disney: day 4 (also known as beach day)

We decided to take a break from Disney and make a day trip to Daytona Beach Shores.  How lovely.  It turned out to be a beautiful day.  I will admit, though, any day at the beach is a good day in my book. :)

We all slept in on Wednesday morning.  It was wonderful.  We packed up and left our hotel around 11:00.  The drive was just about an hour.  On the way there, Amelia said, "Mom, did you pack my swimsuit?"

"Ummm...no...I asked you to put it on before we left."  Tearing up, she replied, "Well, I forgot.  I thought you were going to get it."  Being the mean mom that I am, I let her sit there and chew on the idea that we were going to the beach and she didn't have a suit.  

The pouty lip appeared with this tearful question, "Do you think we can go back to the beach another day?"

Of course, we stopped and picked up a new suit which totally made her day.

The kids and Josh spent a lot of time doing this...

...and they made a sand castle...

...and Josh filled his Tinkerbell bucket over and over and over again...

...and everyone worked together on that sand castle...

 

 

 

 

...and Meredith was having the time of her life (other than when salt water got into her mouth...welcome to the ocean, girls!!)...

Amelia was pretending to be a crab...

...because we caught one.

The finished product.

The beach was amazing.  The girls loved collecting shells and playing in the water.  We walked up and down the beach and just had a wonderful time!  

We ate dinner at a great little pizza place called Panheads Pizza.  I had read reviews online, and it did not disappoint.  We ordered wings as an appetizer, and they were some of the best we've ever had. Our waitress was great, and we received a really nice comment on our "beautiful family" and "well-behaved children" from another table of guests...warmed my heart. :)  

It was a great break in the middle of the week, and I would definitely do this again!

disney: day 3

For starters, this is what your children look like in the morning on day 3.  Way to go, Josh, for capturing this...priceless!!  I love it.

We headed to Hollywood Studios in the rain.  Thankfully, it was only drizzling when we got there, and even though it sprinkled off and on throughout the morning, shortly after noon, it turned into a glorious summer day!  It didn't rain again until about 8:00 tonight (on our way to the pool).  

We absolutely LOVED Hollywood studios.  We started the day with The Voyage of the Little Mermaid (Claire, Amelia, and I...Meredith thought she would be scared of the 12 foot Ursula and didn't want to go).  

We ran into Goofy and Pluto.  Unfortunately, Pluto had to go eat a doggy snack just before it was our turn, but they brought Daisy Duck right out, so we were first in line for her.  Goofy was hilarious!!

We watched the Beauty and the Beast stage show (which was awesome...probably my favorite part of the day).  

Then, Claire and I rode the Rock 'n Roller Coaster...we did the rider switch option and Claire and Josh rode again (for those of you who don't know, they have a rider-switch option for parents who have younger children who won't be riding...you don't have to stand in line twice, you just give them your "switch" card and they let you right on again).  This was a blast.  

We hoofed it to the back of HS for the stunt show.  It was really awesome, too...they showed how they make car chase scenes and had a stunt man fall off the edge of a building and a guy caught on fire when he "wrecked" his motorcycle.  They showed how they create all of those types of scenes...this was a hit for the entire family (even Meredith).  

We then watched the Muppets 3-D.  It was okay...Claire and Amelia enjoyed it.  

We tried to play on the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, but it was closed. :(  We hula-hooped instead.

We then walked over to the Pixar area where we took pictures with the Green Army Men from Toy Story (Amelia wasn't too sure about our guy) and rode the Toy Story ride.  

Meredith didn't want to go on the ride, so Amelia got to go a second time when we "switched" off.  This was a blast for all.  It is an arcade-type ride where you shoot virtual balls at screens and score points based on your accuracy.  Josh beat me by just a few points...grrr. :)  I'll get him next time...

We then watched the tribute movie to Walt Disney, and we all enjoyed that as well.  It was so interesting to hear his story and see some of his personal belongings which they have archived in this museum-like exhibit.  

Josh and Claire decided to head back over to the Rock 'n Roller Coaster for one more ride, and Meredith and Amelia and I watched Disney Junior Live.  This was basically Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and friends (Disney's little people shows).  Meredith and Amelia really enjoyed this (although I think Meredith felt a bit too old for the show). 

We ate snacks of popcorn, lemonade and wild cherry slushies, and a Mickey Mouse ice cream sandwich.  The Mickey ice cream bar was much better two days ago...we'll remember that for the next round of treats.  

We then headed home, had dinner, and swam in the pool.  The pool seems to be the favorite attraction of the entire group of the 10 and under crowd.  

We were so thankful for a nice day.  It was nice to not have to leave the park because of rain!  The highlight of our evening was chatting with Olivia for a few minutes.  The girls absolutely loved listening to her babble on and on, and it was so sweet the way she kept saying hi to "Yilya" when she was talking to Amelia. :)

disney: day 2

Our first night ended with the sweetest little thank you note from Meredith that was sitting on our pillows in our bedroom.  It had cute little pictures of Mickey and Minnie drawn on the front, and said, "Thank you for taking me to Disney World.  I am having a fun time.  Love, Meredith"  So sweet despite her rough first day.  

(Let me begin Day 2 by apologizing for the lack of photos.  I didn't realize that we only took a few pictures!)

Day 2 was overall much better than Day 1!  We started our day with an educational program where Claire and Josh attended a chemistry class, and Meredith, Amelia, and I attended a class on synergy.  Josh and Claire enjoyed their class.  The younger girls and I (overall) enjoyed our class.

One of the parts of our class was to ride Spaceship Earth (the ride that is inside the big Epcot ball).  Meredith was a bit hesitant to go on this ride, so I asked our instructor if it was scary at all.  She told me that it absolutely was not.  

She obviously doesn't know my child because within 30 seconds of being on the ride, we were in pitch black riding up a hill with eerie music playing overhead.  Meredith was crying already and telling me that she wanted to get off the ride.  The bad part was that they wouldn't let the girls and I sit in the same row (we were in the same car).  I didn't want to seat Amelia by herself, and I obviously didn't want to seat Meredith by herself, so I put the girls together, and I sat in front of them.  Thankfully, I was able to reach around and hold Meredith's hand the entire time.  There were scenes of people throughout history in this ride, starting with the cave people...this did not help as they didn't appear friendly at all. :)  

Amelia was also crying during this part of the ride (probably because Meredith was).  This was the point in which I was thinking that we would never get Meredith on a ride at Disney again.  Amelia snapped out of her scared state and enjoyed the ride shortly after she realized that it wasn't actually scary...just a little dark.  Meredith peeked up when I pointed to a scene of Michelangelo painting near the ceiling.  I think she almost stopped crying at that point...but she still had her eyes closed and was huddling close to Amelia, clinging to my hand and Amelia's. :(  That poor girl.  She is sooo sensitive.  

So, we went on with our class.  The next ride was Figment the Imagination ride.  Meredith was still on edge from the previous ride and insisted that we not go on that ride.  Thankfully, our instructor allowed us to sit out.  One of the other moms in the group (who was a homeschool mom as well), told me that we made a good choice as there were a few pitch black spots that weren't super scary, but she thought Meredith wouldn't have done well.  That made me feel better (she was so sweet to tell me).  Our class ended with fun circuit toys called Little Bits.  They were a huge hit with the entire group, and Meredith and Amelia did some fun things with them!  

Josh and Claire rode Mission: Space during their class, and Claire commented several times how much she loved it.  She wanted to go on it again, but we didn't get back to it.  I apologize for not having more to say about Josh and Claire's time since I wasn't there.  

Since we were already in Epcot for our classes, we chose this day to be our Epcot day.  Once classes were over, we had lunch and headed to China.  

The girls really enjoyed looking at the artifacts from China (especially Meredith...maybe she was just thankful to not be on a scary ride).  When we came out of China, it was sprinkling.  We put on our ponchos, and headed to Mexico.  What fun!!  

Everyone LOVED Mexico.  There was a neat restaurant inside, a marketplace, and the Gran Fiesta Tour inside the Mexico building.  The girls really enjoyed walking through the marketplace, and the GFT was a huge hit as it featured Donald Duck.  I was a bit concerned since it was a little dark at the beginning, but it was a fun little tour in a boat.  Poor Meredith was really enjoying it despite the fact that she was a little shaky...totally gun-shy in light of her recent ride adventures.  

The girls enjoyed it so much that they wanted to ride it again.  So we did.  We checked the weather and found it to be POURING rain, so we rode it a third time.  There was also no line...ever...so it was an easy decision.  M and A also decided to press some pennies in Mexico.  We'll definitely be getting some more of those as we see penny machines.  

Speaking of Donald Duck, we were extremely fortunate to see Donald in Mexico.  And he had just been brought in from the rain outside, so there were only a few people in line ahead of us to see him.  I think we waited less than 5 minutes!

The rain didn't appear to be letting up, so we put the ponchos back on and walked to America to watch the American Adventure.  My favorite part was before the show began.  There were about 10 singers in the lobby singing "God Bless America", and they were absolutely incredible.  It was so beautiful...I was crying (of course).  

It was still pouring when the show ended.  We were at the furthest point away from the Epcot entrance in the back of the park.  I had read about a great food spot in France, so we walked there for a snack.  Josh and I shared a strawberry and cream tart, and it was absolutely delish.  The girls had croissants and a chocolate raspberry dessert.  

We decided to head home since it was STILL pouring.  We wanted to make it back for the fireworks and some other attractions, but unfortunately, it rained all night.  We stayed in our room, watched Disney movies, and cuddled. :)  (They have at least three Disney channels running 24/7 in the hotel rooms...one pre-school Disney channel, one Disney movie channel, and one other Disney channel.)

Since it's supposed to rain again all day tomorrow (enough already!!), we're going to go to Hollywood Studios.  I read that it is the best place to be on rainy days since most of the things are inside.  We were supposed to go to Daytona Beach for the day, but we're going to put that off until Wednesday because of the weather.  

Our ponchos have been one of the best purchases that I made.  I bought ours at the Dollar Tree instead of a bit nicer quality ones since I didn't know how much we would use them.  Ours have held up well and have served their intended purpose, but I wish Josh could wear his backpack and his poncho at the same time (having one higher quality one would have been nice).  Thankfully, we brought our stroller just for toting things, so the backpack has been sitting in the stroller covered by our umbrella (thanks Mom!!).  

disney: day 1

Disney Day 1 was not the success that we had hoped for, although it ended well (other than rain).  We learned a few things the hard way.  

Being that we didn't get in until around 10:00 on Saturday night, we were pretty slow in getting started that morning.  We left our room around 9:00, got our tickets, and entered Animal Kingdom around 9:30.  I soon realized that I had forgotten our touring plan in the van.  I was super frustrated with myself, but Josh happily ran back out and got it.  It set us back 10-15 minutes, but the girls spotted the largest spider we had ever seen in a tree nearby our waiting spot...we then, moved spots. :)  It was a bit creepy.  

Josh and Claire rode Expedition Everest and had a blast.  Meredith, Amelia, and I sat and waited for them since the ride was a bit intimidating to them.  They would have freaked out for sure.  

Then, we went to A Bug's Life 3-D show.  This was a complete disaster as the bugs come at you, there are evil bugs, bugs get pelted with acorns (that appear to be flying right at your face through your glasses), and huge spiders come down out of the ceiling.  Needless to say, Amelia and Meredith were crying 2 minutes into the show.  As Meredith was wailing and clinging to me, she was shouting, "I hate Disney World, and I wish we weren't here!!!"  I looked at the woman to my left (she was clearly enjoying the show), and I said, "I must get my children out of here...sorry!"  Our saving grace was that there were only 4 people to our left to make it out the exit doors.  Meredith was shaking, crying, and completely horrified.  It was very sad, and it took her about 3 hours to smile again.  I felt terrible.

So much for a fun start to the day!  

Anyway, so then we waited in line for about 40 minutes to see Mickey and Minnie (the sign at the front told us it would be 10 minutes...not so much).  Meredith refused to be in the pictures with them, but Josh and I were thankful for the air conditioned waiting area. :)

So, we decided to do lunch.  It was a nice break for everyone, and people's spirits seemed to lift.  We went into Dinosaur Land (or whatever they call it).  We (Claire, Amelia, and I) rode the Triceratops ride.  Meredith didn't want to.  Josh and Claire rode the spinning time machine (or something like that) ride.  It looked really fun, but Meredith didn't want to ride because it spun (and along with being super-sensitive to anything scary, she also gets motion sickness waaay too easily...the girl can't even swing for too long...poor thing).  Amelia wasn't tall enough to ride that one.  The kids then played in the Boneyard, which is a giant playground with slides and bridges and things.  They all loved it.

We got a lemonade slushie as a refresher to share and changed out of our shoes into our sandals.  Everyone seemed pleased to have more comfortable footwear. :)  We walked back to the Kilimanjaro Safari ride, and it was AWESOME!  We had to convince Meredith to go on this as she was being kind of stubborn about the whole thing.  Thankfully, we convinced her to go because all of the rest of us wanted to go.  It was basically a 20 minute safari bus/ride through an African wild area/zoo.  We saw giraffes, elephants, hippos, rhinos, cheetahs, alligators, zebras, ostriches, and several other crazy animals!!  We all enjoyed it, and it was a nice break in the afternoon.  It also started pouring down rain while we were on the safari which worked in our favor because we didn't get very wet there!  It had stopped raining by the time we got off.

We also saw the tree of life which was absolutely amazing as well...we didn't do the walk through, but I wish we would have had time.  We had awfully whiny children today, and I'm hoping that they're just tired from our long drive yesterday (and the 90 degree heat).  Today was supposedly the hottest day of the week.  Hope so!

We then decided on ice cream bars for our afternoon snack, and Josh and I loved the Mickey Mouse ice cream bar.  Sooo good!!  The rain picked up again and we knew the afternoon parade would be cancelled, so we decided to head back to our room. :)

The rain stopped by the time we had finished dinner, so we walked to the pool for a swim.  The girls were absolutely thrilled to find a big swirly slide at the pool.  I liked the fact that all of the girls could go down the big swirly slide by themselves, and I loved the warm water!  Even though the pool wasn't huge, it certainly wasn't very busy, and we had 2-3 lifeguards on duty.  So great!   

disney: the drive there

So, I'm really sorry, but I didn't take any pictures on the way to Disney.  I think the camera was buried in a bag somewhere.  The van was pretty full, so I was just thankful to know that the kids were accounted for.

We left home at 3:00 in the morning on Saturday to make the trip.  We decided to do all of the driving in one day.  We figured we could do it with some planning, and we did!  Unfortunately, it rained for at least 8 hours on the way there.  This slowed us down quite a bit.  There were several accidents on the interstate, and we're pretty sure that people from Georgia have no clue how to drive in the rain.  I think we saw about 10 accidents in our first hour in Georgia...what???!  

At one point, there was a semi that had slammed into the concrete wall through the center of the interstate.  There were chunks of cement all over our side of the road, and it took us about 30 minutes to drive 2 miles.  Thankfully, this was close to lunch time.  We had prepacked lunches in the van, so we ate.  

The following information is not funny as a statistic...just funny as a typo in light of the events we saw in Georgia that day...

When we crossed the state line into Georgia, there was an overhead digital sign that informed us that 701 people had died in traffic accidents on Georgia roads in 2013.  It reminded us to drive safely.  Like I said earlier, we saw accident after accident in Georgia.  About an hour into GA, we saw another overhead digital sign that informed us that 801 people had died in traffic accidents on Georgia roads in 2013.  It was obviously a typo, but kind of funny... 

I knew Meredith had the potential to get car sick on the way there, but I didn't know if it would be an issue.  After the girls woke up in the morning and had their donuts and orange juice, she started complaining about her stomach hurting.  She thought she was going to throw up.  Oh no.  Thankfully, we found a little grocery store off the interstate and bought some TravelEase for a whopping $3.88.  It was by far the best money spent that day.  Add to that a little Duck Dynasty in the van, and we were definitely cooking with peanut oil. :)

So, a couple of weeks before our trip, we finally told the girls that we were going on vacation.  However, we told them we were going to Myrtle Beach...not Disney.  They were pumped.  We wanted to surprise them, and I didn't want to hear them ask a million questions about Disney before we left.  Seriously, the two week waiting period was long enough as it was!  We stopped for gas, the bathroom, and a snack at one point and pulled out some t-shirts that Uncle Andrew made for them.  The shirts had Minnie Mouse ears and each girl's initial.  Josh handed them their shirts and had them open them all at the same time.

They were awfully clueless.  Josh said, "Why do you think we got you shirts with Minnie Mouse ears?"  They didn't know. :)  We said, "We're not going to Myrtle Beach.  WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!"  Meredith gave us one of those hands-on-your-hips, head-cocked-to-the-side, questioning looks.  I think she thought we were kidding.

Then, Amelia started jumping up and down excitedly.  They were all pretty excited once we got back in the van.  Amelia soon asked, "Do we have enough dollars to go to Disney World?" :)  

We could not have asked for better travelers in the girls.  They were absolutely outstanding.  I did a lot of planning for the driving part of our trip which I'll post about in the future! 

disney world

On Saturday, we returned home from Walt Disney World!  Wow...what a fun (and exhausting!) week!  We decided to leave Olivia home, since we figured that we'd make her miserable and she'd make us miserable.  Each time we'd see a two year old melting down, we felt good about our decision. :)  

While we were gone, I documented our vacation in emails, so I'm just going to insert those emails right into the blog with our pictures.  

Speaking of pictures...I took my point and shoot since I didn't want to haul around my big dog camera.  After Day 1, I said to Josh, "I think my biggest regret with this trip is going to be leaving my camera at home."  It was.  I came home to disappointed pictures.  I easily could have hauled the camera around...so bummed.  I'll know for next time!  

Anyway, I apologize if you don't want to hear all about our trip.  I'm going to document it for us, and I'm also going to add a bunch of posts at the end about our trip prep, how we planned, how we saved a ton of money, and how we traveled.  You can just tune out for the next month if you don't care. :)

summer in pictures

We loved going to a hot air balloon festival this summer.  It was a huge hit...except for the fact that Olivia was completely scared by any of them that had faces. :(  Thankfully, it was only a couple.