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Monday's Moment: Orchids

Monday's Moment: American School of Doha

All was not lost!

So our house is nearly picture perfect (almost time for the blog tour!!). The last of the artwork was hung earlier today. I'm down to finding homes for the last bit of stuff in our new home. As I was going through one box of our supplemental household effects that had shipped from Charleston, I was going through a rubbermaid bin of items we had been using our last days in Fiji. Things like school uniforms (we kept one shirt/per kid and they each had their PE shirts signed by their friends), our snorkel gear and dive logs from our trip to Taveuni, farewell letters from classmates, etc. In this bin, I had also tossed in the extra screen protectors for our new Nikon camera. I opened the screen protector case and what to my joy do I see....a SD card. Recall, I mentioned in the post about our Disney Trip, it had appeared I had lost all our photos after hours of searching. I looked on the disk and with much rejoicing.....all was not lost!! So without further ado, I give you the belated candid memories from Clarissa's birthday trip. 

The day before we left, I picked up her cookie cake. I even snuck it into the fridge while she was sitting across the room on her iPad. So perfect! You saw the funny "Ha" piece....now here is the whole cake!

Getting snuggles for planning an awesome birthday adventure!

One of us took the silly face more serious than the other when posing with the giant Nikon at Hollywood Studios.

Clarissa and I mildly excited about the great seats our fast pass for the Frozen Sing-a-Long got us!

Pretty close if you ask me! Anna and Kristoff were in a lot of the show.

The look on Clarissa's face when Elsa made it snow in the theatre....this would be my "mastercard priceless" photo (remember those commercials)...lol.

Elsa and Anna at the end of the show. We probably made eye contact we were so close!

I am guessing the target audience for the Star Wars show is not kids!

So maybe we shouldn't here....oops....nothing to see here. We'll keep walking.

Clarissa and I went to the Little Mermaid show. While still good and magical, it was definitely dated and in need of an update.

Mason is a Kermit the Frog fan....so we found the Muppets section.

Over by the theatre, he even found Kermit's foot/hand prints.

Clarissa even found a Happy Birthday Mickey prints!

Clarissa was down for the count, but I did get a picture of our cute "clam shells" we slept in.

The next morning, mommy made the kids eat some fruit before Nana & Bajoo brought in the Birthday cookie cake surprise! We had some cookie for breakfast before heading to the park (birthdays are the best)!

Watching the park opening ceremony....so exciting.

We spotted Snow White between the chipmunks, Chip and Dale.

Then Mickey said some magical words, the Fairy Godmother waved her wand, and the park opened....you can watch the magic here!

Arg....yit 'peers aft'r bein' stranded on yer South Pacific Isle, ye kids arrrr now rum stealing sea crusted scoundrels....arg!

I think this was Clarissa's second favorite ride (diggin' the April showers in the sky behind us).

So as I mentioned the M-I-C-K-E-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y post, the girls had a special Princess breakfast in Cinderella's castle. Being Disney after all, they had lots of fun details...like real knight armor.

We were served a pre-breakfast before ordering! My MIL and I joked....this was more than enough for breakfast (I guess I should say second breakfast)! There were even Mickey-head blueberry muffins.

Princesses making the rounds....as I mentioned before, Clarissa was shy, so we did not get that many good Princess photos (we did get autographs though).

As a super special surprise (probably helped by the "It's my Birthday t-shirt"), Clarissa was also brought out a birthday cupcake.

What the picture doesn't show is how special this cupcake was....so you must watch this short video clip!!

So Clarissa was trying to master using the new camera, but kept taking video....as in I have about 10 video clips of her saying "smile" and us smiling....so by the time she actually managed to get a picture, we were beyond smiling and had graduated on to silly faces.

Still her favorite princess!!!

Love the 'mom do we really need a photo with the Cinderella stain glass window' face. I may have been more excited than her to eat in Cinderella's castle....likely due to never visiting Disney until I was in my late 20's....

Another favorite ride (which never has a long line)....the Merry-go-Round.

While waiting for the rest of the crew to meet up with us, we posed with Belle's castle in the distance (it wasn't built last time Clarissa and I were here).

We rode the elephants.....the Dumbo ride. I got this great we-sie with all 6 of us....

By far, her FAVORITE ride!! She was so excited to drive! It was perfect that we got a Fijian right hand drive car too!

She may or may not have been talking smack to the person on the other side of us in the yellow car about who was going to win (and oh, you are going to lose!!)

Nana taking this race super serious! Bajoo and I (aka the passengers) being super silly.

Game Face on now! In the end it ended up being a tie (I think)....lots of laughing so it didn't really matter who won.

We were pleasantly surprised and really liked all the renovations we happened upon. It appeared we found Rapunzel's tower and her village.

We also captured some riff raff.

The last of her birthday surprises was the character buffet dinner. We had managed to get by snacking during the day (after multiple breakfasts)....so the dinner was a welcomed meal and we didn't have to worry about a long wait to get a table as we already had reservations. Clarissa had definitely gotten over her shyness when it came to asking for autographs (funny thing is, neither kid was ever a big Winnie the Pooh fan...but they both seemed to enjoy it).

 Mason chasing Pigs.....I mean joining in Piglet's parade.

Some serious cuddling going on. Maybe because they all looked like giant stuffed animals she didn't realize people were inside?

So I felt a little bad for Eeyore....he had the hardest time signing her book...had to rest it on his snout.

I think Richard got this shot of the castle before the fireworks show.

Next day was Epcot! Got this shot of giant ball....then the camera battery went dead as I had forgotten my charger in Charleston. I'm so glad to have found the card with all these photos....they were small little moments that we had forgotten about.....that made a great birthday!