her kids left that night and we stayed until after lunch on Monday.  It was a great quick trip and we can't wait to go back to the lake in July!  

Last Baseball Game

Saturday Bryce had his last baseball game of the season.  It worked out perfectly that Kiki, Papaw Duke and Cappy were all in town and got to see a baseball game and the recital in one day!  

Our baseball star

Recital prep at the game

Pre-game warm ups

Bryce's first hit of the game.  He had a great game again!  

After I wrote this I found out that the YMCA scheduled a make up game for us this Tuesday.  The season is officially over so hopefully enough of our boys will show up to play.  The Y is SO 

un-organized.  It's pitiful.  But we are excited to see Bryce play one more game! 

CeCe on stage

Last week CeCe had a Mother's Day program at school.  They sang 4 songs with everyone singing.

 Then her class sang one song by themselves.  

 It was so sweet!! 

 Yesterday CeCe had her first ballet recital.  She's been taking ballet since August and we've all been excited about the big recital!  

Her class is the youngest class in the ballet school and they were precious on stage.  CeCe did great with her dance and said she had fun with it.  

 After the show

 We are so happy that Kiki and Papaw Duke made the trip to see her dance! 

 And Cappy did too!!  So glad to have a former dance mom assist me this time :)  I had no idea how much make up to use or how to get this hat to stay on her head!  

DISNEY- Day 4

Last Day :(  But we woke up super excited to head back to the Magic Kingdom and make the most of our half day there!  I left the big camera in the room and decided to just use my phone for this day.  That big camera is heavy and I'm always worried it is going to get messed up carrying it around all day.  

They were talking about what all they wanted to do again that day while we waited for the bus

Bryce didn't want to ride Thunder Mountain Railroad on Sunday when we were there but decided that night that he wished he had ridden it.  When we decided to go back to MK he said it was the first thing he wanted to do.  We decided to split up and CeCe and I went to Fantasyland while Bryce and Anthony went to Frontierland.  They rode Splash Mountain once and Thunder Mountain Railroad 3 times.  He loved it!  CeCe and I started at Winnie the Pooh (which we had skipped the day before) and we both thought it was great!  Then we rode Dumbo again and of course the Goofy Rollercoaster twice in a row!  She wanted to do Pooh and Small World again so we did those and then met the boys and we got Fast Passes for Peter Pan.  

Waiting outside of Dumbo

After Peter Pan we went to Tomorrowland to do Buzz Lightyear again and to try the Astro Orbiter.  The kids and I rode on the people mover while Anthony rode Space Mountain.  We did the speedway again and switched kids from the day before...Bryce is a much more careful driver than his sister!!  

 It was nearing time to leave so we asked them what ride they wanted to do before we left.  Thankfully they both said Goofy Rollercoaster so we got a Fast Pass for that, ate lunch that we had packed and met Goofy and Donald before our Fast Pass time was up.  Goofy and Donald are probably their favorite characters so this was a great unexpected treat for all of us!  Should have taken my big camera!!  

We rode the railroad around the whole park and then walked to our bus.  The kids were great about leaving.  They didn't want to leave but no one complained when we told them it was time to say goodbye.  We had a good drive home and got here around 8:15.  Super wonderful great trip to Disney World!!!  

DISNEY- Day 3

Originally we planned on going to the Magic Kingdom only while we were there.  We were going to do MK on Sun and Mon and swim and play at the hotel on Tues before driving home that afternoon.  Sunday was such a good day at MK and we got everything on our list accomplished so we decided to hit Epcot on Monday.  Bryce remembered really liking Epcot when we went 3 years ago and had been asking us to go there.  I'm so glad we listened to him and went there!  We had another great day!  We got there at 8:30 and waited for them to open at 9.  

On our walk in we saw Daisy Duck, and NO LINE!  We ran over and met her.  

This one deserves a gold medal for walking everywhere without complaining at all.  My feet and legs were tired every afternoon so I know his were too, but he never said one word about being tired or his legs hurting.  He never complained that CeCe got to ride in the stroller and he didn't.  ROCK STAR!!  

We got Fast Passes for Soarin and then went to ride Nemo.  The aquariums there were great and of course we had to have our picture taken inside Bruce's mouth!  

The night before my friend Julie texted me that they were in Disney too!  She and I were friends in Pensacola (her son Jacob and Bryce were friends too!) and now she lives in California so it was awesome to see her and Jacob for a few minutes!  

When we went 3 years ago Bryce didn't care about meeting the characters, he wasn't scared, just more interested in the rides!  CeCe has always loved a character so I felt like we should meet a few for her.  Her favorites are Mickey and his pals so we decided to wait in the line that had Mickey, Pluto and Minnie.  I'm so glad we did!  I missed capturing the first part of this hug but she ran to Mickey with her arms wide open to hug him when it was finally her turn.  She was so happy to hug them!!!  

After meeting those characters we headed into the country section of Epcot.  It was lunch time so we walked to the UK and lunched on delicious fish and chips!  Bryce loved looking at the pictures inside the USA building and trying to decide what time period they were from.  

We made sure to head to Japan in time to hear the drum show.  

It was amazing!

We stopped in the Africa section to play the drums

 CeCe saw Mary Poppins and Alice in Wonderland while we were in the UK and wanted to meet them.  The lines were already cut off by the time we walked up though so we couldn't meet them.  She got a little upset so I promised her we would meet someone that afternoon.  She chose Snow White (the day before she chose a Snow White doll for her Disney happy, not sure why but Snow White was her favorite princess on this trip!  She's really not into the princesses and won't sit and watch the movies with me!) This Snow White was awesome.  She talked to each girl for a few minutes each and was really into character.  CeCe LOVED it!  

 It was another GREAT Disney day for us!

So great that we decided to buy an extra days worth of tickets and head back to the Magic Kingdom for a 1/2 day on Tuesday!  The kids were over the moon when we surprised them with that!!!!