Day 1 ~ Magic Kingdom

We woke up bright and early, had breakfast at the concierge lounge and hopped on the monorail to Magic Kingdom. Got off the monorail only to realize that we didn't bring both of our cards.. WOOOPPS! So, back on the monorail and back to the resort! Good thing we were staying close! We still made it back to Magic Kingdom just after the park opened. Right as we arrived, there was a show going on the stage at Magic Kingdom.

Isabelle was very excited with her first glimpse of all of her favorite characters! She watched with amazement as the danced around the stage!

After the show we headed to Fantasyland first. The first ride was the carousel which she was extremely excited about since this is one of her favorite rides!


We headed over to Dumbo's ride after the carousel. We weren't quite sure how she would like the up and down, but this ended up being one of her favorite rides (second, of course, to the carousel!)! She loved taking us up high and then having us fall down and would giggle through the whole ride! I think she is going to be a thrill seeker like her Daddy (which he is obviously very excited about! haha!)!!! Here we all are in our Dumbo


And, well, a trip to Disney World would not be complete without a ride through "Its a Small World"! While Jason and I think the dancing miniature dolls are a tad creepy, Isabelle was quite entranced with them. This was her face through the entire ride!


We also rode on Peter Pan's Flight, the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Snow White's Scary Adventure. We weren't going to get on Snow White's ride because we thought it would be a little scary for her but she kept saying she wanted to get on it. She actually really loved it and it tops her favorite rides list at #3 actually! While in line for the Winnie the Pooh ride she got to get a glimpse of Tigger, Pooh and Darby (she is basically the modern day Christopher Robin for all of you that don't watch "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" every morning..and shame on you for that!) and she was very excited about that! The lines were not bad at all! Today was the worst for lines that we experienced all week. It seemed like for Sunday the most crowded sections were the sections for the younger kids and those rides actually had some longer wait times then the big kid rides. They still weren't bad though.. no longer then 20 mins I would say. We came prepared with little toys and stuff for Isabelle to do during lines so we never had any problem with them.

We didn't stand in line for any of the characters because we were having breakfast tomorrow with Mickey and Friends and then lunch on Tuesday with Tigger, Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore. The lines to see the characters were pretty long (actually they were pretty short compared to high season lines but still long!).

Just a little shot of me and Isabelle in front of the castle


After Fantasyland we headed over to a counter service place to grab some lunch. Then Isabelle fell asleep in her stroller and it was Jason's turn for some fun (as he was thinking, "FINALLY!" LOL!)! We headed over to Big Thunder Mountain and he rode that while I found a cozy rocking chair in a shop and relaxed a bit while Isabelle napped.


Then we headed over to Space Mountain for him to ride that ride. After he got off that Isabelle woke up so Daddy's playtime was over for the time being. haha! We headed over to Mickey's Toontown Fair where Isabelle got to walk through Minnie and Mickey's houses. This was super exciting for her!!

Here are some pics of Minnie's house






Then we went inside this tent that had a line to meet 3 of the Princesses: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Belle. These were the first "characters" Isabelle actually met. We weren't quite sure how she would be but she acted starstruck! She gave them all hugs, answered the questions they asked her and asked them to sign her book. When they were signing her book she would look over at us with this huge grin on her face and cover her mouth like "OMGosh do you see who I am talking to!!??!" LOL! It was the cutest thing ever! Here are some pics of Isabelle and the princesses. They were all so sweet to her! Oh and Isabelle's shirt had Cinderella on it and she was wearing her clear jellies so they all made a huge deal about her "glass slippers" and she was so excited to show Cinderella her shirt!





We tried to get her on the mini-coaster, "The Barnstormer at Goofy's Wiseacre Farm", but the girl wouldn't let her get on. It said you had to be 35" and Isabelle was 35" at her 2 year check up but I guess she wasn't close enough on their stick. Oh well.. next time for sure!!! After that it was getting pretty hot and crowded so we hopped on the train at Toontown and took it to the Haunted Mansion. Isabelle loved the trainride and had fun squirting Daddy with the squirt bottle!



I was a little worried at how Isabelle would do on this ride but she did pretty well. If at anytime on any of the rides she got scared or overwhelmed she would just bury her face in my chest and I would cover her ears with my hands. It seemed to work pretty well because when we would get off of the ride she would always say it was a lot of fun! After Haunted Mansion we headed back to the resort for some downtime.

We ate at a restaurant in the resort called the Kona Cafe and afterwards we went to the beach to let Isabelle play with some of the glow sticks we had brought along.

Here is Mommy and Isabelle at dinner reading a book


Isabelle tormenting a group of ducks.. those poor ducks had no clue what was coming! LOL!


And Isabelle playing with her glowsticks and on the beach



Then it was off to bed to rest up for the next day.. brunch with Mickey and Friends and then Epcot! I have some more pics from day 1 that I will upload to the photo gallery website later along with the ones that I posted here.

Pardon the Interruption

Sorry, I know everyone is hoping for another Disney post but I have late breaking news! (I promise I will update more about Disney today!!!)

Isabelle's gymnastics class started while we were at Disney so today was our first class. Well, in true Jen fashion (I swear having a kid has turned me into a blonde!), I showed up to the wrong class. But, hey, it was quite an acccomplishment that I actually arrived on the right day! HAHA! Anyway, Isabelle was supposed to be in the 2 yr old class Parent and Child. I showed up for the 3 yr old class - Little Bodies In Motion. Well, at first I had no clue until the other mom went to leave and I was still there. She asked if it was a parent/child class or if we left them and I said I thought this class was "Parent/Child". So the instructor said she thought her parent/child class was after this class and that this one was Little Bodies In Motion so she looked at her book and sure enough I was at Little Bodies in Motion. She said Isabelle could do this class this week and we would see if she was advanced enough to skip the 2 year old class. So I got to go work out during her class. When I went to pick her up the teacher said that Isabelle could stay in that class because she was doing all of the things that the other 3 year olds in the class were doing and would probably not be challenged very much in the 2 year old class anyway!! I was so proud of her!! She had so much fun doing a class all by herself without Mommy too! Of course I didn't leave the track that goes around the class room and kept peeking in every 10 seconds. LOL! She was so excited to tell me all of the things she got to do during gymnastics and she did tell me the whole way leaving the Y and then in the car ride to go get Kashmir from the puppy hotel (a whole other story!)! When we left she exclaimed, "I love gymnastics!"

From the top

So I uploaded all of our pictures from the Disney trip.. over 800! OMG!!! That's a lot of pictures to go through! So what I am going to do is try and do a day at a time. That way I don't forget anything and also don't have to tackle all of those pictures at once. So, as the Mad Hatter would say, "Start at the beginning and when you get to the end, stop" and that's just what I am going to do! LOL!

So, the beginning.. our flights all went very smoothly on the way to Disney. We left at 12:30 which allowed us enough time to get ready at our own pace and still be able to stop at Barnes and Noble to pick up some flight reading material. It was rainy and cold when we left Fort Wayne. Isabelle was, as she always is, very excited to go on the airplane!! It was nice with her having her own seat. She had lots of books and toys to keep her busy. On the flight from Atlanta to Orlando she made friends with a little German boy her age that was in the row in front of us. He even shared his german candies with us..it was banana and black licorice flavored candy.. Isabelle liked it though I wasn't surprised..she has quite an interesting taste in foods!

So we got to Orlando and were set up to take the Magical Express Bus to our resort, The Polynesian. We signed up for the Magical Express service late so we didn't get the special luggage tags. Instead our travel agent told me to take pics of our luggage and give it to the desk... well they all got quite a kick out of this as they passed out my pics and detailed description of our luggage! Glad I could make someone's day! haha!

So we got to the Polynesian Resort at like 6:00PM. We are at the registration desk when the guy informs us that we had been UPGRADED!! Wooo hoo! We were upgraded to a private building that we need our room card to get in to at all hours! We had a Private Concierge in the lobby..which was actually SUPER nice! When we would go through the Main Ceremonial House the concierge line was always really long! It was so nice to just go downstairs and make reservations for dinner or ask them a question!

Now, the best part was that we had our own private lounge! They had different set-ups througout the day. Mornings they had a lot of different cereals, bagels, pastries (Isabelle is quite the fan of the cheese danish!!) and this awesome coffee maker that made anything from regular coffee to espresso to lattes and hot chocolate! Then they had a lunch set up but we were never there for that so I don't know what they had for that. Then from 5-7:30 they had appetizers and drinks (water, coke, beer and wine). The appetizers were so good! Sometimes we really had to hold back as not to spoil our dinner!! They always had lots of kid friendly foods too. This was really nice since Isabelle was 2 we didn't have to do a dining plan or anything for her. So she was able to eat from there every night and then we never had to buy her a(n extremely overpriced) dinner! Then from 8-10 they had desserts and cordials. I am sure we were probably a little too excited about the lounge but when it comes to free food and drinks we don't mess around! LOL! The lounge overlooked the Blue Lagoon right across from Cinderella's Castle. Every night for the fireworks they would turn off the lights so the fireworks could easily be seen. I could go on and on about the lounge! LOL! We really got spoiled!!

Here are some pics of our resort:

Our building




Our room



The Volcano Pool



The Beach





Inside the Main Ceremonial House (basically where all of the restaurants, shops and other stuff is)





These are just some of the pics of the resort. I'll put the random pics of it on the photo gallery website so it doesn't get too much on here.

The first night we just hung out at the resort. We ate dinner at our lounge, explored the resort and played on the beach. Isabelle went to bed relatively early in preparation for our big first day at Magic Kingdom!!

Back to life, back to reality

And I am so NOT excited about it! Jason went into work to go through all of his emails so he doesn't have to be there at an insane time tomorrow. So it has been me and Isabelle all morning. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Isabelle and I are both sick. I am much worse then her luckily. She just has a stuffy nose...me, on the other hand, has the congestion, sore throat, swollen glands, and achiness.. UUGGGHHHH!!!! So not fun! Hopefully Jason doesn't catch it. I have been trying to work through all of the unpacking and laundry but what I really want to do is upload our pics (oh, and go back to bed of course! haha!). Isabelle is taking her nap now and Jason is still at work so I just might have to take this opportunity to catch a few zzzz's.

Ok, I'll stop whining now and go take a nap. Hopefully I can actually sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow!!

We're home!!

We made it home safe and sound! We had a wonderful vacation! Isabelle had a blast and was so into it all! It was so "magical" viewing Disney from the eyes of a 2 year old. I don't know if I have ever truly enjoyed every moment of a vacation as I have this one. I can't wait to share all of the details with you, but for now I am just a little too exhausted for that! It will be nice to sleep in my own bed tonight for sure! Hope everyone had a great week!

And we're off!

See everyone in a week! Our flight leaves Fort Wayne at 12:30. We get to Orlando at 5 after a layover in Atlanta. We come back next Saturday.

Hope everyone has a great week!!! We have an open house Sunday...hoping for lots of traffic but more importantly just for the house to SELL!!!!

This time tomorrow

We will be taking off from Atlanta!!

I added some pics to the photo gallery website. I added a couple from August of Isabelle and her BFF, Adan at the zoo. I also added pics from Gammy, Pappy and Aunt Jess's visit. During their visit we went to the park and then on Sunday we went up to Mindy and Adam's lakehouse for the day.

I have some more from September to upload but I don't think I will have the time to go through them today. Oh, but this one is just too cute...



Aww and then there's this one..



And I am just a softy for a father/daughter holding hands and walking away pic..



Ooh another favorite..I would kill for eyes like hers! Figuratively, not literally of course! ;o)



Ok..ok..enough procrastinating.. Must...Go...Pack!!