Magic Kingdom

The next two days of our trip were spent in the Magic Kingdom.  The kids LOVED Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Katie rode it three times.  Splash Mountain is my personal favorite there.  I have lots of memories of this ride, and the animatronics don’t come any cuter.  Averi and Brayden got a kick out of the Bear Country Jamboree, and we got a kick out of watching them.  Day 1: Gratuitous shot of Averi.  Seriously, they don’t come any cuter than this girl.   They revamped the Winnie-the-Pooh ride, and so even though the line was miserably long, the kids didn’t mind waiting at all (the adults are an entirely different story).  Throughout the line there were fun play areas to entertain the kids. Paul took this picture.  I was quite impressed. The fam on Small World   Averi enjoying the ride Getting ready to ride Space Mountain with Ashley Outside the Bear Country Jamboree.  One of the few semi-group pictures we have.  Apparently I’m the only one who wasn’t aware a photo was being taken. Kissing cousins Cinderella’s castle in the background.  So pretty! Day 2: We slept in, so we didn’t get to the park until the afternoon.  But our slackness was for a reason.  The night before, we decided we were sick of park food and wanted to go to Olive Garden.  There was a mix up, and our car ended up getting separated from the rest of our group.  We didn’t have a map or a GPS and we were going to a different Olive Garden than we thought we were supposed to go to, so we got lost.  A frustrating 30+ minutes later, we arrived, starved and frazzled.  And of course the kids had fallen sound asleep in the car while we were driving.  So we woke everyone up and dragged ourselves inside.  Since the rest of the group was there, they were already seated and had ordered.  We made our way back to the table, where Averi promptly proceeded to puke all over Aaron and several chairs—before we were even seated.  We figured that she probably threw up because of the excitement of the day, a lack of sleep, and because she had eaten nothing but fruit snacks all day (not that we didn’t try to feed her).  So we cleaned up as best we could and sat down to try to have a normal meal.  I ordered the unlimited soup and salad, because I wanted something besides hamburgers, and because I was starving.  I got halfway through a bowl of soup when up came everything Averi had eaten up to that point.  This time it was all over me.  We decided to cut our losses and make as graceful an exit as possible, shouting out a quick apology for the mess and leaving a generous tip for the meal we didn’t eat.  Of course she also threw up once we were in the car, which meant we had four loads of laundry (lights, whites, darks, and car seat) to do as soon as possible when we got back to the rental house.  The car smelled LOVELY for the rest of the trip.  We were just glad it wasn’t ours! After that lovely story, now for the pictures.  All our pictures this day were from the Main Street Electrical Parade.    Waiting for the parade.  Our tushes we so frozen from sitting on the ground and staking out a good seat.  My parents, Ashley, Kiera, and Katie stayed until closing, and so they say the parade a second time at 11pm.  According to them, there was no crowd at all and the characters interacted a ton with the kids.  Lesson for next time.  Later is better.   I love how the lights turned out on this one with the slow shutter speed.  It looks like the butterfly is about to take off.     Drizella saw me snapping away, and she was hilarious posing for pictures.  I love the stepsisters!         The Pete’s Dragon float was my favorite.  I loved that movie so much growing up. We also stayed for the Wishes fireworks show, but I was busy balancing a child on my shoulders, so the camera didn’t come out for that.  It really was incredible, though.  And the kids now believe that Tinkerbell is actually real since they saw her flying during the show.  Our last day at the Magic Kingdom was on Christmas Eve.  As my parents were taking the late group home, they walked down Main Street.  At exactly 12am on Christmas morning, it began to snow.  My mom said it was incredibly beautiful and that it melted just like real snow.  Only at Disney.