I have always been an active parent in my girls’ lives, and over the years through experience, I have acquired the skills needed to be an even better father. Changing diapers and potty-training were easy (but thank God those stages are over). Learning what colors and patterns match was a chore, but I eventually mastered it, with one of Gabriella’s teachers telling me last week that she never looks like “Dad dressed her.” And cooking quality meals… I have been able to do that since I was ten, so no trouble there (Note: Getting my youngest to eat them is a completely different story though). But once it was just me and them, there were only two things that I was seriously concerned about. One of them I will have to deal with in about seven years… and the other is doing their hair.
Yep. This post is going to be about pigtails, wide tooth combs, and unicorn hair ties… so try not to fall asleep.
Greetings! As you may have noticed, I have not written anything in almost a month. While the reports of my writer’s block have been greatly exaggerated, this has just been a very (unexpectedly) busy month for my family. It all started a few months ago when I got selected for promotion, but did not really kick in until last month when I got accepted into the next level of the military’s education system. The program, named Intermediate Level Education (Distance Learning, for me), is 18 months of classes, including numerous tests and papers. As if that was not taking up enough of my time, I got selected to move to a new position, one that will set me up for greater success and mobility within the Army. This is all great, do not get me wrong, but it also means that I have to study up on all the requirements and responsibilities of this new job, on top of the graduate-level classes I am already taking. The last bit that was thrown onto my plate was that I have to support a training exercise… in Washington state. Which means that, according to our parenting plan, the girls have to go back to Texas with their mother for a few weeks… ending only two weeks before they go back there for over two months. Needless to say, I have been extremely busy and am about to really miss my girls for almost three months. While I am certainly going to get back to writing, I just wanted to give a brief update that even though we have still been going on our adventures, writing about them has unfortunately taken a back seat to increase in workload. In essence, I have only had to sacrifice my personal time to ensure than my family is taken care of, which I think is the right answer. I will try to get a real post out as soon as I get some free time, but at least wanted to give everyone an update on why all the articles that I have been planning have not been forthcoming. Thanks for understanding.
“Pick the best one… tell them I drew it.”
While these look like depressing pictures, this is really just our morning routine. The girls say “Let’s do the window!,” and then we say goodbye to each other through all the windows in their classroom.
While our time visiting the Walt Disney World (WDW) parks was over, we still had a half-day at the resort and then the flight home. As I stated before, I wish I had planned for a day in the middle of our vacation to just enjoy the resort, so we spent the last day at WDW trying to squeeze in as much fun as possible. While tired yet happy, we just did not want our vacation to end until we arrived back at our house.
So we finally made it to Day Four of our Walt Disney World (WDW) vacation (thanks for sticking with us), with the Magic Kingdom batting cleanup. This was definitely the grand finale, as the girls were not only going to meet their favorite Disney princesses in their respective dresses, but also dine at Cinderella’s Royal Table in her castle (which the girls labelled, “The Princess Dinner,” even though it was technically for lunch). This was set-up as our best day of the trip and it did not disappoint in the least.
True Story: It took them ten minutes to sit still for this picture.
With two parks down and two to go, our Walt Disney World (WDW) vacation was halfway over. But it was far from the end and we were going to keep up the pace until we got on the flight home. Day Three was Gabriella’s pick and she chose to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. She is a huge animal lover and her perfect day back home is going to either the Reid Park Zoo in Tucson or the OdySea Aquarium in Scottsdale (at age three, without any pressure or influence from me, she wants to be either a veterinarian or a dolphin trainer).
Grab your popcorn and get your paint on. The post is about to begin.
With one full day already in the books, the Calkins Family decided that Hollywood Studios was going to be the next park at Walt Disney World (WDW) that we were going to attend (which we actually decided weeks before so that we could lock in our FastPasses). While the girls were extremely excited about the prospect of seeing Woody and Buzz Lightyear, I was looking forward to seeing if Gabriella grew in the past week (or if the sign was a tad short) so that she could ride Star Tours. Either way, this was going to be another amazing day on our family vacation.
After arriving the previous day, the Calkins Family was going to spend their first full day at Walt Disney World (WDW) at Epcot. I gave the girls the option of where to go first, and since the best way that I could describe the park was “like a giant children’s museum that has Anna and Elsa,” they obviously wanted to go there first.
Definitely the “Happiest Place on Earth” if it gets them to stop fighting and just hug each other every now and then
After the New Year, the Calkins Family embarked on our much-anticipated vacation to Walt Disney World. Resort reservations made. Tickets purchased. Bags packed. And Disney movies watched again and again. After months of preparing the girls for this trip, we set off from Fort Huachuca late at night so that we could catch our early morning flight to Orlando.
Given that the girls have returned to Arizona and we have had our Christmas together, I wanted to do a quick follow-up to my previous post on getting through the holidays (spoiler… we did!).
The girls are back home in Arizona and we are headed off to our next adventure at Walt Disney World today. I will certainly post about our WDW experience when we get back. I also have a follow-up holiday article coming up, as well as articles on how to manage (fix? not destroy?) little girls’ hair, organizing for toddlers, and travelling with little ones.
Walt Disney World is gonna rock!
I hope you are all having a great 2019 and we will be back in a week!
Adventures in Single Dadding 