Orlando Vacation - Days 8 & 9

Our last full day in Florida happened to be none other than Father's Day! It was fun to be able to be on vacation as a family as we celebrated our wonderful husband and dad!!! He's the best! (And to be there with my dad was fun to!) 

We took our kids to Cocoa Beach for the afternoon for some fun beach time! What I love about Florida Beaches is the water is warm! {Unlike CA beaches that are freezing!} It was a fun afternoon - the boys loved swimming out in the ocean with their dad, and Connor loved playing on the beach on the sand!

The rest of the day we just hung out at the hotel and played games with my family. It was a lot of fun and a nice relaxing Father's Day!

Monday was our last partial day in Florida and then came our flight home. We had to check out of the condo by 10:00am so we spent the morning packing up and getting out. Then we headed over to Downtown Disney to walk around and shop a bit before heading to the airport!

Here is Steven and Marianela in cute wedding mickey/minnie ears we found. For the bride and groom! Aren't they so cute?!

A cute little set-up in front of a t-shirt shop and the kids wanted a picture. Brady, Jenna, Steven David, Shawn and Connor! What cute kids!

In the giant Disney store Brady of course found a hat of his favorite character - Buzz Lightyear!

We were able to snap a picture of the kids with the Buzz out front as well.

They have an incredible Lego store there and all along the sidewalk out front are some WAY cool things they've made all out of Legos! Like Woody and Buzz:

Snow White and her Forest Friends:

And this really long Dragon in the lake!

And also this HUGE one of Maleficent (in dragon form) shooting the Prince on his horse with fire! Yes, the rock they are on and everything is all out of Legos!

Around 1:00 we had to head off to the airport to catch our flight home. It's always hard to leave vacation! Especially one that's been so fun! 

Bye Bye Disney World!!! Until we meet again.....

Orlando Vacation - Day 7

Well today was our last day we had to spend at Disney World! We decided to spend the morning back at Epcot. We went on a couple of our favorite rides again, and went to a couple things we didn't get to do before - a Finding Nemo Ride, Turtle Talk with Crush, and looking at the awesome aquarium they have there was part of what we had left to do. Here is Emily, Connor, Shawn, and Brady inside the Shark's mouth from Finding Nemo:

When we were done there, we headed back over to the Magic Kingdom to spend the afternoon. There was just a few things left there that we wanted to do with our kids. We took them to Tom Sawyer's Island! We've never done that before. It was actually way cooler than I thought it was going to be. They have all sorts of trails, playgrounds, tunnels and caves, and a whole fort there for the kids to play on. It was pretty fun! Here are the boys riding the ferry over to the island:

Shawn and Mike even got to play checkers in the fort! :)

This bridge was totally CrAzY!!! It has barrels under it so the bridge really rocks back and forth a lot when you walk across it - not mine or Connor's favorite, but Shawn and Brady loved it!

The last thing we did before going back to the hotel was ride the Disney Train! Connor was so excited! He had been watching that train every day and was really wanting to go on it - so we finally got to! He was one happy little dude!

Mike and I took all the kids back to the hotel thinking that we could go swimming for a couple of hours - well by the time we got home there was lightening around {and I guess a tornado a few miles away} so they had closed down the pools! Darn! But the kids at least had each other to entertain and play together! Here they are playing in Grandma's Bath Tub! (Huge enough to hold them all and their toys!)

That night we just hung out around the hotel, went and got some dinner, and played for a while. And that was that! Almost done with our vacation.....

Orlando Vacation - Day 6

Day 6 took us back again to the Magic Kingdom! 

(This was the first day there for Steven and his family) 

We spent all day here again. We went on all the rides that Steven and his family wanted to go on - which was the second time for the rest of us! - and we also got to watch the parades, shows, and fireworks that we didn't watch the first day we were there. Here we are on the tram from the parking lot to the entrance. Connor was so funny every day - we would get out of our car, he would see the tram, and he would get all excited and say "I want to go on that!" Like it was some cool ride or something. It was so funny!

And here we all are with Main Street USA and the Castle behind us.

We of course had to go on the flying carpets again! :)

And what better way to cool off while waiting for the parade than with the water sprayer/blower! We used this A LOT this week!

Connor was so excited about the parade! He would smile huge and wave every time anyone passed us! He just loved it!!! He especially loved when the characters would actually stop and say hi to him or give him a high 5 or something - that just made his day!

After the parade, just our little family of 5 went and had lunch at the Lady and the Tramp Restaurant. I don't remember the name (Tony's or something like that). It was very yummy!

I love this castle. I love it even more than the one at Disneyland! It's just magical to look at!

In the evening it started to rain on us pretty good. But we wanted to stay and see if they were going to do the fireworks show anyway since we hadn't seen it yet. So to try and wait out the rain a bit, we ended up in a LONG line for the Winnie the Pooh ride. Pretty much all of the line (all but a little at the beginning) is indoors - at least with a roof over it - and it has all sorts of fun stuff for the kids to play with/on while waiting so it made it bearable. We waited a LONG time though. Longest line we waited in all week! Here are Steven David and Connor playing in "Eyore's House"

And having fun with their Uncle Derek!

It actually ended up being a good time. When we finally ended up on the ride, all throughout it the ride kept stopping and we would be stuck in different rooms for a few minutes at a time. So we of course started giggling about it all and laughing at all the funny things we would find in the different rooms. By the end of the ride my mom and I were laughing so hard we were crying! Funny, funny stuff! {Guess you had to be there though!} :)

Well we were glad we waited because they did end up doing the fireworks show. The rain had subsided mostly (still sprinkled a little here and there) and it turned out to be a great night! And that ended our day at Magic Kingdom! Only one more day left at Disney World!!!