Vacation Recap

I bet you all thought I'd never be back, but here I am with a little vacation recap from an amazing week spent in Orlando. Remember (or maybe you don't) way back before Lily's party I said we had our trip coming up and then had to deal with planning her party in just a week? Yeah, well that vacation never happened. Womp womp. There was a snow storm two days before we were scheduled to leave, and our flight was then cancelled and rescheduled twice. The second time the flight was cancelled, which was already technically on the second day of our vacation, the whole thing got scrapped. So Lily's party ended up happening first.

We managed to reschedule the vacation three weeks after the original one and everything worked out for the best. Right before we were supposed to leave, it snowed AGAIN, (but we got out!) We've been back now for half a week, and in that time it has snowed twice more.

From the bottom of my Disney princess loving heart, Elsa, shut up! The cold bothers everyone else a lot!

Anyway, back to Orlando. It was so much fun experiencing this trip through the eyes of Moshe and Lily. Half the time Moshe's mouth was literally hanging open in awe. And as much as I love me some Disney princess, I hold nothing on Lily's obsession.

Our week was non stop parks, with the weather really cooperating for us at the beginning, and then not so much at the end. Instead of just writing our itinerary, I'll share a few a lot of pictures.

In addition to three Disney parks (Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios), we also went to Legoland, and Universal Studios.

There is really nothing like the Magic Kingdom. Lily didn't want to wear the personalized Minnie ears I blogged about a few months ago, so I ended up wearing them instead. We wore our best Minnie inspired fashion for the day, but actually met Mrs. Mouse wearing the same dress two days later in Hollywood Studios when Lily was not dressed for the part. Oh well.

Since we went off season, the lines were not terrible at all. Especially the day we spent at Universal which was insanely cold and rainy. We managed to get on the Harry Potter ride in less than ten minutes. Because we went with family, there were other adults to watch our kids for the few times we got to sneak away on an adult ride by ourselves, and that was lovely. No one else is pictured because I was given a strict no pictures of them on social media rule. (Hi Mom!)

Hollywood Studios (which used to be called MGM) didn't have a lot of rides we could take the kids on, but we took them to some fabulous shows, and one of the highlights of the trip was seeing them dance and sing along with the characters that they know.

We came home exhausted and not really ready to face reality again (especially because reality has so much snow in it!!) but after all that happened with our first trip getting cancelled I'm just so thankful we got to go, and had an amazing time.

I've read other blogger's travel tips like "How to go to Europe with Two Kids and only Two Backpacks" and "How to Train Your Kids for Disney" (where she paid them for the miles they walked before the trip to get them ready for the amount of walking you do in the parks) but I don't operate like that at all. When it comes to packing, I pack too much, and when it comes to treating Disney like a boot camp... just not my style. While I'm not really qualified to write a vacation guide I do have two small tips. The first is bring a zip lock bag on the plane with you. The kids kept handing me garbage that I kept in the small zip lock bag until the end of the flight when the flight attendant came around with the garbage bag, and I got to throw the whole bag in. That one small bag certainly made my flight less messy and more enjoyable. The second tip is to download a movie onto your phone, or iPad. On the flight to Florida I packed books, stickers, crayons, coloring books, and small toys so they would be occupied but Lily was not interested in being seated and buckled in for the half hour of take off and again by landing. And so she shrieked. Oh yeah, I was that mom. The one everyone hates. On the way back home, the movie managed to keep her occupied during the times of the flight when she really had to be seated and buckled. My ears, and I'm sure everyone else on the plane was thankful.

So that concludes my post with a record number of pictures. Anyone have real travel or Disney tips? Let me know how you keep your kids occupied on planes below.