from hollywood studios...

to the animal kingdom!

our third day of vacation started out with a bang! another yummy breakfast with the little einsteins at hollywood & vine!!! leo, june, jojo, & goliath greeted the girls while we ate more mickey pancakes...and cupcakes! our birthday girl was treated like a queen again and even got a homemade card from all the characters! such a fun, fun way to start our day! it was so sweet seeing ella go up to the giant leo and thank him for her card...

thanks to daddy, we were able to head straight to the "toy story" ride with our fast passes right when breakfast was over! such a cute, cute ride! daddy scored 140,000, grandpa scored 98,000, ella scored 38,000, mommy scored 33,000, and boo scored 0...oh well, she had fun and that's what counts, right!?!?

after this ride was over, we made our way over to the animal kingdom! much to my dismay, ella was chomping at the bit to ride the biggest roller coaster there..."everest"...and so was her daddy! after much debate, she, jeffrey, and dayne headed over the stand in line while honey, maddie, ava, and i headed out for some adventures of our own!

the gals headed to the "it's tough to be a bug" show where we proceeded to scare madeline and ava to death! mom and i loved it though...it's a precious show...but had a few too many special effects for the little price girls!

we wanted to catch the "everest crew" coming down the big hill...so we headed over to wait! little did we know that they had also had a long wait...they had to close down the ride for a while because someone had gotten sick! however, it wasn't long and jeffrey was telling me that they were on board! i honestly could not believe that my little girl was going to go through with it...she was awfully scared i found out, but told her daddy that she was going to "face her fears"!!!! it was so precious watching her sweet, scared little face through my zoom lens! when she finished the ride...she wanted to go AGAIN...so mom and i went for a spin! it truly was a fun, fun roller coaster!!!!!

we made our way over to the safari just in time to use our fast passes! this is just awesome. it is probably the closest i will ever come to experiencing an african safari...the animals are just roaming about while you ride through the "jungle"! incredible! maddie instructed me to take a picture of literally every single animal and became quite chatty with a girl named lindsey behind us...she is so funny!

we were all in need of a snack, so we grabbed a shady table and just relaxed for a minute while we waited for the safari parade to begin! while we were resting and snacking, the girls participated in a tribal dance! they were so cute out there doing the dance with each other...ella says now that she was a bit embarrassed...but you would never have known!

the parade came right by our little spot and it was fun seeing all the characters dressed in their safari gear!
we headed to the lion king show which was just fabulous...kinda like a small version of a broadway show! absolutely fantastic and i'm so glad we were able to catch it!

the sky began to look a little heavy, but ella wanted to get in one more everest ride...so we gave it a go and headed for our last ride of the vacation! she ended up getting to ride it TWO more times...and she loved every single minute! maddie was happy that granpda bought her another ice cream sandwich! (when grandpa tried to split this dessert with her, she told him that she doesn't do halves!!!!)

by now, the sky looked like the bottom was going to fall out and the park was closing anyway...so we headed to the bus stop to make our way "home"! since we couldn't go swimming, we sent grandpa and jeffrey to get supper so that we could have a carpet picnic and celebrate our sweet little six year old's birthday just a little bit early!!!!

we could not have been more thankful for such a wonderful day!