Got Butterbeer?

Here I am tasting my first ever frozen butterbeer. Seriously delicious.

So like I said the last night of the Ensemble portion of the conference we got to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We had the whole land to ourselves for 2 hours. It was AWESOME. If you are a Harry Potter at all, you should definitely go. They did such a good job with it. You walk in to Hogsmeade and they have all the shops and restaurants you would find there (with some Diagon Alley mixed in). You walk in first to see the train that has pulled in to the Hogwarts station.

Then you make your way in to Hogsmeade...

One of the first stops is Zonko's where they actually sell extendable ears. A thanks to my beautiful model Sharla!

They have casks in the street selling butterbeer

Next stop was to Olivander's to buy a wand. You have to stand in line and they let about 25 people in at a time. One person is selected to have a wand 'matched' to them. They then go through a selecting process and find the perfect wand for that individual.

The major attraction in the Wizarding World is called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. This is the sign going in. It actually starts to disappear on the sign and then is slowly written again.

The castle is amazing. This picture cannot do it justice. Especially when we were there at night, you truly felt like you were heading in to Hogwarts. This is the whole MEI gang (at least all the ones at the training) together in front of the castle.

Isabella Loves Mexican Food

I just thought this was so cute. Isabella LOVES Mexican food. We went the other night to El Fenix and just gave her a plate full of rice and beans and some cut up enchilada and gave her a spoon so she could go to town. The funny thing that you don't see in this video is that she immediately just put the spoon in the salsa and ate the salsa in spoonfuls. She loves chips and salsa, but it is spicy and she doesn't understand why her mouth burns after eating a huge spoonful. So we give her water and then she just goes back for more. It is so adorable.

This is just a cute video that shows how she really likes to use a spoon now instead of her hands more and more. She doesn't like her hands to be dirty so she now always wants a spoon. Enjoy..

Ensemble Conference

I recently went to a conference in Orlando for travel professionals who belong to the Ensemble consortia. My agency does focus on Disney - although we do everything - but the conference just HAPPENED to be in Orlando, so we were pretty excited. It was a really great conference where I learned SO SO much about the travel industry. It was also a great chance to get to meet many of the agents that I work with. We work from home all around the country so even though I have talked, IMed and emailed with them all, I had never met them face to face! So it was really nice to be able to put faces with names. Here is my friend Sharla who was in my start group that I got to room with!! I'm pretty sure Smart car was a sponsor...


The first day was all business with a fancy dinner that night. However, the second night was when the real fun began (um, not that it wasn't all fun?). The second night was sponsored by Disney, since they just happened to be around the corner, and they shuttled us all over to Epcot and led us behind the gates to where they normally hold their Party for the Senses party. It is a paid, ticketed even that they have during the Food and Wine Festival, and we basically got to go to a pared down version of it to see what it was like. It was, in a word, fantastic! It was set up in this huge hall and had live music and stilt walkers and all kinds of fun stuff, as well as seriously delicious food. The picture below was taken of one of the most delightful things I have ever put in my mouth. Take a glazed donut, cook it in a pan full of melted butter, sprinkle some cinnamon on it and then flambe it in rum, and that is what you have below. Basically the world's BEST donut. Sorry it was half eaten before I could stop myself to take a picture.



After the party we all got to go to a private area where we watched Illuminations. It isn't my favorite fireworks show, but it was pretty neat to have such great seats.

The next night we went to the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but I am going to do a whole other blog post on that. Here is our group after eating, before heading over to Illuminations. Best travel professionals ever!!!

18 Months

How is it that I have a one and a half year old? Sometimes I look at her and can't comprehend how I have been blessed with such a beautiful little child. And I really can't believe it has been a year and a half!! Everyone tells you it goes by fast, but you just don't believe them. Especially those first couple of months. ;)

We had Isabella's 18 month doctor visit a couple of weeks ago and so I thought I should update everyone since it is such a major milestone. She is doing great basically. She is 70% in height (which is good, she was only 45% last time, having shrunk from her 93% at birth!), 45% in weight and about 80% in head size.

What is she up to? Well she is starting to say a lot more words. She says please (well at least she tries, basically any word that has an S sound in it sounds like ssss), cheese (also her new favorite food), she tries to say Amanda and Grammy now. Her absolute favorite word is NO. She is very certain about what she wants and she will say NO when she doesn't like something.

She LOVES her daddy. She would definitely rather have dad than mom these days. Everyone told me it would happen, but I have to admit it is a little sad. Jason, however, is loving it. She will just hug on him, lay her head on his shoulder, so sweet. When I go get her up in the mornings these days, the first thing she says to me is 'dada'? Like where is he?

Her new favorite thing is sock puppets. She has discovered that she can put her socks on her hands and she makes them talk in this kind of growly type voice. The last two days we went to Mother's Day Out with sock puppets on because she would not let me take them off. Haha. She has also learned to do ring around the rosie, which she wants to do over and over.

She really is just so smart. Most things I ask her to do, even if I think she will have no idea what I am saying, she does! I can ask her to go get something she left in a totally different room and she knows what I mean and will go get it. Brilliant I tell you!

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the last few weeks. We really have not been very good about taking pictures! Isn't that awful? If I didn't have an iPhone we would get no pictures I swear.

Since she was a baby she always liked to sleep with her arms behind her head. This does not look terribly comfy to me, but she slept like that forever this weekend!

She looooves her Nana. When we go visit my parents she loves to go out and swing in the back yard!

My parents also went to Hawaii recently and they brought her a hula girl outfit. So stinkin' cute!!