Bookends

I realized as I came on here to write that I've book-ended our summer with these blog posts. The last one was just after Memorial Day and now it's just after Labor Day. I don't know if it was a particularly busy summer but I didn't get anything written. So for the sake of the fact that I'd like to keep this as a kind of diary of my kids' childhoods, there will be a few posts in a row all about summer.

We. Went. To. Disney. It was the best week of the year, hands down. We LOVED it. The girls were better behaved than I ever dared to hope for. We stayed in a time share condo with my entire family. My parents, my brother and his girlfriend, and my sister all went too.

I have so much to say and I have access to something like 600 pictures, between the 3 of us who took a lot of pictures. But I won't bore you with that many. In fact, here's a link to an album of them.

Believe it or not, we took one vehicle down. We stuffed 10 of us and all our luggage in a 15-passenger van and drove for 24 hours straight. This even went better than I thought it could possibly go. We did learn the truth behind the joke-term 'hangry', or anger and irritation from hunger. We would be growly and impatient and then we'd stop at a restaurant and all be much better.

We spent Monday in the Magic Kingdom. To give you a taste of how well the day went, we were in the front of the line to get into the park. We didn't see a single line until we had been on 4 rides. We walked right onto every ride for the first hour. It was amazing. We opened the park up in the morning and then left as it closed to the general public at night.

We took a couple days off from parks to get some actual vacationing in. We swam (our complex had a water park), played volleyball and tennis, and chilled in our room. We also went to Downtown Disney, where they have all kinds of shops, one of which was LegoLand. That was pretty cool. We ate out and in and enjoyed each others' company.

Thursday we went to Universal. We had a good time there too, but it was hampered a bit by the fact that a few of us got sick on the very first ride. The Harry Potter theme park was awesome, and so was that ride, but those of us prone to motion sickness (myself included) got REALLY sick on that first ride. That combined with the fact that the two little girls couldn't go on very many rides meant many of us had less fun at Universal than at Disney. But it was still a fun day. I can't wait for the day I can go back and explore Harry Potter World even more. I am quite a nerd for that stuff.

Friday was the Animal Kingdom. My wonderful mother treated us all to breakfast with the characters. This meant we were there before the park even opened that day. The breakfast was delicious and we got a few signatures and the girls got pictures with the characters. They even got to dance with Goofy.  Then we got to get in line inside the park to get to the safari first (the thing we wanted to see the most). We were on the first truck out and got some really awesome pictures of the animals.

We piled in the van and came home. It was a surprisingly great ride in spite of everyone being really, really tired! We have such great memories from that week and I hope the girls are old enough to remember it well.