Things to Do - Cherish This Day & Random Links

Just a few photos from our last night in Disney (at Hollywood Studios) - The Great Movie Ride & Fantasmic.

Happy Friday everyone! Don't forget to click over to Cherish This Day to see all of this week's wonderful images.

RANDOM LINKS:

* I love these abstract art prints.

* "There was more time between the Stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex than between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and you" - quirky facts about time.

* This soup looks wonderful. As does this salad.

* I LOVE Where the Watermelons Grow's upcycled pom pom shirt.

* KidFriendly DC is on a mission to uncover DC's hidden treasures, the franciscan monastery looks awesome.

* Best Valentine's Day cards ever.

* Taylor Swift just wowed me.

* Yes.

Places to Go (Vacation) - Disney World 2015, Part I (Epcot)

So this is our family's third trip to Disney, which some may find overkill, but ideally I'd love to continue with biyearly trips to the "happiest place on earth". Plus, winter is Northern VA is cold. And my foot has healed. And plane tickets to Orlando are insanely cheap (thank you US Air!). And I had absolutely no interest in Superbowl Sunday (though we've heard it was the best game ever).

So before we knew it, we were on our way . . .

Turns out that Thursday night flights are quite pricey, compared to Friday morning flights. So the alarm went off at 6 am and the cab arrived by 6:45.







A few moments of sisterly bliss while we wait for Dan and T to pick up the rental car. "This is fun fighting mom, not 'real' fighting." In case you you were confused.









Um, we usually rock a mini-van, but sedans rent for much less. Three kids in one backseat turned out to be utter chaos. And not in a good way.









This was our first trip to Disney using the new online fastpass reserve system. I'm not really a spontaneous person, but it still seemed odd to arrive and already have our day mapped out for us (carefully planned by me, of course).





I'm terrified of small spaces and motion stimulators, but I decided to go on Mission Space with the rest of the family, so as not to miss out on any of the "fun". I will never do that again. This ride was the absolute low point of my vacation, I couldn't stop shaking for thirty minutes after it ended. Whereas the kids said, "it was just okay, not really scary enough." WTF?



Apparently, everyone needs a new hat before they can explore the world.











German beer garden buffet. I could have stayed all day. Really.















After Soarin', T started to melt down. So after a quick stop on Spaceship Earth (F's favorite Epcot ride), we drove to our rental condo and caught the tail end of a gorgeous sunset from the balcony. I had planned on staying through Epcot's light show, but apparently that was a little too ambitious.



A good first day (though somewhat exhausting) . . .

Places to Go (Vacation) - Disneyworld, Part II - Disneyworld's Wilderness Lodge. The First Stop on Our Roadtrip of the South.

(Dan managed to put down the blackberry for most of our trip. Unfortunately, T picked it up.)

For our Disney trip we stayed in a one-bedroom villa at Wildnerness Lodge (my mom stayed in the lodge). On the downside, the villas are pricey (hence why we only stayed three nights). They also book up pretty fast. On the upside, having your own kitchen at Disneyworld is pretty awesome, especially when you bring a carload of food. Dan made wonderful homemade dinners every night (have I ever mentioned how wonderful my husband is?) and we brought lunch and snacks with us to the parks (though most days it was too hot to eat much). We stayed on the first floor and outside our room we had a small patio and a grassed "backyard" where the kids ran and ran. The room was quite large and had a separate shower and jaccuzi tub. A small pool and hot tub were within a two minute walk from our room (as was a great health club, which I never used). Lizards resided on the backfence along with lots of birds. It really did feel sort of wildernessy, Disney's so good at doing what it does.

From the Lodge, Disney runs buses to all the themeparks. For the Magic Kingdom you also have the option of taking a ferry boat, which is how we traveled most of the time. A nice relaxing trip on the water, before the magic began.



By the way, I'm skipping my usual Things to Read post because of all the Disneyworld posts. But, in case you're wondering, we purchased The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World with Kids 2011 (Unofficial Guides) and it really came in handy. With young kids you don't usually have a chance to see everything so it is good to have a plan and know exactly what you want to see (as well as what your children won't want to see). The book really helped us strategize (what a sad word to use for a vacation) thus assuring that we caught several (though not all) of Disneyworld's toddler-friendly highlights.