The OTHER Vacationland

Brian had a conference in Orlando last week so the kids and I decided to tag along and spend a few days on vacation. If ever there is a time to go to Orlando it's gotta be in September - all the kids are still in school and the weather is usually not too hot. And too hot for me is anything over 85*.

WARNING-If you are reading this and you are not family or you aren't a fan of Disney - this post is not for you. You will be bored. You might even go into diabetic shock from all of the saccharine sweetness of the princesses and the edible cuteness of Jamie at SeaWorld. I do not want to be responsible for any uncontrollable ticks or seizures as a result of these pictures- so beware!

Luckily, the trip was very simple and quite. Nothing incredibly exciting happend and that's the way we like it! So I thought I'd just show some pictures with a few details. Basically Lily enjoyed the Magic Kingdom more and Jamie enjoyed SeaWorld more. The pictures show all the details.

Here is Lily on the monorail seeing Cinderella's Castle. Yes....she was dressed up as Cinderella for the entire day. I even brought an extra outfit in case she got tired of it, but that never happened.

We had reservations for breakfast with the princesses at 9am. That meant that we got to go into the part 30 minutes before it actually opened. All of Main Street was Lily's and she danced the entire way down to the castle.

Dinner with the princesses includes a one-on-one meeting with Cinderella. Lily asked her for a dance.

Lily and Snow White

Lily with Princess Aurora. Lily wanted me to ask Princess Aurora if she would like to be called Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora, or Briar Rose. The woman had a prepared speech. After 10 minutes she finally admitted she liked Princess Aurora best. She was actually the most friendly princess and seemed to really enjoy her role.

Lily and Belle. Unfortunately, Belle's outfit has negatively influenced Lily and she has attempted to push her dress sleeves down like Belle's. I told Lily that when she is Belle's age she can wear whatever she wants but since she's three she will not wear strapless outfits. COME ON DISNEY - WORK WITH ME HERE! Ask your princesses to dress modestly!

And here is the most immodest and disobedient princess of them all....We waited 30 minutes in line for this picture. GRRRRR. And this also prompted Lily to change her favorite princess from Cinderella to Ariel. For the rest of the week, it was all about Belle.

And then the rain came tumblin' down. And it POURED. This was probably Jamison's favorite part about the Magic Kingdom. Lily and Brian are in the background walking back from riding some of the rides. (yes, they still allow the rides in the torrential downpours.)

After waiting an hour for the rain to stop we finally decided to leave. It was 4:00 anyway and time to get back to the house. Lily actually fell asleep on the stroller ride back. It's comparable to falling asleep in a cold shower. She must have been completely wiped out.

The next day we took it easy. Lily and Brian played in the kiddie pool while Jamie and I sat in the shade. Jamison was not a fan of the pool for some reason.

Later in the week when I took the kids back to the pool I met a family from Scotland. (I wasn't very surprised - the whole resort was full of people from the UK. We were the only Americans and I was totally in my element). After talking to them for a while I found out that there were actually from a town outside of Glasgow that I lived in for two weeks when I was on International Campaigns at Harding. I had to call my college roommate and fellow campaigner Rachel and have an emotional moment.

Later we went to play putt putt. Let's think this through. We have a three year old. We have a 15 month old. We have temperatures in the low 90's and oppressive humidity. How much putt putt do you think was played? Around the third hole I was begging for a drink cart to bring me a diet coke...but this was not that kind of golf course.

I spent the entire 18 holes preventing Jamison from with maiming or drowning himself. There was no putt putt playing for the two of us.

Here are the kids using the trap on the fourth hole for more than just golf. I was thankful there were no sand traps on this course. Otherwise I would have felt obligated to bring a bucket and shovel.

Can you spot the sneaky toddler in this picture. It took me a minute too. I thought he had possible scaled the fake mountain and was making his way on Interstate 4.

If you couldn't tell from the picture below, the putt putt course we went to was Pirates Cove. Each hole had a factoid about a different pirate. That was my favorite part and I now feel entirely educated on all things pirate.

SEAWORLD! I loved SeaWorld! Mainly I loved those crazy dolphins and killer whales that flung their humongous bodies through the air. All the other animals were neat to look at and definitely interesting but unless they can do flips in the air and propel humans in the air with their snout they just don't grab my attention.

The boy loved the dolphin and killer whale shows. After I saw his reaction to the dolphin show I made sure to have the camera ready during the Shamu show. As you can tell from Lily's body language she was not so thrilled. At one point she told me that she was done with these fishes. I kindly explained that they were actually mammals and it would hurt their feelings if she called them fish.

This is what he was cheering about:

TOTALLY ENTHRALLED. If Shamu captures his attention this much then I am contemplating getting a Shamu tank in our backyard.

This is what he was looking at:

After the show he just couldn't take the excitement anymore. While Jamison was napping Brian and Lily went on more rides. I actually wanted to prop his sleeping body on the other plastic Shamu but there was a line of people waiting to take pictures and I didn't want to wait....or risk waking him. Wouldn't that picture have been hysterical!??!

This is the most expensive sand box in the world. We pay to get into SeaWorld and then the happiest place for Lily is here.

At our rental house there was a screened in porch that Jamison claimed. He would throw all his books out there and just sit and "read" a.k.a. try to rip out the pages and eat them.

It was a very relaxing trip (most of the time) and I can't wait until we can go back with Mark, Kristen, and the twins!