Florida Day 5

Disneyworld!!!

Well, first we started the day with one of Shane's amazing breakfasts! He made a sausage egg scramble, fruit and yogurt parfaits and we had Krispy Kreme donuts. Good start to the day!!

Our timeshare was about a 10 minute drive from Disney, so great! We only went to the Magic Kingdom because it was the most age-appropriate for Oliver. The other great thing about going this was that both kids were free. We took a ferry boat into the park, which we thought Oliver would love, but he was kind of indifferent to. The first thing we did when we got to the park was buy a stamp for our Sun Pass payment. A couple of days previous I had called and explained that we accidentally drove through the Sun Pass. The operator said we just had to send a check in for the toll amount ($.75!). Very easy solution! They also said that the rental company would never know about the transgression. What a relief! So with that out of the way, we could really enjoy our day! That morning Irene had bought Oliver a wrist strap so that he could walk around the park but still be attached to one of us. It was such a blessing! He felt independent walking, but he was always withing 3 feet of us.

OK, so rides we went on, I'll just list them off...Tommorrow land tour (good intro to rides for Oliver), Carousel of Progress (I hate this stupid ride, but Shane makes us go on it every time!), Cars (Oliver drove...and loved it! Still talks about driving his race car), Thunder Mountain (both babies were asleep, so Shane and I went on it...a 3 minute wait!), Splash Mountain (literally walked right on to the ride...crazy!), Carousel, Perimeter train (a good breather from all of the excitement), we tried to see Mickey but it was a 40 minute wait, so I just showed Oliver a picture of Mickey and said "Look, there's Mickey! Say Hi!" He seemed okay with that solution!, Goofy's Airplane rollercoaster (Oliver's first roller coaster!! He LOVED it. He's such an adrenaline junky! He just giggled with glee the whole time we were on it!), Dumbo ride (a must, apparently for a lot of people, our longest wait of the day...40 minutes! Oliver liked controlling the up and down, though, and everyone got to go on), Jungle Cruise (a calm ride for the end of the day). We took the monorail out of the park which Oliver probably counted as another ride! The babies went down fairly easy that night. Shane and I had some lackluster Chinese and called it a night. What a great day!!

Happy Anniversary!

Four years ago, I married the man of my dreams! I can't believe how quickly these four years have gone, and how much has happened! We honeymooned in Mexico, I graduated from college, we moved to Scotland, we moved back, we had Oliver, Shane worked at Wal-Mart, Eased Edges, and for a medical inventory company all to make ends meet, I cared for baby Daniel and sold Usborne books, Shane started grad school, then got a job at Liberty Mutual, we moved to Dover, visited Montreal, had Lily, visited Florida, and now we're waiting for our next adventure.I love experiencing all of the ups and downs, joys and pains, with my wonderful husband! Happy anniversary, love!

Clapping

Wednesday Lily also started clapping. She loves to do it! It improves my day 500% when she claps, its just so stinkin' cute!

First Foods!

On Wednesday we finally relented and bought Lily some rice cereal. She's been pretty insatiable lately, so it seemed a good time to start. She was so funny. She acted like we put lemon juice in the cereal! Unfortunately, she didn't sleep any better that night, but maybe over time her belly will stay full longer! She started cereal about a month before Oliver did.

New Beds!

Monday night we picked up a big boy bed for Oliver (many thanks to Sis. Jorgenson for giving us one she had!!!) That also meant that Lily got to move up into a crib from her co-sleeper. I was so excited to finally be able to put Lily's sheets and crib bumper on her crib! My awesome MIL homemade them just for her! And they look so great!

The first night was a little rough, but Tuesday night they both slept great in their new, big beds! My sweet babies are getting so big so fast!!

Florida Day 4

We started the morning at Shoney's. They had a great breakfast buffet for $4.99! Shane went up FIVE TIMES! Oliver wanted to try and get a ball out of the claw machine at the restaurant so Shane put in enough to try two times. The first time he came close, but the second time he got the ball! I always thought those things were rigged so you could never win! He was so excited to get his New Jersey Devil's rubber ball! "My ball! My ball!"
We got back to the timeshare to get ready to go to the zoo for the day, and I could just not keep my eyes open! So I fell asleep with Lily and by the time I woke up it was too late to go out for the day, so we just headed down to the pool. The kids just loved the pool so much, we could have stayed there the whole time!
That night we had another bbq for dinner. Everyone turned in early so we could prepare for the next day...Disney!


A side note; I just wanted to jot down the sleep arrangements. Lily and I slept in the king size bed. Shane slept with us some nights, but most of the time he slept on the fold out couch with Oliver to get him to sleep better. One night Shane slept a little too deeply, because I awoke to Oliver crying int the bathroom saying "Dragonflies in here!" He had wandered in and when it was dark he got scared. He's not scared of monsters or anything like that, he's afraid of dragonflies! And any dark space he thinks has them. It was so sad to see him in the bathroom, terrified the dragonflies would get him!

Florida Day 3

Monday morning started out with Shane's sister making breakfast sandwiches for the whole family. Oh my. They were sooooooo delicious! We ate at about 10. Then Shane and I went for a walk with the kiddos on the nature trails around the time shares. The kids loved it! Oliver even got to see some turtles in the water. At 1230 we went out to eat at a place called Columbia, which ironically is a Cuban restaurant. None of us were hungry, but it was a free meal! All we had to do was listen to a spiel about upgrading the timeshares. The lunch was mediocre, although it was in the town of Celebration, which is a surreal town. It looks plucked straight out of the 1940's. If you ever go to the Orlando area, I highly recommend taking an afternoon to walk around. Beautiful houses, beautiful pond, beautiful atmosphere. Oliver was getting antsy while we were waiting for the food, so I took him out to look at a fountain and he loved it. He was dying to run through it. He also made a little friend, a little 1 year old girl that walked right over to him and started holding his hand. Presh! So the food was only allright, probably because none of us had an appetite yet! The sales guy had mercy on us and said that the mommies and babies could go back to our units, and the husbands would just have to do the tour and sales pitch, etc. Lily spent the afternoon practicing her crawling. She'd been doing one or two crwls for a couple of weeks, but she got really good this week! Crawling at 7.5 months! Not too shabby! TWO hours later, Shane came back triumphant, having blocked every sales tactic they threw at him!

When they got back we all went in the pool. That day Irene had bought Oliver some water wings. He tried them out and immediately wanted to swim by himself! And he did! He can only swim for a few seconds, but he gets such a kick out of it! Of course, we had to deal with Mr. Big-In-His-Britches the rest of the trip thinking he could jump in the pool byhimself!

That night we went to see a dinner show called Arabian Nights. If you've ever heard of/been to the Mideval Times, its like that, but the focus is on the horses. The ticket price is $60, but we got tickets for $10 for going to the sales pitch...not too shabby! We were a little worried about Oliver keeping still for an hour and a half. Well, we had NOTHING to worry about. We had to remind him he had food in front of him, he was so fixated on the show. It was so awesome to see how into the show he was! We had been to this show 3 years previous, and it was okay, but seeing it with a child makes the show so much more fun! We didn't take a camera with us because we thought photography wouldn't be allowed, but it was actually encouraged! Boo! We got a picture of Oliver petting a horse at the end of the show on Mark's camera phone, but haven't gotten it from him yet. I'll post it when we do. Oliver still talks about petting the horse. He loved it so much! Another great day in Florida!

Florida Day 2

putting sunscreen on!cool guy!

kissin' cousins!

Sunday didn't get off to a very good start. Shane and I wanted to take everyone out to a breakfast buffet place called Shoney's that we had been to 3 years earlier. We searched for a good 30 minutes before we gave up and went to IHOP. Shoney's had moved to another part of town without TELLING US! How dare they! Anyway, IHOP was delish. I had strawberry cheesecake pancakes and Shane had strawberry stuffed french toast. Yum!! After that we went grocery shopping at Publix. I won't lie, we bought some Krispy Kremes. Also, fruit in Florida is so wonderfully cheap! Interestingly enough, though, Florida's Natural Orange Juice is cheaper in NH than FL! Oh, globalization, how complex you are.

The rest of the day we just hung out around the pool. We discovered that Lily LOVES the water. We put her in her floaty and we could have just left her there until dinner, and she would have been happy as a clam. I think it's because she know's Oliver can't tackle her in the water (yet). We bar-b-qued for dinner. Oliver was so interested in everything around him. I taught him what a palm tree was and for the rest of the vacation he loved pointing out he "pom" trees.

It was a beautiful relaxing day.

Florida Day 1

The day started out great! The kids did so awesome on the bus and both flights. They both slept through the Chicago-Orlando leg. It was so ideal.
When we went to get our rental car is when things went downhill. It took a good 20 minutes for them to do all of the paperwork and get the car, and then when we finally jammed the luggage into the Honda Civic, Shane showed me with amazement that somehow our online quote went from $160 to $400 at the rental place. Oh my! There goes the vacation budget! So we were driving along trying to figure out how this happened, when we realized that we missed the pull off to pay a cash toll and got stuck going through the E-Z Pass (called the Sun Pass) toll without a pass! Shane did that once before in NH and got charged about $50, plus in the rental agreement it says that they charge you $50 for going through it as well. Awesome. There goes another $100 from our vacation. We're down $500 and haven't done a thing!!!
When we get to the timeshare, Shane and his dad seriously 30 minutes to check in. Meanwhile I'm in the car with two very crabby babies. I use this time to look through the rental bill and see that they charged us for liablitily insurance AND supplemental insurance. Interesting, since Shane told them THREE TIMES he didn't want to put insurance on the car. They obliged and said " OK, just intial here here and here and sign here." Guess what he initialed? To get insurance and supplemental. Ugh.
So we finally get into the timeshare at about 830. Shane and his mom and sister go to the store at the end of the street to pick up something to eat (we haven't eaten since lunch!) They get back 20 minutes later with milk and 1 soda. Apparently the store was prohibitively expensive. Shane suggests we just order in chinese food, and we all agree...except for Shane's dad who wants pizza. So we end up ordering 2 XL pizzas. We call and put in the order. The wait time for delivery? AN HOUR!! It's 10pm by this time and we just say okay. AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER the pizza is delivered. We all scarfed it down in about 10 seconds because we were so hungry. We all agree, though, it was not that great, and definitely not XL. Oy. Not a good start to the vacation. Luckily for us, all of the bad experiences seemed to have crammed themselves into one day!

Baby Mozart

Oliver composed his first song yesterday. When I tried to get him to sing it for the camera, he wanted to sing Old McDonald, but the words to his song will be with me forever. I love toddler imaginations!
"Monkeys climb, MONKEYS climb, MONKEYS CLIMB!!
Uuuuup Greanbean's tree!!
Camera's here, CAMERA'S here, CAMERA'S HERE!"
I hope he'll be as talented as his Auntie RahRah someday, and with a start like this, I have high hopes!

We survived!

We survived our first vacation as a family of four! Dare I say, we even enjoyed ourselves! In all honesty, it really was a perfect vacation. I'll blog each day of the trip in the days to come, but the most important thing to know is that we had a fun, exciting, joyous trip together!