Florida, Family Fun, & Disney Day One

With nearly three months of freedom looming (Oliver wasn't set to start the new job until July 12th), we decided to celebrate the end of grad school in a big way by planning a trip to Florida to visit Matt, Honor, Andrew, Braden, Chase, and Delainey and to spend some time with The Mouse. Clara immediately became enamored of "Cousin Wainey" and Anna quickly found Braden to be sympathetic to the plight of the second child. We spent the weekend with them hanging out, swimming, playing games, and having an all-around great time. Chase and Honor introduced us to the wonders of Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone/iPod Touch; if you haven't played it, I recommend it. Highly addictive. Oh, and Clara wore Delainey's Snow White dress every possible waking moment. I think she would have slept in it if we would have allowed it.

On Monday, Honor drove us up to Orlando to begin our six days at Walt Disney World. We checked into our room at the Port Orleans: Riverside resort, where Clara was thrilled to find this on the bed:


We headed out to spend a few hours at the Magic Kingdom; Clara had been talking about seeing Cinderella's castle for months, so there was no question that this had to be the first stop. When she saw it at the end of Main Street she immediately wanted to walk through it and meet Cinderella. Unfortunately, she didn't see Cinderella that day, but did get to meet her in a big way later in the week (more on that to come).

Our first stop was Tomorrowland, where Clara spotted the Astro Orbiter and declared this to be our first stop. Here are the girlies waiting in line for our turn:



And the view of Cinderella's Castle from the upper platform of the Astro Orbiter:


Thanks to the ride swap cards for parents with little ones too small for certain rides, Clara was able to drive around the Tomorrowland Speedway twice in a row:


We also rode Buzz Lightyear once or twice that afternoon, where even Anna got in on the action by spinning our car around and around...and around.

On our previous trips to Disney, Oliver and I would always head over to Epcot for dinner at one of the restaurants in the World Showcase, so we decided to keep that tradition alive. We had a great dinner at the Biergarten in Germany, and after a long first day, tired little trooper number one succumbed to the inevitable:




Yes, that is a 35 pound three-and-a-half-year-old strapped to my back; yay for the Beco baby carrier.

More adventures in Disney to come in the next post...I really will get caught up one of these days.