Disney Vacation: The Journey!

We had the most wonderful week at Disney World last week! It was truly an amazing trip. I was hoping to do some recaps along the way, but we ended up not being able to get internet in our hotel. Plus, even if we had been able to connect to the internet, I don't think I would have had the energy to blog. Oh my goodness, no one told me how exhausting Disney is! Especially when you don't stop for a rest time and basically go non-stop for 12 hours everyday. Ha! It was completely worth it, though :)

 

On Saturday morning, January 18th, my mom came over to keep our sweet Lainey so that we could get on the road. I was so sad about leaving Alaina. I started really regretting our decision to leave her at home, but in hindsight, I know it was the right choice. We missed her so much, though!! We kissed her goodbye and posed for a quick family picture. Jude was super excited. Or not.

We got on the road and made pretty good time. We did loose an hour because of the different time zone. The best thing we could find for lunch was Arby's. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but I guess you can't be choosy when you're on the road. (Or maybe you can... on the way home, we literally didn't eat lunch until 2:00 because I refused to eat anymore fast food. We held out for a McAlister's that time. Ha!)

She had her dolls and she was set.

We finally stopped in Tallahassee for the night around dinner time. After a quick meal, we got settled into our hotel for the night. Jude quickly claimed the closet as his bed. (He's trying to shut the door on me.)

I only wish he had actually slept in the closet. David slept with Jude and I slept with Aubrey. We discovered that both of our children are kickers. Oh, and they like to sleep sideways in the bed. Ha!

On Sunday morning, we got up and got ready to go to a church in Tallahassee. We were planning to go to the early service, but we didn't get up in time. But then we were ready too early for the 11:00 service, so we just wasted a lot of time in our hotel room. Oh well, it worked out fine in the end.

We enjoyed the church that we attended, and then we got lunch at Panera before getting back on the road. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and we were all SO excited so see this beautiful sight around 6:00.

We found our way to the Art of Animation where we would be staying.

What sold us on this particular resort were the Little Mermaid rooms. We had totally played that up to Aubrey, and she was SO excited! Well, when we were checking in, we found out that we had been "upgraded" to a Car's suite. David and I weren't about to turn down a suite, especially after the night we had just had sharing beds with our kids. Ha! But we were a little disappointed not to be in an Ariel room after all. However, Aubrey got over it pretty quickly when she saw this pool.

How fun is that?! We never had a chance to use the pool, and it was really too cold anyway, but it was fun to look at! :) The entire resort was SO cute and fun for kids. I was so pleased with it, and I was actually very pleasantly surprised by how nice it was considering it was a value resort. I would definitely recommend it! The suite ended up being a life saver! It was super cute, and there was a separate bedroom for David and me, and a fold down bed and a pullout couch in the living room area, so the kids had their own beds.

After we got settled in our room, we caught a bus to Downtown Disney.

It was so fun! We ate dinner at Wolfgang Puck Express, and it was delicious! I got a pizza and ate the whole thing! :) Afterwards, we walked around and the kids rode a little train.

Aubrey is obsessed with Legos, so all of these amazing Lego creations were fascinating to her.

We were getting tired, so we went to catch the bus back to our hotel. It was such a fun night, but it wasn't ALL smiles. This boy is a trip. HA!

We went to sleep fairly quickly excited about our first day at Disney!