Walt Disney World: September 2017

We're back from Disney World and I have a ton of pictures to share with you all! It was a wonderful trip and lots of memories were made. I'm just sad that it's over!

We revealed the trip to the kids with a little scavenger hunt around the apartment. Madeline was all over it and left Luke in the dust. 

Can I pause for a second and point out how little we packed?! We fit everything in these three small backpacks! We flew Frontier who even charges for carry-ons. The only thing that is free is a personal item which has to fit under the seat. I was pretty reluctant and didn't think it would be possible, but George talked me into it and, well, I did it! I must admit, it made traveling so much easier. 

Our flight out wasn't until 8PM on Friday. We arrived to the hotel at 11:30PM. Madeline was very sleepy, but perked up as soon as we arrived at Art of Animation. She loved our room and immediately started unpacking and arranging our stuff. 

Saturday was a pool day and relaxation day for us since we only bought a 2 day park ticket. The first thing the kids wanted to do was explore the hotel. Art of Animation has 4 themes: Cars (where we stayed), Nemo, Little Mermaid, and Lion King. Afterward exploring, we ate breakfast in the cafeteria area of our hotel (we had a Disney dining plan) and then went swimming. After swimming, the kids were ready for a nap. We knew that they were playing hard because we had to wake them up from every nap our entire time at Disney World. 

After nap, we went to the cafeteria for a treat. Her first Mickey ice cream bar! :)

Then we took the bus over to the Magic Kingdom area and rode the Monorail over to the Polynesian for dinner. Madeline quickly spotted the pool and water play area. We were not prepared with swimsuits, but we made it work. 

 The Polynesian Resort happens to sell Pineapple Dole Whip floats. Mom- this one is for you! ;) 

The next day, we woke up early for our day at Hollywood Studios and Epcot. We had such a jam packed day. We did just about every show at Hollywood Studios -- Playhouse Disney, the Little Mermaid, Frozen sing-a-long, Indiana Jones, and Beauty and the Beast. Our music and movie loving kids were so captivated by every single show. Luke even sat there and watched from start to finish. The highlight of the day for me was when Madeline rode my favorite ride, Tower of Terror, TWICE!!  It was funny because she was super excited to ride Tower of Terror, but got really freaked out once it got going. She seemed completely stunned when it was over. She knew she had the option to ride it again with George since we had a rider switch pass, and sure enough she was up for riding it a second time. Later that night, she told me that next time she would let George and I ride it without her.  I'm not sure what the verdict was exactly, I just love that she's a dare devil and willing to try new things. Around 5PM, we took the boat over to Epcot. We walked around the entire World Showcase. It was Food and Wine festival and we were able to use our dining plan to try some of the different food options. Madeline and Luke met Anna and Elsa, which was of course a highlight. We also rode the Nemo ride and Soarin' and the went to Turtle Talk with Crush. We ended the night with the Illuminations fireworks show. By the time we got back to the hotel at 10ish, we were so exhausted!  Madeline fell asleep on the bus.

You can't see her face in this picture, but she looked terrified. Classic! 

 

We saved Magic Kingdom for our second park day as the grand finale to the trip. Madeline knew we arrived when she saw Cinderella's castle! :) There was a show going on at the castle when we arrived.  More Anna and Elsa! We got our fill of "Let it Go!" on this trip. Haha! Magic Kingdom was actually pretty busy for September, but we were strategic with our fast passes and got to do pretty much everything we were hoping to do. Thunder Mountain and Seven Dwarves Mine Train were Madeline's favorite rides, Luke's was probably It's a Small World :) :) and they both loved the parade and firework show! We went back to the hotel for nap time during our day at the Magic Kingdom. Luke fell asleep in the stroller at Hollywood Studios, but that wasn't happening the second day and we knew it would be a late night and both kids (and adults) really needed a nap to stay up that late for a second night. 

 

I brought some cotton candy back for nap time! 

Notice Luke's face!! 

Madeline has been earning some money over the past couple of months so we brought the envelope of "her dollars" and she picked out a toy. She knew just what she wanted...an Elsa doll, of course! She spent her entire envelope, plus we had to spot her a few dollars! 

 

We ended the evening with the fireworks show, one last ride on Seven Dwarves Mine Train, and an ice cream sundae on Main Street. The perfect ending to our day!

We got a late check-out so the next morning we all slept in as much as Luke allowed. We got breakfast and managed to squeeze in more swim time and Luke's nap before it was time to head out. Here's one last picture at our hotel before we got on the bus back to the airport.

I took little Instagram videos each day. Here are those too! 

Disney Trip

Hi Everyone! I had some technical difficulty uploading those videos from my dad's birthday scavenger hunt. I should have them up sometime this week.

I haven't mentioned this on my blog yet, but we were supposed to be in Florida at Disney World this weekend. About 7-8 weeks ago we decided to plan a 3 night trip to Disney World for September 9-12. We're not exactly known for our weather luck....cough cough....anyone remember the massive dust storm on our wedding day? We even discussed how September is the peak of hurricane season, but figured the odds of a hurricane have to be relatively low. Well, you all know what's going on in Florida right now so needless to say, I am not typing this from Florida. It's a scary situation down there right now and we have been praying for all of those in harm's way. Fortunately for us, we knew about the storm plenty in advance and were able to postpone everything until this coming weekend. We did have a heck of time getting through to Disney because of their extremely high call volume due to the storm. I'm talking 16+ hours on hold. We found out the hard way that our phones have a 4 hour call limit so after 4 hours on hold our phones hang up. I wanted to cry (I actually did cry a little, to be honest) after it happened for the third time. Finally, the fourth time, someone picked up at the 3 hour 30 minute mark AND she hooked us up! She gave us an extra night, an upgrade to a suite (we're staying at the Art of Animation hotel on Disney property), and an upgrade to park hopper tickets (instead of the one park tickets that we got)....all for FREE! She was sooo awesome and I plan to write to Disney to tell them that. So we're headed to Disney World on Friday night for 4 nights now! Madeline knows that we're going to Disney World at some point, but she doesn't know when it's happening, so on Friday afternoon we are going to surprise them with the news. I can't wait to see their reaction! Luke won't really understand what's going on, but he gets excited whenever Madeline gets excited. :)

Sulking over our cancelled trip. 

Aren't these shirts my mom made us so awesome? :)

We made the best of our postponed trip by watching a couple of Disney movies this weekend :)

I'm sure I'll be bombarding you all with pictures from our trip in a couple of weeks. 

Birthday Surprise

I'm sitting here thinking it's a Sunday night, but really it's a Monday night. Three day weekends are the best, aren't they? We had a great weekend. Friday and Saturday were low-key which was needed after a really busy week at work for both of us. By Sunday we were ready for a little adventure so we took a day trip to New York City. Parking is free in NY on Sunday so we always try to go on Sundays. Normally we have to work the next day, so it was a pretty great feeling last night when we were driving home knowing that we still had one more day off! We tried a new ramen place called Yokoya, walked around SOHO, took the kids to a park, and got some ice cream. It was 75 and overcast. We got our New York fix and headed home in the early evening. I'm not sure if we'll be back in September or October because we have a couple of other trips planned, but we will definitely be back in November for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! Can't wait!!! -- the parade is on our bucket list! :)

Right before we take the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan there is a turn-off for Liberty State Park on the New Jersey side. When Hannah and Jeremiah were in town we pulled off and got a great view of the Statue of Liberty. Madeline is always wanting to get a good look at it when we're in New York so this time we decided to pull off so that she could see it. She was pretty happy to see it so clearly, but then she asked if we could row a boat over to get closer. Haha!! We need to actually take the ferry over one of these days. 

Luke devouring the ramen!

Today was 80 and sunny so we knew we wanted to spend time outside. We ended up at a beautiful park about 15 minutes from our apartment called Norristown Farm Park (you might remember this park from a previous post) -- it is gorgeous! The park surrounds an active farm. It's full of rolling hills, forest, walking trails, picnic areas, and a creek. We love it. We brought charcoal and stuff to grill. The kids loved playing with chalk and throwing the ball around. Our really nice weather weekends are on their way out now so I'm glad we took advantage of it while we still have it. 

Backtracking to last weekend, I went back to Arizona to surprise my dad for his birthday. Luke came with me since he still flies for free (only for 6 more months...yikes!) Hannah and Jeremiah also traveled in and were part of the surprise. The surprise was only about 3 weeks in making, but I almost let the cat out of the back on a few occasions. We flew in on a Thursday and that evening my mom had planned a get together at the house for Brian, Terrisa, the kids, Emily, and Grant. She created a scavenger hunt for my dad and we were the last of five clues. I'm smiling as I type this -- it was so fun to surprise him! On Friday night (my dad's actual birthday), we all went out to a nice dinner at a steakhouse in Gilbert. Luke seemed to really enjoy the trip and probably the extra attention without his big sis in town. On past trips, he has been super clingy to me, but this time he jumped right in and was his friendly little self. Meanwhile, back here in PA, I don't think Madeline even noticed that we were gone. George made their weekend really special for her. They had a couple of movie nights, he took her to Chuck E. Cheese, the park, her favorite restaurant, and out to froyo.

I wanted to share the video from when we surprised my dad, but I'm unable to download it from my mom's Facebook. I'll see if she can email it to me and I'll upload it tomorrow.

We had to make a connection both to and from Phoenix. Both times Luke was good on the first flight and terrible on the second.