As most everyone knows, we recently took a trip to Disney World with Gary's entire family to celebrate Mimi's 50th birthday! As the title indicates, the trip was a little bit stressful for mom, but we had an awesome time, and it was so good to see everyone and for the girls to meet their cousins, Reganne, Riley, and Connor, their aunts, Tonia and Jen, and uncles, Jason and Jared! We also spent a lot of time with Mimi, Grandpa, Aunt Sabrina, Uncle Clayton, Haley, Aunt Melissa, and Uncle Whit! Unfortunately, only Aunt Sheryl and Uncle Ryan were unable to attend!
We started the trip off with our first commercial airplane trip, and boy was that an adventure! After being "disassembled" and searched by security, we lugged all of our gear and made it safely onto the plane. The girls both SLEPT, which probably doesn't seem like much of a surprise, but, considering that we've never held them to go to sleep, I was pretty nervous! After we arrived, we went to our hotel and let the girls and dad have a quick nap before heading out to meet the family at Downtown Disney for dinner. The girls did great, but were getting obviously sleepy, and finally passed out in their strollers while we did a little bit of shopping and ate ice cream!
The next day started out kind of dreary, so, after a restless night in the pack-n-plays, we all slept in a little. Once we got up, we headed to Sea World to meet up with the family! We went to the Shamu show and then spent the rest of the afternoon exploring what Sea World has to offer. The girls had their first carousel ride, and Mom and Dad had an awesome time riding the 2 roller coasters at the park while Mimi and an assortment of others (:-))helped watch the girls!After leaving Sea World, we headed straight over to City Walk to attempt to catch the reservation for all 18 of us at Margaritaville...not surprisingly, we were late, so we had to find food elsewhere, and ended up at Bubba Gump's for Mimi's birthday dinner. The girls were EXHAUSTED and fussy, so mom spent a good portion of the meal in the gift shop "bouncing" them to sleep...only to have Makayla wake up the minute I put her in the stroller...thankfully, Uncle Clayton had finished eating so he took her for a quick stroll and was more successful than I, since she stayed asleep long enough for mom to finish her meal and have her much needed margarita that she ordered at the beginning of the meal! :)
The next day, we woke up much earlier and made it out to join Haley, Sabrina, Clayton, Melissa, and Mimi for breakfast with Chef Mickey and friends. The girls watched in amazement (or confusion!?) while the various characters came by for visits, and Haley had an awesome time getting everyone's autographs and pictures! Besides watching Haley enjoy it so much, the best part was watching Makayla as she tried her best to get a good chew on Pluto's paw and Donald's beak!
After breakfast, we rode the tram in for some fun at the Magic Kingdom! We took the girls on their first ride, "It's a Small World", and they decided that it was 11am and needed to eat ON SCHEDULE...and the ride wasn't going to distract them like we thought it might! :) Luckily, Aunt Sabrina helped make bottles and we started their meal right there in the boat!
After that, we spent much of the day walking around and trying to keep the girls occupied. The poor babies were exhausted, and did a great job of catnapping in the stroller, but just couldn't catch up from their 3 day adventure! Grandpa and Mimi watched the girls while mom and dad rode a couple of rides, we all met up for lunch, and then finally got everyone in the same spot for a group picture before it was time for us to head out to catch our flight home.
The trip home was similar to the trip out, except that we started out with a good scream from Makayla...the poor girl was EXHAUSTED!! She finally passed out and I don't think she woke up completely until Monday! Macy slept through the flight as well, and both girls went right to sleep happily in their cribs as soon as we put them down!
Over all, it really was a fun trip, and it was so good to see everyone! We hadn't seen Reganne and Riley since May, and Connor since July, so it seemed they had grown into completely different people! It was so much fun watching them and Haley enjoy Disney the way it's meant to be! We were also really excited for the girls to meet their aunts, uncles, and cousins! I think Mimi really enjoyed time with the family, and we were all really happy to be able to help her celebrate her big day! We look forward to making the trip again in a couple of years when the girls can appreciate things as much as their cousins did this time around!
Now on to the next adventure!!!
