Christmas is a special time for Central Florida theme parks – each park hosts Christmas events and is adorned in beautiful holiday decorations. Walt Disney World, of course, is no exception and hosts Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom. This special night-time event is not included with regular Magic Kingdom admission, but is an event that you and the kids will love.

We were able to enjoy the festivities again this year via a media invitation to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party. Baby boy was able to enjoy a lot more this time since he’s now walking and able to partake in the fun. He and his big sister enjoyed riding several rides, meeting some characters, and of course, snacking on cookies and hot chocolate. I always enjoy seeing Magic Kingdom decorated for Christmas and just walking around taking in the sights. Christmas and Disney World make a good combination, don’t you think?

Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party began on November 9 this year and continues through December 21, on select nights. A very family-friendly event, this Magic Kingdom Christmas party includes various holiday-themed fun:

• Cinderella’s Castle is decorated with Christmas lights that change color.
• Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmastime Parade will be enjoyed by the little ones and they’ll love seeing Santa Claus at the end!
• Exclusive holiday fireworks – Holiday Wishes: Celebrate the Spirit of the Season - can be seen during Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.
• Special shows and entertainment featuring Disney characters are scheduled each night of the party.
• Disney characters dressed in their holiday best are available for pictures and autographs. Special characters also tend to make an appearance that normally are not in the parks, such as Donald Duck’s Uncle Scrooge.
• Complimentary cookies, apple slices and hot cocoa are provided throughout various locations in the park.
• Walking down Main Street, U.S.A. with “snow” falling on you is always fun, especially for the kids!
• Several of the Magic Kingdom rides and attractions are open for you to enjoy with less lines.
• Kid-friendly dance parties with a DJ and Disney characters dancing too!

If you’re local to the area or plan to visit Walt Disney World this December, consider attending Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party; you still have time as the event will be held several nights in December this year and goes from 7 p.m. until midnight. Several other holiday events are also happening throughout other Walt Disney World parks – see Disneyworld.com/holidays for more information!

What do you enjoy most about Christmas at the theme parks?

Disclosure: We received complimentary admission to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party to experience the fun as a family.

As I look back on this blog, I realize that one of the things I enjoy most is sharing special parenting moments with you. It helps me reflect, take in, and enjoy those little, everyday moments, that are actually quite extraordinary. They are the ones we talk about when we get together and reminisce. Those are the moments that have created memories, as small as they seemed at the time.

Over the years, I’ve shared with you simple moments such as brushing my baby girl’s hair and enjoying the peacefulness of doing so, the 6 a.m. conversations we’ve had, and her love for her daddy. I’ve also shared big moments like the story of the day our baby girl was born, getting pregnant a second time, and the birth of our baby boy. They’re all important and all bring back memories.

I realize, though, that I haven’t documented much of baby boy’s life thus far. He’s almost eighteen months old already and is growing so fast! I want to take in his small moments too and be able to marvel at his simple, big, and momentous occasions. I think I’ll start sharing more of those with you from now on. Let’s start with some of what he’s doing at the moment.

• Baby boy is adventurous. He loves to walk, walk, and walk some more, all around the house, outside, and pretty much anywhere you’ll let him. Of course, this also means he likes to get into every corner, open doors, climb, and find his way into trouble as he explores.
• My little boy is sweet as can be. I’ve said it before that I was genuinely surprised by just how sweet boys can be. He loves to give rounds of hugs and goes back and forth between daddy, mommy, and his big sister. He’s a bit stingy with kisses, though.
• Baby boy is a comedian. This doesn’t surprise me much since his daddy and big sister are much the same way. He now knows that certain things he does will get a laugh from us and will do them on purpose. Of course, seeing him laugh (that big, belly-bouncing laugh that babies have), is all we really need to get us laughing.

There’s so much more he does on a daily basis, from running away when he knows he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, to sitting down to “read” a book. The transition from baby to toddler is a fun stage in parenting, one that I look forward to documenting a second time.

In the meantime, I’m excited to share that I’m joining a team of bloggers for Disney Baby and will have a chance to share parenting stories with their audience! Stories, anecdotes, and memories such as the ones I’ve described will be shared by the Disney Baby blogging team on the Disney Baby site starting next month. Until then, expect to see them here on ModernMami.com a couple of times a week. If you want, visit the sites of the rest of the Disney Baby bloggers and get to know them!

• Andrea Howe, Four Flights of Fancy
• Nadia Carriere, Child Mode
• Amy Heinz, Using Our Words
• Selena Burgess, La Petit Reve
• Michelle Horton, Early Mama
• Melanie Blodgett, You Are My Fave
• Lauren Hartmann, The Little Things We Do
• Janssen Bradshaw, Everyday Reading
• Jacinda Boneau and Jamie Morrison Curtis, Prudent Baby
• Rachel Faucett, Handmade Charlotte
• Arianne Segerman, To Think Is to Create
• Casey Mullins, Moosh in Indy
• Natalie Holbrook, Nat the Fat Rat
• Amber Doty, The Daily Doty
• Meagan Francis, The Happiest Mom
• Becka Robinson, Life as an Artistpreneur
• John Cave Osborne, JohnCaveOsborne.com

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Disney Baby. I’ll be joining the Disney Baby blogging team next month, and look forward to sharing these kinds of stories with you over there! Stay tuned for more details!

Photo: Rob Ellis

The last week of April began what has been a month of travel, conferences, and fun. It kicked off with a bang, though, as it all started with a trip to Walt Disney World to attend Disney’s Social Media Moms Celebration!

This was our third year attending this family-inclusive conference and as always, we had a great time. It’s great to be able to take the family along and have events that are for the whole family! It definitely makes it easier when trying to balance work and life.

Speakers at this year’s Social Media Moms Celebration included Chris Brogan, Peter Shankman, Ramon De Leon, Amy Jo Martin, and Lisa Druxman. They each spoke on a variety of topics, ranging from how they use social media in their businesses, to how they balance out their lives. It’s fair to say that the overall message from the speakers was that you need to create your own success and find the fun in life.

Here are some of the snippets I shared via Twitter from the presentations we heard:

The Social Media Moms Celebration also included a day of mini-sessions, of which I attended a Doc McStuffins presentation. I was able to learn more about this new show on Disney Junior and hear from the show’s creator about the inspiration behind Doc McStuffins – she saw a need for helping children learn about doctor visits after being in and out of the hospital with her son his first year of life. It was also very interesting to find out that when she pitched the show to Disney, her son was about 8 months old and the show did not premiere until he was almost 5 years old!

Between pirate-themed family dinners, a night-time visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and a sneak peek at the new resort, Disney’s Art of Animation, my family really enjoyed themselves. Personally, I was able to reconnect with many friends from our blogging community and learn more about how Disney world provides families with many opportunities to create memories. One of the strongest statements made during the conference that resonated with the majority of attendees was that we only have eighteen summers with our children to make lasting memories before they leave our house (traditionally). Wow, right?! Eighteen years! That’s it!

What are some of the more special memories you’ve been able to create with your children so far?

I encourage you to search the #DisneySMMoms hashtag on Twitter to find links to more posts from other Disney Social Media Moms Celebration attendees. I’m sure you’ll get a variety of stories from the conference and a wealth of information about Walt Disney World!

Photo: Josh Hallett

Our Disney princess patiently waiting to arrive at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for a night of fun during the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration.

Today’s the day! We’re heading to Walt Disney World for the Social Media Moms Celebration!

Learning, fun, family, and friends? Yes, please! We’ll share insights with you soon, but in the meantime, follow along with us on Twitter and Facebook!

If you have young children at home, then you may be excited to find out that a new 24-hour Disney Junior channel will be coming on March 23!  The current Disney Junior block will continue on Disney Channel as well, but your kids can now enjoy their favorite shows throughout the entire day.

The new Disney Junior channel will include shows like Jake and the Never Land Pirates and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, plus will launch with new shows like Doc McStuffins and a weekend full of Disney movies. In addition, the Disney Junior channel will feature past Disney shows such as, Higglytown Heroes, JoJo’s Circus, and Rolie Polie Olie. My girl loved JoJo’s Circus when she was younger and her first birthday party theme was even JoJo’s Circus, so this is pretty exciting for our family! Now, we can share these shows with baby boy as well.

Other new shows coming to Disney Junior are Sofia the First, about a little girl princess, and Oki’s Oasis, the first western for preschoolers, starring Mandy Moore as the voice of Oki. You can check DisneyJuniorTheChannel.com to see if the new 24-hour Disney Junior channel will be available in your area.

What are some of your children’s favorite Disney shows?

A few photos from our weekend safari tour of Kilimanjaro Safaris at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, part of the Walt Disney World resort in Orlando, Central Florida.

Have you ever been to Disney’s Animal Kingdom? What’s your favorite part of that park?

Helping folks find their way to Cinderella’s Castle. Icons on parking lot floor of Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World.

My family and I recently attended Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. We were part of a media group invited to attend as guests of Disney and were able to join the fun of celebrating Christmas Disney-style. This is our second year attending Mickey’s Christmas Party and it was just as fun as our first time attending!

Some of the highlights of attending the holiday events at Disney World are special character sightings, special event merchandise for those who collect Disney merchandise, and event-only parades and other activities. During Mickey’s Christmas Party, we got to see Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmastime Parade, which has a special appearance from Santa at the end. You can also catch a holiday version of Wishes, Magic Kingdom’s fireworks show. There were also a couple of character-themed dance parties for the kids; baby girl got to dance with Jessie from Toy Story!

Throughout the night, we spotted some new characters we had never run into in the past: Abu from Aladdin, the bears from Frontierland’s Country Bear Jamboree, and Captain Jack Sparrow. I’m not sure if these characters are normally out and about at the parks and we’ve just missed them, but I know that it was our first time being able to get their autograph and picture. We actually had something really nice happen to us as we were waiting for Abu’s autograph. As is normal for character greetings, Abu and Aladdin were switching out with Jasmine and the Genie. The only character my girl was missing was Abu, since she’s met the others at previous park visits. As she was getting close to the front of the line, it was announced that only one more person would meet Abu and Aladdin, as Jasmine and the Genie were about to come out. So, baby girl was going to miss her chance to meet Abu! But, the very nice little boy in front of her told her it would be okay to switch places since he was fine with meeting any of the characters!

Something my girl was really looking forward to was the complimentary hot chocolate and cookies that are provided to guests throughout the park. The night we attended, it was actually pretty cool out and windy, so hot chocolate came in handy. The snow on Main Street is also a fun treat! Another bit of Disney magic that happened for us that night was not being charged for baby boy’s skullcap; the cashier told my husband as he went to pay, “I can’t let the baby be cold!”

We had a nice evening out and enjoyed seeing Magic Kingdom decorated for Christmas. It’s always fun to visit the parks during these special events because you see them in a whole new way. In the coming weeks, we plan to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios to see the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights.

Have you ever visited Disney World or Disneyland during the holidays? What is your favorite part?

Photos © ModernMami.com

New Magic Kingdom parking lot set-up.