It’s Sunday and today I’m sharing some of my heart and reflecting on the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Regular crafts and recipe posts to resume this week. 🙂

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration(#DisneySMMC) at Disney World. It is a by-invitation conference, where I paid my own way but at a discounted rate for things like park tickets and lodging. This was my first year attending and it was truly a special experience.

We are not really a family of Disneyphiles. We are fans of Disney to be sure, but I haven’t been to a Disney park in many, many years and my children have never been. I knew it would be a really fun trip but the biggest benefit was not something I would have ever have imagined. My little girl got back some of her childhood. That sounds a little dramatic, and I don’t mean it to be, I just don’t know how else to say it. Let me explain.

Back in February I hosted a #Disneyside party. I was sent products to help facilitate a party, and then I threw the party. It was a lot of fun. In our party kit, there were some Minnie Mouse sandwich bags. The bags weren’t used at the party, so the next week I thought I would earn some cool mom points and send my daughters sandwich in a Minnie Mouse bag. I wanted to surprise her and I couldn’t wait until she got home from school to see how much she liked her surprise. Well, the surprise was all on me. My sweet first grader was in tears and crushed. One of her “friends” made fun of her and said that she liked baby stuff because her sandwich was in a Minnie Mouse bag.

I was equally crushed and of course furious, because I’m the Mama Bear. Now I know plenty of adults that would love these sandwich bags, so it was just terrible that another little girl was cruel. We worked through it and decided that the Minnie Mouse bags would be for other things and not school lunches. Life moved on and everything was fine.

Fast forward a few months to #DisneySMMC and getting pictures with characters was all the rage. My daughter loved meeting all kinds of characters, including Mickey and Minnie Mouse. In fact, my daughter’s teacher who was not aware of the prior situation asked my daughter to get a picture with Minnie Mouse for her. The whole trip was just such a wonderful time for our family. I have never seen so much pure joy on their faces. I now understand why people make visiting Disney parks such a priority. We will back for sure.

The trip was wonderful and we had to come home late one day and go to school the next day. On a whim I asked my daughter, “How would you like me to pack your sandwich wrap in a Minnie Mouse bag today?” I bet you can guess what happened. She said, “That sounds great!” We only had 7 days left of the school year, but she took a Minnie Mouse bag every single day after that. I was so exited, I took a photo on the sly.

 

It’s something small, but I got to turn the clock back just a few notches and it makes me so happy. Kids grow up so fast and if it takes some pixie dust to slow that down just a bit, that’s not a bad thing at all! In fact, I think it’s a great thing. I wish some pixie dust and Disney magic for everyone!

What do you do to celebrate and keep hold of that joyful childhood innocence? Let me know in the comments, I would love to hear about it.