about our Disney day trip (part 2)

Again, a warning: this post is probably boring unless you really care about Disney World.



So my last post left off with our Fast Passes for Splash Mountain. Since we had a couple of hours to kill before we could come back to ride it, we hopped on the Walt Disney World Railroad to go back to Main Street and head to Adventureland.

Adventureland holds another favorite ride:

We got to ride in the front of the boat, even!

The park was still surprisingly empty. We got some ice cream and enjoyed this view again:

Per Aaron's request, we stopped at the Country Bear Jamboree on our way back to Splash Mountain.

We rode Splash Mountain in the back row, which was fun, and then grabbed Fast Passes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

Then it was back to Tomorrowland for a couple things...

Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor

Stitch's Great Escape

The park was getting a little more crowded now. We ran into a bunch of parade traffic on our way back to ride Thunder Mountain.

It was finally time for a little nap, so we headed into the air conditioned sanctuary of the Hall of Presidents.

After being reminded of America's fun history, it was 4pm, and the nice people at Be Our Guest had encouraged us to check back to see if there were any cancelled dinner reservations since we had never eaten there for dinner. It is booked months in advance. And wouldn't you know, it really was our lucky day. There were cancellations, and we were seated right away. This was turning out to be a day for the books.

We not only got to try "the Grey Stuff" (it's delicious, you know...), but we also got our picture with the Beast. 

• Our photo with the Beast was also taken by an official Disney photographer who gave us a Photopass so we could later download our picture online. Unfortunately, not 20 minutes later, it fell out of my back pocket into an automatic flushing toilet. I sadly watched it flush away unable to do anything about it. Epic fail.

I will say that after eating at Be Our Guest for dinner, we are more than happy to only eat there for lunch from now on. It's half the price and just as fun!

After dinner, we moseyed around Tomorrowland again. Aaron researched how to score high on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, and got a ridiculous score.

I think I only got 7000. :(

No trip to Magic Kingdom is complete without the Carousel of Progress and the Peoplemover (twice).

Then, since we had done everything that we wanted to do someway somehow, we headed to the castle for the last show.

I LOVE HER.

It started to look like it might rain, if you can tell from the sky. We meandered into one of my favorite shops on Main Street right before the downpour. We were safe and dry and entertained by this awesome glass blower guy for the next 30 minutes until the rain stopped.

It was time to find our place for the special 4th of July fireworks next.

I love the castle at night.

And here are a few of about 50 fireworks pictures that I took. For 4th of July, it was a 360 degree fireworks show, so they were all around the park.

They were beautiful.

Since we had done everything that we wanted to in the park, we decided to opt out of staying until the 1am closing time. We had a long drive ahead of us, and it usually takes an hour to get from where you are at the fireworks back to where you parked your car.

We headed for the exit, but couldn't resist the five minute wait time to see Mickey.

It was time to leave then, and we decided to take the ferry instead of the monorail. It was good choice. What a pretty way to say goodbye to our favorite place. 

Until next time, Disney World.

Last note:  we seriously have no idea how we lucked out with such an easy day at Magic Kingdom on the only week of summer that every kid is out of school and the day before a national holiday. Jesus must have known we needed a relaxing park day. It will probably never happen like that again.

about our Disney day trip (part 1)

Warning: this post is long and full of pictures and Disney things you may not care about. Feel free to skip.

Disney World.

It's funny to me that one time when I was little girl, I actually cried when my parents said we were going to Disney World. That might be a good Friday Flashback story for this week.

I think you all know by now that Aaron and I love Disney. Anything Disney, almost.

I mean, we aren't fans of any of the "Buddies" movies or the eyesore that is Home on the Range. Nothing like that.

But, anything else that Disney puts it's name on is basically gold, we think.

And Disney World is in our top five favorite places to be together. As often as we can go, within reason, we go.

Especially before we have kids.

We totally have a Disney budget. Hey, one day, we might not be able to. We might as well while we can.

You might think we're crazy, but we can name bigger Disney fanatics than us. It's all relative, right?!

So, anyway, since we were within two hours of Disney World, we made a plan to pay a visit to our friend Mickey Mouse.

Now, Disney World is actually home to four theme parks. You can splurge for the park hopper and visit all four in one day, but we opted not to fork over the extra money. Besides, we've both agreed on our favorite park. It took me a year to convince Aaron, but he's finally sided with me.

It's The Magic Kingdom for us.

In order to make the drive and money and day worth it, we woke up at 4:30am on July 3rd to make the trek to Orlando from Homosassa. Now, you might be thinking, July 3rd?! Isn't that the busiest day of the whole year?! Because that's what we were thinking! The crowd tracker that Disney has online said that Magic Kingdom was predicting a crowd level of 9.6 out of 10. We figured it was going to be insane. But, oh well.

When we saw this:

We didn't care about crowds.

We drove into the Magic Kingdom about 45 minutes before it opened. Then we parked and took the Monorail to the entrance wearing our excited faces. And sparkly Minnie ears in my case.

We were pleasantly surprised that the crowd out front was dare-we-say small. We tried not to get our hopes up though. We watched the opening show, and waited in anticipation for the gates to open.

The guy we bought our tickets from thought we seemed so happy to be there that he gave us "I'm Celebrating!" buttons. It often presented a problem though since we weren't really celebrating anything. Our answer when asked varied between "Disney World!," "The opening of Lone Ranger since it came out that day, and "You, of course!"

When the gates opened, we hurried down Main Street, USA, and rounded the corner to a sight that just never gets old.

Like any smart Magic Kingdom go-ers would do, we made a beeline for Tomorrowland to go to Space Mountain. We walked right on with no wait. That seemed easy enough, but we were still counting on chaos to start at any minute.

In space...

We left Space Mountain and decided we should make our way to Fantasyland on our way to Splash Mountain, eventually. Splash Mountain was closed when we were there in January, so we wanted to make sure we rode it this time.

Before we left Tomorrowland, we noticed that the Speedway was without a line and we had never done it before due to long lines. We hopped on.

The park was still not crowded at all. We made our way through Fantasyland, hitting all the rides we cared about.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Peter Pan's Flight

We got to do Enchanted Tales with Belle for the first time.

Aaron got selected to play a soldier...

So he got his picture with Belle...

And a cool bookmark sourvenir.

Under the Sea: Voyage of the Little Mermaid

Prince Charming's Regal Carousel

It was time for lunch after that, so we went to our new favorite Disney restaurant, Be Our Guest. 

And then before we left Fantasyland, we had one more stop at Mickey's PhilharMagic.

Leaving Fantasyland, we saw another new thing since January.

I love Tangled.

We passed The Haunted Mansion, and seeing the wait said 5 minutes, we hopped in line. We were really starting to get excited how absolutely easy the day was so far.

We finally made it to Frontierland and grabbed Fast Passes for Splash Mountain.

To be continued...the suspense might just kill you, I know.

about our Florida trip

Well, so much for blogging in Florida, huh?

Sorry for the false hope.

I count it as a win anyway since I was hanging with my fun family instead!

We had a great trip. Here's the majority of it in pictures, but I'll save our day at Disney for a different post...

We headed out early last Monday after stopping for gas and giving Penny her prescription "happy pill" for the car ride.

We prayed for a much better experience with her this trip. Thankfully, it was.

We hit the the road and headed down I-95. There was a lot of rain, but thankfully, no traffic.

South Carolina 

Georgia 

Florida (I was driving and Aaron was asleep, hence the bad photo of the Florida sign...)

We ran into so much rain once we got into Florida, but we finally got close to my grandparents' house. We knew we were close when we saw this...

There's quite a few rednecks in those parts!

It was so great to see my family, and Penny got to meet her "cousin," Marley.

Needless to say, Penny lost tug-o-war.

While we were at my grandparents', we played card games, pool volleyball, and worked on three 1000 piece puzzles. This one was the hardest:

At least I thought it was...

We attempted exercise one day and went on a walk with my parents. We realized my grandparents lived near a famous person...

It's Tow Mater from Cars!

But I don't think he's allowed to pose for pictures...

While we were there, we had a baby shower for my two cousins that are having baby girls in the next couple months. My aunt and uncle own a store that sells things from estates, so we had it there. My dad even found a motorcycle to ride around.

I guess it's hard to see, but he's riding it behind that tan couch.

This was on the 4th of July, so we got to sit out front to watch the fireworks. It was a little uncertain if they would even happen for awhile...

Also, the back door looked like something out of horror movie during the torrential downpour:

Thankfully, the rain stopped in time for the fireworks.

It was sad to leave everyone yesterday. Penny didn't even want to follow us out to the car. She was a little dejected on the way home, missing her new buddy, Marley.

After sitting in traffic for an hour and a half yesterday, we got back home and crashed on the couch.

Summer trip number three is complete.

on vacation again

Well, we are in Florida. Again. I feel like we just drove down for our cruise. Time is flying this summer. I thought my new chalkboard was fitting for how we feel...

This is Aaron's third trip to visit my grandparents. He went once with me while we were just dating.

We were so young.

We went again two months after we were married for a wedding.

And now here we are on trip number three, three years later.

This is Penny's first trip to Florida though. So we didn't repeat our Tennessee drive fiasco with Penny, she had some sleepy medicine from her vet. We also didn't have a rental car. She did much better.

This week, I am looking forward to playing games, relaxing in the pool, and catching up with all of my family.

And, of course, we can't be just an hour away from Disney World and not stop by for a visit. A Magic Kingdom day trip is on the schedule, as long as it works out!

Stay tuned, because I'm hoping to have time to blog this week.

Later, friends.

Happy July!

I can't believe that July is here already. This year is blowing my mind with how fast it's flying by.

July is another busy month for us. Here's what's coming up that I'm pretty excited about...

1. Florida trip. This is underway right now. Aaron, Penny, and I are heading down to spend Independence week with my family in Florida. My grandparents, great grandma, and a lot of my dad's side of the family live down there, and we haven't been in three years. I've missed going, and I'm so glad we will be there this year.
2. Disney. My grandparents live just an hour from Orlando, so Aaron and I are planning to make a day trip to Magic Kingdom while we're down there. My favorite place.
3. Triangle Kids Camp. My hot husband was asked to be the main speaker at a local camp this year. I love hearing him speak to kids about God's Word, and I know that's what he loves to do. I can't wait to cheer him on.
4. Camp KidJam. Our kids from Journey are headed to camp this month as well. Now, this one is a little bittersweet. I am not going with them for the entire time, so I will miss Aaron like crazy. But, I am going to spend a day with them.
5. Birthdays. July is my little brother's birthday month. I cannot believe that he will be 21. It's just crazy. My sweet sister-in-law has a birthday this month too.
6. Friends. Somehow, we've managed to squeeze in a date with friends this month as well. My high school girl friends and their significant others are planning on dinner and bowling one night this month.

I think that's all. Aaron is also going to camp with our high schoolers at the end of this month. I'm excited about that too, but I don't get to go at all to that one. I'm such a sissy when he goes out of town. I don't like to be alone! But, he will have a great time, and I'm glad he gets to go. Penny and I will hold down the fort.

I hope your month holds a lot of fun things too! Happy July!