#mcdanfamloveswdw: Day 8 – Dexter’s Disney Birthday!

Posted on June 13, 2015June 13, 2015 by mommyinthemidwest

I’m in the homestretch with these recaps! We’ve been home for 4 weeks already; how is that possible? I’ve been obsessing about all the wheres and whens and hows of our next vacation (not a Disney trip). I think I have a disease…Obsessive Vacation Disorder. As soon as one trip is over, I’m thinking about the next. I just love spending that time with my family, making memories, having something fun to plan look forward to, and let’s face it – a good reason to be off work for a week. Now, on to a very special day, Dexter’s 4th BIRTHDAY!!

In case you missed it:

Click HERE to see the photos we shared on Instagram from our trip.

Click Here if you missed Day 1.

Click Here if you missed Day 2.

Click Here for Day 3.

Right here for Day 4.

Here for Days 5 & 6.

And my most recent recap, Day 7.

Day 8: May 13th, 2015

As I mentioned on Day 7, we had early morning reservations again as part of our celebration of Dexter’s big day. This time we went to the Polynesian Village Resort for breakfast at ‘Ohana with pals Lilo & Stitch as well as Pluto and Mickey Mouse.

We took the bus from our resort to Magic Kingdom and then the ferry boat over to the Poly.

Recently renovated lobby.

The food at ‘Ohana was reeeeally good! We loved the pineapple bread.

Served family style – Mickey pancakes, hash browns, sausage, bacon, biscuits, all the fresh melon and berries we could eat, that POG juice, and more, more, more food. The kids loved participating in the mid-meal parade. And meeting the characters of course. We all have on our buttons – Dexter’s is a birthday button and the rest of ours’ say “I’m Celebrating.” A good way for a birthday boy to get lots of attention throughout the day!

After a delicious, entertaining, busy breakfast, we rode the monorail back over to Magic Kingdom to continue our fun day.

I have a picture of Ryan here with Goofy from trips past and he asked me to take another. A nice bystander offered to take a family photo so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

By this point in our trip, we’d promised and missed about 3 opportunities to meet Buzz. We knew on Dexter’s birthday, this was a non-negotiable. That was one happy little birthday boy. I didn’t think about the fact that I was WEARING my Buzz Lightyear shirt until after we walked away. I bet he would have given me a big thumbs up.

The goal was to hit a bunch of stuff we hadn’t had a chance to do yet this trip – one of these things being the Astro Orbiter.

A special treat for me on Dexter’s big day – my friend Rachel moved from Indiana to Florida in December of last year. She’s as much a Disney lover as I am. So much that she and her family have annual passes. She drove an hour to meet up with us for the biggest part of the morning. It was GREAT catching up!

Ryan’s obsession with slushies continued as we made our way back to Gaston’s Tavern for another Lefou’s Brew.

Rachel had to get back to Realityland so she left us in Fantasyland. I hugged her so tight!

One of the boys’ favorite rides for sure – Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.

All he talked about, leading up to our trip, was getting a cupcake on his birthday. We get him in Big Top Treats of Storybook Circus and what does he choose? A marshmallow/cake pop thingy! Because….it’s blue. He loved it, that’s all that matters. We sung Happy Birthday to him right there and I got a little choked up. What a special boy. What a special day.

Penny pressing fun.

And when the sugar rush turns into a sugar crash…ha. Dexter slept for about 2 hours. I know Ryan and Theo rode Carousel of Progress and I remember walking around the gift shop at Space Mountain’s exit. I believe this was the only mid-day nap either of them took the entire trip. He was so out of it during this nap that Ryan and I both voiced worry that he would wake up not feeling well. We actually woke him up after two hours and he bounced right back to his happy, excited self.

One of the birthday boy’s favorite things to do at Magic Kingdom is the Tomorrowland Speedway.

If I’m being totally honest, he’s a terrible driver.

Ryan decided to skip this puke-maker.

Catching this show was on our to-do list. Check.

Jungle Cruise!

MORE PENNIES!

Playing in the souvenir shop after riding Pirates of the Caribbean.

Country Bear Jamboree – done. Now I don’t ever need to do this again. Unless I need a nap.

We love Voyage of the Little Mermaid.

And seeing Cinderella Castle all lit up at night.

We also made time for once to watch the fireworks (I didn’t bother taking pictures during, but I took this one below right beforehand). A magical ending to a magical day. I can’t imagine a better way to spend Dexter’s birthday. Throughout this day, Ryan and I discussed several times where we would spend our last park day the next day. We had done the majority of what we wanted to do in each park by this point. It was kind of depressing leaving Magic Kingdom, not knowing if we’d be back this trip. Even though the last-day-blues were starting to creep in, I went to bad happy knowing that Dexter could not have had a better day.

Up next – our last day!

xo,

~C~

#mcdanfamloveswdw: Day 7

Posted on June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 by mommyinthemidwest

ICYMI:

Click HERE to see the photos we shared on Instagram from our trip.

Click Here if you missed Day 1.

Click Here if you missed Day 2.

Click Here for Day 3.

Right here for Day 4.

And here for Days 5 & 6.

Day 7: Tuesday, May 12th. Another day of rest and taking a break from the parks. Deciding to go to Hollywood Studios on Monday instead of Tuesday worked out well. We were able to stay late and then sleep in. Not being at a park on Tuesday meant we would be able to get the boys to bed early since we had early morning dining reservations again on Wednesday.

We didn’t get in a hurry – we had a nice morning hanging out in our room and getting ready for the day. Monday had been super humid and Tuesday was looking very much the same. We decided to play miniature golf before the predicted afternoon thunderstorms hit.

We took a bus to Hollywood Studios, then a boat over to the Swan & Dolphin Resorts. It was fun using all of the different complimentary modes of transportation during our trip.

We had the boat almost completely to ourselves.

I never realized how pretty the properties at Swan & Dolphin are until this visit. I wanted to just stay! We walked to Fantasia Gardens miniature golf from these resorts.

It was hot. Super hot. We got there before lunch time but we were hungry. And hot. And kind of whiny. Myself included. I may have been the ringleader this time around. The mini golf course is wonderfully themed with lots of adorable features, but when I think about this particular activity, all I can think about is how hot I was.

Good thing we caved under the pressure of the heat and humidity the day before at Hollywood Studios and purchased the misting fan. I was kind of against them before, but y’all? Game changer. Worth every penny. Totally made the Florida humidity almost bearable. Except for at putt-putt. I was still dying. Weird, because I know we must have been hot at Hollywood Studios on Monday but that doesn’t cross my mind when I remember that day.

Glad to have done it and glad to be done! Let’s eat!

We found a quickservice place inside of the Dolphin Resort called Picabu (but barely …it was REALLY hard to locate inside the hotel). It was kind of a cafeteria style set up but the food was high quality and so delicious. I’m glad I researched it before we left our hotel so that we could experience something a little different. We couldn’t wait to get back to the resort to swim and that is just what we did. The boys barely got back in the water after dinner before the pool was closed because lightning was spotted. Fine by me, we shut it down for the night around 7 and I think the boys were asleep before 8:30.

I guess there was a downpour at EPCOT that night but we never saw a drop. The sky looked pretty cool though.

I started to add Wednesday, May 13th to this post but decided not to. I’m going to give Day 8 it’s own post since it was Dexter Jay’s 4th birthday! Stay tuned.

xo,

~C~

#mcdanfamloveswdw: Days 5 & 6

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by mommyinthemidwest

ICYMI:

Click HERE to see the photos we shared on Instagram from our trip.

Click Here if you missed Day 1.

Click Here if you missed Day 2.

Click Here for Day 3.

And here for Day 4.

Sunday, May 10th 2015. Mother’s Day! On Mother’s Day this year, we decided to take a break from the parks. It was a much needed day of rest and relaxation after hitting the parks 4 days back to back. We spent the morning and early afternoon checking out the resort arcade, swimming, and doing laundry.

We had some lunch at the resort and then walked over to the other side of the resort to check out a different pool.

Around dinner time we headed over to Downtown Disney – the boys had been waiting for this day! We promised we’d buy them a souvenir and they didn’t let us forget about it. The first place on their list to visit was…you guessed it – the Lego Store. We went there first so they could stop obsessing about it. We let them look around but didn’t let them buy anything until we checked out all the other stores. They still went back to their beloved Legos (lame since we can buy them at home) but they were amazingly well behaved and so patient as Ryan and I meandered through all the stores quite leisurely. Ryan and I treated ourselves to some souvies as well. We all enjoyed our dinner at Earl of Sandwich and then finished off our evening by going back to the Lego Store with two very excited guys.

When I saw this Mr. Potato Head, I instantly remembered the picture of the boys and I standing in the same spot less than 2 years earlier so we did our best to recreate it on the fly. Gah, they’ve grown so much! And whoa, I didn’t realize how much darker and longer my hair has gotten.

Happy with their purchases (Dexter’s is 3x bigger than Theo’s because it was his birthday present from us).

Day 6:

Monday, May 11th. Originally I thought we’d take 2 days off back to back on Sunday and Monday. As I woke up and started looking at the weather forecast and crowd predictions, I suggested we go ahead and visit Hollywood Studios that day. 30 minutes later, we were out the door and ready to enjoy another action-packed day.

The boys were decked out in their Big Hero 6 t-shirts, eagerly anticipating a character greeting with Hiro and Baymax.

These 2 little kids rode the Hollywood Tower of Terror! They were scared, but they liked it a bit. They ended up riding it twice but then decided that was enough …like, forever. ha! They will ride it next time. They may not know it yet, but they will ride it again.

Why did I tear up during the Frozen Sing-a-long? I have no idea. Totally unexpected. I was just overwhelmed with this feeling of gratitude. I was thankful to be there, in that moment, with my family. Hollywood Studios always makes me feel so sentimental, since that’s where I worked when I did the Disney College Program in 1999.

Hollywood Studios was no different in that the boys’ favorite spot was the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground. They loved the larger than life plants and bugs. It was super humid this day and we found that the playground had some water features that we all took advantage of for cooling down.

Theo and Dexter probably liked Star Tours more than any other ride. We rode it several times and enjoyed the different versions.

They were so happy to meet & greet the green army men from Toy Story. Theo kept saying “he tickled me!” Ha.

The boys were surprisingly interested in One Man’s Dream, which is a tribute to the work of Walt Disney. This recreation of Walt’s office is underwhelming. I think they thought that this is where Walt Disney actually worked – we let them think that. They were kind of in awe and it was too cute to ruin.

We finally found Baymax and Hiro – along with everyone else at Hollywood Studios. Actually, the line didn’t look that long. We ended up waiting 80 minutes to meet them. The longest line by about 40 minutes that we waited in during our entire trip. About halfway through, this is what both kids looked like. Oh, and Ryan too. They were so tired.

It finally happened…this moment right here. It’s one that the boys are still talking about. One of their favorite memories from the trip.

And then as we left the greeting, this happened. One of my favorite memories from the trip. One of those moments when, as a parent, your heart feels like it could explode with happiness. They spontaneously held hands and ran just ahead of us, excitedly talking to each other. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but we looked at each other and back at them and I knew Ryan felt it too. The 80 minute wait was worth it. Hell, the plane tickets were worth it.

Ice cream treats for everyone!

More pressed pennies.

Hollywood Studios, I love you.

We enjoyed Fantasmic. I didn’t try to take any pictures – just enjoyed it. Afterwards, both buddies fell asleep in their strollers (don’t ever listen if someone tells you 4 and 5 year olds don’t need strollers at Disney World) so Ryan and I took advantage of the time to take turns riding the Rock N Roller Coaster and stroll through some shops. Kinda like a date for an hour or two – you know, except for having to ride the roller coaster with a complete stranger. The boys were out like a light and positioned almost exactly the same in their strollers. We heard saw so many “aw, they’re so cute” comments and looks. And we were like, yeah. We think so too.

Up next, another day of rest and the last couple days at the parks.

xo,

~C~