Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

Independence day means celebrating America! Barbecue (barbeque or BBQ, depending on the region), family, fireworks, watermelons, swimming and general merriment abound. After a day or two, my family needs a little downtime, so we fall back on our favorite kid friendly movies about the revolution, patriotism and American apple pie nostalgia. Ten kid friendly films perfect for Labor Day, Memorial Day and the Fourth of July In no particular order: The Top Ten Family Friendly Fourth of July Movies   Ben & Me Passed The classic film short following the mouse behind the man. See Benjamin Franklin's adventures from inventions to the Declaration of Independence. Disney's American Legends Direct to DVD - I'd rate it G James Earl Jones introduces the legends of John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan and Casey Jones. Try watching these without reminiscing about elementary school movie days. Not really possible is it? Yankee Doodle Cricket TV Movie - I'd ra...

Last year by late June, the #DisneyMP twitter tag enjoyed a workout as all of the #2015Hopefuls proceeded to begin the annual process of waiting and hoping for pixie dust emails know as the Disney Parks Moms Panel Search. The aura of mystery around the selection process keeps us hopefuls coming back each year to wish on a star for this year to be "our year" on the panel. Just keep writing. Just keep writing. What do we do? Somehow last year, I *did* manage to make the final round(s) so I feel well equipped to tell you roughly the proper process to make it through to the finals. 1.) Notice round 1 dates are announced on the Disney Parks Blog, Twitter and/or other forms of social media. (Approximately end of August)  2.) Apply as soon as applications open. (Around Labor Day week.) 3.) Read over your essays. Spellcheck. More than once. Be mindful of proper nomenclature. (I'm embarrassed to say that this takes me an hour or two depending how much "assistance...

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers! Can I just stop for a moment and say how shocked I am it's July? Deb, am I right that this year is going super fast?    Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom swapping cards before rope drop. Do you have any Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom fans among your mousekateers? Thank you to Focused on the Magic for hosting!  

Early Friday morning, I tried to avoid all of the controversy on Facebook. In case you hadn't heard, they banned the selfie stick from  all of the Disney Parks locations and the Disney discussion was running rampant. Just before I shut off my phone, I checked my email.  I love pixie dusted email! I squealed. I jumped up and down. I hopped onto Twitter and tweeted my disbelief. Then I hopped back onto Facebook and discovered my Disney BFF, Casey who blogs at Mommy to All Girls got in as well! We'll do our best to #KeepAustinGoofy and report back after the #DisneySMMC conference in August! FAQs: How do you get invited? Please visit www.disneysmmoms.com and add your email to their email list! You'll get notified when it's time to apply for future "On The Road" events. No one really knows how the selection process works, but you can never g wrong following Genie's advice to, "Just BEE yourself!" The Disney Social Media Moms Celebr...

After ending the day Saturday  with twenty Wilderness Explorer badges, the kids voted unanimously to head back to Animal Kingdom for more. The badge stations opened a little bit later than park opening, so we ducked into the Tree of life to warm up while we waited. Guess who was coming out just a we left the world of the bugs?  Squirrel! Our fellow Wilderness Explorers, Russell and Dug greeted Christ and Kylee. The kids told them all about their mission to become Senior Wilderness Explorers. Russell wished them well and signed their Wilderness Explorer Handbooks. We hiked off to the Maharajah Jungle trek through the quiet of the morning.   Beautiful and fun. The tigers weren't out yet, but the badge guides were.  Talking tiger with their badge guide. We hopped one of the first trains out to Rafiki's Planet Watch and the kids faced their biggest fear...the petting zoo. The badge guide insisted that the kids had to go into "Affection Secti...

Sonlight is having a monthly blog linkup this year, in honor of their 25th anniversary. Find out how we decided to homeschool in the February hop and my best advice for new homeschoolers in March and in April shared a day in the life of my homeschool . Last month, I admitted complete ignorance to the whole convention scene and instead blogged about our summer reading list (so far). Now for June's prompt: Share your favorite summer reading and learning activities . Ah, the lazy days of summer... CAUTION: Three consecutive weeks of swim lessons may induce napping. or not as much, in our case. One of the many perks of homeschool is that when it is center of the sun hot (which in Texas, can stretch from June well into September) we hibernate. Now since we don't live in a cave (or under a rock) hibernating is quite pleasant and even dare I say fun in it's on way. What do we do to hibernate? Read. Lots. Which means our library card gets quite the workout (as can ...

After spending all day Tuesday waiting out #TSBill, the rain cleared just enough for me to go brave minor flooding and meet up with a friend for a girl's night out. Our film of choice: Fathom events presentation of Insider Access to Disney Pixar's Inside Out. Not only would we get to watch the long awaited Pixar film, but enjoy a behind the scenes tour of the Pixar studios. It's always nice to get some girl time and getting to view the latest Disney film uninterrupted was a real treat. As a Disney/Pixar fan, the tour before the film was worth the fathom ticket pricing.  Meet the Little Voices Inside Your Head! Inside Out SPOILERS warning!!!  If you don't want any spoilers, go watch the movie (bring Kleenex!) then come back.   Joy is not the first Pixar character that made me both laugh and cry. (Frankly, between Up and Finding Nemo and Toy Story 3 , the mere sight of the Pixar logo is something of a warning sign for me to double up on the Kleenex....

Welcome to this month's Magical Blogorail Blue loop. Today we are sharing what you can expect from some of the club level experiences at Disney Resorts and on the Disney Cruise Line. Have you ever dreamed of cruising concierge?  What about in the royal suite? Last year offered up a boatload of moms panel excitement , trip planning high spirits, beginning of  homeschool jitters and also a ridiculous amount of pixie dust magic!  Toes in the wind and off on an adventure! In January, our family cruised in the Walt Disney Suite on the Disney Wonder to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary and our daughter's fifth birthday. Then in November, we upgraded at port to the Walt Disney Suite on the Disney Fantasy. Just for fun. (TONS of pixie dust, y'all!) So what's the difference between one royal suite and another? The Disney Wonder Disney's classic ships, the Disney Magic and the Disney Wonder feature nearly identical Royal Suites. Located on deck ...

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers! This week's focus is on our favorite Disney dads. No offense to Goofy, Mufasa or Darth Vader, but my favorite Disney dad is my husband! Gingerbread house construction in Animator's Palate; Mickey Bar on the Verandah; Meeting Donald; Castaway Cay 5K; Outside Enchanted Garden.  Thank you to Focused on the Magic for hosting!

Previously on the Three Mousekateers , Agent K foiled the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz, my daughter found her Voice and my son upped his defenses. With four days of magic on the books, we were very much in need...  Some time to take a breath and appreciate the details. Of a little bit of a break! Groundhog's Day crowd level predictions for the parks were medium, so we decided to take a day to kick around the resort and Downtown Disney and just rest. Racing cars at the Lego Store. After returning Susan's iPhone charger , we played at the Lego Store for a while, then window shopped and the kids collected another few pressed pennies from the various machines. Our friend, the Lego Dragon! When we started to get hungry, we headed back to the Downtown Disney buses. It was time to resort hop! Disney's Beach Club is a lovely place for a break. We arrived at Beaches and Cream with plenty of time to wander a bit before our ADR. Kylee and I split the falafel while...

Best Performance in a Leading Role #SilentSunday

Previously on the Three Mousekateers , pixie dust rained down, younglings completed their training and we just barely escaped Akershus unscathed. With food in everyone's belly and alacrity returning to the mouseketeers, the promise of pixie dust hung in the warming afternoon...   Once upon a time three intrepid Mousekateers set out to take on the World one Dole Whip at a time. Christopher directed us toward Spaceship Earth after his near brush with the princesses. As luck would have it, we arrived at the FastPass+ queue just as a large tour group also entered the line. Thankfully with the continuous loading, we got to go straight back into the history of communication with hardly any hang ups. The kids just finished up learning about the ancients and loved seeing all of the different animatronics of Egypt, Rome and especially the Phonecians. (I don't know why they love the Phoenicians so much, they just do.) Anyway, they asked us to squeeze three across so we all sha...