Siena at 10 months

• Gives high-fives
• Waves hi and bye
• Says"goy" all the time
• Always on the move
• Stands for brief periods of time
• Sings and dances along to songs

Halloween at Magic Kingdom

I love to visit Disney World during a festival or when the parks are decorated for a holiday. Don’t get me wrong visiting Disney World during any time of year is wonderful, but the holiday or festival provides a little extra magic.

On our last trip to Disney World, the Magic Kingdom was decorated for Halloween. Well not the whole park, just the entrance, Main Street and the hub.

When you go through the turnstiles, the first thing you notice are the giant pumpkins in front of the train station and the banners decorating the station.

After you reemerge from the tunnel onto Town Square, you will find scarecrows welcoming you.

The buildings lining Main Street are decorated with banners and pumpkins. Be sure to take some time and look at the carvings on the pumpkins that adorn each building – so perfectly Disney.

In the hub, new Halloween inspired statues have been placed.

When leaving Magic Kingdom, right before you go through the tunnel/under the train station make sure to look up.

Epcot: Food and Wine Festival - Greece

I could have stayed at the Greece booth at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival the whole time we were there. I loved all their food choices!

The Greek Salad with Pita Bread was wonderful. The feta cheese, olives and dressing were perfect. The pita bread was great to soak up the leftover dressing on my plate.

The Spanakopita is what I refer to as spinach pie. It was flaky and yummy.

The Chicken Souvlaki with Tzatziki was one of my favorite dishes at the whole festival. I loved the Tzatziki sauce and the pita bread was soft and delicious. I think I had this dish three times at the festival....

Below is the full menu from the Greece booth:

Greek Salad with Pita Bread

Spanakopita

Chicken Soulaki with Tzatziki

Baklava

Boutari Moschofilero

Enoteca Emery Athiri Mountain Slopes

Boutari Naoussa

Atlantis White

Epcot - Food and Wine Festival: Mexico

During the Food and Wine Festival at Epcot, 28 food booths are set up from different countries around the world. Each food booth offers tapas sized food, wine and/or beer and/or cocktail drink. It is a great way to sample different foods that you would not normally try.

One of the food booths that I really enjoyed was Mexico. The Tamal de Pollo was wonderful...the chicken mixture inside was flavorful and delicious.

The Esquites (Pan-Fried Corn and Spices) was ok. All the flavor and spices were on top, so once you got past the top layer it was just plain corn kernels.

My husband really enjoyed the Taco de Chilorio. It was full of flavor and the pork was cooked perfectly.

I didn't get a photo of the Passion Fruit Margarita, but I could have drank it all day. It was so good. I noticed that the Passion Fruit Margarita was on the newly renovated La Cantina de San Angel menu...I hope it tastes as good.

Below is the full menu from the Mexico booth:

Tamal de Pollo
Taco de Chilorio
Esquites(Pan-Fried Corn and Spices)
Churro
Dos Equis Beer
Passion Fruit Frozen Margarita
Conga Fruit Punch
Wine L.A. Cetto Chardonnay
Wine L.A. Cetto Petite Sirah

Review: 3D Disney’s Dessert Discovery, Epcot

3D: Disney’s Dessert Discovery is a special event in celebration of Epcot’s International Food and Wine Festival. My family and I attended the October 8, 2010 party in the World ShowPlace Pavilion. Disney World advertised the event as, “…a dessert lover's dream! During the Festival, select Thursday & Friday evenings become truly delicious with a variety of desserts and samplings of cordials certain to please any sweet tooth. Afterwards enjoy V.I.P. viewing of IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth.” This special event really was magical and my family and I enjoyed every moment of it.

This event is held in the World ShowPlace Pavilion which is located between Canada and United Kingdom, behind two large brown doors. You first check-in across from the building on the lagoon side of the World Showcase. You need to have your entire group together upon check-in, as you will each receive a wristband that will allow you access to the party and then later into the special VIP viewing area of IllumiNations. As a side note: the cast members even put a “Under 21” wristband on my 9-month old daughter; which was a little excessive.

Upon entering the World ShowPlace Pavilion, we were each handed a pair of 3D glasses (more on the glasses later.) We were held in the entrance of the building until 7:00 p.m., when the curtain opened allowing us our first look at the party. The room was beautiful! The tables were covered with tablecloths and the chairs had cloth covers on them. There were candles on each table and ambiance lighting throughout the room. In addition, a band was playing on a small stage. There were several dessert buffets set up around the room each one consisted of two different stations of desserts with each station being repeated in another section of the room. Each dessert buffet had two alcohol offerings on each. In addition, along the walls were beverage tables with water, lemonade, pomegranate lemonade, ice tea, hot tea, and coffee.

The seating was not assigned, but it seemed like everyone had a place to sit. The lines for the desserts and alcoholic drinks were long at first but as the night progressed they decreased significantly. You do not have to worry about the desserts running out, because the cast members are constantly refilling.

The first dessert station I tried was the "miniature pastries", which included pistachio cannoli, chocolate eclairs, cream horns and linzer diamonds. I think the chocolate eclairs were one of my favorite desserts of the night...I ended up going back for more.

The second station I hit was the "chocolate" one. This station included biscotti, macaroons, tea cookies and truffles. When I went through the first time there were no macaroons, but when I went back to take photos they had magically appeared. I was really disappointed in this station, besides the truffles (which chefs were rolling in front of us), nothing else was that great. This station could have used more "chocolate" items like fudge or a homemade chocolate chocolate chip cookie.

The third station that I hit was “warm donuts with ice cream”, which were donuts flambéed in Jim Beam with your choice of vanilla or coffee ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and cherries. So yummy, but when I started getting down to the bottom of my bowl, the alcohol was very strong.

The last station I hit was the "warm dessert", I was really looking forward to these desserts. The choices were candy bar bread pudding, chocolate ganache torte with raspberry sauce, and peach, apple and raisin cobbler with rum sauce. Sadly, none of these desserts led up to my expectation. The bread pudding had no flavor. The chocolate ganache torte was ok without the sauce. The cobbler was not what I was looking for, not a traditional cobbler.

The alcoholic choices were scotch, rum, Maker’s Mark 46, Red Stag (in lemonade or hot cranberry juice), sweet Champagne, dry Champagne and red dessert wine (described as Spain’s version of the Canadian Ice Wine).

At about 8:30 pm, we started out walking for our VIP viewing of Illuminations. We had to follow orange lighted batons through the Food and Wine Festival crowd to the front for World Showcase, across from America, between the two stores. We had to show our wrist bands to get into the area which was quite large, and we had plenty of room around us to breathe.

What made the event was the 3D glasses. I can not describe how magical it was to watch the fireworks through these special 3D glasses. When the first firework went into the air, the whole crowd gasped. On every light of the firework was 2 mickey heads, so the sky was full of falling mickeys. It truly was a perfect end to the evening!

Overall, I think the event was well worth the money. We all enjoyed ourselves and got to experience something new at Epcot.

Cost of Event: $45.00 USD per person, plus tax. Gratuity included. Theme park admission is required.

Upcoming Dates:
October 21, 2010 7:00-8:30 p.m.
October 28, 2010 7:00-8:30 p.m.
November 5, 2010 7:00-8:30 p.m.
November 12, 2010 7:00-8:30 p.m.

Siena at 9 months

• Cruising along furniture


• Crawling "normally"


• Wanting to constantly be on the move


• Eating more and more solid food


• Added "dada" to her vocabulary


• Shrieks to get your attention or to be heard over noise


• Loves water: faucet running, fountains, etc.