Disneyworld: Day 6- Thursday, January 13th

We had 8:30am reservations at Tusker House in Animal Kingdom this morning so we got everyone up early. Gracen seemed to be feeling much better so Josh fixed her toast with PB & J to make sure she was ok.

Just as we were pulling in the Animal Kingdom parking spot she threw up all over herself. Double UGH! Josh offered to take her back to the house to change and then return later to pick us up. So the other four kids and I headed into the park.

Donald Duck greeted us at the entrance. Note my purse that Morgan is carrying. This thing was a lifesaver on the trip. We left the backpack on the stroller with all the diapers, wipes, extra clothes, waterbottles, etc but I wore this with my wallet, camera, etc. It was small enough to not get in the way but big enough to hold my stuff.

This picture is a drastic change from some of the pictures of Everett with Winnie the Pooh! He had just given Mickey a straw here.

One word of advice- make sure to take cups for your kids to AK. They don't have regular cups with straws- just coffee cup type cups and the straws are paper- they are protecting the animals.

Note that Everett wouldn't let go of Mickey's hand for the picture.

I love this picture- Everett wanted Goofy before he even got to the table.

This day was the coldest day of our trip so we didn't stay very long. We did a couple rides, watched a show and went on a safari. Look at Everett's face- you can see how cold and windy it really was.

Pretty sweet how close the animals are. (this photo wasn't taken with zoom)

Josh picked us up around lunchtime and we went back to the house for a relaxing evening.

Disneyworld: Day 5- Wednesday, January 12th

This day was an 'off' day for our family. We hung out around the house and went to Downtown Disney in the afternoon. We watched 'Tangled' in 3D and walked around a little bit. I would probably only go back to DTD if it was summertime and we were bored- not much exciting there.

Later that evening we took Josh's grandmother, Peggy, to dinner. She chose Longhorn Steakhouse. We picked her up and headed to the restaurant. Right after we ordered Gracen threw up all over herself. UGH! So I took Gracen and Everett to the car while everyone else ate their food. I didn't have a change of clothes for Gracen, but did have an extra pair of Jack's jeans and one of Everett's fleece pullovers. (Hence what she is wearing in the below pictures)

After dinner we took Peggy home and the girls loved looking around her home at all the girly things (her house is mainly white and pink- that's it)

We went home and went to bed hoping Gracen wouldn't get sick anymore- hoped it was just a fluke. We had reservations to eat with Mickey at Animal Kingdom the next morning!!

Disneyworld: Day 4- Tuesday, January 11th

Our third park day was at Disney Hollywood Studios.

We saw some awesome shows at DHS.

There is a whole Star Wars area at that park. Jack (and Josh loved it)

There is this 'Jedi training' where they train little kids (you have to sign up) to be Jedis and then they fight Darth Vadar. When Darth came out Jack and Josh were trying to contain their excitement.

Jack bought a Star Wars Blaster with his $$.

They loved this Star Wars plane thingie (I have no clue what it is called)

So did their dad.....

The Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area is a favorite

We went to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner. I love my goofy husband- he keeps me a little less serious. :)

Disneyworld: Day 3- Monday, January 10th

Our second day at the parks we went to Epcot. Bright and early.

We had reservations at Akershus to eat breakfast with the Princesses.

I LOVE the World Showcase at Epcot- so beautiful and great attention to detail. Lucky for me, Josh and the kids appreciated it almost as much as I do. Unfortunately for me, however, my little ones don't have a lot of patience when it comes to studying architecture. ;)

Akershus is in the Norway section of the World Showcase- SO PRETTY!

Belle was greeting everyone as they walked in. I know this is a blurry picture but the princesses (and all other characters for that matter) are fabulous with the kids (and adults!) and stay in character the whole time. Belle kept calling Gracen and Everett our little teacups. :)

These are pictures I took with my camera but your breakfast includes 2 nice photos taken and printed out right there. Gracen was enthralled (as you can tell in the below picture)

They bring 'family style' platters of sausage, bacon, eggs, and potato casserole to the table and keep filling them up as needed. There was also a cold buffet- but yummy breakfast foods this time. Incorporated Norwegian and American foods. I think my kids ate 5 pounds of strawberries. For real.

Gracen and Raelyn wore princess dresses. Rae wore her Rapunzel dress and Gracie wore the Snow White dress my grandmother made for me when I was little!!

We saw: Belle, Snow White, Aurora, Ariel and Mary Poppins.

After eating Raelyn changed into her regular clothes but Gracen stayed in costume all day.

As a treat we let the girls pick out oysters in Japan. Each oyster had a pearl in it.

I had purchased cute carriage cage settings before we went so each girl has a Cinderella Pearl Necklace.

Around lunchtime it started to rain! I had brought ponchos for everyone and they worked well, but we decided to get a nice bite to eat in Italy and escape the rain. I really loved dining with my family during this trip. The kids are well behaved (for the most part) at restaurants.

After lunch we stopped in Mexico. Josh was wearing Everett in the ergo while he rested.

We made our way to Future World and rode tons of rides. Jack was bummed he couldn't ride Mission Space though.

Klacki and Pop gave the kids Disney gift cards before we left so they each could choose out a souvenir. Gracen chose a baby Minnie.

And one of Gracie's pearl in the Cinderella cage.

Disneyworld: Day 2- Sun, Jan 9th

When heading onto the Disney properties you have to go through this entrance. I was giddy at this point.

It was the weekend of the Disney 1/2 and full marathons. I wanted to run.....maybe someday.

We were heading into.......Magic Kingdom. The beautiful castle, the teacups, Dumbo, It's a Small World.......

The very first ride we went on was Dumbo. Gracen looked up at me and said 'This is SO magical!" I might or might not have teared up at that point (yes, I'm admitting this on my blog) I was so excited to be on vacation with my little family. We went on 5 rides in an hours time. No waits, nothing! Perfect. Most rides sat 2-3 people in each 'car' so we usually sat Morgan & Raelyn together, Josh and Jack together, Gracen and I together and then Everett went with either Josh or me. Our whole family could go on so many rides all together.

While Josh, Morgan and Raelyn went on Big Thunder Mtn. Railroad (this was the girls second time- I took them the first time) the little ones and I found this cute little play area.

On our way to lunch we happened to run into Prince Eric and Ariel. Gracen's face lit right up! She was a little shy though. Jack didn't want to be in these pictures because he was afraid everyone would think he liked princesses. AND he asked Ariel not to sign his book- only Prince Eric. I had to talk to him about being nice.....

I had made ADRs (advanced dining reservations) back in the summer to eat lunch at Crystal Palace with Winnie the Pooh and friends. After arriving there we waited about 5 minutes before getting seated.

Crystal Palace is an all you can eat buffet- it was actually pretty good and had TONS of food.

After lunch we rode even more rides and watched 2 parades. I tried to talk the kids out of wanting to ride the merry-go-round. We could do that anywhere, but no luck.

Ev and I hung out while everyone else did Goofy's Barnstormer roller coaster.

I had 'If I'm lost call.....(then insert Josh's number)' bracelets for each of the kids (the lime green bracelets you'll see in most pictures) along with lime green if I'm lost tags that I safety pinned on their belt loops each day.

OK, now for the embarrassing Cortney story. Like I said in the last post- we bought our tickets from a 3rd party dealer. Well, you need your tickets for entry (you only get one ticket for your whole trip) but you also need them to get fastpasses. So....you have to be very careful. After getting fastpasses somewhere (can't remember where) I couldn't find the tickets. I was FREAKING out. I looked and looked and looked. Finally I had no choice but to go to customer service. They pretty much said that since I bought them from a third party they couldn't help me out unless I could get that third party on the phone and get the ticket numbers from them. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and the place I purchased them from wasn't open until Monday morning. We had breakfast reservations Monday morning so we really needed tickets THEN! I ended up buying everyone one day tickets and praying we'd find the other tickets. (The first day is the most expensive when buying Disney tickets)

Long story short- I spent SOO Much $$ on one day tickets (to use the next day) and when we got home that evening Josh found my 'lost' tickets. Luckily while in Epcot the next day they refunded me the $$ so I wasn't out any more. Josh didn't let me forget this the whole trip and kept joking with me that I probably shouldn't carry the tickets- I might lose them.

What's a trip without a hiccup?