Family "vacation"

You'll have to bear with me, this will most likely be a long post.  For various reasons, I've had a hard time getting myself to blog, and now I don't know where to even start.  A lot happens in 3 months. Since my last post Gemma turned 5, we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, and Esmé went from sitting to cruising around furniture...that's just listing a few. So instead of writing a book trying to recap everything, I'll make this first post of 2015 about our latest family adventure...our trip to Disney World.  I call it an adventure, because in no way could it be called a vacation. Traveling with three young children is NOT a vacation, at least not for me. This was our first time flying with kids, and I have to admit I was pretty nervous about it. I had this fear that one of them was going to throw up everywhere, or one of them would scream the whole time from ear pain. Admittedly, all possible scenarios still seemed better than driving the whole way...so we went for it. Thankfully, both the flight there and back went superbly. We did have one guy give a not so subtle eye roll when he saw our party of five in the row behind his (thanks dude), but we also got several comments on how great our kids were, and how easy we made traveling with 3 look. Considering I was a ball of nervous energy the whole time, those comments meant the world to me.

Our first day was a little short of fantastic. We originally thought we would be meeting up with Clay and his family from day 1, but they weren't able to get there until late that evening, so we were on our own. We got to Orlando pretty early in the day so we decided to hit up Magic Kingdom for at least a couple of hrs.  We were all exhausted from being up at 4:45 and traveling so it wasn't as "magical" as we had hoped, but it helped us get an idea of what we wanted to do the following day.  We went back to the hotel, had some dinner, and let Gemma go for a swim, which she had been begging to do since we had landed.  Pretty sure that heated pool was one of the trip highlights for her.  

The next day we got to Magic Kingdom pretty early, this time armed with a stroller, a plan, an aunt and uncle, two cousins, and one grandpa (grandma stayed with a feverish Esmé back at the hotel). It was cold and rainy which doesn't seem ideal, but it kept the crowds away and we were able to cram in lots of rides, shows, and fun.  According to my dad's phone app, we logged 8 miles of walking! Both kids surprised me with how much they liked the roller coasters.  I must have been a total wimp as a kid, because they terrified me at that age! Gemma even liked Space Mountain! Makael's favorite part was the Jungle Cruise, which is basically just a boat ride and a bunch of fake animals.  He was in heaven! Gemma loved everything, but especially the big parade where she got to see all of her favorite characters. She's convinced that Anna and Elsa waved at her specifically from their float because she was wearing her special frozen shirt. Sweet girl! Makael was more entranced by the fire breathing dragon...which really was quite spectacular.

The third day we went to Hollywood. We were one man short since grandpa stayed with grandma and Esmé, but we had an extra stroller so Makael and cousin Aksel had a lot less walking to do (and we had a lot less carrying to do hahaha). We filled the day once again with rides, shows, and fun.  The Hollywood park seemed a little more low key to me. Less rides, but more shows, so we had a lot more sitting time.  That was nice! Makael got to meet Woody and Buzz, and got to play hard at the Honey I Shrunk The Kids park. That was most definitely his favorite part.  Gemma hit the jackpot not once but twice! She got hand picked to be the "princess" and go up to meet Belle and get a rose from the prince after the Beauty and the Beast show. That was nice for us too since it meant front row seats! Then later, she got picked again to welcome the crowd at the Little Mermaid show.  She got to stand in front of everyone and talk into the microphone. 

Maybe when the kids are older and we decide to do Disney again we will do more than three days. For this trip however, it was just right. Actually it was exhausting. After a full day at Hollywood, we started the four hour drive down to Miami. Not sure who's terrible idea it was to make the drive that night (ummm Clay's), but we arrived around 1:00 a.m. Thankfully the kids slept most of the way, so the only ones who were sleep deprived and cranky the next day were the adults.  Miami was basically the opposite of what we experience at Disney World.  It was warm, sunny, and relaxing...which was perfect.  Besides making sure we went to the aquarium for Makael's sake, there wasn't much on the agenda. We got to see a little of Miami, had some down time by the pool, great sushi, and lots of play time with the cousins.

It really was an awesome trip and one I would definitely do again...once I have fully recovered hahaha. The best part was just seeing the kids have fun and watching their faces light up. One for the books. 

To see pictures:
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