“She can’t get to her chocolate milk because the ketchup is clogging the straw.”
“I don’t like Barnstormer because it hurts my tummy and makes me have to poop!”
“You know how there’s always someone at Disney who looks worse than you? It’s her.” {this was said about one of our own. Lovingly, of course. =)}
“Reeves found the golden ticket!”
“For the love of all that is pure and holy, buy that child a balloon!”
Yes, all of this and much more was said on our Disney trip last week. For the very first time ever, all of the cousins did Disney together. It was awesome and exhausting. Not surprisingly, there are about a million photos from this trip. Way too many to fit into one blog post, so I’m going to break it up into as many posts as it takes.
To give you a little bit of background information, my parents always take their grandchildren to Disney World for their fifth birthday. This year they decided to combine Tess and Caroline’s trips. Tess turned five in December and Caroline will be five in June. As you probably know by now, the Smiths never pass up an opportunity to head to the Happiest Place on Earth, so we were along for the ride. Because we were all planning on going, Mom and Dad decided to rent a house for all of us to stay in. OFF PROPERTY. I know. Many of you just gasped in horror. Call us Disney snobs if you’d like {and you would be correct in doing so} but we have never stayed off property on a Disney trip. We love the Disney bubble. Parking our car and leaving it alone for the entire trip is one of the best perks that Disney offers in our opinion. Soap with Mickey’s head etched into it, hidden Mickey’s on bedspreads and wallpaper, cast members encouraging you to “Have a Magical Day!”…it all makes up that Disney bubble and we all love every part of it. So we were a touch nervous about staying off site. It just made sense, though. We found a seven bedroom house that would sleep us all for the week for a fraction of the cost that it would be to stay at Disney. Mom booked it and gave us the house for Christmas {Best Christmas present ever!}.
Annnnd…it was Fabulous! We were all pleasantly surprised and we would even do it again. We made a few off property mistakes and learned a lot, but overall it was a great experience.
About three weeks before the trip, we all decided to head down a night early to get one more Disney Day in. Because seven days isn’t enough, right? We understand that we may have a problem. Ahem. Anyway, the four of us, along with Reeves and Rebecca, decided to camp at Fort Wilderness the night before we checked into the house. In a TENT. At this point, I would consider our family to be experienced campers. In our Airstream. A tent? Not so much. We borrowed one from the Otts and decided that we could handle anything for one night. Surprisingly, that night wasn’t bad either! And we got to watch Wishes from the beach, which is one of my favorite Disney things.
Thank goodness for this boy. I was zero help when it came to setting up the tent.
Soon cousins arrived!
Slightly excited to be OUT of the car
We ate supper, watched Wishes and headed back to sleep. Not the best night of sleep ever, but really not all that bad either. Then on Saturday morning we met up with the rest of the family at Magic Kingdom.
The Disney bus ride will always be a favorite!
First glimpses of the Magic Kingdom from the boat!
Oh, Sweet Caroline and the carousel. This child rode this ride 7394 times on this trip. I have never seen a little girl with so much devotion to one ride! Her happy place in the MK, for sure!
Where Tate spent a good portion of his week. I kept waiting for him to tee-tee down his Daddy’s back. You know, like that picture that’s floating around Pinterest? Didn’t happen. =)
These three did everything they could to spin their teacup the fastest and make each other the sickest. No adult wanted to ride with them.
Lilah Drew is notorious for motion sickness. Seriously, the poor baby will throw up just from her Daddy circling the parking lot. And she wanted to ride Tea Cups this trip! Boom-Boom was the brave soul who boarded the cup with her. And he did everything in his power to hold that cup still. It worked! Baby didn’t lose it. In fact, she loved it!
We ended the day by heading to Rainforest Cafe for supper. We had seven exhausted but hyped up on Mickey Love kids and eight adults who just wanted a place to sit and some sweet tea. And Rainforest Cafe is pretty much the only place in Disney to get real sweet tea.
I just want to pinch her, she’s so cute.
More from the trip coming soon!
Love all the details. We love Disney too headed down in 13 days and I can’t wait!!!
OK, This makes me want to go back again already. I think I have issues. Also makes me wish we were at the campground with you on Friday night instead of stuck on the interstate in 1) road cleanup in SC and 2) a traffic accident in Georgia where we went 5 miles in 2 hours. But it was worth it when we checked into the DISNEY hotel for the night and then was able to start our vacation EARLY Saturday morning with everyone. Can’t wait to see the rest of the pictures. I think I see some potential Christmas card pictures here.