Animal Kingdom and Bibbidi Bobbidi Hair Boutique 2/17

I have to mention that I purchased an awesome Disney guide by Birmbaum. I highly recommend doing this before making any concrete Disney plans. I lived by this book and followed every thing it told us to do. I, unfortunately left this book in a restaurant on Friday.

On Wed. morning I took Eden to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Hair Boutique in Downtown Disney. Kyle took the other three kids to Animal Kingdom where Eden and I caught up with them after lunch. The whole reason I was blessed with girls was for moments like this. At the boutique girls get a "princess makeover". Eden got her hair, make-up and nails done by a "fairy god mother." Eden enjoyed herself (as did I) thoroughly! We saw many, many little girls around the Disney parks all week with this same hair style wearing princess dresses. I offered to buy Eden a princess dress but she didn't want one. I don't know what was up with that...I think she thinks she is too old for the actual dress (this is what happens when you have an older sister). I also don't think she wanted to walk around in one all day. At Disney all employees (the nicest people in the world...it REALLY is the happiest place on earth) always called the girls "princess". Eden REALLY liked this. So after her hair is done and she is looking beautiful we were waiting for the bus and she starts feeling her hair (which is hard as a rock) and decided it hurts and wants it all taken out. UGH!!!!!!!! I begged her to keep it in so daddy could see but she reminded me that we had taken photos and that he could see those. We returned to our room and I washed out lots of gel, hairspray and glitter. I didn't want to listen to her complain about it all day...and she would have. I guess it was the experience that counts. She kept her make-up and nail polish on.

Animal Kingdom was also very enjoyable. The top ride (most popular at all the Disney parks) was "Everest". It was a VERY FUN roller coaster. They also had an awesome animaltronics (not sure if this is a word) dinosaur roller coaster with very realistic, scary dinosaurs that came out at you in the dark. Faith was the only one who would re ride this with me. Sawyer and Eden said "no way." Faith was even all cuddled up to me and hiding 1/2 the time. Lots of other good stuff too but these were the highlights. Also, I had made notes and marked all the stuff we did in my beloved book that I lost- so I know I am forgetting stuff. I also need to add how great Beckett did. He spent 90% of his time from our whole trip in the stroller and never complained.

Epcot on Tues. 2/16

We stayed in the Port Orleans Riverside Resort at Disney. It is a moderately priced resort and the grounds were beautiful. They had a great cafeteria with great food and a really nice store. We were stuffed in our room. I tried to talk Kyle into getting two rooms but it would have cost us double so he said "no". We had two double beds and this weird trundle that rolled out from underneath one of the beds. It was like an over sized crib mattress. We had to force the kids to take turns sleeping on it at night since it was not comfortable. However, it worked out fine and I actually looked forward to returning to our room every night in exhaustion. Overall, we barely spent any time in there and it was very clean. We quickly planned our trip over Christmas break-it was $1500 cheaper to go in Feb. than in May and we thought that it wouldn't be very crowded in Feb. Well, we were wrong...it was crowded-come to find out...President's week is one of the busiest weeks at the Disney parks. Everything still worked out great. Disney is VERY family friendly. They have a "Fast-Pass" option for all the popular rides. "Fast-Pass" is like getting a reservation for the ride. You get a ticket and the ticket tells you when to come back and then you don't have to wait in line. They also have a "Rider-Switch" option which allows the parent waiting with the baby/toddler to go on (without waiting in line) after the other parent and kids get off-they get to take 3 riders on with them. The best part about this was that we used these on all the "Fast-Pass" rides. Faith, Sawyer and Eden got to ride all the best rides twice without waiting in 90 min. lines. Without these options the trip wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable. The three oldest were able to ride every ride available-Eden couldn't ride one or two but she didn't care. My kids are daredevils...they will ride every single roller coaster and thrill ride without thinking twice. It is great...makes it a lot more fun for Kyle and I.

So, Tues. morning was Epcot. When we were all lying in bed just waking up I heard Sawyer say "my stomach hurts." I was screaming inside my head "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO"!!!! He was pale as a ghost through breakfast and would hardly eat. We went to the gift shop and bought him some Immodium, hoping that would help. Nothing was going to stop us on this trip. Well......we get on the bus that takes us to the park that is packed with people and a bad thing happened. He was sitting down and I was standing a few people away from him and I notice he is looking really bad. I always carry a zip-loc bag in my purse for emergencies and I was getting it out and he threw-up. We were standing next to a really nice guy from Louisiana (I think the whole state of Louisiana was there to escape Mardi Gras and celebrate their Super-bowl win). Anyways, he had a disabled daughter and carried hand towels around with them -he kindly gave us a hand towel to clean up Sawyer's vomit...plus I had a ton of baby wipes. Kyle, very efficiently, cleaned it all up. I think that bus floor was cleaner than it had ever been. I don't even think the bus driver even knew. After we got off the bus Sawyer felt 100%. He never got sick again and neither did anyone else...thank goodness. I don't know what his deal was but I was just so happy he felt better.

We had a great time at Epcot...but not enough time. We chose to use a Disney Photo pass while we were there for most of our photos. This is where a Disney employee takes most of your photos and then you have to order the photos or the disk. I don't have access to those photos yet so I can only post the ones we took. I could go on FOREVER about each of the parks but I am just going to try and touch on the highlights. The most popular ride at Epcot is "Soarin"-it was also our favorite. We were all standing in a 40 min. line for a different ride when an employee came up to our family, asked how many there were of us and then handed us 6 Fast Passes. I often wonder if people feel sorry for us with 4 kids or if we look frazzled or something. I felt bad for all the people standing around us but we took them and ran! We were also standing around deliberating on riding "Test Track" when some strangers came up and handed us their 4 Fast Passes that they weren't going to use. We felt really fortunate and were actually able to "pay it forward" a couple of times ourselves throughout our trip. In the country of "Norway" we ate dinner with the princesses-very fun! Kyle, Faith and Sawyer went close to closing to catch "Mission Space" while Eden, Beckett and ran into the Disney characters. They were all lined up and you could get your photo with them. I think the longest we waited in line was to get pictures with the various characters. Despite the vomiting on the bus, it ended up being a great day!

Naples and Disney Trip

We went to Florida Feb. 14th-21st. Despite the cold Florida temps. we had an amzing time. I voted this our best vacation EVER-even better than our European travels...yep I said it. We flew into Ft. Myers on Sunday to visit with Kyle's very loved grandparents in Naples. We visited with them Sunday and Monday. To back track briefly...our flights went well. We had a short layoever in Atlanta. Since Bex is "2" we were forced to buy him his own seat-although he sat on my lap most of the time. We left the house around 4:30 am on Sunday and I just swept Bex out of bed in his P.J.'s and packed his clothes. Well, on the first leg of our flight I changed him into his "day clothing" and almost immediately after he had a HUGE blowout. He is "2"...he never had blowouts anymore. It was disgusting. Getting him cleaned up was a challenge in such a confined place and it was stinky. He had to go back into his P.J.'s. Thank goodness I didn't get him dressed before we left the house because I wouldn't have had anything to change him back into. Beckett also didn't want to sit in his seat-he flat out refused and fortunately the flight attendants didn't really care (on the way home was a different story though-will get to that later).

We had a great visit with Dale and June. They remind me of an older version of Kyle and I. They are 90'ish and still quite active. June has friends over to play Wii bowling pretty regularly-how great it that???? Kyle really adores his grandparents. They lived where he grew up until he was 15 or so and then moved to Floriday permanently. He tries his best to visit once a year. I am always worried about the kids ramsacking their home but they did really well. The Wii helped a lot. Late Monday afternoon, we took off for Orlando. Everyone was really excited. This was the kids' first trip to Disney. We decided to go all out and stay at one of the Disney Resorts and take advantage of the character dinners and everything else "Disney". We arrived safe and sound to a very small hotel room but were ready to start out at Epcot on Tues. morning.