Our Florida Vacation Day 6 (It's so hard to say, "Goodbye!")

Today was our final day at Disney. The week has really flown by so--- fast. We planned to get up really early to head out to Animal Kingdom, but we had a bit of a crazy night, so we slept in a little.

Here's what happened:

In the middle of the night, I heard William crying. He was all the way across our condo, the furthest he could have been, but I could really hear him. I ran into the room he an Natalie were sharing and just laid on the bed next to him to try and calm him down. Next thing I know, Natalie was at the side of his bed and tells me she heard a loud THUNK. I look at William to ask him, and as I do so, I notice there is blood all over the upper portion of his bed. I PANICKED! I turned William's face to me to see that he is indeed bleeding from his nose. I picked him up and ran him to Sam & I's bathroom to look him over with Sam. William had obviously fell between the bed and the nightstand and most likely hit his nose and upper lip on the bed frame. He looked like we had beat him up. I felt so sorry for him, and knew that it must be pretty sore. So, we chose to leave the blood on his swollen nose and just wipe the other areas gently. After all the excitement was over, we ended up with William and Natalie in bed with us. At least they were super tired so neither of them moved!

When we finally woke up from our exciting night, we finished packing the last of our things and headed to the park. Not a single one of us had ever been to Animal Kingdom, so we were very excited to see what it was like.

Check out all the animals carved into this tree!

When all was said and done, we were not too impressed. We had invisioned Animal Kingdom being like a "Disney Zoo," but that it was not. There were really very few animals to see if you were walking. The areas where you could see animals were not laid out very well, so in many of them we could not see anything. The Jeep Safari was AWESOME, though, and we really enjoyed seeing all the beautiful animals being able to roam freely in their habitat. We also really enjoyed Rafiki's Planet Watch. William loved the train to get there and Brianna, Nate, and Natalie loved the educational aspects of it.

On our way to the Conservation Station(After Icecream!)

The best of all, however, were the shows!!! We saw the Festival of the Lion King and Finding Nemo-The Musical. They were spectacular. Those in themselves made Animal Kingdom well worth the visit. The costumes and set-ups were just amazing!

The Bald Eagle at the "Flights of Wonder" Show

We were sad it was our final day, but it was a teriffic end to a FANTASTIC vacation! We are so grateful that we were able to take this trip. It has been wonderful!

Our Florida Vacation Day 4 & 5

Day 4:

Today we went to the Magic Kingdom. The kids were so excited as we stepped of the tram in the parking lot and suddenly had to make a decision of how we would magically arrive to the front gates of the park, ferry boat or monorail. We all decided ferry boat would be fun since the line for the monorail was really long and we had just packed our double stroller to its full weight of 200 pounds. We did not want to have to unpack everything again! The kids said we would take the monorail back at night. We were great with that.

The Magic Kingdom is quite disappointing if you are a family who has been to Disneyland. It was very crowded, which made it very difficult to walk in its pretty narrow streets, and it does not have as many rides to keep you busy during the day. We ended up making this day, a relaxing day without much structure at all. It was great. In the evening, we had a great spot to view the SpectroMagic Parade where all our kids could actually see. We then bailed out of the park early, before the fireworks, to catch the show from across the lake. It was truly magical!

Nate, Brianna, and Natalie holding Tinker Bell

Pulling the Sword in the Stone

On Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride

Our Magic Kingdom Favorites:
The Jungle Cruise
Tom Sawyer Island
The Haunted Mansion
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
It's a Small World
Mickey's PhilharMagic
Peter Pan's Flight
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
Cinderella's Castle

Dinner at The Pinnochio Village Haus
The SpectroMagic Parade & Fireworks

Our biggest let down was the Enchanted Tiki Room. Sam and I both have fond memories of the Tiki Room, and never get tired of seeing its mesmerizing show. Well, they have redone it, The Enchanted Tiki Room "Under New Management", to give it a "modern" theme. We did not enjoy it. Some things are better left in their original forms.

Outside the Tiki Room

Day 5:
This was the day we scheduled for the kids to return to whatever park they enjoyed the most. It was a unanimous decision for Epcot. We were very glad. Epcot is such a HUGE park that we were not able to cover much of the front area of the park at all. We started the day by Fast-Passing Soarin', which is a must if wish to ride this ride. Even though we got there right when the park opened, our Fast-Pass time was 11:15. I could not believe the lines, even just to get the Fast-Pass.

After finally getting our Fast-Pass, we rode Spaceship Earth. The kids loved it so much we rode it 2 more times, all in a row. They thought it was so funny how you could make up what you would be like in the future. After that, we took part in a family "Don't Waste It" Garbage Challenge in the Innovention's Building and then rode Soarin', which was fantastic! Disney is so creative. It was so neat to fly over the California pines, and smell the pine in the air as you did, and the same with the satsumas. Incredible. We were a little freaked out that William or Natalie might spill out of their seat though. We made our whole family wear the crotch straps. After that we went to get lunch at the Grill, then headed over to the World Showcase to participate in the Kim Possible Adventure. What an awesome idea! Because we were not in any rush to see everything, this worked out well. We found criminals in Japan and Norway, as we rushed around each country with our secret agent phone giving us clues along the way. We had a blast. Even Natalie and William enjoyed making areas of our country come to life as we found the answers to our clues. From there, we rode Maelstrom, which was closed when we come on Wednesday, and then headed over to Mission Space. We found the Butterfly Building along the way, and also Pixie Hollow. Since the kids made their own plans for this day, they decided to leave the park around 3:30 to go swimming at the hotel. It ended up being a very enjoyable day.

Natalie and Brianna in Pixie Hollow

Our Epcot Future World Favorites:
Soarin'
Mission Space
Spaceship Earth
Innoventions
The Kim Possible Adventure

Swimming at the Caribe Cove Resort
(Getting 4 kiddos to all look at the camera at
the same time is darn near impossible.)

Tomorrow: Animal Kingdom

Our Florida Vacation Day 3 (Here comes the sun!)

Due to our previous night's events, we decided to sleep in a little to rest up for a full day of fun at Epcot. We had brunch reservations at the Aukershus, so thought we might as well just pass on throwing together breakfast and eat an early lunch. It was FANTASTIC! Our whole family had such a wonderful time. We were able to start our day off with an all-you-could-eat buffet and were visited by the most popular Disney princess characters. (Natalie is all about princesses!) Even Nate, being a boy, seemed to enjoy himself. The princesses kept telling him that he was just a handsome as Prince Charming. William is a complete flirt, so he did not mind having a bunch of pretty girls around either.

After brunch, we enjoyed the World Showcase. Our kids were in heaven! We have done a lot of studies about foreign countries, especially last semester when a good friend of mine held a class once a week about foreign countries for our homeschool group. The kids really enjoyed seeing all the artifacts and goods from other places. They also really enjoyed having their autograph books signed by real people from other countries.

Our World Showcase Favorites:
The Architecture! (It's Amazing!)

The Reflections of China 360` Adventure

Chinese Stick Yo-yos

The Vikings of Norway(Everything about them!)

The German Toyshop Dolls
Japanese Koi Ponds
The Pearl Finders in the Mitsukoshi Department Store
The Great American Adventure
The Epcot Kidcot Stations

William taking a 3 1/2hr. nap in the stroller!

After we walked the entire World Showcase, we went to a few other areas of the park, like the Figment Ride & "Honey, I shrunk the audience." Our little ones were quite freaked out after the show though. (Going from Figment to huge lions and snakes might not have been a great idea.) We had to let them run through the jumping fountains for a while to help take their minds off of it.

The rest of the night was an enjoyable low-key ending to a wonderful sun-shinning day. We visited The Land and The Seas buildings, ate dinner, visited our favorite characters, then finished with a bang watching Illuminations. Our feet were very sore after all the walking, but no one seemed to care. It was a Great Day!

Nate and Mickey

William and Donald(His new found favorite!)

The Whole Crew with Goofy!
He was such a good sport!
(And we managed to get a GREAT Picture!)

Spaceship Earth at night

Tomorrow: The Magic Kingdom

Our Florida Vacation Day 2 (The Day of Mayhem!)

Today was going to be our first day at the Disney World parks. We were so excited! We should have known, however, that it was going to be an interesting day when it started raining right at the start! It worked out well because we had planned to go to Hollywood Studios, which has mostly shows and indoor attractions.

On the way there, we were gratefully blessed to see a wild bald eagle, sitting on top of a light post outside the park. I was quite relieved because that is Nate's favorite bird and he knew that a large percentage of them live in Florida at this time of year. I had promised him that we would see one at some point during our vacation. It was great to have it happen on our first full day! (Check-mark one item on our lists of musts!) Unfortunately, we were unable to get a picture of it because there was not really a place to pull over inside the park, and there was no where to turn around. I do not think he will ever forget though! He was absolutely awe-stricken!

When we got inside Hollywood Studios, we purchased rain ponchos from a gift shop, a fantastic tip from my friend Elicia. However, all they had were child sized. They had sold out of all the adult sizes. Luckily Sam and I are pretty small adults. They were a little tight around the neck, but they served their purpose well.

Some of our favorites for the park were:

The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular

Star Tours

The Honey, I Shrunk The Kids! Movie Set Adventure

Lightning McQueen & Mater

William told us that he was going to buy them!

Toy Story Mania

& Beauty and the Beast -Live On Stage

The best highlight of the day, and maybe even the trip, was that William measured 40" tall exactly, so he was able to ride every ride that we wanted to go on with us. Yay!

It was around 6:00pm that we felt we had seen all we wanted to see. We were also pretty wet and wind blown from the day's crazy weather. We decided to take a shuttle bus over to Downtown Disney for dinner instead of staying for Fantasmic.

The kids were so excited to visit the Lego Store, World of Disney, and to eat a T-Rex, a brand new restaurant to Downtown Disney. It was an erupting volcano full of dinosaurs, mammoths, fish, and even ice-caverns. It was Way Cool!

To eat at T-Rex however, we had to wait 2 hours to be seated. By the time we ate, it was after 9:00. When we were done, it was after 10pm. We walked back to the bus station to take us to the Pop Century Resort, which would then take us back to Hollywood Studios, where our van was parked. We did not think at the time though, about Hollywood Studios closing. When we made it back to the Pop Century Resort, we realized that there were no buses going back to Hollywood Studios. I just wanted to cry! Here we had William and Natalie sound asleep in the stroller, no one in sight, and absolutely no knowledge of where Pop Century was located in the Resort or how to get back to Hollywood Studios from there! It was a little frightening. Sam saw a cleaning lady sweeping the outside walkway of the hotel, so he asked her what she thought we should do. Luckily a few moments later, a bus pulled up delivering people from Hollywood Studios to the hotel Sam went to talk to him and he said he would be happy to bring us back to the park. We were the only ones on the bus, the only ones on the tram through the parking lot, and probably the only ones who were so excited to reach Hollywood Studios that morning that we did not take notice of where we parked! Luckily, the tram attendant told us that we would probably be the only vehicle in the parking lot, and we were!

Our lonely van in the parking lot! Even the kids

had a good laugh!

The drive home proved just as eventful as the rest of the day. Disney World is completely enclosed with its own roads. When leaving, we knew we needed to go on 192 West. When the signs came up for 192, they read East, and our hotel was in Kissimmee, so we took that exit. Little did we know that our hotel is 17 miles away from Kissimmee (but still has a Kissimmee address) and that the sign meant East for 1 freeway, but both East and West for 192. We did not figure that out until Thursday. We ended up in Celebration, a city with amusement parks and attractions we had never seen before. We knew we were going the wrong way, so we made a U-turn and finally made it back to our hotel around 1:00am. We were worn out but ready for the next day: Epcot!

Our Florida Vacation Day 1

Our family has been so excited to go on our much needed vacation that when the day finally arrived to be in Florida, it hardly seemed real. After we left Baton Rouge on Easter Sunday, we drove into Crestview, FL. around 10:00pm. We immediately went to bed in order to wake up for our departure to Disney World at 5am the next morning. Little did we know what was ahead of us.

We had planned to leave early on Monday morning, drive 5 hours, and be in Disney by 10 or 11 in the morning. Things did not end up how we planned. We did indeed leave at 5am, but with a detour to the Capitol in Tallahassee, the 1 hour time change, me getting pulled over for going 14 mph over the speed limit, and gas/potty stops, we got into Orlando at a lovely 2pm.

The Capitol Building in Tallahassee

Detouring to get a picture of Monster Trucks for William

We still had not eaten lunch yet, so we decided to go eat lunch at Cici's and pass on going to Animal Kingdom until Saturday. (We would have only had 2 hrs. to be at the park. Way not worth it!)

The funnest Cici's Pizza ever in Orlando!

The day turned out wonderfully despite our change of plans. We went to Cocoa Beach instead to let Brianna and Nate see the ocean in Florida. It was not what they expected, (very spoiled by the beaches in Southern California), but they had fun bouncing in the waves, finding shells, and then getting ice cream at a fantastic ice cream shop called, "Tutti-Fruitti Gourmet"! It was great!

Brie and Nate enjoying the waves

Natalie showing off her new Ariel swimsuit!
(William wanted nothing to do with the
ocean, so he slept on my lap the whole time.)

All the kids had Bubblegum ice cream except William.
He had Superman, which fit him perfectly!

Visiting Baton Rouge

We had the wonderful opportunity to visit my family in Baton Rouge during Easter weekend and we all had such a fantastic time! We drove in early Saturday afternoon and were able to visit my grandma and grandpa at their beautiful new home. It was wonderful to see them. It has been almost 2 years since we have seen them. Too long! We were given the grand tour of their home, then spent some time just visiting with them while the kids played with Grandpa's well known blocks.

From Grandma and Grandpa's, we went to visit my cousin Megan, her family, my Aunt Linda & Uncle Mike, and my other cousins Sarah and Michael at Megan's home in Covington. They had a huge crawfish boil and all kinds of treats for the kids. It was so nice to see all of them! Megan had made the kids these really cute frosted cookies and my aunt decorated Easter eggs with them. (Each year we get all the supplies, but always seem to forget to do them.) The kids loved it. They also really enjoyed playing with Megan's dog Stella, and riding in the wagon with their little son Matthew. (What a doll!)

The Kids and Stella the Dog

My Aunt Linda, Cousin Megan,

and her son Matthew

Sam and I really enjoyed socializing with the adults while the kids were able to play and just be kids. When it was time to go, all they wanted to do was have us tell them that we would come back again. Unfortunately, we were only going to be in Baton Rouge for a total of 27 hours. We still had several people to see, and had to include sleep in there somewhere. We definitely realized that we have to go and visit more often.

After we made it back into Baton Rouge from Covington, we checked into the hotel then decided to take the kids to our famous Coffee Call on College Street for hot chocolate and Louisiana's famous beignets! Call us crazy, considering it was after 10:00pm at this point, but I really wanted to share the exciting memories I remembered from my childhood of Louisiana with my kids. It was well worth it! The kids were completely covered in powdered sugar, full of it too(right before bed), but we had a great time and only managed to spill one cup of hot chocolate as we were getting ready to leave. Luckily it all stayed on the counter.

William covered in sugar

For Easter Sunday, we sneakily hid Easter eggs in our hotel room for the kids while we were at breakfast. After Natalie kept telling us she wanted to go home because she was not getting an Easter Basket this year, she was quite surprised. So were Brie, Nate, and William. Instead of Easter baskets though, we gave them Easter Bags full of goodies. The bags were more compact and fit in our back-pack unnoticed. After all the eggs were found, we were dressed in Sunday best, and our van was again packed, we snuck away to visit the state capitol of LA before going to church. The kids have been studying American History and the 50 states this semester, so they have been making a book to keep track of all the state capitols they visit. They were so excited to see how incredible the Louisiana state capitol was! It was covered in beautifully carved statues and very very tall. They were also quite amazed at the number of sparrows that built their nests inside the decorative metal work above the entrance doors. I was so glad that we were able to go, even if it was only a quick trip and we couldn't go inside.

Our Family outside the Capitol

From the Capitol, we met my Aunt Pam, Uncle John, cousin Johnathan, his wife Katie, their beautiful little daughters Grace and Agatha, my grandma and grandpa, and Grandma Mutt at their church for Easter services. It was a wonderful sermon and very spiritual. We really enjoyed the opportunity that we had to be with our family, whom we never have been before, on this special day. It really meant a lot to me. It made me feel so blessed to have the family that I have, whom I love so very much, and know that they love me and my family so much too! It was GREAT!

After services were over, we followed my family back to my aunt and uncle's neighborhood to have Easter Dinner at their clubhouse. It was incredible! We sat an enormous table that stretched the length of the room we were seated in. Everyone had a massive buffet of food to choose from, the kids had visits from the Easter Bunny, who brought them little goody bags and Easter Eggs, and then we had dessert. Oh my goodness! I think we must have gained 20 pounds each after that meal. The togetherness and laughter we were able to have was priceless! I didn't want it to end, but knew that if we were going to keep on our schedule, it would have to.

For the last couple of hours we had, before we needed to head out of town, we went over to my Aunt Pam and Uncle John's house to visit with them a little longer and to let the kids move around before being couped in the van for several hours. I cannot say enough at how excited the kids were to be able to visit their home. We have had some wonderful memories there! My older children especially remember them. Brie and Nate played pool, explored the yard, and Natalie and William raced the kiddy-car with Aunt Pam, played soccer, and had a blast with little Grace until Natalie wiped-out and skinned her knee pretty bad. Thank goodness for Dr. Uncle John though! He had her bandaged up and fixed up quicker than whip! We were really sad to leave when it was time to go, but we knew we needed to get on the road before it got too late. Grandma and Grandpa had one more surprise for the kiddos, before we headed out of town, that we needed to go by their house and pick up. It was also really starting to rain! We gave everyone our kisses and hugs goodbye, pushing back tears from my eyes, and headed out. Grandma and Grandpa met us at our van at their home with an enormous Easter Basket for each of our kids, full of all kinds of goodies. It was so nice of them to do that. I know the kids will have that in their memories for life! I could not tell them, "Thank you!" enough.

As we left out of Baton Rouge, there was one last thing I wanted to do. The last time we came, Sam and I took a trip down to New Orleans to visit my other grandma and grandpa's tomb. I wanted so badly to leave some flowers in the vase on the front of it, but we could not find a shop to buy some. This time, I found a beautiful bouquet of Easter roses for them. As we arrived at the gates to the cemetery, we realized that they were chained and locked shut. I was devastated! I couldn't see why they felt no one visits their loved ones on Easter, but it was what it was. I knew that my grandparents knew my intentions, and that was enough for me.

From this point, we headed on to FLORIDA!

Beautiful Baby Savannah

Photo Cube

The Hardy Family