World Travelers!

Disney World that is. Yes, we spent and entire 8 days and 7 nights at the Walt Disney World Resort. Aside from the blister that formed on my foot the last day, we managed to survive the "happiest place on earth." As some of you know, we kept this vacation a secret from the kids. They knew we were going on vacation, but just didn't know where. Mimmy of course spilled the beans (pun intended) and told them we were going to the lima bean farm. And for those of you who don't get the humor, it is because you don't fully understand the disdain my children have for lima beans...I threw in an extra detail...lima beans with a side of baked beans. My chitlens of course didn't fall for the lima bean farm like Brooke did (who was utterly disappointed to find out we didn't go there). They did however fall for the fake "slip-up" from dear old Dad. Who mentioned a trip up to the mountains. By Sunday (the day we left), they were certain they were in for a long 10 hour ride to the mountains following church services. It wasn't until we crossed under the big Disney World sign within the resort that Abbey started to wonder.

We had a wonderfully exhausting trip. And I did manage to take well over 100 photos (which is major progress for me). However, it will take me the better part of next year to upload all of them. So I will just leave you with some of our favorites.

Since this is our third or fourth trip to Disney with the kids, we feel we have become somewhat of an expert in "World Traveling". So my next post will be the Do's and Don'ts of WDW! Stay tuned!

My kids were finally tall enough this year to ride on some of the "big kid" rides, ie. Tower of Terror, Test Track, Dinosaurs, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain...anything with a 44" and lower height requirement. Unfortunately, Space Mountain was closed for refurbishing, but we went on all the rest of them. Probably the scariest would be Tower of Terror. I think that was actually my favorite ride. Brady was the most scared of this ride, he didn't really want to go on it, but we all talked him into it. Abbey was really excited about it. This was our first park day of the trip and she was bound and determined to go on some big roller coasters. Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios is based on the twilight zone theme. So it is a big scary haunted mansion. None of these things were sitting well with Brady, but he did it. Now for those of you who have never been on this ride, I will give you a little background. You are taken into an elevator looking room that has probably 4-6 rows of stadium style seating (4 people per row). You have a seat belt that goes across your lap. And you basically are hoisted up this tower, elevator style, where you are then dropped (free falling) and then raised back up and dropped again for several minutes. During this ride, you are in the dark except for the occasional times when windows on the tower open up and you look across the whole park and see how high up you are. So for our first experience ever, where do you think we were seated. Yep, you guessed it. Front Row! Nobody in front of us to block the view from the windows. Just us and the windows in front of us. Brady had a death grip on Matthew the whole time, Abbey screamed and screamed. It was by far, the scariest ride the kids had ever been on. We got off the ride and made it all the way down to the gift shop...because, you know Disney can't possibly let you go through any part of the park without stopping to buy souvenirs, and that's when Brady broke down. SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY! We pumped him up by telling him how brave he was and he eventually calmed down. If you ask him what he liked least about the ride, it's that his bottom was off the seat when we were falling down. With as scared as he was of the ride, by the end of the week he was talking about going on it again...but I think he knew we weren't going back to Hollywood Studios anymore and he was safe!