a magical week

As I alluded in my last post, our family just returned from an amazing vacation to Florida.  After watching, obsessing over, airfare for 6 people for several weeks before our trip, my primitive math skills just couldn't get the price low enough when combined with a rental car. At one point I had all 6 tickets in my cart, and we were one click away from flying the friendly skies, but I just couldn't do it and slammed my computer shut.  All of the extra fees tacked on got my dutch blood too riled up.

In the end we made the decision to travel WallyWorld style. At first, I was a bit nervous about traveling 20 hours in the van.  But it went really well.  Really, really, well.  There were no complaints, and I don't think Stella cried once. We left Friday around 6pm, and drove straight through the night, stopping for breakfast just south of Macon, GA.  When Tim finally gave me the wheel just north of the Mason-Dixon line, his last words before he dozed off were "Set the cruise, and don't get pulled over".  So naturally, I was a bit nervous to wake him up when I noticed the red and blue flashers in my rear view mirror :)  Thankfully I only recieved a warning, and that was the extent of the excitement on the way down.  The kids were bummed to hear that they slept right through mommy getting pulled over.

We arrived at our condo on Saturday afternoon, and spent the rest of the day relaxing. Tim and I were counting down the hours until we could go to bed, but the kids had way too much energy after being pent up in the car. So, we swam in the pool until Austin puked...ugh,  and went to bed early. Thankfully the puking ended there :)

The next morning we got up bright and early and headed to our first day of fun at the Magic Kingdom.  We did our research ahead of time, got to the park an hour before it opened, bought our passes for the week, and rode the monerail over.  We went throught the turn-styles just as the park was opening, and were once again told to have "a magical day".  We headed straight to our first ride, Space Mountain.   I did a lot of research, so we had a plan of attack on how we were going to get through the park most efficiently, in an effort not to waste one precious minute of our day in long lines.  We knew what we wanted to ride, and how we were going to play the FastPass game....which is almost as fun as the coupon game :) We floated from ride to ride all morning and had a magical time, never waiting more than 10 minutes. 

 We bought the kids autograph books, and I think we waited longer to get character signatures than we did for rides. As you can see by Stella's face, she wanted no part of this.  The only way to even get her in the pictures was to have Tim hold her.

We went back to our condo for a couple hours in the afternoon to give Stella a nap, and to get Tim some medicine, because he really wasn't feeling well.  We came back to the park late afternoon, watched a parade, went to a few shows, rode our favorite rides again, and stayed for the fireworks show. All in all, a "magical day". 

 More to come....