Saugatuck Getaway

This past weekend Chad and I took a belated 10th anniversary trip to Saugatuck, MI. It was wonderful! Truthfully, just sitting in a car together for almost five hours and being able to talk in complete sentences and listen to whatever we wanted on the radio without having to console a crying baby or put on Disney Princess songs was a blessing. We stayed two nights--two gloriously, uninterrupted nights--at a cute B&B right in the center of town so we were able to walk to just about everything. The food there was incredibly good (stuffed blueberry French toast, anyone?) and we spent our time walking around, coffee in hand, going to all the cute shops and visiting a few beaches.

It was lovely. And I took lots of pictures.

And despite the peacefulness and lack of responsibility, we missed these two like crazy and couldn't wait to get home to them. Lack of silence and all :)

~Stacy

Disney World: Part 2

The second half of our week at Disney World started off with a day at the hotel--no parks at all on Wednesday. We were all getting way over Disney'd and overtired and one of us was having some pretty serious meltdowns (spoiler alert: it was Charlotte). We took the whole day off and hung out at our hotel watching cartoons, reading, and hanging out by the pool. And napping. Charlotte fell asleep on the walk from the food court to our hotel room and we actually managed to successfully transfer her to the bed without her waking--a true miracle.

On Thursday we visited Animal Kingdom. I wasn't sure what to expect with Animal Kingdom and honestly did not think I'd care for it all that much, but it ended up being one of my favorite parks. It's really just a big, beautiful zoo with great places to eat and tons of shade--much needed that day since it was super hot and sunny. There isn't much by way of rides there, especially for someone under 40" tall or for pregnant women (those restrictions shut us out of some things) but I'm still glad we went and we had a good time.

One of the funniest/most ridiculous things said during the trip happened at Animal Kingdom when we went to a petting zoo. They had goats there and right outside of the pen was a big bucket full of brushes you could use to pet them. Chad, trying to call Charlotte over, said "Hey! Charlotte! Want to brush a goat?" It's not a question that gets asked...ever.

Brushing a goat while holding her nose to escape the "stinky smell."

Inside the building she got to meet Thumper, who was a big hit:

On Friday, our last full day at Disney, we went to Hollywood Studios. We had planned on staying there much of the day but we ended up only staying for a few hours. It was definitely our least favorite park...there wasn't much going on that appealed to us and it was the hottest and sunniest day there--with no shade anywhere. At that point everyone was completely exhausted, hot, and very tired of walking around. You could definitely say that by this point we were all ready to go home!

The highlight of Hollywood Studios was meeting Baymax and Hiro from Big Hero 6.

We left Hollywood Studios early and headed back to the hotel for a nap. That evening we had reservations at The Crystal Palace at Magic Kingdom that we did not want to miss since A) they were hard to get and B) that's the only place in all of Disney with the Winnie the Pooh characters. And Charlotte definitely wanted Winnie to meet Winnie.

She was so excited when we got there that she stood peeking in the window with rapt attention until our table was ready.

I don't have many good shots of her with Tigger, but it's alright because she was chosen to do something very special--she got to lead a parade through the restaurant with him! That was a big deal :)

After dinner we walked around Magic Kingdom one last time. Charlotte rode her favorite ride again--the carousel.

On the way out, Charlotte got an unexpected surprise when we spotted Princess Aurora in a secluded gazebo area. There was no line, so we thought maybe she was heading over to Fairytale Hall (where the line is always at least 45 minutes). The photographer saw Charlotte and called her over so she got to have a visit with Aurora right before we left.

Saturday morning we woke up early and were on our way--the last shuttle, bus, monorail, train, and airplane ride of the week and we were ready!

It was so nice to get home after a fun but truly exhausting vacation. On top of that, Charlotte's nasty cold that she had during our trip turned into an ear infection, so by Saturday night she was pretty miserable. It's taken until today for all of us to feel somewhat well rested and back to something resembling a normal routine.

Even though I've only visited once, I feel like I could write a book of advice about traveling to Disney World...Chad suggested I write something called "Disney for Introverts" or "Disney for People Without Patience" or "How to Visit Disney with a Child Under Age 7 and Not Kill Anyone."

I don't know about a book, but there's definitely one last Disney post in mind about all of those topics so stay tuned :)

~Stacy

Disney World: Part 1

We're back!!

It's hard to believe that a trip we'd been planning for close to a year has come and gone, but we are back at home after returning yesterday after a whole week at Disney World. As expected, I took a ton of pictures plus we have a bunch more taken by Disney photographers--hence the reason for splitting the posts about this trip into two parts. And they'll still be long :)

We left last Saturday morning with a very excited little girl who was also feeling nervous about flying for the first time. I was too--I wasn't sure how she would do on the flight and just crossed my fingers that she liked it, didn't get motion sickness, and didn't have ear issues. Thankfully she was just fine; she held our hands from the minute we got on until the plane lifted off the runway and then she let go and announced how much fun it was, and that was the end of the airplane fear. Also, the giant bag of gummy bears we let her snack from helped.

We had a nonstop flight and arrived thirty minutes early (score!). We hopped on board the Magical Express bus and went to our hotel--the Caribbean Beach Resort. It's on Disney property so we were able to get buses to and from the parks and airport as part of our stay.

We didn't go to any parks the day we got there since we figured that would be pushing the limits of everyone's energy and patience levels after traveling all day. We had our first special dining experience that night, though, at Chef Mickey's. Apparently this place is a must-do because we had to get reservations months in advance. I'm glad we did because it was a great introduction to Disney World and Charlotte was SO excited to get to meet some of the characters. It set the tone for the next day and made her look forward to our first day at Magic Kingdom even more.

Our first day at the parks was Sunday, at Magic Kingdom. We took a bus there and I'm glad we chose that park as our first one--it was far and away the best of the four and the most exciting for Charlotte to see. They don't call it "Magic" Kingdom for nothing.

Her reaction to seeing the castle the first time:

On the way to the castle a Disney photographer took some photos of her (and added a cute little Tinkerbell effect):

We had breakfast reservations inside the castle at Cinderella's Royal Table. This place is harder to get into than the White House--you have to make reservations six months in advance or forget about getting a table. Thankfully our travel agent handled this for us because Charlotte got to meet Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White, Princess Aurora and Princess Jasmine all during breakfast--pretty much the princess jackpot.

We spent the better part of the day here--until late afternoon. There are people who probably think it's crazy that we consider "spending the day" to mean 10am to 5pm, but after a full day of travel followed up by a day of walking around in the Florida sun with one person under the age of four and another person 7.5 months pregnant, that is definitely a day. Our last stop this day was to visit Tinkerbell:

The rest of the day was spent back at the hotel at the pool, Charlotte's most favorite spot in all of Disney World.

On Monday, we went to Epcot. Epcot...was not my favorite place, mainly because it's just not designed for kids under about age 8 or 9. If Chad and I were there alone my opinion would probably be different, but there just wasn't much there that appealed to Charlotte. Also, by this time she was headed for full blown Disney meltdown and we were dealing with some major over tiredness and the beginnings of a nasty cold. Yay. We spent maybe 4-5 hours at Epcot before heading back to the hotel for some more pool time.

The next day, Tuesday, my parents left for home so we said goodbye early that morning. We decided not to go into a park as planned an instead do Downtown Disney and keep things as relaxed as we could since we had FastPasses for Charlotte to meet Elsa & Anna that night (past bedtime).

Downtown Disney was a neat place--it's mostly just shopping and restaurants but there's plenty to see and it's just a nice area to walk around in. We visited the Lego store and had lunch before Charlotte crashed and Chad walked her sleeping self around for almost two hours (hallelujah, finally a nap!).

When she woke up she talked her Daddy into going into a store and then this happened:

We headed back to Magic Kingdom that night--our passes to see Anna & Elsa stared at 8:20, so by the time we got to the park at 8pm it was already past her bedtime. But that evening ended up being one of the nicest ones of the whole trip. Seeing Magic Kingdom at night is so cool and Charlotte loved meeting the Frozen princesses and riding the carousel at night. We got to see some of the parade while we were there, too, plus walking around was much more pleasant in the cooler evening than during the hot and sunny afternoon.

So there's the first half--back tomorrow with the second half!

~Stacy