She's an Official Teenager

How in the world is Makayla an official teenager? It just seems like yesterday she was a baby, and here we are with a teenager. 

Makayla is just the best and we loved spoiling her on her special day. 

Prior to her birthday, Makayla wanted to get her haircut. She got a few inches taken off and looks so much older now.

Somehow she talked me into stopping to get a Starbucks before she headed back to school. 

She chose Texas Roadhouse for her birthday dinner. She tried to get out of sitting on the saddle, but our waiter said if she didn't sit on the saddle, he wouldn't bring out ice cream. 

Makayla didn't really want a traditional friend party, so we ended up taking Makayla and a few of her friends to the new Mean Girls movie. These girls are anything but mean girls. Makayla knows how to pick great friends. 

Then on her actual birthday I woke her up with her favorite Starbucks drink. 

She opened a few presents before we went to church. Makayla wanted Mo Bettah's for dinner so we tried our hand at kalua pork wrapped in banana leaves. It was interesting, but not my favorite way to make pork. 

Makayla opened her presents. She got lots of new clothes and new Nike shoes. 

For her family party we had dinner then played "What's on your phone".  See, Makayla said her favorite thing in the world is her phone, so we created a game where the goal was to beat Makayla's score. We would give something that had to do with Makayla and people had to show us that thing on their phone. It could be a picture, an app, a song... you get the idea. Some of things were 13, selfie, dance, Benson Boone, and Starbucks. 

In the end, Makayla got 1st place, Colton came back from behind to get 2nd place, and Rico got 3rd place. 

Then we opened presents. Makayla got lots of clothes and gift cards... exactly what she wanted. 

Her favorite was a new Benson Boone sweatshirt. We listen to a lot of Benson Boone music in our house because of Makayla. 

Then she blew out the candles on her cupcakes as we sang Happy Birthday to her. 

It was a great weekend celebrating our favorite teenager. 

Makayla, where do we begin? We love you so much and are so proud of the amazing young woman you are becoming. You have such an amazing future ahead of you. You make us so proud everyday. We love watching you find confidence and strength as you endure the challenges life gives you. You are the perfect oldest daughter and bring us such joy. You are funny, thoughtful, generous, determined, and a great example to your friends and family. You are doing so well in middle school and really challenge yourself to do well in school and take honors classes. You are a dedicated student and have made the honor roll with a 4.0 for two quarters now. We love watching you work so hard at dance and seeing your hard work pay off when you do your solo onstage. You are so thoughtful and are always looking for ways to make your friends' day better. I love that you are meeting new friends this year and that you have chosen a great group of girls to hang out with. I love that I never have to remind you to make your bed, or do your homework. And it amazes me how well you manage your time between school, dance, friends, and church activities. You are so responsible... there's not a lot of kids your age who have jobs, and here you are working at your dance studio helping to teach the younger kids. Some of the things I love about you at 13 is that you love music, expensive drinks at Starbucks or Swig, skincare, and food. We are so proud to call you our daughter and love getting little glimmers into the amazing women you are becoming. Thank you for being the best and most amazing daughter we could have ever hoped for. We love you!!

Here are Makayla's answers to her birthday interview questions: 

What are some things that you like or are popular today? "Taylor Swift, Rizzing people up, Gyatt"

What do you like most about yourself right now? "My hair"

What do you think your future job will be? "Don't actually put this... I'm going to be a garbage man. Just kidding. I want to be a vet. Or work at Cafe Rio."

What are you good at? "Dancing, Rizzing people up"

Do you have a celebrity crush? "Flynn Ryder from Tangled"

Who are your friends and what do you like about them? "Well my best friend is Maddy because she makes me laugh. Some other ones are Avery from dance because she's always really nice and lifts me up at dance. At school Chole and Brook are really funny and they make me laugh."

Where is your favorite place to eat? "Cafe Rio"

What makes you really annoyed? "When people breathe really loudly"

I'm Just Here for the Snacks

 If you're wondering if we ate on our epic trip to Disney World, the answer is yes, we did! I thought the Disney food deserved it's own post. 

We ate in the park all the days we were there. We had our usual park food like hamburgers and pizza, but here's a few of our Disney themed favorites: 

We loved the crepes in Epcot. 

Tyler and I knew the kids wouldn't like our brisket grilled cheese from Woody's Lunchbox, so we snuck away for a few minutes to enjoy a mini dinner date. 

I'm pretty sure we ended up getting Jack Jack's nom nom cookie at least 3 different times. It was warm, chocolaty yummyness. 

You can't go to the Tiki Room with out a Dole Whip!

Mickey shaped pretzels are a must

And as weird as this sounds, my favorite lunch might have been these cheeseburger eggrolls. 

We had to get the Mickey cookie and Minnie caramel apple. 

We told the kids how good our grilled cheese was, so they all decided to try it and loved it. That made us feel super guilty for sneaking away without them. 

The Cheshire cat tail was good, but I probably wouldn't get it again. 

The cream cheese stuffed pretzels were so good that Makayla got them twice that day... once for her snack and again for dinner. 

Mickey sugar cookies were yummy but...

Mickey and Minnie Caramel apples are a must for me and Makayla. Must be raising this kid right. 

 After all the snacks we tried, we're thinking about becoming Disney food bloggers... what do you think?

Disney World Day 5 and 6

 By day 5 we had been to all of the parks, so we told the kids for the last 2 days they could choose their favorite park. Day 5 we went back to Hollywood Studios

We started our day by meeting Mickey and Minnie!!

And we finally got to on all of the rides at StarWars Land. We love Smugglers Run because each person gets a job: Pilot, engineer, and Gunner. This time Caden and I were the pilot and I would say we did a pretty good job. Makayla and Brynnli did a great job as they had to "shoot the train", and Tyler did his usual engineering, by fixing all things we messed up. 

We didn't get to go on Rise of the Resistance last time, but we got to go on the ride this time. I have never seen the Star Wars movies, but I know enough to understand we are fighting a battle between the resistance and the first order, we get captured, but eventually escape and the good guys (us) win. The ride is so amazing and lasts 20 minutes. 

Walking past the storm troopers is one of the best parts. 

Handsome couple!!

We loved Mickey and Minnie's runaway Railway. Mine and Brynnli's favorite is the room with Daisy Duck teaching us how to dance in our carts and this scene with Mickey and Minnie. 

The Elsa and Anna sing along was so fun. We loved singing all the songs from the movie and Brynnli loved the "snow" at the end. 

We didn't get to ride Slinky dog, but we went on all the other Toy Story rides. 

Our favorite ride at Hollywood Studios is still The Tower of Terror. 

Makayla decided she wanted her souvi to be Minnie ears. After looking at all of the different options for 3 days, she finally decided to go with the rose gold ones. Perfect way to remember our trip!!

We loved Hollywood Studios, but one of the rides I was so excited for our kids to experience was the Aerosmith Roller coaster which was closed for refurbishment. Maybe we will have to make another trip to DW someday so our kids can experience this ride. 

Day 6, our last day, we spent at Magic Kingdom. 

This is one of my favorite memories on the trip: We had to take a tram into the park. We were standing on the tram and a cute family was in front of us. I was staring at the cute family for quite a while thinking how fun that they had 3 girls all around the same age, until I realized one of "their kids" was Brynnli. I started laughing so hard because 1) I didn't realize that was my own kid and 2)This just fully explains why we love Brynnli so much: she can literally make friends with anyone she meets.

We were ready for our last day

One of our first rides was the Seven Dwarfs ride again. Waiting in line is half the fun because there are so many interactive parts to play with. Since Tyler is a "miner" and our kids will be "miners" in high school, I made them pose for lots of pictures in front of the mined jewels. 

We met Rapunzel and Princess Tiana. 

Princess Tiana made a big deal about Caden's Jazz shirt, thinking it was Jazz music from Louisiana, so that deserved a special picture with just Caden. Plus, Tyler was trying to give Caden suggestions for pick up lines he could use with the princesses. 

Go on and...

Love these two. They may have been forced to pose like they like each other, but these two are so cute and funny together. 

After missing the parade last time because of the rain, we finally got to see it. It was just as good as I hoped. 

We tried multiple times to get the perfect picture in front of the castle... which one is the best?

We made sure we rode all of the rides in Magic Kingdom. We liked The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, Barnstormer, Mickey's PhilharMagic, Dumbo and the people mover. Tyler even made us watch Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress because he said he remembered that ride from years ago.  The kids were less than impressed with that one. 

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was closed the whole time, but ended up opening toward the end of the night. We were so excited because that is one of our favorite rides at Disneyland. Tyler loves all of the mining memorabilia. 

We were so happy we got to ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at least once while we were here. 

Brynnli saw this from the movie Dumbo and she had to get a picture in front of it. See when Brynnli was like 3 years old we would drop Makayla and Caden off at school and then come home and she would beg me to watch Dumbo every. single. day. She loved to watch the movie while eating cheese-its. So we had to get a picture in front of one of her favorite parts in the move when the mom elephant gets sold. 

The kids forced me to ride Mad Tea Party. I closed my eyes the entire time and hated every minute of it. Ok, that's a little dramatic, but I hate these kind of rides. 

One last walk past the lanterns from Tangled. 

And one last picture in front of the castle. 

We stopped to get the kids' souvis. Brynnli got some dolls and a stuffed Daisy Duck. Caden chose Disney Castle Legos and a Mickey sugar cookie

And Makayla and I chose more Minnie caramel apples. 

And just like that our epic vacation came to a close. But not without one last Uber ride home where the kids fell asleep. 

And it's not a vacation without jumping on the beds. 

We had to wake up at 3 am to make it on our early flight home on Sunday. It was an exhausting trip, but one of the best vacations. We made so many fun memories along the way. I love this family and I love so much that we were able to go on a family vacation in the midst of Tyler switching jobs. 

I think the thing I loved most about this trip to Disney World was that there were so many things we could all experience for the "first time". Disney World had to many different rides that we didn't know anything about. It was so fun to experience them all together with our family of 5.