Where We Went and Why

The Lead Up...
Earlier this year, Dakota and I were enjoying a rare quiet evening together, looking through a photo book I had made from 2010. It included lots of pictures from a trip we took to Disney World that year. It was a fun trip with lots of good memories. But after looking through the pictures, Dakota commented that he couldn’t imagine doing a trip like that again right now—with 3 kids and one not even a year old. I told him not to worry; no one said we had to do a trip like that anytime soon. In fact, with the room addition planned for this year, we weren’t planning on there being money in the budget for any big trips. And that was fine with us.

It was just a matter of days later that I got an e-mail from my mom, saying she thought it would be a good idea if we all did a big Disney vacation together. Had she somehow heard our conversation just a few nights earlier? The plans my mom was making sounded like a lot of fun, but it also sounded like a lot of work for us and a lot of money.

We really wrestled with the decision for a few weeks and were leaning toward not going. But when my mom offered to pay for most of our trip, and we realized we might not ever have the opportunity to do Disney on such a small travel budget, we reconsidered. Plus the contractor we are working with said he encourages the homeowners to leave for a while during the building process, allowing the workers to get more done without disturbing the homeowners. So before we knew it, we were Disney-bound again.

Getting There...
Traveling with 3 kids is no easy task, that's for sure! Especially when you haven’t been able to sleep well the whole week prior to traveling, thanks in part to a head cold and not being able to turn off your stressed-out brain. But somehow we managed.

Josiah handled his first flight better than I expected. He loved the trays on the back of the seats and had a great time making them go up and down.

The girls enjoyed using a couple of older ipods my mom had handed down to them. (Thanks mom!)

And we learned that flying makes Ashlyn VERY hungry! We packed dinner and snacks for the plane, but she just couldn't get enough to eat!

Our flight arrived in Florida at just after 9pm. We got our luggage, picked up our rental car and headed for our hotel, which was about an hour away. Josiah and Emma fell asleep on the drive, but Ashlyn, our night owl, stayed wide awake! Somewhere around 11pm, she called out from the dark back seat, "Did anyone know I can make a tambourine sound with my nose?!" Then she proceeded to sing a song, adding her tambourine nose-sound as she sang along.

We arrived at the hotel and got checked into our room sometime after 11:30pm, and got ourselves to bed sometime after midnight.