Disney On Ice + Travel To Cedar Rapids

Good morning and hello from Iowa! I’m checking in today from my hotel room in Cedar Rapids and anxiously awaiting room service for breakfast. I admittedly have an unnatural love for room service. I absolutely love trying new restaurants and tasting the local flavors when I travel to a new place but I’d be lying if I said room service didn’t feel like a luxurious indulgence.

I’m in Cedar Rapids for a blog trip with Quaker and will absolutely share more about my trip in an upcoming blog post but for now I wanted to recap our weekend and share a little bit about the past couple of days with you guys.

Weekend

Friday night kicked off with date night!

With my mom in town, Ryan and I were more than happy to take advantage of her kind offer to hang out with the boys so we could enjoy a relaxing date night at 131 Main. It’s been way too long since we had a date night (I truly cannot remember the last time – gah!) and, as always, we laughed a lot and said we need to really begin making date night more of a priority because dating each other is really freaking fun.

We began date night with drinks and ended it with ice cream. A winning combination in my book!

Saturday

Our weekend continued on a high note on Saturday morning. The boys, Ryan, my mom and I piled into Ryan’s car and drove into the city for Disney On Ice where our family was invited to attend the 11 a.m. show. We had plans to meet my friend Carrie and her family there (Chase and her daughter Lilly have been friends since they were babies!) and once we were all reunited, we bought some popcorn and found our seats.

Dress: Amazon (Available in a bunch of colors and very lightweight — perfect =summer to fall transition dress! I’m wearing a medium.) / Shoes: Slip-on Converse / Fringe Bag: H&M 

The show took place at the Spectrum Center which is where the Charlotte Hornets play basketball. Since the venue was quite large, I fully expected it to feel like total mayhem inside but everything flowed well, parking was easy and traffic wasn’t too bad. All big wins!

Having never been to a Disney On Ice production before, I wasn’t sure what to expect and truthfully, I thought we’d be taking turns walking around the concessions with Ryder because he’s in the wiggliest phase of toddlerhood right now and doesn’t like to sit still for long. We were all totally amazed when he not only sat still for the entire show but genuinely seemed to be captivated by it as well!

(Super random tip: If you’re ever looking for Disney clothing, check your local children’s consignment shop. I found both boys’ tees on Friday at Children’s Orchard for only $3 each!) 

All of the kids watched the show with their mouths agape which had all of the adults laughing quite a bit. I swear they were all too infatuated to even smile!

Chase was all-in on the show from the moment it began and loved every second of the Toy Story segment.

The show lasted right around two hours with one 20-minute intermission and it was fabulous. We would absolutely love to go again in the future and will be keeping Disney On Ice on our radar when it comes through Charlotte again.

We made it back home in time for a late lunch and naps for both boys. Apparently a morning at Disney On Ice exhausted Chase and Ryder because they both napped for 2.5 hours! My mom volunteered to hang back with the baby monitor while Ryan and I took Sadie on a long walk in the afternoon. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and getting outside and enjoying a distraction-free walk with Sadie was a treat!

By the time the boys were up, we were all in the mood for food and drove to Birkdale Village where we picked up Cava for dinner and had a picnic on the grass outside where the boys could run around.

Our plans for the evening took me and Ryan out again (two nights in a row – who are we?) and we met up with our friends at Hello, Sailor for drinks in honor of our friend Laura’s birthday.

It was such a fun night and Ryan and I both crashed hard when we got home.

Sunday

Despite our best efforts, Ryan and I didn’t sleep past 6:30 a.m. on Sunday and since we were awake, we figured we’d sneak in a quick walk with Sadie before everyone else was up for the day. We covered right around 3 miles and arrived home just as the boys began to stir.

The rest of the morning passed by in a bit of a blur. I packed for my trip to Cedar Rapids and said goodbye to everyone around 9 a.m. Travel to Cedar Rapids by way of Chicago was fairly smooth and I arrived in Iowa around 3 p.m. I made it to my hotel a little after 4 p.m. but apparently that was late enough in the day for most things within walking distance of our hotel to be closed. I struck out three different times when I tried to head out to various places you guys recommended to me to check out via Instagram Stories but took that as a sign to relax a bit and get some work done in my hotel room.

I only had two hours of free time to spare before I met up with our group in the hotel lobby for a welcome dinner with other bloggers and the Quaker team. It was a delicious dinner — a fabulous strawberry and granola salad followed by salmon and then apple crisp with ice cream for dessert — and I went to bed feeling nice and full.

Today should be a rather busy day! After a full morning and afternoon, I’ll be heading back to North Carolina and should arrive home around 10 p.m. I hope you guys all have a great Monday and thanks so much for making PBF a part of your week!