Five Years, Mouse Ears

When I think of anniversary celebrations I think of lazy mornings, no alarm clocks and breakfast in bed... but ours didn't begin that way. We were up before 3:30am, dressed and on the road before 4. All because of Disney World. 

Remember how we went just a few weeks ago to the happiest place on earth? Well we bought three-day Florida resident tickets that didn't have to be used together, but that expired on June 5th. As we thought about it while we were there, we realized we wanted to spend more time with family than in the parks -- plus three full long days in a hot park walking around is super draining. So since we'd used the money from our anniversary fund (leftover Christmas and birthday money) for the tickets in the first place, we thought that returning for our third day on our anniversary was a great idea. 

Getting there when the parks opened was a terrific plan too. We didn't arrive until 6 minutes after 8, which was perfectly fine, but we wanted to get there as early as possible because of lines. 

We'd heard about the lines for the Toy Story Midway Mania game, so we headed there first. It was a 40 minute wait time (but I think it was less than 30 in reality) but the wait time shortly after went to 2 hours.

Disney gives you lots to see in the lines, and this ride's lines had lots of life-sized board game and kids' toys as the eye candy. There was even a Mr. Potato head that was HUGE (8 or 9 feet maybe) that talked and blinked and moved as you inched past in line.

It's a 3-D ride where you sit in a little bench that swivels around and you shoot at targets on a screen. My gun felt a little defective because I was going just as fast as Carson but nothing was happening. Likely operator error.

Our final scores. I'm the green. At least my accuracy was a little better? I was aiming and Carson was just shooting, which is apparently the way to win this thing.

I loved the barrel of monkeys above the sign for Pixar Place.

We went during the second weekend of "Star Wars Weekends". I wish I'd taken pictures of the families (we're talking huge groups of people) in long brown hooded Jedi robes, or the grown men in full costume or the thousands of people in all kinds of Star Wars themed shirts, dresses, and other kinds of clothing. It was equal parts impressive and weird.

There were meet-and-greets with people who've done voices or acting in the Star Wars movies, and while we didn't go to any of those, we did enjoy the people watching and thought the Star Wars things were funny.

We had a Fast Pass for Star Tours, which we got to wear 3D glasses for again.

Next, we rode Tower of Terror. The line was spooky and purposely steamy, and it made my hair really poofy.

We rode this one twice. First, without a FastPass, then we saw a show and rode it again with a pass. The ride changes depending on which elevator you're on so we made sure to get a different one. It makes your stomach drop in a way that's a little scary, like you miiiight lose your lunch, but we liked it anyway. Carson hummed the theme from The Twilight Zone all day after this.
(we're in the back middle)

We saw the Beauty and the Beast show in between Tower of Terror rides and thought it was cute.

And since we had a bit of time before our next Fast Pass, we decided to have a snack. I'd wanted a Mickey Pretzel the last time we were here and didn't get one, so we made that happen. I was also tempted by the very refreshing raspberry lemonade as we stood in line, so we shared that. Carson got a big pickle to eat.

I'd heard good things about the Rock 'N Roller Coaster, and it didn't disappoint. This was my favorite ride all day and I think I liked it even better than Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom.

Carson was a little surprised. It goes upside down, which I didn't expect because they didn't seem super worried about us making sure all bags were shut. Thankfully no keys or chapsticks or cell phones went flying... but I'm guessing that happens fairly often.

We saw the Indiana Jones stunt show next. It was fun and the host of the show was great.

Hydrating... it was 97 degrees.

Cinderella's Carriage from the new version of Cinderella. Isn't it pretty?

Next, we went to the car stunt show where drivers acted out a variety of chase scenes, jumps and escapes. They even had one guy on fire in a fireproof suit. It was really entertaining but I wondered if anything ever goes wrong with these shows?

We walked around after that, since we'd pretty much seen everything we wanted to see. There were a few things that were closed that day, and several things that had lines that we just didn't want to wait in, so our day was pretty much over at about 2:30.

This Storm Trooper didn't have a line of people waiting for a picture (the line for Darth Vader was over an hour, or Carson would have jumped at that) so Carson got a picture with him. He pointed at Carson's "Happy Anniversary" pin, then pointed at me. Carson nodded that it was our anniversary, and the guy pushed Carson away and put his arm around me as if to walk away. Ha.

"Oh I loved these guys in the movie!" (as I look at them now, they look a little too much like the Klan)

We had a Disney photographer take a picture of us together with her camera and one with my phone. The phone ones look pretty bad, so I screen-shotted these, which really aren't so great either. And I just have to say although I'm probably the only one thinking about this... I'm not balding... that's just what happens when you have a very high forehead and very light hair around your hairline.

We left at about 4 and got to Caleb and Morgan's house in Ocala at 5:30 after stopping for a quick bite. We went to my aunt and uncle's house for dinner and Marlin got to ride shotgun with Carson.

Some baby prep was done, and we enjoyed pizza and salad for dinner, with strawberry shortcake as a delicious dessert.

Our stay in Ocala was short; we left at 9 the next morning and were back in Tallahassee at noon. We both napped I did laundry while Carson watched the X-Files before we decided to do something active at around 5. We went to nearby Lake Ella to walk around. It's fairly shady which is key in temperatures over 90 degrees. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the sunshine. 

We also enjoyed a snowball. We had these with my parents once before and they are most definitely better enjoyed when it's warm outside.

We watched the ducks as we enjoyed our snowball. Lots of people were there feeding them and there were lots of duck and goose families out in the water and gobbling up bread.

We made our last stop of the evening a trip to Movies 8, which is our budget theater. We paid $3 each for us to watch the new Cinderella movie (I thought the name of it was behind us in this picture but it was on the other side). Cinderella is my favorite classic Disney movie, mostly because of the mice, and I loved this one. Spoiler: the mice are in it too (although with fewer lines...). We got to see Cinderella's carriage on the big screen after we saw the real one the day before!

And just like that, our anniversary was over. We didn't exchange gifts because the traditional gift this year was wood and we couldn't think of anything fitting for each other. That said, we do plan on working with that theme and either building something out of wood or refinishing something. We haven't entirely decided, but plan to work on it in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Disney, Part Two

Our sort-of-last-minute trip to Disney World was so much fun. On our first and second day we played by the pool, went to Downtown Disney, and visited the Magic Kingdom (here). 

We woke up on Saturday morning with a little less pep in our step because we had such a long day in the Magic Kingdom the day before. Both Carson and I get up at a pretty early hour and go to bed early these days, so staying out past 10 was rough! We were still ready to experience Epcot together for the first time. 

I've only ever been to the Magic Kingdom before, and I loved it. To me, Epcot was pretty great and definitely lots of fun to explore and wander around as adults, but it wasn't my favorite of the two. Childhood favorites are hard to beat.

We left the room at just before 8 and got on the bus for Epcot. It was closer to our hotel than the Magic Kingdom was, so we were there and in line for the park to open rather quickly.

Spaceship Earth - the only thing I really knew about Epcot. I'd expected the entire park to be built around this (like Cinderella's Castle), since it's sort of the iconic thing from the park, but since it wasn't, it was fun to spy it from the gates!

We got our FastPasses late in the game, so the "big" rides were all taken and we knew we'd need to book it in order to avoid long lines. Almost everyone sprinted toward the Test Track ride, and we joined them. Our wait was only 10 minutes, and that's with the backpack Carson carried mysteriously coming unzipped and spilling its contents everywhere!

I knew nothing about this ride and thought it would be one of those things where you drive a little motor car around a track - I was wrong. We designed our cars and they were linked to our tickets (we had magic bands instead so they were linked to those). We scanned our bands when we got on the ride and it registered our car and used the specs to customize the ride, sort of. We loved this ride!

Next, we hurried over to Mission: Space. Carson looked like he was taking on the world in this picture as we walked to the ride.

We had a much slower start to our day than the one before. After those two rides (Mission: Space was intense!), Carson decided that he definitely needed to have coffee to get through the day, so we ordered from Starbucks and sat on a shady curb outside (the available seats were in the sun).

We had a FastPass for Spaceship Earth next and had heard that it wasn't exciting but decided to try it out anyway. We actually really liked it! Something happened on the ride and they had to stop it for about 20 minutes. There were cast members walking around looking for someone with flashlights, so I'm guessing someone tried to jump out and explore? We were very thankful that we were in air conditioning, and not at the top of some roller coaster somewhere. This was from our future at the end:

The Flower and Garden Festival was going on, and there were some really beautiful things there. I'm guessing it usually looks lovely there anyway, but some of the arrangements were really impressive! Carson took the camera out and snapped any pictures that could have been taken with my nice camera. I used my phone.

We walked through the World Showcase next and I'm thinking that this would be a place to REALLY explore another time, as we eat our way through. We didn't even have a snack, which was sort of a silly thing not to do.

I did see Mary Poppins in the United Kingdom. As an adult without kids, it feels strange to go up to the characters, so this is as good as it gets.

Beauty and the Beast in France.

Belle

Morocco

Japan

Italy

Germany

China

Norway

Walking through the countries was my favorite part. It didn't seem like there was any intended geographical order to them, which I liked because it felt sort of neat to walk between two very distinct countries.

Here we are at the end of the day. 

We decided to make our day in Epcot short so that we could spend time with everyone at the hotel. With the heat and all the walking, it was a relief to not feel the pressure to stay in the parks. We went for a short swim and then got ready for dinner (we were actually super late getting ready because we stayed in the pool too long). We bussed down to Downtown Disney, and realized that in that time we totally could have walked or taken the ferry.

They'd made reservations for Laela's birthday, which is good because that's the line for people without them.

I took this of the girls as we waited for our table.

This is a restaurant owned by Rainforest Cafe and is supposed to be similar (I've never been there) but with a dinosaur theme. Every 15 minutes there's a "meteor shower" and the lights dim, the dinosaurs move and roar, and lights flash. It was spectacular.

Erin had the waiters sing to Laela, and she beamed.

There was a great sunset as we got out of our dinner.

The girls had been given gift cards to spend, so we hit a store looking for the perfect thing for each of them. It was overwhelming for me, so I can't imagine the pressure of which cute stuffed thing to choose.

This store looked fun - it's for left-handed people.

Here's a high-quality snap of Carson and I waiting for the bus that evening.

And Brooklyn with her baby Marie (from Aristocats - I learned so many Disney characters names this weekend!)

We decided to use our third park day later, so we got to spend time with the family on Sunday. Everyone else went to an appointment, but Kiki got to stay inside and cuddle with Uncle Carson. They watched old Mickey cartoons and then Horton Hears a Who. She's two, but she was so quiet and still. Carson was afraid that she'd get scared when it was just two of us almost-strangers with her, but she didn't have a problem and ended up falling asleep on him.

We decided to walk down and meet everyone at the pool later. Kiki was still not feeling great, so she rested on Carson again and then I held her (holding kids in 95 degree weather is VERY warm) while we waited for the rest of the family to appear.

We swam and played around with everyone, and then RyRy got tired from it all too and fell asleep on Carson. Apparently it was the trendy thing to do.

We decided to walk to Downtown Disney to explore just the two of us and maybe get a souvenir. I also got a Mickey ice cream.

We returned and packed up our things. We were sad because we could definitely have stayed another week or month or something. I got a picture with us and all our sweet nieces before we hit the road.

And then we took some selfies (you should see the ones they took).

It took us four hours to get home and we basically dropped our things in the foyer and went straight to sleep because we were so tired. It was exhausting but so much fun and we'd do it again in a heartbeat. Currently scheming ways to have these guys move closer to us and for us to all permanently reside in a resort setting. Any good ideas on how to obtain some major wealth?