The Best of the Rest

First, I’d like to apologize for those of you who really could not care less about our recent trip to Disneyworld. Sorry for dragging it out to 4 posts! But honestly, it is about the most fun & exciting thing we’ve done lately – otherwise, I wouldn’t really have much to talk about. I think this is my last Disney post, so hopefully we can move on to more mundane things very soon.

Anyway, I think I covered all of the major categories of our trip, but I wanted one last “catchall” post to share the fun things that didn’t really fit into one of those categories. Like the fact that the boys LOVED the monorail! I mean, really – what kid DOESN’T like the monorail? It’s cool – it’s a train, up in the air. They would get so excited whenever they’d see one coming. We would even have to stop whatever we were doing so we could see what color it was. Zachary was partial to the green one, and Liam liked the yellow one. And of course we all professed our love for the red & black ones too. One day we were on the monorail, and the monorail announcer came on with his little speech. Zachary looked up at me and said, “Why did the monorail guy say to gather your baloneys??” I was a little confused at first, but then it hit me, “He didn’t say gather your ‘baloneys’, he said gather your ‘belongings’!” Ha ha! So every time we would ride the monorail, we would always check to make sure we had our baloneys. And then Zachary would ask for a baloney sandwich. One bit of disappointment though – somewhere between our last trip and this trip, they have stopped letting people ride in the front of the monorail. So I guess I feel lucky that we got to do that once before, since they don’t do that anymore.

Here is a little video of Liam singing his monorail song. It’s less of a “song”, per se, and more of him just screaming “Mah-Noh-Ray-Ull!” at the top of his lungs.



We also made some funny observations while down there. Josh made the observation that the place was swarming with Phillies fans. What’s that about? I made the observation that there were far too many people down there wearing too-tight clothes. And it wasn’t like they all thought it was summer (although some did – some people had on tank tops & shorts…it was upper 60s, low 70s…), but a lot of people just had on too-tight jeans & sweatshirts. Not sure what that is about either. And, perhaps the funniest of all – just because you live in Michigan or Wisconsin, and you travel to Florida in February, it does NOT mean it’s going to be warm enough to swim! This did not stop people though. The day we arrived, it was 50 degrees outside, yet there were people in the outdoor pool! OMG! Later in the week, the pool was PACKED! It had gotten up to around 70, which was warm enough to not need a jacket, but still not warm enough to swim in an outdoor pool. Even if it’s heated, do you know how cold it will be when you get out? I guess some people think that Florida is geographically located on the equator, and by golly – they WILL swim when they get there!

And finally, we learned some lessons:
1. Character dinners are EXPENSIVE! Next time, we will stick with breakfasts (which still are not cheap, but much less expensive than dinners).
2. We should just be prepared that the first night we are there, that it is going to take forever for the boys to go to sleep. After all, they’ve been in the car all day & need to burn off some energy.
3. We should also be prepared to throw napping out the window for the week (if it’s not already normally out the window). Zachary hasn’t napped in about a year & a half anyway (except on rare weekend occasions), but Liam still naps regularly. However, even Liam’s napping was sporadic & short. After the first day where we tried to shove a nap/quiet time down their throats, we sort of gave up. No reason to stress over something we know is just not going to happen.
4. Rain on a Disney trip – while not ideal – does not have to mean a complete wash-out. Yeah, it sucked having to wear ponchos & rain boots half the time, but we still rode the rides & still had fun.
5. The older my kids get, the more they “want”. I don’t really remember Zachary asking for THAT much on our last trip. He asked for a couple of things, but it wasn’t a lot. This time though, he expected a souvenir every day! And if we bought him one in the morning, he had forgotten about it by the afternoon & asked for another one! You have to have good self-control to be able to navigate that possible mine field. I did buy a lot of things ahead of time to try & cut back on what we bought there. Not sure how successful that was, but I will still do that next time too.
6. This time we packed stuff to eat for breakfast, so we didn’t always have to buy it in the hotel. It can really start to add up, but if you pack a couple of boxes of cereal, and some fruit, you can save time & money.

So there you have it – our trip to Disneyworld! My next post should be filled with stories of our much more boring life at home! (well, except for the big birthday weekend which is coming up – more on that later!)

A few other random pics:
Liam & his “puppet show”…

Zachary making a pizza on his first field trip yesterday – to CiCi’s Pizza!