Winter Vacation '09 -Part 3

Day 3 was Animal Kingdom. This was new to both of us since it is a fairly recent addition to the parks. We just loved it. Drew had so much fun watching for animals. We asked him before we got there what kinds of animals he thought he would see..we fully expected him to say ducks, sheep, goats etc., but to our surprise he talked about lions, giraffes, and zebras. He got what he asked for (except the zebras).

We started the day with a character breakfast right inside the park. We wanted Drew to meet one of the characters before we risked him freaking out at a breakfast full of them, but the characters don't just wander around like I remembered. You had to wait in a long line to meet any of them...we decided the 30 minute wait was not quite worth it and risked a potential freak out when he saw those big headed things coming at him. You can decide for yourself if you think Drew enjoyed it:

Our first stop after breakfast was the safari. This was another one of the highlights of our trip.

After the safari, we headed over to the "affection section" where Drew had a blast petting the goats.

These poor goats didn't know what hit them when Drew ran in. They had little roped off areas where they would go to get some rest and aren't supposed to be disturbed. Most of the goats took shelter in that section. A few of the goats were napping just outside the roped off area so Drew loved on them. This one black goat above was one of the few that wandered around outside of the ropes. He cracked me up! He was so ugly, but he got lots of attention anyway. Here is a closeup of the front teeth:

We couldn't believe Drew wasn't even scared of this guy.

We finally got some food other than hot dogs, chicken fingers or pizza for lunch at Animal Kingdom. We had a salad and chicken with rice that was pretty tasty. Drew however, wasn't so thrilled with what I offered him for lunch. He had the kids lunch which came with some Jello. Apparently, Jello is NOT for Drew. This led to puke #2 of our trip - more of a gag because of the texture sliding down his throat, but it also elicited nasty looks from other park goers who do not want to get our kid's germs. Honestly, I didn't care about the looks because I was stuck next to a guy who apparently didn't care that he was only supposed to smoke in certain sections of the park and I guess the small child or the fact that I was pregnant didn't stop him from lighting up right next to us while we tried to eat lunch. Amazingly, that was the only such offense of our whole trip.

That night, we went to Downtown Disney and had dinner at Planet Hollywood. It was much more like a TGI Fridays than I had remembered, but we had a pretty good meal regardless. I took the night off from photos, so nothing to post here.

Day 4 was our last day at Disney. We went back to the Magic Kingdom in the morning and then after lunch, drove the 4 hours to Key Largo. Check back for more photos of the last part of our trip!

Winter Vacation '09 -Part 2

I don't think I can fit 2 days into this post, because these next days were the most event-packed of our trip. I promise there won't be 8 of these, but for now here is day 2 - Magic Kingdom:A very blurry shot, but this is Drew at breakfast. They called up all of the children to come and ride these wooden horses around the restaurant. I had to chase Drew through for fear that his horsey would take out all of the other diners. He had a blast!

Swiss Family Robinson Tree house - this one I would skip next time...especially at 29 weeks pregnant. Far too many stairs!Another self portrait

Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride was a big hit! Made me a little dizzy though - especially when Drew was controlling it!Teacups were one of Drew's favorite. In fact, tonight as I was putting him to bed he randomly started talking about them. Granted, he will talk about anything to stall me at bedtime, but I was surprised to hear him talking about teacups a week later.

I know Disney keeps things pretty clean, but we were surprised to see the guy who scooped up the poop behind this horse also carried around big bottles of sanitizer and cleaned the ground after he "went".

Back at the hotel for an afternoon nap. This Mickey was right outside our room. Drew would stop every day and talk to him. He also made sure to say goodnight to him every night. Drew also brought home a stuffed Mickey. He has been insisting on sleeping with him. It is pretty cute how much love he has for this thing; especially since he usually doesn't have much interest in stuffies.

In the evening on day 2, we headed over to Epcot. We had made reservations for a nice dinner, but wound up having a change of plans. On the shuttle ride over, Drew was doing great and then out of no where he puked. Well, it wasn't quite puke but it sure sounded like it and everyone else on the bus looked at us like it was. He just regurgitated the apple just that he had just drank. I think it was the backup of phlegm that caused it. We didn't quite know what to do with him. Initially, we got off the shuttle and immediately back in line to wait for one back to the hotel. After we thought about it for a minute we said lets just give it a try, but we canceled our dinner reservations for fear that he might do it again and that this time lunch would come back too.

We walked through most of the countries and stopped in America (of all places) for a quickie dinner. Andy was pretty excited when I told him that the street vendors sold beer. We love Drew dearly, but we were both kind of wishing that we were there alone (and/or not pregnant) and could enjoy the refreshments just a little bit more.

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Drew's favorite part - yet another fountain to throw money in. I don't think he quite gets the concept of wishes yet. I really hope that this doesn't come back and bite us when we try to teach him the value of money.

Day 3 was Animal Kingdom and the character breakfast. Stay tuned for those photos...

Winter Vacation '09 -Part 1

We are back home from our 8 day vacation to Florida (extended 1 day due to snow). We started with 3 nights at Disney World, and then drove to Key Largo to spend 4 nights at the Ocean Reef Club with Grannie and Poppy. We had SO much fun. The weather was wonderful, the only exception being that it was a little cool in Orlando for the first 2 days...but we could deal with that. Drew was great on both flights. On the way there, he was entertained by watching Thomas on the portable dvd player. However, on the way home we didn't realize that it hadn't charged and we were left to fend with out it. We made it through eventhough he must have asked for it a million times.

We stayed at Disney's Wilderness Lodge, which we thought was really cool. It was supposed to have a Northwest feel to it - and it certainly did. Drew loved the fountain in the lobby, and just about every fountain we passed. He loved throwing change in, and wiped us out of all of ours whenever we came across one. I just hope I don't find pennies in my toilet now!

We kept Drew on a fairly regular schedule since he had a cold and couldn't really handle missing naps or very late nights. We initially thought we would try and push the sleep schedule, but once he got sick, we decided to make sure he had plenty of rest. Sleeping at the hotel in a Pack-n-Play, surprisingly, wasn't an issue for him. He did join us in bed on a couple occasions, but that was really just due to him waking up and seeing us in the same room. We had a king size bed, so we didn't mind a bit (honestly, I liked "nuggling" with him).

I am going to have to break up the posts over a few installments. I took over 300 pictures and it is hard to narrow them down. We regret not bringing the 'good' camera, because we have a lot of blurry shots and they aren't all great quality. I will try and post most of the good ones.

Our hotel pool. We never made it in there, but it looked nice! Day 1 - Lunch at the hotel.

This little guy showed up at our window. Unfortunately Drew was napping at the time.

Day 1 - post nap, we took the shuttle to the Magic Kingdom. Drew loved all of the "school bus" rides!

The only real family photo we got at DisneyWhenever we drive past water at home, Drew looks for "duckies". Obviously, the duckies haven't been there the past few months, so we have been telling him that we would see them in Florida. When he talked about the trip he would say "Go Florida..see duckies!" We knew that there HAD to be ducks there...and there were...right when we got in the park. In fact, mallard ducks were quite frisky inside the Magic Kingdom. The stalked all of the food areas like seagulls - we had to watch Drew closely to make sure he wasn't feeding them!

First ride - Small World

Waiting in Line! Actually, we were pretty lucky and the lines weren't bad at all.

Dumbo

The parade was early on our first night (7pm), but Drew was getting antsy while waiting for it to start. After about 15 minutes of trying to battle pushy people crowding the street (and 3 minutes before it started), Drew hit the end of his rope so we called it a night. We made our way down "Mainstreet USA" and at the end, right before the exit, was the start of the parade and far less crowds. We were happy our waiting wasn't for nothing because Drew loved it and when he saw Mickey for the first time he was so excited!

It looks like I only made it through one day - scary, because it was really only a half-day because this is the day we flew in. I want to share as many photos as I can, and be sure to write as much as I can for our own memories..so if it is too much info, feel free to just scan the photos of the next few posts. At this rate, it looks like there may have to be 8 of them!

Needless to say, we are sad to leave Florida, but very happy to be home. Lucy is very happy we are home too! Drew missed his trains very badly and it was the first thing he went to when we walked in the door. He then proceeded to pull out almost every toy and play with it for a few minutes.

Stay tuned for some more posts over the next few days.

The Best Part!

It is hard to choose the best part of our trip to Disney, but Andy and I both agree that this moment was hard to top.
We are still in Florida, currently in Key Largo with Grannie and Poppy. Since there seems to be a snowstorm hitting MA on Weds, we decided not to risk any delays with a 2 year old, and changed our flight to Thursday. I know, poor us...it is supposed to be 82 here on Weds!!

Keeping Busy

Monday - Playdoh. I bought a big bucket of playdoh tools and doh....way too much of a good thing! Tuesday - After gymnastics, lots of stickerbook playing and a nap, watercolors.
Spending some time on the computer - someone now looks even more like his daddy!Stopping to smell the flowers. Dad says he looks like me when he makes this face...nice, huh? Well, I think it is precious.

Wednesday - not sure yet, but I am thinking we should carve out some time to go buy thermals...it is going to be bitter cold the next few days! I think the weather forecast actually said "miserable".

Is it Spring Yet?!?

We are really starting to feel cooped up around here. We are looking forward to spring already!

We have had quite a bit of snow and ice lately and that has kept me from venturing too far from home. We have had a few weeks off from classes, but luckily they start up again next week. We signed up for gymnastics again as well as a new class called "Craft and Coffee" (or something like that)..this is a class that is half "Sticky Fingers" (the art class we were in) and the other half is the kids on their own with the instructors in the next room. This is where the coffee comes in - the parents get to sit around and chat for 30 minutes sans kiddos. I was questioning how Drew would do, especially with me just in the next room, but I heard that there are trains so we are ALL SET!

We are working really hard on getting Drew's "big boy room" ready for Feb. He is so excited! He picked out his own sheets (with cars, of course) and wants to get a look at the progress whenever he can. Andy is putting up all new trim and then we have to paint, so it is taking a little while to get it done. Whenever he hears the saw running or the hammer banging he talks about his "big boy ROOMS" ...I'm not so sure why he makes it plural, I think he plans on claiming both rooms for himself. His furniture was delivered a few weeks ago, and when he asked to go on the bed, I told him that we would have to wait and call Grampy to get the mattress. He nagged me the rest of the day to call. Every time I picked up the phone he said "GRAMPY?" I just hope this excitement continues when he realizes that he will actually be sleeping in the bed.

I am beginning to count the days until we leave for our vacation. Grannie and Poppy are renting in Key Largo again and we are going to stay with them for a few days, but before we go there we are going to take Drew to Disney for 3 days. We thought it would be nice to have a little "only child" get away before the baby comes. He may not remember the trip, but we will - and I am sure he will have LOTS of fun!

I really don't have too many pictures to post. The only shots I have of the past few weeks were after nap time and Drew is looking, well, a little disheveled. But here is a sample anyway: