Our big family vacation (part one of many)

I'm not sure how many posts this will take up, but I know that I can't post about our whole trip in one. Well, I could, but I would scare away everybody. Who wants to read a 10,000 word post?

As I hinted at in yesterday's post, we went to Walt Disney World in the great (hot) state of Florida. I'm going to get it out of the way now; it was hot, hot, hot, hot...you get the idea. It was such a change after coming from a cool Spring here in Chicago. I was wondering when it was going to get warm here, now I don't need to experience heat anymore all year. Of course it's going to be 90 degrees here tomorrow. Oh well.

Anyway, the fun started before we left. Turns out both kids got sick three days before we were set to leave. Our son would wake up nearly unable to talk, and our daughter couldn't breathe. It wasn't a good start. Jenn took them to the doctor on Monday, but we were starting to prepare for the worst. What if they couldn't fly? Would we rent a car to drive? Would we use our own? Do we have enough things to keep them entertained for about 22 hours of driving? Will I go insane before we get to Disney World?

It was a fun 36 hours around here. The doctor said they both had strep throat (again), but they could fly and were good to travel 24 hours after taking the medicine. Good thing we were leaving in 48 hours. Nothing like cutting it close!

So, we went to the airport on Wednesday, and were bombarded with questions on how long we had to wait until it was time to get on the plane. For two hours. Then, we get on the plane, get all ready to go, settle the kids down since it was their first flight, then we find out we need to change planes. Yipee! We had a broken one that couldn't be fixed in a timely manner so we had to wait an hour for another plane. And be asked another 40 times about when we are going to leave.

The flight down was fine once the kids started enjoying the flight, which wasn't too long. We got to Orlando, waited for our Magical Express to bring us to our hotel, and then ordered room service since we missed our dinner reservations due to the flight delay. We stayed at the Grand Floridian, which was really nice. We really liked the hotel, but didn't like paying $9.95 for a peanut butter and jelly uncrustable sandwich.

We had a great view from our balcony. We could see Cinderella's Castle from the Magic Kingdom and watch the fireworks from the comfort of our own room. Of course, we could also hear the fireworks even when the kids crashed out early, but that was okay, they didn't wake up. They were too wiped out everyday.

The first full day we were there we went to the Magic Kingdom. It was the closest park to our hotel, and we could hop right on the monorail to get there. The crowd was not too bad our first day. We waited about 20 minutes to drive the cars in Tomorrow Land and basically walked right on to the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin. Our son liked that ride the best, I think.

We also hit Aladdin's Magic Carpet, The Pirates of the Caribbean, and Tom Sawyer's Island. Our son loved exploring on that island. There wasn't a whole lot to do, but when you are a little kid you can imagine a lot of things.

We walked around the park for about 5 hours, or so, then headed back to cool off at the pool. We did that pretty much everyday. It worked out well to cool off and take a break from walking. My feet were quite sore walking all day long.

That night we went to Fulton's restaurant at Downtown Disney. We found out that our daughter loves crab legs while we were there. It's always good when the kinds like expensive food. While we were there we hit the gigantic Disney store. It was so big Jenn and I got separated and had to call each other on the phone to find each other.

There was a dinosaur place in downtown Disney that we didn't go to, for some reason, but I took a picture of the snow covered mountain they had. I don't know who they are trying to kid, it is not cold enough for snow. I don't care how high the mountain is.

I'll stop here for now. More to come, including Star Wars Weekend! Don't get too excited now.

I have more pictures up on Flickr, with more to come as I get to it. Also, I'll start catching up on reading blog posts, too.