Back from Never Never Land....

What an amazing trip! We successfully acclimated to the Florida time zone, so when we arrived home last night- we promptly went to bed. This morning my little Lily ray of sunshine woke me up at 3:20 am, starving. Now that I have the little ones fed- I can try and catch up with blogging.

Every afternoon when we were taking our mandatory rest(read as collapsing into the air conditioning and summoning energy for dinner) I thought about downloading photos and blogging and usually got as far as downloading photos...I finally decided that blogging at home would be a good way to recount our amazing travels and give me time to organize(and select from) the thousands of photos we took.

I gave Phillip our old camera and he was really into taking his own pictures. The girls each got a disposable camera, which they filled the first day in line waiting to get into Magic Kingdom. I am very impressed with Phillip's pictures. It's like seeing the trip through his eyes and he captures things I didn't even think of which is really interesting.

The first week we stayed at Give Kids the World and kept busy because in addition to going to the theme parks, there were always fun activities there to participate in. Every afternoon when we arrived back from the parks there would be presents waiting for the kids in our villa. We ended up filling a whole duffel(the big green military kine) by the end of the week. The second week we stayed at the new Bay Lake Tower by the Magic Kingdom. It was fun to be able to just walk to the castle, although getting to the other parks required taking the monorail or a bus. I think the toughest part was just not having enough energy to go go go, but we definitely got to do the things we wanted to. Lily took a couple of days to adjust to the change. There were some tantrums, and it's tough to publicly discipline a child wearing a big make a wish button as onlookers stare in horror. But we definitely got to reconnect and spend some great quality fun time with each of the kids. Each child got to pick things they wanted to do each day. Lily and Phillip always picked rides. Bella liked seeing characters and swimming, which surprised us- we figured she'd be terrified of the characters, but she loved them. Kiera wanted to shop. That was the hardest request to fill. It's not like there are a shortage of shops, but the actual act of shopping for things when there were so many fun things to do- was the tough part. She was mostly afraid of rides but by the end we had dragged her onto so many she had gotten into it. We even got her on the new Everest roller coaster at Animal Kingdom. With a huge duffel full of presents, I didn't feel the need to shop for anything. Phillip saw a light sabre he had to have. After completing Jedi training at Hollywood studios- we began a long search that ended steps from where we stayed. The other elusive item- a Jasmine costume in Lily's size. We finally found the sabre in a light cart in MK, the Jasmine costume will have to come by mail.

We all now have colds, which is unavoidable I think being around that many people. Today I have to get some groceries, get the kids caught up in school and put away the 5 things that Phil didn't already unpack. He was the only one last night who didn't crash immediately and I woke to find the bags unpacked and anything he didn't know where to put categorized into piles. Love that guy!