Spring Break 2015

Ah I had made such good progress catching up my blog last fall, but it's been a few months again and now I'm in danger of the time lapping my posts by a year!  So, I'll be making another push to catch up!  LAST spring break we went to Baba and Grandpa's house again.  It was a very fun, busy trip.  Our annual pass to Universal was still valid, and Grandpa had started working at Disney World, so we got to help him take advantage of some of his new employee perks!  Also, Joe went a few days before us and our trips overlapped for the first time ever.  We also took in a Spring Training game and had dinner with the Gorondy Family!  

A well timed perk for us was the Disney Employee Spring Fling that we got to attend with Dad.  It was held at Mickey's Retreat, which is an awesome park facility just for employees.  For the event they offered face painting for free for the kids, carnival games which only cost fifty cents per ticket, inflatables, food trucks, and they had an easter egg hunt!

Tyler's turned out so cute and went with his sweatshirt, he actually had employees asking to take photos with him!

check out the bottom right photo closely, made skills by Timmy for making the shot, and by me for getting this picture!

Also special for the event, some favorite characters showed up!

The canoes and paddle boats are always at Mickey's Retreat, and only cost a few bucks to rent.  Neither Timmy or Tyler had ever done anything like this before, and both really enjoyed it!

One last character sighting!

The next day we took in a Nat's Spring Training Game.  Baba and the Gorondy's came to the game too, but I guess we were pictured out from the day before!

I'm finding this a little hard to believe myself, but according to the dates our phones put on our pictures, we made our way over to Universal after the game!  We caught the tail end of a parade, and rode the Woody Woodpecker Rollercoaster over and over again, mostly all by ourselves!  Both boys absolutely loved it, and Timmy even asked to ride in the seat alone!

The next day we were right back at Universal and Tim got Timmy to ride Do-Right Falls, and Timmy loved it!  Thanks to rider swap he got to do it a few times.  Tyler was waiting so patiently in the rider swap room, that a universal employee noticed and asked how tall he was.  When I told them, they said, "That's tall enough for Spider Man.  When you go there, tell them that Ashley at the Falls says Tyler doesn't have to wait in line because he was so patient here."!  Unfortunately Spider Man was closed during this trip, but we told them the next day and we didn't have to wait in line, all thanks to Tyler!

The next day we were back at Universal again.  Tyler was tall enough for both Spider Man and Transformers this trip, which he had been dying to ride for a full year.  I rode both of them with Tyler, with my arm wrapped behind him and back across his chest.  I thought his little heart was going to beat right out of his chest, but after the rides he said he liked them.  I think he especially liked Transformers, as he talked about helping Optimus Prime, and about Bumble Bee saving us, for a while after the ride was over.

Tyler was also tall enough for the Simpsons ride, and I was shocked that we talked Timmy back onto it too since he was pretty traumatized the first time he rode it.  Timmy still dislikes it, I think Tyler liked the ride okay, but they are both afraid of their Krusty the Clown stuffed animals that they had won on a previous trip now!  This trip was also our first for riding the Minions in the moving cars instead of on the stationary bench.  It's so fun!

The next day we took it a little bit easier, with pool time and coloring Easter Eggs.  That evening we met up with The Gorondy's for dinner.  I didn't get good pictures, but you can see they are fond of Parker!

Before heading to dinner, the boys posed with Grandpa as he was getting ready to head to work!  At the time, he was a deckhand on the Ferry at Magic Kingdom!

The next day Dad took us all to Epcot on free employee passes!  Dad had met another Deck Hand who is retired from Chevrolet, who offered to meet us at Test Track, let us check out the Chevrolet Lounge, and get us fast passes for the ride!  It was neat to get this behind the scenes peek!  We also completed the Easter Egg hunt around the Country portion of Epcot, and met Princess Aurora for the first time.  It was a full day!

Test Track Chevrolet Lounge and Meeting Spaces, great view!

On our last full day, Mom and Dad treated us to an awesome meal at the Animal Kingdom Lodge.  While we waited for our table, we got to go out on the "plains" and watch Zebras, Giraffes, and other African animals roaming around!  We could see a lot of them through the window once we were at our table too, especially the bird, who hung out by the window almost the whole time!  The food was SO good too!

After lunch we went over to the Wilderness Lodge to complete a scavenger hunt for Hidden Mickey's!  The boys got pretty good at following the clues and we found them all!

When we woke up on Easter morning we checked out our baskets to see what the Easter Bunny had brought.  Then it was time to head home!

Spring Break 2014

Another week long vacation, another ridiculously long post.  You have been warned!

We ventured to Florida and my parents for Spring Break again this year.  They are definitely bribing us to continue making the drive for every vacation by paying for park tickets.  And it's working.  The boys are so good in the car though, it's not too horrible.  This year we opted for Universal Studios tickets because their prices are more reasonable, and it was something new.

We went to Universal on our first full day in Florida.  Unfortunately I've let it take so long to write this post that I'm a little fuzzy about what happened on which day, but will do my best to straighten out between the 2 cameras and multiple cell phones that were taking pictures!  We had a much more relaxed pace then we ever have at Disney, we only spent partial days at the parks each time we went.  On day one we definitely decided that Universal doesn't come close to Disney World, it doesn't have the magic and it just doesn't follow through on the details like Disney.  Also, the fast pass system does not work. at. all.  Once we got past all that, we definitely had a great time.  They have some fantastic rides and tons of stuff the kids could do.  Poor Timmy was afraid to ride anything and poor Tyler was dying to ride everything but was too short to!  We did the Islands of Adventure side on our first day.  We rode Shrek and then made a turn towards the kids area and ran right into Bumble Bee!

They have a childsize roller coaster that Tyler was tall enough for, thankfully.  Timmy and Tyler were both a little nervous to go on it for the first time, but they were super excited after!  We rode it a few times in a row! (Per their request, despite what their faces say on the ride!)

So upset I didn't catch his whole face, but you can see the smile!  He jumped up and down saying how awesome it was!

We ate at Mo's Tavern in Springfield and it was pretty neat!  After we ate Tim bought a monster size donut and put it on the table in front of Timmy and Tyler.  Tyler's eyes turned into saucers and I'm pretty sure they both started drooling.  Then Timmy asked, "Wait, do I have to share this with Tyler?"  It was big enough for all six of us to share!

The parks are definitely Dad's happy place!

I know that we did more then this on the first day, but we must have stopped taking pictures!  While we were in Springfield we took Timmy on the Simpsons ride.  He hated it.  He did keep his eyes open through it, and at one point when the video made it look like we'd gone upside down he asked, "Wait a minute.  Did we just...?"  I assured him that we had not.  He was shaking afterwards.  I'm sure he will not ride that again for a long time!

The next day we headed back to Universal and finished walking around the same park.

The highlight of the day was the parade, it was Mardi Gras themed.  The kids collected so many beads!  When we got home we gave them away to all of their classmates and put them in Tyler's goody bags for his birthday, and we still have dozens!

The next day we took it easy, played in the pool, and kept an eye on Chompy.

This is Tyler "jumping in"!

On our next trip to Universal we wandered through the Super hero section just in time to see all of the Super heroes!  Tyler was asleep in the stroller at first, but we woke him up in time to meet Captain America.

We also met a few other characters and spent some time in Seussland.  Tim eventually convinced Timmy to ride the White Water Rapids ride which is Popeye themed.  Timmy was so nervous before hand because we were honest that there is a little drop on the ride.  They ended up going a few times in a row though, and I think it's still one of Timmy's favorite rides.  The boys did not ride Do-Right Falls, but they did think it was cool to sit in the log!

Back to Universal again and we took Tyler in to become a Minion!  He's not tall enough to sit in the moving seats, and Timmy wasn't feeling well so he really wasn't in the mood to try any new rides.  This actually helped us out with the line though, We took Tyler in to the stationary seating without having to wait at all!  The ride is really fun!

The kids loved exploring everything in Seussland!  We rode everything at least once!

This.  This is what I saw constantly, every time we stopped, every time I put him down.  Accompanied by his hand reaching up as high as he could reach and a, "Mom.  Pick me up."  If ignored it would be repeated, whined, or demanded until I gave in!  My poor back!  That sweet face!

We were lucky enough to have some old tickets to Disney World so we went to the Magic Kingdom for one day.  It was hot and the most crowded we have ever seen one of the parks.  That said, with Tim's great planning we were able to do absolutely everything.  He said he was going to write a book after this day and he should have!  We went straight to Storytime with Belle which we had never done before.  Tim, Timmy, and Tyler were all selected to be characters (a Guard, Maurice, and Chip!)  It was really fun.

From there we got onto the Little Mermaid, Goofy's Barnstormers, and Tomorrowland Speedway.  We only waited 20 minutes at the longest for any of these rides.  By the time we got out of each the lines were much longer!

Tyler's First time driving!

Timmy and Tyler were both putting in requests for which rides to do next but were accepting our reasoning that we had fast passes for later, or the lines would stay short, or we'll go there in a little bit, until Tyler spotted Buzz Lightyear.  He was NOT going anywhere else until he got to see Buzz!

After collecting my childswap ticket at Space Mountain we came out to find Stitch, the boys other favorite.  Tyler even showed Stitch his own stitches!

Next up was the People Mover and Buzz Lightyear ride followed by Mickey's Philharmonic Theater and the Carousel.

Then we took a ride break and went to watch the new parade.  We are not usually parade people but it was definitely worth seeing!

We took a food break and by this time the park was just packed.  We did the Haunted Mansion with a fastpass and then started going to attractions we usually skip, just to get out of the heat and the crowds!  We went to the Hall of Presidents, Country Bear Jamboree, and the Tiki Room!  The boys enjoyed all of them, but I think it would have to be similar situations for us to do them again any time soon!

As the sun started to go down the crowds did too.  We made a mad dash around the park hitting some more favorites, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, we rode Aladin's Magic Carpets during the fireworks, and then cut back across to Peter Pan, Small World, Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, and a few more turns through Buzz Lightyear!  The boys were both passed out before we were through Main Street!

My cell phone tells me there were 9 minutes between these two pictures!

The boys, Tyler especially, needed a break the next day.  We had plans to meet up with the Gorondy family that evening anyways, so we spent the day resting and swimming at my parents and coloring Easter Eggs.

My parents kept the boys for us while we went and met Shana at Junk 2 Funk and then went on to Stanford to see their house, play with Parker, and go to dinner.  They took us to an awesome German restaurant and we enjoyed eating outside in the beautiful weather.  After dinner we went across the street to an eclectic bar for a while.  We wrapped up the evening back at their house, visiting until after Parker was asleep!  It was really great to spend so much time with them!

On our last full day we had more down time and Baba and M+M made an Easter Egg hunt for the boys.

For dinner that evening we went to Mickey's Bar-B-Q and M+M joined us!  Timmy was just as amazed by the Lasso Artist as the first time.  Goofy was Timmy's favorite of the night  (it might have had something to do with his hat selection for the trip.)  Dale made a special visit to our table to see M+M!  He was very excited when we told him that one of her son's is named Dale.

It was a great trip!  We drove home all day on Saturday.  Easter morning Timmy and I were the only ones that were able to get up and go to church.  Timmy enjoyed going through his Easter basket before we left, and of course we had candy for breakfast!  When we got home Tyler and Tim were in better shape, and Tyler enjoyed his Easter Basket goodies too.