Today we started with a car ride! Okay, okay, with breakfast but after that we jumped in the car to stop at the nearest Starbucks with drive-thru! 

Danielle got her NFFW and I got my CDL with both a Chocolate Chunk Cookie! And the coffee was a necessity as we were about to drive 3:13 hours as we got an invitation to meet both “Sinterklaas & Zwarte Piet” Celebrating Sinterklaas is a Dutch tradition and in short it is about the birthday of Sinterklaas, on the 6th of December he celebrates his birthday and on the 5th he gives presents to the people. After that he leaves to Spain to return a year after. For the none familiar readers: Wikipedia is your friend! 🙂

Emily did better as expected in the car, we drove to Davie, Florida (close to Miami) without stopping! Lucky for us we had some time left for a quick lunch at the McDonald’s! Emily got her first ever Happy Meal and she finished it…the McNuggets were gone really quick! 

Soon it was time to the local Scandinavian Church to welcome Sinterklaas himself. The organization, the N.A.S.F (Netherlands Association of South Florida), out did themselves. There was Dutch food (Poffertjes), Sinterklaas candy (Taaitaai, Kruidnoten, etc.) and games kids. 

At 16:15 Sinterklaas invite Emily over to get her gift! By now she is a professional unwrapper and she helped the other kids before she got her present. Not afraid at all she walked over smiled at Zwarte Piet, waved to Sinterklaas and sat down unwrapping her box with miniature Care-bears! Mama and Papa needed to help with opening the box but as soon as she could hold one of them she was happy! After a group picture we left as Emily was really tired. 

The first 1,5 hour Emily slept like Aurora and the last 2 she was awake looking at the lights around us. And I know I wrote no Disney yesterday but I made an executive decision and drove straight to EPCOT, the idea was to watch Illuminations! 

But it turned out a bit different! The line up for a picture with Joy & Sadness from the movie Inside Out was really short and thus Emily and Mama waited in line while Papa got something to eat and drink. Finally back it took just 10 more minutes before it was Emily’s turn to meet them…

She loved it, she walked through the whole meeting area with them touching the memories, pushing buttons and pulling handles at the control panel, chasing each other and more! There was not a single moment she was shy.  

At the very end of the meet Joy decided that Emily earned stickers…they were all over her head, skirt and legging. But Emily didn’t care she was sitting there with two new best friends watching the memories Riley was making! 

After this meet and greet we met with Baymax!

 Looking at the time (21:05) Illuminations would not be possible anymore…until we found out that it doesn’t start until 21:30 while we drove back to the villa…there I had my sadness kicking in. 

But for Emily it was better to get home, she was too tired to stay longer and as soon as we came home she went to bed! Probably dreaming of Bing Bong singing: 

Who’s your friend who likes to play?

Bing Bong, Bing Bong

His rocket makes you yell “Hooray!”

Bing Bong, Bing Bong

Who’s the best in every way, and wants to sing this song to say

Bing Bong, Bing Bong!

Goodnight!