Let The Memories Begin!

That's the motto outside the Magic Kingdom park and I thought it would be a good first title as I "re-live" this past week's excitement. It's hard to believe that our BIG family vacation has already come and gone, but let me tell you what - it. was. FABULOUS! I'm guessing it was so enjoyable because Kasey and I decided that we were going to be as laid back as possible and use this one as a learning experience, taking any mishap with a grain of salt and learning from them for next time. Also, I looked through our pictures that the park photographers took throughout our vacation and they got some fantastic shots, but I can't post them because I do not own the rights yet (I have to go through all of them and make sure any edits, borders, etc... are done before I purchase the cd.) But as soon as I do I will share them!!

Tuesday, May 3rd: We went about our day as normal, Kasey went to work, Mikenna went to school, and the other two little girls and I deep cleaned the house so that I would be able to relax after we got back (fat chance, somehow it got messed up again right before we left! No idea how... lol) I had all the bags packed and organized ready to go by the time Kasey and Mikenna were home. Then we drove to Casper to drop off our zoo with my mom while we were gone, and the girls had eye appointments in the evening. Mikenna has great vision and felt totally jipped that she didn't need reading glasses or anything (we'll ask her again in a few years if she still feels the same, ha!), and I wrote about Adiee's little "condition" a couple weeks ago. She is a little far-sided and needs glasses with pretty minor correction. She picked out these cheap Christmas looking plastic frames at first but changed her mind after some "slight" parental persuasion. Looking back though, maybe paying almost $200 for her FIRST pair of glasses wasn't the smartest thing :) Oh well, she looks pretty cute in them though if I do say so myself!

Wednesday, May 4th: We stayed the night in Casper and all 5 of us got our hair done (including Isla, her first haircut mind you). Here's her before, during, and after pictures... Adorabe!!

And while my highlights were processing, Kasey got a pedicure by a 5 and 6 year old. He's such a good daddy! I don't know many men that would be seen in purple and orange toes (and later a butterfly/peace sign bandaid on the top of his foot! haha :) What a good sport!)

Now that we were all looking snazzy, we drove on to Denver. We got to town about 4ish, stopping at a few of the strip malls on the way in. We picked up some new clothes and shoes for the girls and I, became members at REI, Kasey got a new outback hat (HOT hubby alert! haha) and I got a big floppy crocheted sunhat that's super cute. We went a little crazy shopping before the trip even started! Ha! Then we ate dinner at Olive Garden, and went to our hotel. On the way there we saw a few of those yellow and black spotted buses (the shuttles for where we were parking our car for the week) and it started to sink in that we were actually going.

Just as soon as Kasey had checked us in, we all got in our swimsuits and headed to the pool. We were the only ones there, so we were able to jump, splash, laugh, and play any way we wanted! It was great! We stayed down there for a couple hours, and when we got back to our room Kasey and I tag-teamed bath-time. I gave washed their hair and as soon as each one was done, they would hop out and Kasey would blow-dry their hair.

We WORE them out!! Haha! They passed out as soon as their little heads hit the pillow! I did some last minute packing, making sure that all of our things were where they were supposed to be and re-packing the girls' carry-ons. They tore those apart in the back seat during the trip to Denver and I didn't want any surprises at security.

Thursday, May 5th: I couldn't sleep AT ALL that night I was so excited! I felt like a total kid on Christmas Eve! I may have fallen asleep between 4 and 5 in the morning; other than that not. a. wink. No joke! haha :) We started our day off right with Kasey breaking the ceramic soap dish in the shower... with his head... He went down to talk to hotel management about it and I finished getting the girls ready for our big day. Our goal was to eat breakfast and leave the hotel by 8. And even after all the "events" of the morning we made it!! And yes, I picked this parking area because of the fun shuttle buses! haha :) And when we checked out at the end of our trip, it was only $30! I was expecting a little over $50. Score! ;)

The girls asked us where we were going, and we said we were on our way to a park (they just didn't know what kind of park! hehe! Sneaky, sneaky!) When we got to the airport the girls took one look around and said, "This doesn't look like a very fun park." HA! Kasey and I decided that we should tell them so we lined them up against the wall and told them to close their eyes and hold out their hands for a surprise. I proceeded to put their hats in their hand, of course I had to mix up which one belonged to who, all the while trying to video it with the cell phone too (which I forgot only did 30 second clips! Ugh!)... It was kind of a mess.

But anyway, we told them to open their eyes and told them that we were going to Disney World. Wow, did their reaction surprise us. In a very dull voice, they said, "yaaay, disney world..." WHAT?!? What kid says yay that way?! Haha :-) I think they were just confused, overwhelmed, and didn't know what to exactly expect. After we started talking about it, they got more and more excited... You know, the way we were expecting them to react in the beginning and of course it wasn't captured on tape, haha. We got through everything pretty quickly, we had 2 hours left by the time we reached our gate. The girls watched the airplanes outside the window, and took a walk with Kasey to go get some water bottles, etc... It actually didn't seem to take too long for the time to pass. We left Denver at 10:45 a.m.

The girls were really excited to be on a plane for the first time! The seating on our first plane was an "Air Bus" and had 6 seats across, cut in half by the aisle. So Adiee and Mikenna both got a window seat.

Kasey sat across the aisle with Mikenna, and I sat between Adiee and Isla on the opposite side.

Isla quickly fell asleep and slept right through take off. And I was able to hold her as soon as we were in the air. They thought the plane was pretty neat, they got to look at "Sheldon, the sea turtle" on the wings, the clouds underneath us, and before we got too high, Adiee said, "The ground looks like a puzzle!" So Cute!!

When we were landing about 3 hours later, Mikenna and Isla had a little bit of problems with their ears not popping, so they didn't like that part too much. They cried a little quietly, it's so hard to not be able to do anything for them. We arrived in Florida at 4:19 p.m.

When we all got off, we took a tram to the main terminal where my little sister was waiting to greet us. It was all short-lived though because immediately we had to find the Disney's Magical Express that was going to take us to our resort. So she ended up driving 2 hours to see us for 10 minutes, poor Melanie. They gave us some grief over Isla not having her own ticket for the motorcoach, even though I booked the whole trip through Disney. I just figured they didn't put her on there because she wasn't 3 yet. They put her on some lists and not on others so I had no idea that this was one list she did need to be on... But we got it worked out and had her added for the ride back to the airport.

Another 45 minutes or so, we were standing in the lobby of our resort getting checked in which took about 2 minutes because Kasey and I did the online check in the night before we left home. They gave Kasey a welcome packet and a Key to the World card for each member of our family. While Kasey was doing that, the girls were already busy getting balloons... and LOTS of them! haha :)

We went to check out our hotel room and drop off our carry-ons after we pryed the girls away from the balloon lady. Our room was on the third floor in the 101 Dalmations part of the resort which was neat, there was a GIANT Pongo in front of our building and the staircase was a GIANT fire hydrant. There was a Mickey Mouse head made of towels on our beds. 

The Toy Story section of the resort was probably my favorite with the 101 Dalmations coming in on a close second. The girls are in front of Andy's bedroom door and crawling all over RC. Love it! It was really hard to get them to look at the camera because they were so enthralled with their surroundings! Just like the Pongo and Perdy, there was a GIANT Buzz and Woody. Awesome!! 

First on our agenda - We had reservations for "The Spirit of Aloha" dinner show at 8 o'clock. We went to the concierge desk and got our confirmation ticket and transportation directions on how to get there. We waited for a bus that would take us to Magic Kingdom, and transferred to the monorail that would take us to the Polynesian Resort, then walking to the luau area. We waited in line forever, then we waited in another waiting area for even longer... The girls got pretty tired of the waiting part, but they were so good!

When we finally got seated, they brought out a plate of appetizers such as fresh pineapple, green salad with mandarin oranges and poppy seed dressing, pineapple-coconut bread. They sang and danced a few songs, then brought out dinner. They had roasted chicken, BBQ pork ribs, polynesian rice, steamed veggies, etc. After they gave everyone time to eat, they did more singing and dancing. They brought out a volcano desert that was shaped like one and was made of a chocolate mousse/cake thing, I don't know with raspberry lava and an orange syrup on the bottom of the plate. Mikenna didn't like it at all, Adiee scarfed it down, and Isla picked at it some.

They even had the kids in the audience come up so they could teach them a little hula dance!

After all was said and done it was like 10:30 pm. In my opinion, the show dragged on a little and it should have continued while people eat. The coolest part was the actual hula dancing and the fire dancer, they were AWESOME!! Right after we left the luau area, we stopped on a beach and all ran barefoot through this powdery sand, watched in the distance Cinderella's castle turn different colors and the last few fireworks go off. We put our shoes back on, and instead of riding the monorail back to Magic Kingdom, we took a water taxi. Then had to get in the bus line to go back to our resort; little did we know we were going to sit there until midnight because the park was closing and there was a huge crowd of people who wanted to go home at the same time. Whew! And this was just the first few hours in Walt Disney World!!