Disney World Part Two - the Conclusion

Posted 3/6/06

After having a great day on Tuesday at MGM, my Inlaw's decided to take Wednesday off and just hang out. We took our boys and went to Chef Mickey's at the The Contemporary for a late morning breakfast with the characters. Having a meal with the characters is a bit pricey, but so worth it. I highly recommend it to any family going, it creates some great memories. :) Not only that the food was GREAT! I can't say how surprised I was at how good the food was for a buffet. You would've thought they made the food just for you and put it out there when they saw you coming, wonderful! At our breakfast we were joined throughout by Chip and Dale, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto. It was nice that they kept coming back around, we got autographs and lots of pictures. By the end of breakfast Aidan was blowing kisses to Minnie Mouse, so cute. :) Below is a family picture outside of The Contemporary before we got on the boat back to the resort.















After our breakfast we met up with everyone else and checked out The Wilderness Lodge. It was very beautiful. We were going to stay there, but BIL has 5 kids so I guess the cost was way more than what the IL's paid at Fort Wilderness. I think I would've liked the Wilderness Lodge a bit better - maybe some other time. It was a "restful" day.

Thursday we were up early to head to The Magic Kingdom. This was the busiest of all the parks. But, still for the time of year we went we moved easily through with a double stroller and the lines weren't that long. We really needed two days at the Magic Kingdom, I guess we learned a lot about what to do on our next visit. :) Aidan was very excited about going on the Buzz Lightyear ride, sadly it was down for refurbishing - WTF!!! So, we have to go back another time just for this ride. We didn't even make it through the whole park. Ethan was tall enough to go on Space mountain, one of my favorites. He didn't make a peep on the whole ride. I didn't think he liked it, but he wanted to go again. We watched two parades at the Magic Kindgom and the fire works. I think I was most surprised by Aidan riding Thunder Mountain. He was just tall enough to go on that one, and I thought he was going to cry like a baby to get off. We've had bad experiences on the kiddie roller coasters, there was no way he was going to make it through a big one. Well, he thought it was great, even threw his hands up in the air. It was so cute! We managed to do some shopping at the end of the night to get some memorabilia. It was a long day, but one of the best.

Here we are with Mr. & Mrs. Incredible. The boys were a little disappointed that Dash wasn't there too.

Friday we made our last day to Epcot. My IL's kept saying that it was the best park to go to at Disney. It was a great park, but I think the lowest on the list for my kids. I think it's more of a park for older kids and especially adults. My niece and nephew were so psyched about going to Test Track, but alas another ride down. I guess the down side of going at a slow time at Disney. But, we made up for it by several rides on Soarin' - great ride! Very long wait, 1 1/2 hours, we did a couple Fast Passes on this one. Ethan loved, loved, loved Mission Space. Sadly, it made me sick to my stomach. I could feel it spinning in circles - blah. Ethan rode it four times!

Aidan in Bruce's mouth ("Fish are friends, not food").

There is so much I'm not putting in here, but I've been trying to complete this since the end of February and I really want to move onto other things. And I want to post more often without writing a book. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AIDAN!!!

My beautiful, handsome little boy is four years old today! I am amazed at how fast time goes by, my babies are just growing to quickly.

Now, he won't actually be four until 11:10 tonight. :) It was around this time I headed to the doctors office because I noticed some blood when I used the bathroom. The doctor informed me that I was 4 cm! No contractions, at least none that I was feeling. :) I was told to go home and relax and see if I could time some contractions. I called Nick and told him to come home, my mom was getting ready to catch a flight to come and take care of Ethan for us. It was a Friday and I was due to be induced on Monday. So, I called my good friend M to ask her to take Ethan until my mom got in. Things moved pretty quickly after that; we dropped Ethan off and got checked into the hospital at about 7:30 pm. I couldn't have an epidural right away because Aidan was still "floating", they wanted him to come down more. An hour later I got my beloved epi!! :) So, the waiting began. My mom's flight got in a little after nine, she collected her luggage and took a taxi over to the hospital. At 10:50 pm I was 6 cm and my doctor decided to break my water. After that Nick went down to the lobby to meet up with my mom and they barely got back in time for Aidan's birth! I went from 6 to 10 cm in less than 20 minutes. The nurse laid me flat and wouldn't empty my bladder because it was holding Aidan's head in - yikes! My doctor got there and I delivered him in one contraction. He came out screaming and hasn't stopped. :)

I will never forget that night, I was so happy to meet Aidan and see how perfect he was, he was a huge welcome to our family.

Here is a picture of him today, he wanted to "clean" the bowl after I got done making his cake. :)
Well, I tried to upload the pictures, but not having any luck, I'll try later.

Disneyworld Vacation Part One

WOW!!! In one word I think that is how I would sum up our trip. It was so fun and exciting. I LOVED seeing Disneyworld through the eyes of my boys.

We left on Sunday the 22nd, very early. Our flight left at 9:20 am from O'Hare, so Nick and I were up at the butt crack of dawn - 4:30 am to be exact. We actually left the house by 6:30 providing us plenty of time to get the car to parking and get over to the airport and through security. It went very smoothly. The plane ride went very well too! :) Once Ian fell asleep I got to read a book! I love, love, love to read, but rarely find time these days so it was a very special treat for me. Thanks to the ladies over at Moosejulie, I picked up My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Very good book, I am anxiously awaiting to finish reading it.

First plane ride. :)

Back to the trip, we arrived in sunny,warm Florida late in the morning. We caught our Magical Express bus to the Fort Wilderness Resort. If you ever plan a trip to Disneyworld I highly recommend taking the resort route. They sent us these special luggage tags, so we didn't have to pick up our luggage the resort picked them up and got them to our cabin for us. We got checked in and got our golf cart to get around the resort and headed for something to eat after checking in with the rest of the family. I forgot to mention that Nick's dad and stepmom paid for our trip (aside from plane tickets) and his brother and his family joined us at the resort. We were the only ones who chose to fly, there was NO WAY I was going to drive to Florida with three small children.

The resort was very nice and the people working there were SUPER friendly. Every night they had a Disney movie playing and Chip and Dale would come before hand for a sing along. The boys thought that was so great.

Our first stop was Monday to the Animal Kingdom. It was really humid, so my efforts to straighten my hair were worthless. By the time we got to the part it was frizz central. When we got into the park we came across Lilo and Stitch. Aidan was a little shy off the bat, but Ethan went up and got their autograph and a picture with them. We went on a safari tour that was just awesome. The boys thought it was so much fun and they got to see all kinds of animals. There were 5 week old baby elephants playing, so very cute!

Day two, Tuesday, we went to MGM. The great Buzz Lightyear was there, Aidan's favorite super hero. :) We got rained on a bit, but not for very long and it stayed warm. :) We ate, or I should say the boys (Nick and I packed sandwiches) got to eat at Pizza Planet and play some games. We saw the Muppet Show, lots of fun, even Ian liked that show. I can't believe the old guys in the balcony are still around. :p We went to the Bugs Life show, but I wasn't able to stay since Ian started screaming. We stayed outside and watched the waterfall. We met quite a few characters and got their autographs at MGM. It's not how things used to be. You now have to wait until their scheduled time to get a picture and autograph. Ian was so excited to see Chip and Dale, the whole trip they were the only ones he would let hold him. Thankfully we saw them at all the parks and they were at our breakfast with the characters too. He would just scream and cry when we had to leave them.





I will have to end this for now, laundry duties are screaming at me. :) Part two to follow soon.