Disney 2011 - Magic Kingdom

Well, I am sure taking my sweet time getting to these Disney pictures, aren't I? Just trying to make the memories last longer...



My kids always prefer Epcot to Magic Kingdom, but we have a good time at Mickey and Minnie's house anyway. This year was especially fun because the kids' cousins were there.





It was a little crowded (after Labor Day is always better for smaller crowds). And it was a little hot, but that problem is easily solved:


It was a good day!

Disney 2011 - Where We Stayed

This is the second time we have stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, and we always enjoy it. We love the decor, especially the fact that many of the artifacts are from our African home countries.


We love the African food, and the view from our balcony was awesome:












And of course we were treated wonderfully...it's Disney magic!

Disney 2011 - Getting There

While I miss being so very far from the warmth of the Sunshine State, I have to admit that a 2 1/2 hour plane ride down was a whole lot more enjoyable than an 8-hour road trip. The airplane is still a bit of a novelty to the kids; the car, well, it is not. Needless to say, they were excited to head to the airport last Saturday to board the jet.

We didn't leave until mid-afternoon, but we got there early enough to have a little time to hang out at the airport.











We did not go to Disney straight from the airport. Since we didn't arrive until evening, we decided not to use any of our Disney Vacation Club points for a few hours' sleep. So we used our Marriott points instead and stayed a a Courtyard. Honestly, I didn't care where we stayed; I was just happy to be in tropical paradise again!

Things I Accomplished During My Blog Hiatus

I did not intentionally take a break from the blog. I just didn't feel like writing. It happens sometimes. But I discovered during my break that I can get an awful lot accomplished when my fingers are not tied to my keyboard or the shutter of my camera. Here's a taste of what I've been up to:

1. Spring cleaning. Not that you can tell now that I was spring cleaning a week ago.

2. Planning school for next year.

3. Paying more attention to the kiddos.

4. A week at Disney World. More to follow on that if I can get my act together and wade through the hundreds of pictures. Actually, I found I did not take as many photos this time as usual because we visited our regular spots, and I have all the great photos from those spots already. Want to see them? Just click on the Disney label on my right sidebar!


5. Unpacked.

6. More cleaning.

7. And today began what I have observed to be about a semi-annual occurrence in our house: we change things around. As an MK (missionary kid), I have ants in my pants and want nothing more than to move around. The longest I have been at one address in my life is 7 years. In missionary boarding school, we left our school every 3 months to go home. When we returned from vacation, we had a new room, a new roommate. So every few months, I feel the need to change things up a bit. NOT that I'm going to get a new roomy, but I do like the change.

We just closed on the sale of our Georgia home, so we tossed about the idea of taking the plunge again and finding our forever home here in CT. But we decided to stick it out here a few more months. That will help out our landlord, and the more time we spend here, the more money we can save for a down payment.

With that in mind, I decided to better set up the house for school. Since we rarely have guests, I am turning the guest room into a school room by bringing in a table from storage. Of course, guests are still welcome, and one of the kids will be happy to relinquish his or her bed to a guest. So we have kept busy today making the move. Of course, I'm sure my husband wishes there had been a little more "me" in the "we", but it's getting done nonetheless.

Things I learned during my hiatus:
1. The world does not stop revolving if I skip a day--or 15--blogging.

2. God's creation continues to be beautiful,


and my children keep on being adorable even if I am not photographing every moment.


Who knew?

Pictures and details of Disney to come...

Disney 2010

I think I left my writing inspiration at Disney. I would say I left my muse at Disney so I would sound all writerly, but I don't believe I've ever had a muse. Unless you count the kids. And I definitely did not leave them at Disney. Although over the last couple of days I've secretly wished I had left them at Disney. We've had a few Vacation Habits to break: staying up 'til all hours of the night and then sleeping in until 10:00 (OK, so that's me too), eating whenever they what, whatever they want.

I really should have stayed up to date on Treasured Chapters while on our vacation because then I could better capture the details of our trip. But now--alas--it is but such a distant memory, so I'll just offer some sketchy details:

Day 1 (Tuesday):
1. Bright Futures


2. pick up TravelDaddy from the airport

3. sit in the car for 7 hours

4. plan French for 2010-11 school year

5. freak out because I thought I left my wallet--with all the cash and the rest of my life in it--sitting in a nasty bathroom in a lonely gas station; thankfully I had just absent-mindedly set it on the car seat, and hubby absent-mindedly put it on the floor

6. check into a Marriott hotel, which caused a bit of a stir with the Princess who was not at all inclined to believe that we had actually arrived at the correct destination; we tried to explain that we were not going to waste Disney vacation points on a few hours sleep

7. Princess does not understand Disney vacation points, but she does understand Balloon Guy at the nearby Chili's and declares that Chili's the best one EVER

Day 2 (Wednesday):

1. move over to the REAL Disney, the Beach Club Resort to be exact

2. enjoy the really unique, awesome pool--being the Beach Club and all, they set it up as such with a sandy bottom pool

Day 3 (Thursday):

1. Epcot

Day 4 (Friday):

1. more pool fun

2. a tiring trip on a 6-person surrey

3. dinner at Animal Kingdom at our favorite restaurant where we enjoyed an African meal

4. Princess and the Frog on the beach


Day 5 (Saturday):

1. a relaxing day poolside, er, beachside

Day 6 (Sunday):

1. no more room at the beach inn, so we moved over to Saratoga Springs Resort which is where we stayed last year

2. more pool fun at our new resort

Day 7 (Monday):

1. plans to go to Magic Kingdom are put on the back burner because of a rainy forecast, but should have known better--only about an hour of rain

2. Downtown Disney

Day 8 (Tuesday):

1. Magic Kingdom

Day 9 (Wednesday):

1. drive home

Day 10 (Thursday):

Vacation? What vacation?

Back to Reality

I've been gone awhile because...we've been here:

We got home around 6:00 this evening, I unpacked half the suitcases, we went for pizza, came home, and I finished unpacking. Now it doesn't even seem like Disney ever happened. But then there are all the pictures I must sort through in order to revive the memories. If you need me, I'll be wading through all of those pictures so I can adequately capture last week.

Post Vacation

So I did actually consider resuming school today. But there was all this mess--these piles of laundry, the unpacked suitcases--glaring at me, so I opted for a final vacation day, a working vacation day. I really needed to get all of this squared away to be happy. Because if Mama ain't happy, (altogether now) ain't nobody happy!

It's been a productive day, but I miss being on vacation. It was a magical week even though we didn't do any of the major attractions. Our last day was a misty one, but we made the most of it by continuing our resort-hopping.

One of our first stops was the Contemporary, which is one of the older resorts and the closest to the Magic Kingdom. In fact, we could see this from there:

And the kids got to ride the Monorail, which we boarded right from the lobby of the hotel!

In fact, we took the train to a few other resorts, one of which was the Polynesian where the kids enjoyed the volcanic water slide.

This was my favorite slide, but then, I never tried the pirate slide from the day before; that one was our critics' number one choice:

I hated to leave on Sunday (was that just yesterday?) and couldn't leave without my usual, "Let's move here!" Mark asked, "Where would we live?" "At Disney, of course." Duh! Yes, it was indeed magical. Already planning next year. I suppose we need to get through the next 354 days, however.

So it's back to the laundry, the housekeeping, the cooking in TravelDaddy's absence, Bright Futures tomorrow morning, our first day of co-op following, and our regularly scheduled school days in the weeks to come.

Not Disney Disney Vacation, Day 3

As Disney Vacation Club Members, we are permitted to visit all other Disney resorts, even the ones in which we have not unpacked our suitcases. Technically, there are a few whose pools are just for direct guests, but as we found out today, you don't always need an open invitation to try out a new slide.

Our resort-hopping began when we returned to the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we stayed last year. Had we made our arrangements sooner this year, we would have called this home for the week again. Since we didn't, however, we had to visit for an African lunch. After we enjoyed our chicken and couscous, we visited the animals and explored the lodge a bit.

Then we hopped over to the Boardwalk Resort, which boasts of the longest of all water slides of all Disney resorts. The kids wore it out. Jacob especially was all smiles each time he splashed into the water and would then climb out and run back up as quickly as he could.

The Boardwalk resort is actually called the Boardwalk for a reason. Walk around back, and enter a whole new world...a boardwalk surrounding the lagoon with colorful shops and restaurants lining it.

And on the other side of the lagoon we discovered the Yacht Club Resort. We spied the pirate ship from over on the Boardwalk side and, when we finally made it around, discovered it was another water slide. We noticed most of the guests wore yellow wrist bands, but we played ignorant and let the kids ride the slide a few times. Mark finally asked someone about the wrist bands and discovered only Yacht Club guests were permitted at the pool but that no one checked after 5:00. Since it was well after 6:00, we allowed the kids to ride a few more times.

After our resort-hopping, we returned to our home resort, had dinner, and headed to Downtown Disney. Definitely a lot more crowded than the other day, but we had fun anyway and enjoyed a street band featuring a didgeridoo (that can't be spelled correctly, I know), which the kids found fun because they learned all about the "things" (I could look it up if I weren't so tired and lazy) at the Aussie-themed VBS this past year.