Orlando - first of many

Jason and I decided a while ago that we wanted to take a family vacation. He was changing jobs and would have an almost 2 week break between the two, so we decided to head to the Sunshine State. Why Florida when it's 100 degrees here? Well, why not! We wanted to do a few days at Disney and a day at Sea World, so we loaded up.

Interestingly enough, even though we allowed for plenty of time to get to the airport, we hit bad traffic on I-35 N due to an accident, and discovered that I-29 north was closed and diverted ourselves over to 435. Needless to say, it took us longer to get there than intended. We made it in enough time for Jason to drop me off with the bags and Allison while he took Andrew and parked in circle parking (that cost us). We literally ran onto the plane. Thankfully, a few people shuffled seats and allowed for us to sit across from each other.

I did have enough time to grab my camera and get a few shots of the kids waiting for Jason to grab some things from the car, and then watch for planes arriving.

We didn't land in Orlando until 1130 pm Florida time. We grabbed our luggage, took a shuttle to the hotel and crashed after midnight. We decided that Friday would be a lazy day at the pool. After a comped buffet breakfast, we swam all morning. The kids napped well and we headed to Downtown Disney. It was only a few miles from our hotel, and we hopped a shuttle there. We went into a few stores, rode a ferry across the lake and grabbed a quick bite to eat. Then it was time to wander. The kids got their first of many bowls of ice cream and we enjoyed the evening.

It was a beautiful night. The weather was nice. It had rained that afternoon and cooled everything off.

There were some fountains set up that the kids got to run in. We didn't have any dry clothes, and the next time we went, I brought some. But they had a ball and were the only kids there.

After the kids were sufficiently soaked, we ran into a Buzz Lightyear standing outside a Disney store. It was the first Disney character experience of the week, and it wasn't even real! They thought it was great though.

I got a few cute pics of the kids in front of Buzz, but later, when I was going back through them, they all had this kid hanging out in the background. In a few of them he was actually making a few faces! Ha! I didn't even notice him at the time!

We wandered into the store and Allison had a great time putting together some Potato Heads.

It was a fun first day. We got back to the hotel around 1o pm and quickly got the kids bathed and to bed. We were all staying in a 1 bedroom hotel room and I was afraid that would make it difficult to sleep. How wrong! They were so tired at naps and bedtime that I don't think it would have mattered where we slept!

Day 2 was Disney...

More to come...