Florida Fun

Florida trip part two- Orlando. We went Sunday night to Marc's sister's AMAZING house- I wish I had taken pictures- it's just beautiful and so comfortable. The backyard is like a resort with a salt-water pool with fountains inside a huge screened room with slate tile floors and several seating areas and a bar with a T.V. We hung out Sunday night and even had homemade pina coladas in the hot tub. Monday we had a professional photographer come by the house and take tons of pictures of the whole family. It was actually fun and we all tried to coordinate in black and white. That afternoon we swam in the pool and cooked out hotdogs. That night we all went (with five children under six) to a Japanese steak-house and watched them cook our dinner with pizzaz. I would have never thought to take young kids to something so nice, but they did really well and loved the flaming onion volcano. :)

The last day we were there we decided to tackle Disney. Amber had a friend that could get us all in for free and we had a park-hopper and went to THREE parks in 12 hours. It was quite a fun-filled day and the kids did amazing. We started at Animal Kingdom where we did the Rainforest Cafe for breakfast and the safari trip and other tours. Then we headed to Hollywood Studios, which I love, and Juliabug loved because we went to Playhouse Disney live and she saw in real life The Little Einsteins, Tigger and Pooh, Mickey Mouse and his crew and Handy Manny and the tools. She was in hog heaven. Sadly, Marky's cousin Noah is past all the playhouse Disney characters and he and Marky decided that it was "too little" for them. So here he is pouting by rocket and begging to go to Star Wars. Don't grow up so fast!

And we did go to Star Wars and rode the ride and went to Jedi-training. That was really cool and the kids got to fight Darth Vader. Marky and Noah didn't want to get on stage so they just watched and cheered. Both Julia and Marky got new light "savers". I tried to talk Julia into something else, but she insisted. : )

Tucker somehow managed to be chunky and charming while taking only one 45-minute nap early in the morning. He was just awake and smiling the WHOLE day- we kept waiting for him to doze off, but he wanted to see what was up.

We ended the day at the Magic Kingdom which was all done-up for a "not-s0-scary" Halloween with lots of pumpkins and costumes. Julia was enchanted by Cinderella's castle, and even today talked about seeing the "pretty castle". Here she is with her favorite prince. This picture touches my heart. We call Julia the "invisible" child because a lot of times people don't seem to notice her or talk to her, when they do take time to talk to the boys. Even in Florida, she just seem to get lost in the shuffle and not get any attention from others. She is definitely not invisible to us and we adore our princess and her sweet spirit blesses us all.

P.S. One highlight for Tucker on this trip was getting to turn around in his car seat. After hours of fussing backwards we turned him around to get some peace. He LOVED it and could finally see the DVD player. Marky was sad because he couldn't see his little brother any more. They truly are best buddies.