Day 4 - burning up the night time

Today we went to a really cool beach at a park called Calidesi Island. We had to drive an hour and a half to get there and then take a ferry boat over to the island. They limit the time you can spend there to 4 hours, but that was just the right amount of time because by that time we were perfectly sunburned. Note to self, *reapply, *reapply, and *reapply!! We saw a big turtle just walking right in front of the concession stand and also gathered a lot of cool sea shells. Another important note is that you should always wear sandals when walking on boardwalks!! We had to run down the walkway and Sydney was screaming in pain because the wood was so hot. It was not a pretty sight. My feet still hurt hours after that event. Yikes!! The beach was beautiful and the water was so warm, it was a dream day.

After our long car ride home (and a good nap for the kids on the way) we went to Downtown Disney for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. That place is always busy, and I think Saturday night would qualify for the busiest night of the week. By the time we got there at 7:30, it was a 2 hour wait! But I still took the reservation time and we decided after a little bit to go to Planet Hollywood instead. We waited 45 minutes to get in there, by walking around the shops, and then when we got seated, the restaurant was way too loud and we left. Perhaps that is a sign we are getting old or something, but it was definately not the place we wanted to be. So we waited an hour longer and finally got our seat at the Rainforest Cafe. Despite the late dinner time (9:40!) the kids did really good.... until the end when Zack realized there was another "storm" coming on at the restaurant and he started to cry. We quickly exited the restaurant right as it was starting to rumble.

Day 3 - How I got that bad sunburn...

It was a lazy day today, due to the late night yesterday. We decided to go shopping, play golf and then Alan would be meeting up with his friends for dinner.
Let me just start by saying, despite how fun and adventurous the mini golf course promises to be, it will still be about 800 degrees in the sun. HOT HOT HOT It was so darn hot it was almost unbearable. Having said that, we decided that the Adventure Golf was for us, and we started playing at 1pm. Playing is really a loose term as the kids just rolled the balls along and I just tried to make it through the course without having heat stroke. We all had sunburns in the shape of our tank tops when we left.
When we went shopping, Zack decided to spend his Disney Dollars (he had earned $10) on a Car's canteen, that had a water ring toss game in it. Fun! Sydney got a Princess beach towel.
It was bath night and Alan went out to dinner with some friends that live in the area. He went to a Cuban restaurant in Celebration, and the kids watched Toy Story at the house.

Day 2 - Disney World!!

Since it was a weekday, we decided at the last minute to go to the Magic Kingdom in Disney. We got to the gates around 9:30 and it was even hot at that time of the morning. The first ride we went on the was the parking lot tram, then the boat, and finally made it to the park! Once in the park we headed to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, spinning cups. Next it was the Winnie the Pooh ride, and Sydney started to cry about the Wuzzles and Heffalumps being scarey! She said "I never want to go on that ride again". Seconds later we were surprised in the gift shop by Disney employees telling us that we had all won Dream Fast Passes! They were pretty cool - we could go to the Fast Past rides at any time we wanted to (just once). Too bad a lot of the rides were for big kids, but still, it was a great prize. During that day, Sydney spent much time begging to go shopping and spend her "Disney Dollars" (she had $12) and Zack just wanted to go on the race cars!
We tried to go into an attraction called Mickey's Philharmagic, and found out that it was a very dark, loudy and scarey ride! In fact we left after just about a minute of it. I don't blame them, it was pretty darn intense. So we would be well rested, we went back to our house for lunch and rest, and then by 3pm we were back at the park. It was not crowded at all, and a picture session with Pooh was about the longest time we waited (20 mins). The kids loved the race cars, and Buzz Lightyear laser ride. Zack was a much braver kid than Sydney and his absolute favorite ride was Goofy's Barnstormer roller coaster! He also enjoyed the Dumbo ride and the People Mover. We did have a problem on the People Mover- it broke down in the dark area as you enter into Space Mountain. That would have been a total disaster had it not been for Alan's pocket flashlight, which kept the kids from being afraid. It seemed like we were stuck forever, but it was probably about 20 minutes.
When it started getting dark we headed to see the light parade. However, so did about a million other people and it was so crowded we couldn't see it. The fireworks went off right over our head, and they were pretty. We stayed until the park closed, at 11pm. What a busy day, we were all exhausted, but had a lot of fun!

Day 1 - Florida Trip... we have to get up how early??

We started our trip to Florida at 4:20 am. yep, that early. We haven't been up that early since the kids were still drinking bottles. Anyhow, we decided to just dress the kids in their outfits when they went to bed last night, so we just picked them up out of bed at 5am and stuck them in the car. I figured that with the lack of sleep they would just be sleeping the whole plane ride. Well much to our surprise, the kids were up and raring to go and never slept once. Oops, I didn't even bring any entertaining toys or books for the plane because I thought we didn't need them. Even so the kids did a great job on the plane ride and never cried once even when we put them in the car at 5am.
Since we had such an early flight we arrived in Florida at 11am, but our house wouldn't be ready until 4pm. So we took a trip over to Downtown Disney. It was hot hot hot! But the kids had fun going to Lego Land and racing cars. After hanging out and shopping for a little while, we went to our house. It was a really nice house, with a big - no *huge* - TV. And a home theatre system, with 250 DVD changer. Now if we could just figure out how to turn it on!
We had dinner at TGI Friday's and went grocery shopping, then called it a night. The kids slept great together in the same room, other than Zack always wanting to talk, and Sydney wanting to sleep!