Part II - Disney World!!

 Still have that darn sea spray on my camera at this point, but I am just about to clean it. :) Welcome to Disney World!!

 I was so giddy, I could hardly wait to get out of the van! Maybe I should say the kids were so giddy, but we will just be honest, I was about to bounce out of my seat!

 Buying our tickets... and since we looked lost and confused a nice lady brought us all buttons that said "1st Visit" which we all pinned to our clothes.

 Main Street USA. I actually got a little chocked up and teary eyed just walking onto Main Street. There really is a magical feeling at Disney World. I know that sounds more than cheesy, but it's true.

 This is one of my favorite pictures that we took on our trip. I wish that we would have gotten someone else to take our picture so that my dad could have been in it with us. The kids all dressed up like characters. Avri was Belle, Mercedes was Snow White and I made shirts for Talmage and Rigdon to be Dash and Jack-Jack. We even had masks for them to wear.

 What a world-wide icon.

 Right before we went in to Mickey's PhilharMagic Show. This show was AMAZING!! I'm not really that into 3D movies, but this was in a league of it's own!! It was fantastic.

 Kendall and my mom took the kids on the carousel.

 We walked through a couple of the shops and the girls admired themselves in the princess mirrors.

 Then on to "It's a Small World." (Don't worry Amber, I didn't put ALL of my pics of this ride in the blog, but I took a bunch for you. :) Love you!)

 

 On the Small World boat, and here we go!

 We went and stood in line for about an hour to see Belle's story time. I thought about skipping it, since the wait was so long, but I think this was one of our favorite experiences and we are SOO glad we waited. If you can see in this picture, the Beast's castle is up on the mountain, by Avri's head.

 I could tell you about the entire experience here, but it would take a while. So I will just saysix words: mirror, castle, Lumiere, play acting, and Belle.

 Belle was perfect. The lighting was horrible for pictures,

 but the kids loved the experience.

 I loved that she got right down on Mercedes level.

 Next we were off to Winnie the Pooh. We got to do the ride, play in the tree house...

 and we even got a glimpse of Tigger and Pooh!

 We got to fly on Dumbo. The kids each got to control the ride so that they decided how far up and down to go. I was riding with Mercedes and she giggled the entire time.

 By mid-afternoon we were getting a little warm, so the kids ran through the water,

 and got pretty wet.

 Then we went to find some more to do. We found the Fairies. Tinker Bell was very sweet.

 And then we met Periwinkle. I had no idea who she was, but I've since seen the movie and this character was perfect!! She even said that she would "frost" the flower that Talmage gave her. I had no idea what that meant, but now that I've seen the movie it makes perfect sense.

 Rigdon decided to fall asleep a little bit after we left the stroller, so Kendall ended up holding the 35 lb child during his entire nap!! I think he slept at least an hour and a half!! Good thing Kendall does a lot of weight lifting!

 The kids each got a turn to try to remove the Sword from the Stone. But we found out we don't have any future kings or queens in the family.

 We didn't get to see as many characters as we would have liked, but the ones that we did see were so much fun. I thought that Rigdon might freak out a little since these characters are big and scary for some two-year-olds. But he loved them the most!! He wouldn't stop hugging them long enough to get pictures!

I think he was the cutest with Donald. So funny. He even grabbed his bill and gave it a big kiss!

 We literally couldn't get him to stand up for the picture. So many hugs.

Waiting in line for Minnie and Daisy.

 The kids favorite RIDE was the Buzz Lightyear Ride. You got into this little car thing that you could spin around and you had a laser gun to shoot the bad guys. The ride had technical difficulties, which was AWESOME because it stopped for a while and we got to play with spinning the cars around and shooting stuff without moving the entire time. This was one of the last things that we did. The kids were really tired when we got on the ride, but by the time we got off they were so excited that they had all of their energy back and were ready for round 2! When we got off the ride we got to go see Buzz Lightyear himself.

 The boys both picked the same souvenir, a Mickey Mouse light saber thing that lights up. They have had many battles with those things!

And then we saw 3 different shows that night. There are fireworks and the shows are something that can not be explained. But they are incredible. It is the perfect end to a perfect day. 

 When we got back to the car the kids were asleep before we even got all the way out of the parking lot.

I was sad that we only had one day in Disney World, and we only saw like maybe half of Magic Kingdom. But it was an incredible day. January was the perfect time to go for weather. And if we would have gone mid-week instead of on a holiday weekend we would have had an even more incredible time because there wouldn't have been the lines. But I definitely want to go back again some day. Maybe when the kids are a little bit bigger and we can do a few more of the "big kid" rides. And now I know a bit more and could probably plan the trip out even better for next time!!

A Totally Awesome Vacation - Part I

We took the most amazing vacation as a family in January. I've been horrible at keeping up with my blogging lately, but I need to get this on here before I forget any of the amazing details. So here goes.

We drove to Florida. We did our routine drive-through-the-night thing on the way there. So we stopped at McDonald's for a late dinner right before the kids had to go to "bed."

 We had to get a picture taken with Ronald, of course.

 Then we got back into the car and got ready for a night of sleep. Except Kendall, who of course had a long night ahead of him! The kids actually really love traveling like this. They look forward to sleeping in the car with their pillow pets and blankets. We get out glow sticks once it is completely dark and play with those for a few minutes, read scriptures and then try to get everyone to stop talking.

 The drive was pretty uneventful, we had nice weather and didn't have to stop too many times. We were surprised at how cold it was all the way down. We figured it would keep getting warmer and warmer, but it really didn't warm up much until we hit Florida. We made it there in less time than we planned, so we immediately found a public beach that we could play on. It was empty, since the locals think it's cold in January. Everyone was excited to put on their sunglasses.

We found the ocean!

 They ran up and down the beach, trying to get as close to the waves as possible without getting wet!

 Oops. A little too close.

 There were tons and tons of shells on this beach. In fact, the sand wasn't very soft. It was really more like small shards of shells.

 But we did find one area of very soft sand to play in.

 Chasing seagulls was the second favorite thing to do. And we heard the phrase "THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!" over and over again.

 Next we met my parents at Marine Land Dolphin Adventures. My pictures are terrible here because I had sea spray on my filter over the lens  and nothing to clean it with. Grr. I didn't know. Oh well. It was really fun to watch the dolphins. We thought about letting Avri feed them, but we would have had to wait around for 2 hours, so we decided to skip that.

 

In addition to dolphins they had a small aquarium section with a bunch of other marine life. We saw an octopus, sting rays, other large fish, sea stars, etc.

 After that we finished our drive down the state to the hotel near Orlando. We stayed there for two nights. It wasn't a fantastic hotel, but it was decent and we got it free, so we couldn't complain too much. Here's Rigdon by the palm trees next to the hot tub. The pool was SOOOOO cold that it was like a double dog dare game trying to get people to get in. We had some good laughs.

Stay tuned for Part II - Disney World!!