What I can say is that the past month has been a blast. We are lucky. Our kids are great road travelers. In fact driving 17 hours doesn’t bug them, driving 2 hours to grandpa’s house does. Go figure! This time we checked out audio books from the library (way more than we would even have the time to listen to but it was great to have a selection). We listened to “Because of Winn Dixie” a very cute book. The person reading it had an obnoxious nasally southern voice which didn’t match my idea of a 10 year old, but none the less it was great to listen to a book and actually finish it. The drive went great.
Our first stop was in Tallahassee Florida. I’ve only been to Florida once, down by the space center and Disneyworld, not real attractive landscape. So I was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful Tallahassee was. Rolling wooded hills. It reminded me of Asheville North Carolina. I loved it. We met up with two of our closest and dearest friends, Becca and Keith and their two super cute little boys who are different ages but are the same height and look like twins. I love hanging out with Becca. She could make visiting a shack fun. She had already scouted out the area and had a list of fun things we could do. Here’s a list of our activities.
1.Quick trip to the local Farmers Craft Market near the capitol.
2.Watched a woman weave baskets out of pine needles
4.A 6 hour trip along the coast to get to the St. Joseph Peninsula State Park Beach. Ok, it wasn’t a 6 hour trip, but we joked that it was. We took the scenic route which was very enjoyable but lacked places to stop and buy groceries. Where in the world do Floridians purchase food??
5.After starving because we couldn’t’ find a grocery store we stopped at a small town that had maybe 2 café’s and shared one plate of very expensive quesadillas between the 8 of us. There were only 4 pieces. The waitress said “Only one order?” We told her we were just having a snack. We did find a gas station that had some vanilla moon pies.
6.We made it to the very white soft sandy beach with about everything one would want on the beach. Another thing I love about Becca, she thinks ahead. Notice the black bag that Ken is carrying, that is Becca’s beach bag!
8.We all stayed in a suite together, very roomy and nice. About 1 in the morning we were awakened by a fire alarm. Well, every one woke up except Becca’s 2 boys, they would sleep through anything. We evacuated. The kids were excited to see the fire trucks. No fire. Just steam in the laundry room.
9.On Sunday our wonderful suite started to smell like cigarette smoke. I called and complained. We headed off to church. Apparently the whole Stake here does sacrament last, no problem accept the guy on the phone gave me the wrong times. So we made it to only sacrament. The kids seemed disappointed that there would be no Primary. By the time we got back from church the room smelled like smoke but not cigarette, more like the illegal type of smoke. So we were moved to an equally nice suite across the hall. Eventful I must say.
10.Took the kids to a park and ate our seedless watermelon.
The visit with Becca and Keith was way to short, but worth every minute.
On Monday we headed off to Orlando to meet up with another set of very dear close friends of ours. Greg and Celeste and their two kids, Hannah and Gabe. Our destination: Disneyworld! It turned out to be one of the funnest family vacations we’ve had. The kids did great! We had so much fun we even stayed an extra day. Here are some highlights of our trip.
1.Before the trip: Karie comes up with a wild last minute idea (like 3-4 days before the trip) to have Celeste tie dye shirts and Karie draw an iron on of the family with our fun nickname “Millnik”. Celeste pulls it off. We iron on the pictures in the hotel. The shirts turned out to be a success and we felt like rock stars the day we wore them. People were constantly making comments.
3. We all wore the same color of shirt each day. We were lookin’ pretty cool I must say and it helped keeping track of everyone.
"Aqua Shirt" day
5. Up and out by 8-9am each day and gone until 11pm 12am, sometimes 1am (a few breaks in between). Amazingly the kids held out with great attitudes.
6. 14 month Gabe is the most well mannered baby I’ve ever met. He was just along for the ride and didn’t complain a bit.
7. Standing in line for rides while Greg made the mad dash to get fast passes to other rides
8. Being called the “Red Family” by the tour guide. Or “Hey, there’s that green family”
9. Racing to track down characters for autographs.
10. Standing in line for almost an hour for autographs (duh!)
11. Celeste standing in the middle of a dancing parade to get better shots of the kids and the parade. I about laughed my eyeballs out when I saw her out there.
12. First day the stroller is loaded like a pack horse. By the end of the week we had learned a thing or two about what we needed to bring and the stroller was almost empty.
13. The hour wait mostly in the sun for the 1 minute Dumbo ride that Daria and Dustin just had to ride.
14. Hannah (6 yrs. old) riding the tower of terror (this girl has guts!)
15. Dustin and Daria super excited to ride the Star Wars ride.Their excitement turned to terror at the entrance as they both melt into bawling tantrums that they are scared so we had to opt out of that ride. Lame I must say, as that ride was like sitting at home and looking at your computer.
16. Waiting in a hot sweaty, human packed crowd for the Disney Fantasia. We got great seats.
17. Daria hiding behind me during the loud fireworks.
18. Dustin throwing up in the bus line twice (I think it was heat related from waiting in that hot Fantasia line)
Celeste totally blowing everyone score away on the Buzz light-year ride
19. Sneaking McDonald’s French Fries into Ariel’s show. As if people couldn’t smell them!
Portions of our clothes turning pink when we got rained on (while wearing our fabulous red tie die shirts)
20. Celeste successfully getting me on several roller coasters: Thunder Mountain (loved that one, the kids loved it to), Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and eventually Mount Everest! Even Daria went on that ride.
22. Celeste getting soaked again on the river rapids. “Are ya kidding me?”
23. Dustin’s major melt down at the Lego store in Disney Downtown. Ok, imagine taking a boy who loves Legos and placing him in a mega store loaded with every Lego kit, box, idea you can imagine and huge characters built out of Lego’s. It was like pouring 10,000 grams of caffeine into one little body, and Dustin’s body couldn’t handle it. He was so overwhelmed and over stimulated at the prospects of millions of Lego’s that he could barely keep his feet on the floor and think straight. He turned into a ball of blubbering tears and tantrums when he realized we could not spend the rest of our lives in the Lego store. We had to peel him out of the store literally. Notice in the Lego picture Dustin’s face. This is a “I don’t want to leave this store face” If I had a camcorder with me I would have recorded it! It was sort of hilarious and mostly irritating.
25. Eating lunch with Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Alice, and SnowWhite.
26. Meeting the Power Rangers (this was pretty cool)
27. Ken giving Minnie Mouse his number
28. Ken getting telling Mr. Incredible “No I only want my picture with Elasta girl” Hello! Bob is so much bigger than you!
29. Dustin not wanting to take his picture with Ariel because she was a girl (even though he just had his picture taken with Minnie Mouse), after seeing what Ariel looked like he relented.
30. Strategically placing ourselves simultaneously in line for Captain Hook, Peter Pan and Aladdin (thank goodness for cell phones).
31. Dustin meeting captain Jack Sparrow and pledging to be a apprentice pirate.
"Jack Sparrow" "Dustin pledging to Jack"
I hope you take the time to check out my Disney Galleries. No, I did not post all 1700 pictures, but I did post a lot of pictures. There are no passwords so they should be easy to navigate.
