Day 2 of vacation

After a busy day of traveling on Thursday, we were still going to get up early on Friday. We had a full day in the parks and I wanted to get a head start before the crowds got bad. Unfortunately, we had a 3 hour time change not in our favor. We still got out of the room by 8:30 and made it to the Magic Kingdom by 9. We spent the first half of the day riding rides and after lunch, we headed over to another park, Hollywood Studios and spent the evening there.

This was our view when we woke up. Ben was so excited each morning to see what animals were waiting for him. Most mornings, it was giraffes and zebras.

Waiting to get into the park. Jack spent a lot of time in the carrier, especially when riding the bus and waiting in line for rides. It was so much easier than carrying him.

Ben was very nervous for awhile. He didn't know what to expect but after riding our first ride, It's a small world, he started warming up.

Drew smiling as he went along with my silly plans

Jack watched everything

All morning, Ben kept asking to meet Mickey. We waited in line and when it was our turn, he ran up to him. Both Drew and I were not very fond of characters like this when we were younger so I didn't know how Ben would respond to them but he loved them.

Of course it's impossible to get a picture with everyone looking and smiling

Yes, he looks mad here but I promise you he wasn't. This is how Ben looks when he is taking it all in.

Ben and dad riding on the Speedway cars. Jack was too small for this one so him and I sat out.

We had a nice lunch at the Crystal Palace with all of the Winnie the Pooh characters. They came by your table throughout your meal. 

Watching a show in front of the castle which Ben loved. It had his favorite's, Mickey and Captain Hook

By this time, we had made our way over to Hollywood Studios where Ben got to meet Lightning McQueen and Mater from the movie Cars.

Jack was content like this the whole trip. What a perfect little guy.

The dancing lights display was amazing We stood in the street, in awe of everything around us. Every 15 minutes, the lights dance to Christmas music. I'll get a video up on here eventually.

Ben took a lot of naps throughout the week in the stroller.

When he woke up, we met Buzz and Woody from Toy Story 

A whole lot of sickness

We've been all feeling under the weather for awhile now. I think that combined, we have had every symptom in the book. Even though some of us are sill feeling not our finest, I think we are on the road to recovery.

Day 1 of vacation: Spent most of the day on an airplane

We were out of the house by 4:45 am and headed to the Fresno airport. Between Drew and me, we had a stroller, 2 diaper bags, 2 backpacks, 4 suitcases and two children. I'm sure it was a funny sight for those around us as they watched us trying to carry it all into the airport. Check-in went smooth and our plane even left a little early.

I look pretty wide awake for 6:30 in the morning. I also look like I am about 16 in this picture.

Trying to keep these two entertained on the plane was not an easy task

Drew was a good sport during it all

Our 2.5 hour layover in Dallas went well and our next flight even left a little early too.

We finally landed around 5:30pm (eastern time) and made our way over to the hotel. Ben did get sick on the shuttle ride over there. I guess he ate too many m&m's on the plane (they were used for bribing purposes). We got checked in and headed to our room. This was the lobby at the hotel. It was beautiful!

It was a pretty long walk to our room, or maybe it just seemed like it since we were exhausted from flying all day and our pants were covered with Ben's throw-up. Anyways, we arrived to our room and Drew walks in to find someone else's stuff in there. A little confused, but thankful that there wasn't actually a person in the room at the time, I headed back to the front desk to find out what was going on. The hotel was pretty full so it took them awhile to find us a new room but they were very nice about it and even gave us credit to the hotel which ended up covering quite a bit while we were there. Got our new keys and headed to the new room.

Backing up a little, the hotel we stayed at was the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It is surrounded by three savannas with real animals. A lot of the rooms have views of the savannas but we went with a standard room with no view since the better view rooms were not in our budget. There are a lot of places throughout the hotel to view the animals so we thought it would be okay to not be able to see them from our room. When we got into the new rooms, we quickly realized that we had been upgraded to a savanna view. We were so excited and really enjoyed it throughout the week.

Bellhop quickly brought up our groceries that I had ordered and the stroller we rented for the week. After getting cleaned up, we headed downstairs to dinner. By this time it was after 8 and we were hungry.

Jack is constantly taking his socks off

After dinner and exploring the hotel, we were all tired and ready for bed. We had an early morning ahead of us.

Don't worry, the pictures get a little more exciting

Our family

We're back

and I've got lots of pictures and videos to upload.

We got back late last night and after a long day of traveling, it felt good to climb into bed. Drew's parents were waiting for us at the airport. Lewey was very excited to see us. Ben was running around until after midnight (remember, our bodies were on eastern time).

I'd have to say that the trip was pretty successful. A couple of bumps in the road made for a few unpleasant times (extremely cold weather on Monday and Tuesday, waking up in the middle of the night Tuesday as Ben was throwing up on me). Otherwise, everything went very smooth and it was a great family vacation. We got to experience so many new things and we enjoyed watching Ben take it all in. Jack was content the whole trip and just went along with us, smiling.

I'll be updating, little by little.

Happy Birthday Ben

We are having a wonderful time. Everything has gone smooth and the boys are doing great. We are heading out to Mickey's very merry Christmas party to celebrate Ben's birthday.

The highlight for Ben so far has been meeting Mickey. He ran right up to him.

He may look innocent

but we've got a biter

Jack's teeth are coming in one after another. He is up to 7 with the 8th one not far behind. This afternoon, he bit my leg. It hurt so bad that I couldn't help but scream. He laughed.

His teeth ended up leaving teeth imprints in my leg, through my pants.

Doesn't happen often

where we get both boys to cooperate in a picture. Definitely easier said than done. My dad was the lucky one who was in the picture with them while they did this.

The beginning of a long celebration

Sunday night was the beginning of a two week long birthday celebration for Mr. Benjamin. My dad was visiting for the weekend so we thought it was a good time to start. You may remember what happened last year when we sang happy birthday to Ben (click here if you don't remember). Well, Ben has grown up and he loved it this time.

The festivities will continue as we leave for our trip tomorrow. Ben's actual birthday is Sunday but we will celebrate it throughout our trip. I think it's going to be hard to top future birthdays after this one.

I don't plan on updating the blog while we are gone but you never know, you may be surprised.