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?

Disneyworld: Day 1- Sat, Jan 8th

We got up and were out the door for our drive at 6:45am. We don't have a TV in the van (we had one in our old van) so we ended up listening to a 39 Clues book-on-cd and also to The Witches

About 2 hours down the road Jack threw up. I chalked it up to the pop-tart treats I gave him for breakfast. I knew there was a reason that I never bought those things.

The drive (with stops) ended up taking us 11 hours. Not bad.

We arrived at the house and crashed- ready for the first day.

Disneyworld: Our rental house

Like I said in my last post- I researched all the options. Onsite resorts, off-site hotels, off-site house & condo rentals.

We decided on an off-site house rental for a multitude of reasons. A major factor was the space. We had SO much space. We even had one bedroom that we didn't even use. The garage was turned into a playroom and each bedroom had its own bath. There was a kitchen as well as a washer/dryer AND we had a heated pool with hot tub in the back (that had a great safety fence around it!) Josh and I wanted to enjoy our trip once the kids were asleep and not just have to go to bed at 8pm with them because there was no where else to go/nothing else to do. We ended up watching lots of TV after they were asleep (cable), getting on the internet (wireless internet) , getting in the hot tub and eating!!!!

Once we decided on renting a house and I knew in which area we wanted to be I used VRBO.com to find the house that we wanted. There are so many options- we technically could've stayed in a condo and there were houses that were even cheaper than the one we were in, but the place we stayed had such great review and looked so nice.

Your Disney House was what we ended up choosing.

This house was every bit of what the website describes and shows, plus more!

So much space for our family and such nice amenities. The kitchen was stocked with every appliance/baking dish/etc you could possibly need (even had a panini press!) and the owners were so nice! (we communicated via e-mail and telephone leading up/after the trip) You do have to supply your own detergents, trash bags, etc. They stock the house with TP and paper towels and if you run out you supply your own (but we didn't run out).

They use a managements company in FL so if you have a problem you just call them (we didn't have any issues!) The home is in the Windsor Hills gated community. It's only 5 minutes from the Disney parks, 5 minutes from Super Target (where I went to get groceries) and less than 5 minutes from about a bazillion restaurants (which came in handy the night Josh and I ordered take out after the kids were in bed).

Check-in was super easy- there was a key pad lock box on the doorjam to the house that held the key- you use the code to get the key out and just walk in- same with checkout. SO NICE not to have to go to the management company office after driving for 10 hours.

One more bonus- One of the Windsor hills playgrounds was three houses away (and no one was EVER there) and the other one was a block away (it was a cool castle themed one so it was little busier, but not bad at all)

We pulled in about 6:00pm. This is not long after we arrived and Josh was unloading the van.

The kids made themselves at home VERY quickly. Gracie was already in her pjs before we finished carrying everything in. Jack and Gracen slept in this room.

Cons: The ONLY possible cons were (and believe me- I'm stretching when I try to even THINK of a con!):

1. The landscaping was suffering a little (but it is January and my yard at home is terrible- so I don't really care)

2. It took us 15 minutes or so to really figure out the hot tub. So better directions on that.

Drumroll please........Disneyworld: The Planning

My Disneyworld report is going to be very in depth- I've had a lot of questions about our trip- mainly logistics with a family of our size, but also about finances, what is worth it, etc.

FYI: When I speak of Disneyworld as a whole I mean all four parks in FL.

I guess I'll start in the beginning. We started planning this trip after Christmas in December 2009! We talked to my parents and for our Christmas gifts in 2010 they agreed to help pay for our trip to Disney! I've been to Disneyworld several times- a couple when I was a little girl and then once at the age of 12 or so. Josh had never been. Neither one of us consider ourselves 'theme park people' but I REALLY wanted to take the kids to Disneyworld. Josh on the other hand, didn't care to. He finally gave in, but told me it would only ever be one trip so I better choose wisely when we would go.

We booked our house a full year in advance (so Jan. 2010) and I started researching.

www.disboards.com was an awesome messageboard resource for my planning

My favorite Disney planning book was The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World -Worth EVERY penny. The author also has a website- Touringplans.com that was also worth its weight in gold. I liked knowing when each park was going to be the least crowded by their calculations.

Josh also downloaded a couple Disneyworld apps on the iPhone that essentially told us wait times, had GPS locations, etc.

Packing with 5 kids is a breeze once you get a system down. The house we were renting had a washer/dryer so I didn't have to pack too much, but FL weather in January is varied so we needed a variety of types of clothing (you'll see that in more posts!) I did end up buying a few cute disney themed shirts for the kids (Josh would've died if I bought any for him or I- although I REALLY wanted one!)

This is all the kid's clothes waiting on my dresser to be packed up!

Also, since we were staying in a home and didn't plan on eating every meal at the parks, needed to do wash, etc. I had packed a basket of household needs and a basket of food (didn't get a picture of that!) (YES, those are disposable diapers- we used them for the trip)

Driving vs. flying: We knew immediately it made sense for us to drive. It's only a 10 hour drive, we have 7 people in our family, I wanted the freedom to go to the grocery store, we planned on visiting with Josh's grandmother while in FL and we were staying off-site (meaning not at a Disney Resort) PLUS, Big Blue (the van) has so much space for our family. We packed everything we needed with plenty of room to spare.

Off-site renting vs. Disney Resort: As soon as I started looking into it, I started making spreadsheets. I included prices for parking if we stayed off-site, sizes of rooms, amenities, etc. It was significantly cheaper for our family to stay off-site in a 4 bedroom, 4 bath house with a private heated pool than to stay in a hotel room that would hold all of us (at least a disney moderate level resort) or 2 hotel rooms connected (at a disney value resort). I know that you lose some of the 'Disney Magic' by not staying there, but it was definitely the best choice for our family. More on the house in the next post.....

Tickets: I purchased from a site that touringplans.com suggests and saved $50 or so. Next time I'll buy from disney- I'll explain more about that when I get to day 1.

2011 Date Challenge

In honor of our 10 year anniversary this year we are doing a Date Challenge.

While we spend almost every evening together around the house, we needed to work on 'dating' each other again.

So......our goal is 48 dates in 2011.

4 a month.

Josh is in charge of Jan, me in Feb, Josh in March, me in April, you get the drill.

Can't repeat a date within your own month.

Already done with January and we're lovin' it.

Picture: At our first date of the New Year- Jan 1st at 12:00am.

Running of the Lights (5k at midnight)