We're back home now and had a fabulous vacation! We spent our last morning in Orlando having breakfast at Chef Mickey's at the Contemporary Hotel.

The boys did awesome on the plane ride home!

It felt really good to get back to our house and sleep in our own beds.

We are truly blessed to have had the ability and priviledge to go on this awesome vacation. I didn't think about work at all and if you know me that is a major feat! It's been 8 years since I've been able to take a vacation and not worry about work, think about work, work on work all while on vacation. I really am blessed with where my company is now and the awesome employees we have working for us.

Now....It's back to reality! (Which isn't so bad!)

Today we had breakfast with Mary Poppins at 1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian hotel. Tigger and Pooh were there too along with the Mad Hatter and Alice. The boys loved seeing the characters again and food rocked.

After breakfast we hopped the monorail over to Epcot and spent several hours doing some rides and playing. Caleb loved seeing the big ball again. This time we rode the ride inside the ball. It was very cool. However, if my brother Tom is reading this, you'll be sad to know that the boy yelling "Extra, Extra, Read all about it!" is gone! (sorry, inside joke). Also, Sue - Figment said to tell you hello. Lisa, Snow White says hello to you as well.

Back to the hotel to give Caleb a late nap and Holli, Camden and I munch on some Pizza Hut from the hotel.

After Caleb's nap we headed over to Downtown Disney to play a little bit. There's a cool lego store there with a big area where the kids and play with legos and build stuff.

Here are some of day's highlights:

Camden wanted to show off his room here at the Nick Hotel:




Camden saved us from getting eaten by a dinosaur:



Caleb had fun playing with the legos and he didn't even try to eat them:



And finally, the Top 10 Things To Let You Know You're Done At Disney:
(in no particular order)

10. You find yourself getting very upset when the slow Italian family in front of you on the ramp to monorail causes you to miss the train.

9. You find yourself getting very upset when the same Italian family magically shows up in front of you in line (an hour later) to meet the characters.

8. The toddler Italian throws a fit through most of the line and you find yourself getting frustrated. However, it is good to know that all 2 years no matter of geographic location act the same :)

7. As you watch people cruise around Epcot on those Segway scooters you secretly hope the wheels lock up and they go flying off.

6. You see the 1000th red-neck wearing a nascar t-shirt spit on the ground and you want to chuck your coke on them.

5. You're riding the Indy Cars at the Magic Kingdom dreaming the whole time that you can escape off the track and wreak havoc all around the park in that tiny car.

4. You're riding Small World and want to punch all of those happy singing animated kids.

3. You start trying on purpose to get in front of every tourist's camera when they are trying to take a picture.

2. You start thinking about Free Willy and decide to run around Animal Kingdom secretly unlocking all of the animal cages.

1. You've spent your last cent at the 100th gift shop selling all of that Disney C-R-A-P.

Yep, call me Grumpy. I'm Disney'd out. The boys however are NOT and Holli wants to stay on vacation and avoid the reality of all that laundry hanging in the room behind me right now. So I'm off to do the nightly pina colada trek and enjoy one more night before we leave.........

 

You have to say the "1 Billion People" in the Dr. Evil voice and put your pinky up to your mouth.

Definitely noticing an increase in the number of people here on Saturday. The Magic Kingdom was a lot busier and the Nick hotel is packed! The pool is full of kids and the arcade is hopping. We talked to some other guests and then said last Friday and Saturday were at 97% occupency and then it dropped to 30% on Sunday. We're hoping that holds true this weekend :) We leave on Monday.

Before we left for the Magic Kingdom the boys did a craft at the hotel and made a post card. Caleb got marker on his face and all over his hands! Nothing a little wet wipe can't fix.






Even though the park was busier today we had a lot of fun. We parked our car at the Grand Floridian and then took the monorail over to the park. More rides and more playing and hanging out. The boys are happy just to run around and play.

The Family of the Day

We went into a restaurant to grab some lunch and were picked to be the family of the day. Basically got us a special seat to watch a little animated show and some free dessert. Camden thought it was pretty cool!

Here's a picture next to the sign that was on the special reserved table:


Here's a video from after the lunch:






Camden turned into a Super Hero:





Caleb discovered that ducks like grapes! Or "balls" as he refers to them:








Caleb and Daddy play peek-a-boo:




Toga time after Caleb's bath:



The is flying by fast and we can't believe it's already Saturday. We have been having so much fun and are so blessed to be able to be doing all of this cool stuff as a family. See ya soon!

Camden wanted to ride more rides, so back to the Magic Kingdom we go.

Caleb Gets Wet:

First off, when did they change the name of the park from MGM to Hollywood Studios??? What's up with that?

We started the day off at around 6:45am when Caleb woke up. Holli and I kept him contained for about 15 minutes and then Camden woke up. We headed out for a breakfast at the hotel and then made our way to the Hollywood Studios.

This is a pretty cool park. Definitely more stuff for older kids here, but we found enough to keep us busy. Two big highlights of the day:

1. Lunch at Hollywood & Vine. We had lunch with Jo Jo and Goliath and Leo and June from Little Einsteins. Our reservation was at 11:10am which I was a little concerned about because I didn't know how hungry we would be. Afterall, we had a buffet breakfast at the hotel and you know how much I over-eat at the buffets. The 11:10 reservation was awesome. We were hungry and the timing was great. The restaurant wasn't busy at all, so we got lots of time with the characters. Plus, the bonus was that we got to eat breakfast again for course #1 and then at 11:40am they brought out the lunch stuff on the buffet, so course #2 was lunch! Definitely over-ate at this one. All of these character dinings are buffets, so you just plain eat way too much.

2. Hollywood Stunt Show: Totally AWESOME! We really liked this show. It lasted about 30 minutes and was a series of cool stunts with cars and motorcyles and fire. Caleb and Camden loved it. It's amazing what these stunt guys can do. There's a scene at the end where they blow up a bunch of stuff and the heat of the fire comes out into the crowd and it was so loud and hot that Caleb started to shake on my lap, but then he got this huge smile and started yelling, hot, hot, hot, car, car.

We finished up the day with dinner back at the hotel and Camden and I hit the arcade one more time while Caleb got ready for bed. Camden is still eyeing up those stuffed animals in that claw game. I did let him try again tonight and he actually almost got a stuffed shark. That was a major highlight for Camden. When we got back to the hotel room he must have told Holli about 20 times about almost getting it. I think we need to pray that Camden doesn't get a gambling habit. He kept telling me "Just one more time Dad, I know I can get it, just one more time." Oh Boy....On another game (one of those crazy press the button at the right time to win tickets games), he just pressed the button without looking and scored 250 tickets!! Now that is some luck. Maybe I should send him to Vegas.

Here are some highlights of the day:








Caleb having fun at the stunt show:

Caleb crashed out after the stunt show. Gotta love the Mr. Mischief shirt, sums him up perfectly:


Our daily Mickey ice cream bar snack:

After the breakfast with the Nick characters, we played a little bit, then Caleb was ready for an early nap (he's pooped out). Camden and I hit the arcade again (shocking) and then hit the pool (again, shocking). Caleb and Holli joined us at the pool after the nap.

We decided to spend the afternoon at Animal Kingdom. If I could give a big raspberry sound with my tongue on this blog, I would. I give it a thumbs down. We grabbed a quick bite to eat once we got there then rode this dinosaur flying ride sort of like Dumbo at the Magic Kingdom. Then we went over to the Bone Yard where the boys got to run around and climb on stuff and go down lots of slides. It's sort of like a dinosaur excavation site.

We saw the afternoon parade and did some strolling around. The grounds are beautiful, but we just weren't thrilled with the action there.

The highlight of the afternoon was when Camden turned into a dragon. You've got to watch the video.

We started the day off with breakfast at the hotel with Sponge Bob, Dora, Diego and Little Bill.

Camden's favorite was Sponge Bob. Caleb's favorite was Dora.

Camden says the songs and dancing were great!

Camden says this hotel is great!

Camden says hi to all our friends and family following along on our blog.

Ian, I'll be back soon. Tell the other owls I said hi. Your best friend, Camden. I love Ian.

More later....

Here's a few more pics. You can't go to Disney without getting a Mickey ice cream bar. And...Camden and Caleb got eaten by a shark!

 

After the arcade Camden and I hit the pool! Much fun! This picture is the smaller of the two pools. The view is from our room.