Tuesday, March 8, 2011

So much for keeping up with posts. In January - where I

left off - we headed to Disney World. It was an incredible vacation for many different reasons. Incredibly fun to watch the kids and their excitement, incredibly expensive as you all have probably experienced, incredibly exciting to ride all of the different rides of all different styles, incredibly overwhelming with the number of

parks, rides, adventures, and last but not least incred

ibly exhausting.

We drove down there with high hopes of fitting in our weeks worth of school on the road trip to and from. However, we proved to not fit it all in because on the way we were too excited to focus and on the way back I was too

tired to make the kids do anything. The drive wasn't too bad and we broke it up on the way there and way back with a stop in Hilton Head.

The weather was nice mainly in the 60's the whole week. There were several rides that were closed for refurbishment which may be a downfall of visiting in January. However, we rode everything that the kids were up for riding. Ella's favorite was "Soaring" at Epcot and

the "People Mover" in the Magic Kingdom. Eli loved the "People Mover" as well but also really liked "Toy Story Mania". Landon was a pro at "Buzz Lightyear" at Magic and scored 999,999 which was the highest you could score. He left with a button naming him a Galactic Superhero

for his score and they even announced his name and score at the end of the ride. Landon was a trooper and rode a lot of the big rides as well including Space Mountain, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, and his favorite - Test Track. It was also awesome to have some friends down there at the same time. We were able to ride rides with friends nearly every day. We also had dinner with some friends one night. By far the kid's

favorite park was Epcot and we ended up spending 3 whole days there and never set foot in Animal Kingdom. Of course we took Ella to Cinderella's Royal Table to have lunch with all of the princesses and Eli even got a big smooch from Snow White which he had on his face for the entire day. I really enjoyed our dinner at the Crystal Palace where we met Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Eeyore - with a highlight of seeing Ella and Piglet on the floor collecting confetti together and playing. It was storming that night so we had the place almost to ourselves so they had extra character time. Mike and I agreed that watching the kids have so much fun was the best part of all. They have all said that they want to go back sometime soon. I think Mike and I need a couple of years to catch up after the trip but would probably return tomorrow to see the kids faces all light up again.

After taking a couple of weeks to get back to normal we are in our routine and working hard to get school done by

Ma

y. The kids are all doing well with school including Eli who asks to do his "school work" each morning as we start our lessons. Ella has really taken off with her reading and surprised me with taking up the Little House on the Prairie series. She later decided it was too long and started reading a series of chapter books on fairies. If she isn't in the middle of a game with the boys I can usually find her somewhere curled up reading a book. Eli has really taken a liking for the Wii and waits anxiously each day for Landon to finish school so that the can play Wii with him. Right after that they are usually both on the trampoline. They are all also taking swimming lessons and are counting down the days until summer and the pool opening. I am sure our summer will be filled with days at the pool and beach and seeing how wrinkled their skin can get being in the water for hours. I am just asking for time to slow down as it seems that every time I look at my kids they are 6 inches bigger and changing so fast!!!

After our trip Ella said that she wished we could live at Disney World because Daddy never has to work at Disney!!! Oh how I love my kids way of thinking!