another awesome adventure: Bippity Boppity BOO!

One last Florida surprise for the girls: Bippity Boppity Botique at the Downtown Disney mall. They both had 1:30pm appointments today for princess makeovers. Because we were about to drop stupid amounts of money for this, we spent the whole morning hanging out at the condo, swimming our hearts out. Once their hairdos were done, we were going to be done swimming until we get home again.

Matt went M.I.A. for about 15 minutes, and we found him in the hot tub....

Charlotte has improved GREATLY in her swimming skills while here, and is now able to doggy-paddle across the pool (about 15 yards) by herself, with an adult close-by. Way to go, Charlotte!

Madeline is, and will remain, part fish and part human. This girls lives to swim! Our own Little Mermaid!

And Mr. Elliott finally made friends with his raft and spent hours in the pool laughing and smiling, which is drastically different than his first few encounters with swimming pools.

Lifeguard in training!

Picture me here.....

Matt and I took advantage of the grandparents (free babysitting!) while everyone was having fun in the pool, and took our tennis racquets over to the clay courts and played a whole match. I was hot, sweaty, and tired by the end but loved having some one-one-one time with my sweetheart and getting back on the courts again. I love clay courts, too. What a treat!

After lunch, it was time to shower up and head over to Bippity Boppity Botique!

Each girl had her own team of beauticians, who styled her hair, put on makeup (yikes!) and painted fingernails, while we all listened to soundtracks from Disney princess movies. Everyone referred to my girls as "Princess Charlotte" and "Princess Madeline" which made them both smile and giggle.

Charlotte's 'fairy Godmothers' were from Venezuela, and taught Charlotte some Spanish words while she was getting styled. Charlotte was soaking it up.

After the styling is complete, the girls all received a dusting with pixie dust and magic wishes (translate: glitter) from their fairy Godmothers, before they were swiveled around to see themselves in the magic mirror.

Maddie was done first. She was THRILLED with her new look.

* sprinkle * sprinkle * sprinkle *

Ta-daaaah!

Both girls picked out totally opposite hairstyles. I was a little concerned about Charlotte's 'poof' on the top of her head, but she adored it, so I did too. She loved running her fingers down her colored braids, too.

Before departing, they signed the Princess guestbook.

Happy girls! They received some lovely gifts, including makeup and nail polish to take home.

We took our time walking around Downtown Disney, as Matt was at the condo with Elliott who was still taking a nap, and we needed to stay away so he could get some good sleep and wake up happy.

Legoland was amazing! All of these were crafted out of tiny little Legos -

Can you imagine how LONG it would take, and how many Legos were used? WOW!

About that time, we noticed a large plume of smoke coming from the direction of the condo, which was just a couple of miles away.

We called Matt to make sure everything was OKay. This was a grassfire that quickly got out of control, on the side of I-4 which was a mile from the condo. There were dozens of fire trucks rushing over to that area, and they broadcast on several news stations with helicopter views of the fire. We could hear and see the smoke and the helicopters from the condo all afternoon into the evening. Scary stuff. Most of Florida has been under drought conditions for the past couple of months. It just takes one careless cigarette butt to create a catastrophe. Freeways were at a stop for hours, creating havoc on the roads. What saddens me the most is that, although no buildings were damaged and no people were injured, this is fledgling time for native birds. To think of all of the littel baby birds that perished today, helpless in their nests, is heartbreaking.

We stayed out of the chaos and after returning to the condo, we played putt-putt golf. Because the winds were driving the smoke to the southwest, we were relatively unaffected.

Grandma was feeling tired and drained from all of the heat (95 outside today!), so we left her to rest at the condo and we took the kids to a go kart track in nearby Kissimmee.

This was a first time for both girls to drive their own cars.

Check out that hair!

We got some pretty big smiles after that fun!

At the racetrack there was a gator pool. Lots of roadside attractions advertise 'live alligators' and often charge a small fee ($2 to $3) to feed them. I won't get started on my PETA platform, but often times its quite apparent that these animals life in substandard living conditions, and are offered little, if any, environment enrichment. This was one of the 'better' establishments, but still had about 25 gators packed into a relatively small and shallow pool.