Well, our last big summer celebration was a great 2-week family trip to Florida. We had such a great time. We decided to drive, because it saves so much money (paying for 6 flights adds a lot, and we had just flied out to Utah a couple weeks earlier).
Anyway, PJ had been at the LDS Youth Leadership Conference earlier that week, in London Ontario (about 2 hours away from us). He got home on Saturday evening (after a great week of fun with lots of other youth from the surrounding wards & stakes). We hurried & did a last batch of laundry, loaded up the van, and went to bed.
The next morning, we got up & headed out around 4 a.m. We like to get started early, so we can get as far as possible. The kids always travel well. We take cereal for breakfast, lots of snacks & water, a DVD player, movies, iPods, books, notebooks & pens, pillows, etc. to keep everyone entertained & comfortable. We drove about 14 hours, to South Carolina, stopped there for the night, and then continued on the next morning for 7 more hours, reaching Orlando around 1:00 in the afternoon. It was kind of fun to add several more U.S. states to our list of those we've been through. Driving from Canada, to Florida, we were able to go through: New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and finally Florida. After all our travels when we were living in Arkansas, and our families all out west in Utah & California, and now seeing more of the East coast, we've been able to see most of the 50 U.S. States.
So, once we arrived in Orlando, we went to the rental agency & got the keys to our house we were renting, stopped to pick up some groceries, and headed to the house. It was a nice home in a residential area about 5 minutes from the Disney parks. It had 4 bedrooms & 3 bathrooms, a kitchen, family room, dining room, a private pool & hot tub, and a fooseball table and dart board in the garage. It was great to have so much space, bedrooms for everyone, and a private pool. The kids went swimming a couple times every day & enjoyed that as much as going to the Disney parks!
Once we got settled in the house, we headed out to dinner, planned out which parks we'd go to on which days, went swimming for a while, and then went to bed.
The next morning we went to Disney's Magic Kingdom. It was GREAT! The weather was perfect, the park wasn't very crowded at all, because the schools there had already started (and many of the schools in the U.S. start mid-August), so we didn't have to wait in many lines. There were only a few select rides that had long lines & we just got fast passes to go back later & walk right on. The kids favourite rides at that park were Splash Mountain (Clay was very brave & even went on it & loved it!), Big Thunder Mountain railroad, the Buzz Lightyear ride, Space Mountain, the Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean and many others. We were there from 8:30 a.m. until about 9:00 at night. Needless to say, the kids were pretty worn out, and everyone's feet were very tired. But we all had a great day!
The following day we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom. As soon as we got there, we noticed that they had a Rainforest Cafe restaurant near the front of the park, so we went & made reservations for lunch. Then we headed out to see the park, ride the rides, & have fun. We loved seeing all the animals on the African Safari and the walk-through Indian forest. We LOVED the Lion King production & musical with acrobats, that was AMAZING! We had a great time riding the wild-water raft ride (I can't remember the exact name), as well as several other rides, and enjoyed a lot of the educational & hands-on info about animals. And Jonah and Neil were the only ones brave enough to go on the Expedition Everest roller coaster, and they loved it! We would have gone on it again, but we ran out of time.
After 2 days of walking non-stop all day long, we decided to take a break & head to the beach. So on Thurs. morning we got up & had breakfast, then headed to Cocoa Beach. The kids all had a blast playing in the ocean waves, digging in the sand, and just relaxing. After our beach fun, we stopped at a delicious Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was SOOO good! We miss having Mexican food here in Canada! After that we headed to Downtown Disney to see what was there. It had shops & restaurants, a movie theatre, and a big indoor amusement park of some sort (we chose not to do that). The kids had fun looking for souvenirs and checking out the Lego store with all the cool (huge) lego creations!
On Friday, we went to Disney's Epcot. The kids LOVED it there too! Our favourite ride was "Soarin'" We had been on it before at Disneyland in California and knew we'd want to go ride that one first! They enjoyed the other rides and shows, and loved going through the various country pavilions, where they can see a little bit of what it might look like there, and try foods from various countries as well. We ate at a Chinese restaurant the first day, and and Italian restaurant the 2nd day at Epcot. And then of course we had to visit the AMAZING German candy shop both days, for some awesome treats! BEST chocolate-covered caramels ever!!! :)
On Saturday we finished with the last of the 4 Disney Parks, Disney's Hollywood Studios. We enjoyed it, but it was our least favourite of the 4 parks. We LOVED the Toy Story Mania ride, but after we rode it the first time, the fast passes were all gone for the rest of the day and the wait time to get on again was something like 90 minutes. So we just went on it once. We rode some of the other rides & saw a few shows, but were done by about 4:00. So we stopped for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse right by our rental home, for dinner. It was delicious as always (we also miss these, because we don't have any in Canada).
Yes, it sounds like we talk about food a lot on vacation, and you'd think that living in Canada wouldn't really be that big of an adjustment (which it's really not), but there are a few things that we still really miss that we can't get here. A few of those are MEXICAN FOOD!!!...PF Changs Chinese food,... Olive Garden or Bravo Italian food, Outback Steakhouse, and then other random things like "American" cottage cheese (there is a HUGE difference--the cottage cheese here is kind of yellowish & slimy--really weird), certain choices in crackers, snacks, pop, medicines, etc. And of course the prices in the U.S. are always much better too! We loved the fact that we could take our whole family out to dinner & spend about half of what we usually do in Canada for the meal! :)
On Sunday morning we slept in a little (meaning that Jonah & Clay got up at 6 a.m. as usual and I told them to just watch the Disney channel in their room & have some cold cereal while the rest of us tried to sleep a little longer). But I was up by about 6:45 with them. We all had some breakfast & got dressed for church & found an LDS chapel about 15 minutes from our house. It was a good meeting & we were glad that we were able to go. After church we just hung around the house, watched some T.V., played some games, napped, & relaxed.
On Monday, we got a little bit of "Tropical Storm Isaac" going past, so it poured rain most of the day. We knew this was going to be the weather for the day, so we went out for a big breakfast (we rarely go out for breakfast, so it was a bit of a treat), and then wandered around Target for a little while, picking up a few more groceries. We did some laundry, the kids played some games, and then we went to see a movie at Downtown Disney after lunch. Once we got back home, the rain had died down a bit and there wasn't any lightning, so the kids went swimming for a while before dinner.
On Tues. & Wed. we took the kids back to their 2 favourite parks, which were the Magic Kingdom & Epcot. We knew which rides were all our favourites & hit all of those first, and rode several of them multiple times. It was so much fun. And the kids each picked out a t-shirt for their souvenir, along with one other thing. Tessa chose a little painted ceramic lizard from Mexico. PJ chose another t-shirt. And Jonah & Clay saw some really cool BeyBlades in Japan that they wanted, so we went & bought the at Target for half the price.
Thursday was our day to relax & swim at the house, go see Gatorland USA, and finish up some laundry & packing to head back home the next day. We loved the slow, relaxed pace, the great family time, and all the fun we had in Florida for a couple of weeks!
Friday morning we got up & headed out at 4 a.m. again. We had reservations in West Virginia to spend the night, but by lunchtime, we decided to just keep driving straight through. I called to cancel our reservations & we ended up getting home around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. We were all pretty tired & went right to bed. Well, as usual, Jonah & Clay were up at 6:30 a.m. People don't believe me when I say that they really never sleep in! Even after traveling for 21 hours, and getting home at 2:30 a.m., they were still up at 6:30! They really do NOT sleep in! But I sure love waking up to those cute little smiles & hugs! :)
It was such a great trip & a fun, relaxing 2 week vacation, with lots of fun family memories. Once we got home, we did some laundry, went through some mail, paid some bills, re-stocked our groceries, and made sure the kids had everything ready for school to start on Tuesday. We were glad to have Monday off for Labour day & enjoyed relaxing, and going to our annual ward picnic. Lots of fun & ready for a new school year to begin! :)
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