Disney World - Part I

Hello to everyone. As you can imagine, we've been pretty busy since our return from Disney World. I have said to many of you members of the "12 month working world" that I seriously don't know how people go on vacation and return to work just a few days later. Ugh!!! We're seriously exhausted! Add to that the girls have been sick nonstop since we returned and getting to blogging has been low priority.

Now that I'm done complaining, let me tell you we had an amazing trip. There are so many highlights that I hardly know where to begin. I'll cover my absolute favorite thing about going in December - it isn't HOT! You don't SWEAT! And, you aren't EXHAUSTED before you even start in the morning. My second favorite thing - NO CROWDS! Seriously, I've only ever been to WDW in the summer and, while the trips have been amazing, we're always hot, sweaty, exhausted, and elbow deep in crowds by 9 am every morning. Not this time!!! The weather wasn't as predictable and way more difficult to dress for (as you will, we're in shorts some days, pants other) but it was so much nicer than dripping with sweat. We had a few warm days of shorts, a day of rain, one really cold day, but mostly just cool days with jackets in the morning and evening and short sleeves in the afternoon. Perfect if you ask me.

We arrived on Black Friday and started the trip by visiting Downtown Disney. We knew it would be too late to visit parks that night but we were anxious to do something! The weather was warm and it was fairly crowded so we didn't stay long - just enough time to check it out, pick up a few things we knew we wanted, and head back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep. We stayed at Carribean Beach again this year and, as before, absolutely loved it. We had a room close to the food court, shopping, and a playground, so it was great! And, while we didn't get to enjoy it because it was too cold, they have completely redone their pool area. It was amazing to see the change in just a year!

On Saturday, we headed to Animal Kingdom. While it is always one of our favorite places to visit, it is usually so muggy that we can't stand to stay long. Not this time! It was perfect weather - warm enough for fun without being hot! The girls loved Dinoland. Katelyn noticed that the huge dinosaur was wearing a Santa hat so she had to point this out each time we passed by him that day and the other day we visited AK. Sydney's favorite part was "It's a Bug's Life" - the 3-D bug adventure and Katelyn's favorite part was meeting Pluto and Goofy. It was our first character experience of the trip and she was absolutely thrilled to meet two characters that she knows so well. She really didn't want to leave them. Kevin and I really love the African Safari so that was definitely our favorite part of the day!

We decided to take in the sites at Epcot that night and we were totally amazed at the lights! Everything was so beautiful - we could hardly believe it. There really aren't words to describe it. We ate dinner at The Garden Grill where we Katelyn was again in her glory, as met Chip, Dale, Mickey, and Goofy (again). As you can see by the photos, Katelyn absolutely loved the characters but especially liked Mickey Mouse. When he snuck up on her, she was totally surprised and thrilled to meet him. The pictures below show how happy she truly was to meet them! The pictures also so her decided lack of enthusiasm when meeting Santa and Mrs. Claus in Epcot. In her defense, it was late and she was pretty tired. But, Sydney was thrilled to have them autograph her book - so much so that she couldn't really remember what she wanted for Christmas. Honestly, it was a pretty short list this year!

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Okay, I've only managed to tell you about the first day and this has taken me two weeks to write! Oh well - seriously, I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you about the entire trip. But, here is a link to SOME of the photos from our trip. I have more than 1,000 so I tried to go through them but I still wound up with about 300 pictures in this album. Anyway, we you some time, check out our trip highlights. I'll try to post a few more details when I can!!!

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