So we finally did it. We took all three kids on a plane ride to Florida.
[More Click here to read all about it and SEE ALL OF THE PICTURES]
Mike's Uncle Paul got married in St. Petersburg the first weekend in January. So, we decided to attend the wedding and just make a vacation out of it and visit a certain Mouse while we were there. (Butch, Wendy, Corey and Casey also attended but they decided to drive to Florida). We flew out New Years Day and stayed with Mike's mom in Spring Hill. The older two did well on the plane ride. They sat and read, colored, Hunter played his DS. Stone, well he's a two year old and acted as such. We didn't buy him a seat so he was on my lap and Mike's lap the entire flight. The whole back and forth thing got old but I think Stone did pretty well considering there wasn't much room to move around.
Me and the kids finally got to meet Mike's grandmother Vi and his other Uncle John (who looks like Kevin Spacey by the way) and his daughter Claire. We spent the Saturday before the wedding at Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park checking out the animals and the manatees, which is supposedly the big draw and ironically I don't have one picture of them. It was a beautiful day but a little cold.
Sunday January 3rd was Paul and Jane's wedding.
The hotel was beautiful and I felt like we were treated like royalty. The ceremony was short and out on the balcony. So again, it was VERY cold. This is a shot of the hotel the next morning before we left. And yes, it's pink! (Brooke was thrilled!)
I danced a LOT and the kids always have no problems getting out on the dance floor. They are naturals like their mama.
And again, we met a lot of Mike's side of the family - Paul and his new wife Jane, Paul's daughter Rochelle, Aunt Ceil, and John's sons Kyle and David.
I can't say enough about the hotel. They really catered to the kids during the reception. One of the waiters brought some paper and colors for the kids so they wouldn't be too bored. The waiters also brought fruit cups for them while the appetizers were being served. They even brought sparkling grape juice in champagne glasses for the kids to have during the toast.
There are SO many pictures from this part of the trip. But I wanted to post some from the reception because Brooke picked up the camera and started taking pictures. I think it's interesting to see the world from a 4-year-olds perspective.
Finally Monday gets here and we're off to Disney World! But not before we checked out the beach! The hotel still had Christmas decorations up so we took some time to take a few more pictures before we left.
We didn't get all checked into the hotel in Orlando until mid-afternoon. But it was worth the wait. The hotel was amazing (in a juvenile kind of way). We stayed at the All Star Movie Resort and boy was it awesome.
The court yard of the hotel had these ginormous Toy Story characters. Every time we would walk by them Stone would scream "See Buzz-year, see Buzz year!"
Our first stop was Disney Hollywood Studios. Because we stayed at the resort, we got to take advantage of their special late hours. We were there until 11 p.m. soaking it all in - oh yeah, and freezing our tails off! I tried to take pictures of everything we did, but sometimes that just wasn't possible. We did the Star Wars Star tour, we did the Muppet 3D Show, we saw the Osborne Family Specticle of Dancing Lights, the kids danced some some of the Disney Characters at the Playhouse Disney live on stage...Mike and I rode the Hollywood Tower of Terror and the Aerosmith Rollercoaster, which both ROCKED!!
Tuesday we headed to Magic Kingdom! Casey got his haircut for the first time at a barbershop inside the park. (I didn't get a picture but he did get mouse ears!)
The castle in real life is unbelievable. The pictures you see of it don't do the REAL thing justice. It was beautiful!! And all the Christmas decorations were still up. We spent an entire day at Magic Kingdom so we did a LOT. There was a ton of stuff the kids could do. We rode Peter Pan's Flight, which I thought was SO COOL for a kids ride. The kids rode a merry go round which they always love to do. We rode "It's a Small World", The Haunted Mansion (Mike and Hunter rode this again after lunch), we met Woody and Jessie from Toy Story 2, we rode an Aladdin flying carpet ride, we saw the Swiss Family Robinson house (which was a huge tree - very cool). We caught a parade as we were crossing the park and saw lots of characters we hadn't yet seen, including the Disney princesses and Mickey himself! We went into Tomorrowland and Mike and the kids did Stitch's Great Escape. Next we rode the train over to Mickey and Minnie's house and met them in person. This was also the night that Brooke and I got our picture taken with Aerial! I think it was the highlight for both of us! We stayed until the park closed that night so we could see the fireworks show! It was a long, but unbelievable day!
This was so cute. We stopped at the Sword and the Stone and we told Hunter the story about how only one person could pull the sword out. He still can't figure out why he couldn't pull it out and what we'll do if we go back to the park and the sword is gone!
Here are a few pictures from the parade we caught crossing the park. I actually got emotional just seeing all this - it was truly overwhelming!
These are the pictures of Mickey Mouse's house and then our meeting he and Minnie.
These are the pictures of Brooke and Aerial and myself. We're going to frame some of these for Brooke's room! :)
The castle was truly amazing and these pictures just don't do it justice!
This is Stone in his "Buzz year" hat from the shop in the hotel. We didn't buy it but thought it was funny.
Day three: we're off to Animal Kingdom and got to spend a few hours at Epcot!
And this is how we started off the day - cold and not in very good moods (see Stone on the ground not wanting to take his picture!). Lucky for them, the day was pretty much all about them. There was so much to do there, but there was a rollercoaster that the adults got to ride. Below is a picture off the internet and it was called Expedition Everest and it was VERY cool!
Off we went to the Kilimanjaro Safari. 500 acres that is home to some 1700 animals representing 250 different species throughout the park. The jeep that we rode didn't really slow down long enough to allow good pictures. But here are a few I did take:
Next we took a train ride to the other side of the park to see a 3-D movie.
The movie was called It's Tough to Be A Bug. It was in the Tree of Life which is a sculpted 14 story, 50 foot wide tree. 325 animals are carved into the bark of the tree and it also houses the 3D theater. It's the main tree that you see as you're walking into the park. I've posted a picture of it above.
From there we left and headed over to Epcot. There aren't many pictures of the few hours we were there because it had been a long day and I was tired of taking pictures. It was cold and we saw much of Epcot in the dark. I told Mike on our next trip to Disney, we'll have to start at Epcot and see it in the day light. We started with the Seas with Nemo and Friends. You ride in a giant clam and it takes you through the story of the adventures Nemo faced.
We didn't really do much after this. It was SO cold and everyone was hungry. So we headed over to China for dinner. From there we did a little shopping and then got our seats for the fireworks show. I really enjoyed it and can't wait to go back and see what Epcot has to offer in the daylight.
We got back to our hotel and walked in on the weirdest thing. Brooke's (stuffed) penguin was sitting on the bed with the remote control watching TV, her (stuffed) dog had gotten into the toilet paper and little Brooke (Brooke's baby doll) was missing. We couldn't find her anywhere.
After searching the hotel room, we located little Brooke. Apparently this is something that house cleaning does to be funny. They had tied up the window drapes as a swing and little Brooke was sitting in the window.
So Thursday morning before we left we headed to Downtown Disney to do a little shopping. We literally had about an hour and it was back to the airport to head home.
Again, what I did see of Downtown Disney was AMAZING and I can't wait to go back and see it all. We literally only got to hit two shops while we were there. One them being a HUGE Lego store. We didn't buy anything but probably could have spent all day there.
And then my little princess asked to have her picture taken with another Disney princess. We passed a huge statue of Cinderella on our way out.
The flight home was pretty uneventful. We got to the airport and had just enough time to eat before we got on the plane. The flight back was a full one, but the seat next to me was empty. Getting Stone to actually sit in it was virtually impossible, but again, he is only two!
We took over 550 pictures over the course of the seven day trip! It was truly an AMAZING experience and it was really neat to see Disney for the first time with my children! I hope they had as much fun as I did.
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