Dan's parents live in Florida so I'm always checking for cheap flights. I found a super great deal for the end of october to early november. I was so excited to take the kids to disney while everything was decked out for Halloween, and then Christmas!! We've taken them before, but they were so little they won't remember. Damon claims he does remember meeting Mickey, which he remembers things that makes me wonder if he really does remember! haha Anyways, we couldn't pass up the deal on the flights, and we figured since we were going, we had to go to disney and then Dan and I went to Universal Studios for a day.
So we flew out on a thursday, it was a red eye, but it was non stop. This was good because flying that far usually means at least one lay over and it can take a whole travel day. It was also nice because the boys slept a good portion of the flight. But it made Dan and I soooooo tired the next day. So that was kind of brutal for us, but luckily my in laws are amazing and let us sleep and catch some naps over the next few days while we were at their house. They live about 2 hours outside Orlando. So once our flight landed we got ALL our crap and our rental car and headed to their house. It was a long night and a long morning, but it was so great once we were there.
We had a day at the beach, which the boys loved! I could sit at the beach all day and comb the sand and just listen to the waves. Jag took a nap on me which was so sweet not to have to chase him around, and just relax. The boys loved building sand castles and dumping water on our feet.
The next few days we just hung out and enjoyed spending time with family. Dan's sister, Brynne and her family came to visit us and spend halloween together! We had fun at the trunk or treat at the church. The boys couldn't wait to get in their Star Wars Costumes. We went swimming, carved pumpkins, took naps, had some beach time, played games, and just visited and enjoyed eachother's company!
On Monday we headed to Orlando to begin the Disney part of the trip. My sweet parents booked us a few days in their time share in Reunion, FL which was just about 10-15 minutes from Disney. It was AMAZING! The resort had it's own water park so we spent one of the mornings there. It was the perfect place to crash every night after we were worn out from the parks.
We went to Hollywood Studios the first day where we did EVERYTHING Star Wars. The boys were in heaven! We had SO much fun! It was a great way to start our trip. We rode all the fun rides and got to see a cool show with all the main star wars characters. One of my favorite parts of the day was when we stopped and watched the "jedi's in training" where kids get to go up on stage and get robes and lightsabers and they go through "training" so that they can defeat darth vadar. So we stopped to watch and I asked the boys if they wanted to do it and they said yes and were so excited.....then Darth Vadar came out and they suddenly weren't so eager. Hahaha they really thought it was the real darth vadar and were too scared. Rafe was pretty scared for all the kids that were up on the stage, but I reassured him that they'd be ok......but I mean have you seen the star wars where annikan kills all the young jedi?! Oh yeah, and Dan and I were parents of the year and made Damon go on Tower of Terror with us, which was hilarious! He had a solid face expression the whole time. He was so scared but you never would have known it! On the other hand, I peed my pants. That ride scares the heck out of me! haha damon handled it way better than I did! But he made sure to tell us a few times that he didn't ever want to ride it again. hahaha
The second day we started off the morning at Animal Kingdom. I LOVE animal kingdom. I love all the trees and how jungly everything is. We rode the safari ride first which is always awesome because almost all the animals are out. Lucky for us, Dan's sister Brynne used to work at Disney so she knows all the good tricks! We got a bunch of fast passes for the yetti ride, so Dan and I rode it 3 times back to back. It was amazing. We went to it's tough to be a bug and the Lion King. Those are always fun. We spent a lot of time just walking around and looking at everything. Then around lunch time we left and got some food, then headed to Epcot for the rest of the day. My favorite was fast track. I haven't ridden that ride before and the boys were in heaven building their own car and "racing" it. I also love Soarin, which is now soarin around the world, which was so cool! Last time I rode it, it was just in california. The boys were a little freaked out on it, but I think they enjoyed it. We also went on the finding Nemo ride, the space ride that's inside the big globe....I can't remember the name. And dan and I did the zero gravity ride. It was a fun day! Epcot at night is so pretty!
The third day was all spent at Magic Kingdom. We rode EVERYTHING. It was so great because the wait times were really low because of the time of year we went. I super loved the new 7 dwarfs ride, the car track was fun with the boys, we also love splash mountain and space mountain. We rode dumbo, and the spacerocket ride, it's a small world, winnie the pooh, the carrousel, and peter Pan. I'm sure there were a few others, but those were the best. We stuck around for the fireworks, which was magical! I love Magic Kingdom at night when the castle is all lit up. It was so cool! Packed with people, but cool and I hope the boys will always remember it!
The last day Dan and I went to Universal Studios. We pretty much walked on every ride! I made him ride the hulk ride with me back to back. It's my favorite! We got drenched on jurrasic park, which we also rode twice. The first time we didn't get too wet, but the second time we were drenched! We spent most of our day in harry Potter world. We honestly didn't touch the second park except for Harry Potter world. We rode both the dragon rides, after we ate lunch at three broomsticks, which was a bad plan! hahaha we felt so sick after that.....so we got another butter beer. Seriously so good. We did the ride at the castle, which I love! Last time we went, we did the single rider line which is much shorter but you don't get to see hardly any of the castle. So this time we got to see more of the castle which was so cool! Then we rode the hogwarts express to the other park and walked around for a bit. It's amazing to see all the shops and how much everything looks like it's straight out of the movie. We rode the new gringots ride twice then the park was closing so we headed out! We loved the gringots ride! Probably my new favorite! I don't mind missing that side of the park though. It's a lot of like the simpsons and transformers, and mummy. I like more rollercoaster rides than the 3D rides. I was bummed we missed the rockin rollercoaster ride, but i've been there done that so it was worth it to spend it on the gringots ride instead.
We could not have done any of this without Dan's parents. They were such troopers. They were so sweet to wheel Jag around in his stroller while we took the boys on rides. And to babysit them for the last whole day so we could go to Universal was so sweet of them. They probably needed a vacation from our vacation hahah! But I know our boys had so much fun spending time with their grandparents and they are always asking when we are going to go back to florida.
The next day we did a little swimming then checked out of our hotel and headed back home! It was a long week that was jam packed of family and fun. Dan and I both talk about how glad we are that we spent our money on that trip. It could have gone a million places, but we'll never regret spending it to see our family and create memories with our kids. I'm sure they'll remember it forever! If they start to forget I have about 3 hours of video and 2 thousand pictures for them to refresh their memory! ;)
