Georgie's Magical Dance

It was about 8:30 pm on Monday, November 2nd, 2009.  We had just stepped off of Cinderella's Magical Carousel and were ready to bring our day at Disney's Magic Kingdom to a close.  But the true magic was yet to come.

With the fairy tale tunes from the carousel in the background, our very own Princess Georgie was transported to her own world.  Some of her nascent Studio One dance moves come through, but most of it is her own spontaneous choreography.

P.S. You can hear us cut Isaac off rather harshly about halfway through.  He was a little upset at the time, but I hope he understands eventually.

P.P.S.  The segment is woefully short due to our amateurish lack of preparation.  Always bring an extra tape!

A Typical Sunday/Saturday Morning

Joey and I were talking in bed this morning and I commented how much I loved the background noise.  We were chatting, at 7am, to the sound of the kids playing in their room together.  ANd this is the background noise of all our weekend mornings, something I miss hearing every morning since Isaac went to school.  When left undisturbed, they always wake up with a vivid imagination together.  I love it so much that I decided to post about it!  I wish I had a live post from my mother, telling me what we were doing on a typical weekend morning, complete with a picture...

...(I wish it was a cuter one...and yes, I know my curtains don't match...I'm working on it;)  This is, hands down, the greatest thing about blogging!  Back to my story, by about 7:15 on weekend mornings, the kids have unloaded every stuffed animal, princess barbie and star wars toy onto their bed and are playing anything from Star Wars, to animal families.  Almost always, their method of play is Isaac narrating what he's doing, "and then Luke gets out of the ship and rescues you,"  Georgie listens for her cue, for Isaac to tell her what to do and say next, and then she does it, word for word.  When it comes to creative play, Isaac almost always runs the show.  By about 7:45, she ditches him to find me, but he almost always follows, begging her to come back.  If I'm in bed, she climbes in and I try to convince her to snuggle.  That lasts for about 2 seconds because she's hungry.  "Mommy, can you make me some brefast?"  I reluctantly climb out of bed or Joey runs in from the computer or the guitar, where he spends his Saturday mornings, and gets it for them.  A typical breakfast in the Merback household is Yogurt and Grape-nuts, or oatmeal or toast.  There's usually some fighting going on at breakfast..."she has more than me" or "she always gets that placemat" or "mommy, I said for you to get me some orange juice."  But, if we're lucky, the mood is pretty peaceful.  Its nice to wake up to!  Maybe I should try and recall those joyful moments later in the day when it takes all I can muster not to send them to weekend school;)

flowers, flowers, everywhere

flowers, flowers, everywhere

I did my first craft show last weekend and sold a whopping $100.00 worth!!  (I hope you're catching my sarcasm:)  The traffic wasn't very high, I put it quite a bit of time and even money toward the whole project and didn't quite make it all back but, still, I'd say the experience was worth it.  I shared a booth with a talented jewelry making friend named Nichole and we both felt the stress of looming rejection or failure, but we had fun!  Some friends asked me to post pictures with some tutorial links for the things that I made.

These fabric flowers were probably the most successful and unique things that I made.  Adults, teenagers and kids liked these because they are sort of casual/organic looking.  The edges frey as they are worn, which I love.  I had a box full of vintage buttons that my Gran had saved over the years that really came in handy.  I would recommend buying a lot on ebay for any sewing projects that you do.  Its hard to see the feathery, flouncyness from these pictures but they do have an almost whispy, petal look to them from the way they are folded.  I've been in the habit lately of holding on to any remnants of fabric that I get...be it old clothes, stained clothes, sheer curtains from when we moved in...whatever.  If there's any morsel of cuteness to a stained clothing item, I save it and repurpose it.  These clothes came in really handy for these flowers!  I'll bet you could find the stuff in your house to make a flower or two right now...for free!  Let me know if you do.

I used a lot of feathers on the silk flowers.  Thee cutest ones, bright pink and peacock feathers, sold out so I don't have any pictures.  Here is where I found them and for a pretty bang up deal too!

Last and probably least, I wanted to post how the vintage Belle dress turned out.  About my dilemma over keeping it a dress for dress up or making it into an adorable skirt for Sundays, my friend, Alyson suggested doing both.  She suggested making it into a two piece play dress who's bottom half could also be used for Sundays, weddings, Christmas etc.  I thought that was a genius idea and proceeded to hack into the work of some amazing mother from the 1940's.  Let's hope that she wasn't glaring knives at me from her cloud in heaven:)  Perhaps she's forgiven me now that she can see the finished product.  The bottom half was no big deal...rip out the seams and add an elastic waist...nothing to get excited about!  But the top was another story.  The results you see here were PURELY good luck and chance.  I had no real game plan...I just went about in my hairbrained way of cutting, patching, gathering and sewing until it came out looking as much like Belle's gown as I could possibly get it to.  I think Georgie 'll like it!  I'm glad that family and friends can only see pictures because if you saw the real deal you might notice what a shoddy job I did!  It's best, for me, that you remain in ignorance!

Better Late Than Never...Halloween

I know you'll be shocked, but Georgie was a princess this year.  Georgie had wanted to be Aurora since I first asked her the "costume question" a few months ago.  I told her that we weren't buying halloween costumes this year so she had to pick something from her closet.  When hearing what Georgie wanted to be, a kind friend let us borrow her little girls Aurora costume from a few years before.  It was perfect and Georgie loved it.

Of all things, Isaac wanted to be a bat.  I was pretty excited about this idea because it was his own, completely...not TV's idea, a friends idea or anything else.  I had fun putting his costume together out of a black beanie, an umbrella (for wings) and a black hoodie.  Cheap but cute!

Happy late Halloween!

Georgie Says....

"It already was Isaac's turn and now its my turn now.  I went to Disney World and then I had to go and then I had to fly and then I went to see Altus, OK."  I'm going to tell you about Disney World if Mom doesn't kill me before hand.  I't's tricky keeping these hands away from the keys and keyboard!

  (last part by Mom)

I'm very beautiful.  Pluto is such a good dog.

"This slide was cute and small and pink.

And that other picture was about I was silly and a hermit."

eh?

  

"This wig was long and I was pretending it was my hair.  I liked to look in the mirror when I wore it and carried my purse."

"These are the Ooo la la girls.  Daddy told me that was their name.  They are from It's A Small World After All ride.  Ya, ya, it was my favorite."

"She's captured and we want to save her.  And she is very so pretty.  Her dress is made out of fabric and her mom made it until she corrected Peter Pan.  And now her hands are tied up by the pirates just like this.  We tried to kill the pirates and save the pirate ship and Tinkerbell."

"I licked it and I just did."

"I was very so beautiful with my crown and my dress and one nation under Disney World!"  LOL;) Your guess on that one is as good as mine!

Over and out from the one nation under Disney World!

Isaac Says....

My Mommy already told you her side of the Disney World Story.

 Here's what I have to say about it:

This is me with Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story.  That other one is me with my new stuffed animal that I got from Disney World.  It's a Mickey Mouse dressed up as Luke.

This is me and Georgie on a Star Wars Ship.  I liked the Star Wars ride.

This is me and Georgie with Mickey and Minnie mouse.  We waited in line for a long time to take pictures with Mickey and Minnie Mouse.  It wasn't worth it but Mickey was nice.

Bruce ate me up at Disney World.  But he didn't chew me, that's why I'm still alive!

Okay, that's it.  This is taking forever and I'm done.

XOXO,

Isaac

We're Ba-ack!

Disney World was a wonderland!  We had such a good time.

Here's a little bit of what we did:

We had fun with 3D glasses (and 3D movies!)

It was fun to look down the aisle and see Isaac reaching out in front of him to

 touch the airborne characters.  Georgie couldn't keep the glasses on to save her life.  Somehow a blurred movie screen  was preferable to giant cartoon characters, canonballs and splashes of water flying at her. 

We had story time with Belle and Isaac was asked to play Belle's father.  He was quite the bashful but adorable thespian;)

We danced at the castle, complete with dips and tickley neck kisses,

We had lunch with the princesses

We played in giant wonderland playgrounds like this one with a Honey I Shrunk the Kids theme.  On the left is a shot of Isaac holding the Jedi Micky Mouse that he purchased with the money he'd been saving since we began planning the trip!  He was so excited.  Gigi purchased a little Ariel doll that she holds on to every moment that she's at home.

Here's Isaac in front of his favorite ride:  

Toy Story

And I did kind of love these pictures.  We have about 3 pictures of me, total, with the kids so it's nice for the kids to have a little bit of evidence that I actually played with them!  Notice how in the first picture its broad daylight and in the last it is dark.  This should signify how many "British Invasion" (code for Beatles;) shows that we went to IN A ROW at Epcot, much to Joey's enjoyment!  From 4:30-8:30pm we sang, danced and rocked out to The Beatles.   The rest of us were ready to go at 7pm but, for daddy, we stayed until 8:30.  And it was the best show of them all.  The kids WERE HILARIOUS dancers the WHOLE time!  Eventually I'll post some video once I get it edited.  I've never seen Isaac have so much rhythm.  He bowed like three times after every song, head banged, played air guitar, danced with a pole and more....we don't know where he learned that stuff!  

And, yes, people do actually buy there children those big huge suckers.  Who are these indulgent, sugar mongering people?  

Us!  Never say never;)

Georgie and Isaac were both very brave and 

conquered the Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster. 

 Way to go you two!

Some Sweet Dance Moves!

Our first taste of "the Disney dance phase" came on Monday night, at Magic Kingdom.  After watching a dancing/light show parade we bought Gigi a crown (poor girl didn't even have one;) to wear to her princess lunch the next day.  As soon as we payed and crossed the threshold of the Tinkerbell store back out into the street Georgie just couldn't contain herself.  She felt so beautiful, donned with plastic jewels, that she began to spin and twirl, skip and sing, wave her arms high and low, pick up her skirt to reveal princess underpants and hold projectile poses on the dirty ground.

The lighting was horrible as was my photography but the cool India-esque orange light smudges are actually growing on me.  I think it adds to the whole ambiance...gives it a Bollywood feel;)

And so, despite our sometimes vomitous feeling of being completely bombarded with Disney marketing tactics, in the end, Isaac displays perfectly how we felt about our Disney vacation.  We loved it in just the way that little boys love beautiful princesses but hate to admit it.

I know you've heard enough of our vacation already but this is, after all, our family journal and I'm not done documenting yet.  The kids will be posting their thoughts and when I get the video edited I'll post the footage of Isaac and Gigi dancing. Mostly for the enjoyment of Grandmas;)