Thursday- Magic Kingdom, Day 2

Day 2 at Magic Kingdom

Brigham at the Mickey breakfast.

Mickey and Brig.

Minnie and Brig.

The girls at the princess breakfast.

Sarah and cousin Mollie.

I'm telling Sarah to stop dipping her fingers in the OJ and to sit down in this picture. We are working on "princess" manners...

A picture of some of our chaos in our cool smurf colored shirts!

We took up a whole boat for It's a small world!

Matt and Brig.

My cousins with Sarah and Lucy (who are cousins).

Race car ride.

Sarah on the teacups.

Matt and Brigham stayed late for the parade and fireworks. Brig was sooo tired!

Wednesday- Magic Kingdom, day 1

On our first day at Magic Kingdom, it poured rain.

Nate got stuck in it without a poncho.

While we waited for the downpour to end we ate for like, 2 hours! Here's Sarah being picky, only eating the meat out of the sandwich.

Brigham and those too cute Mickey ears. It made him a ton easier to keep track of too!

Thanks Matt for putting your family in jail with Zurg.

Sarah Jane on one of her favorite rides, her other favorite was the flying Dumbos.

Me and Brig.

This is us being dorky.

Yeehaw!

My parents.

Sarah loved this picture of Belle.

Tuesday-Disney Hollywood Studios

We threw ourselves back into the fun at Hollywood Studios and had lots of fun.

The girls keeping Pa busy!

Sarah had to walk down the whole line in the street.

To the rescue!

Brig anxious to go on the Toy Story ride.

Sarah was scared of the robotic Mr. Potato head. Who can blame her?

3D Glasses.

It was absolutely tragic when Brigham and Sarah missed meeting Phineas and Ferb! The look on Brigham's face still breaks my heart!

My brother, Nate. He smiled only twice on the trip: Eating his turkey leg, and taking my mom's jazzy for a spin in the hotel's parking lot.

Yum!

The girls ready to watch Belle.

Weeee!

Darth Matt

Me and some bad guys.

My mom couldn't pass up the tacky and touristy Orange world store on the way back to the hotel.

Entertaining ourselves while my mom is shopping...

Wow, Matt is soooo strong!

Silly Brigham.

Monday- Disney Animal Kingdom

We started off bright and early with Disney Animal Kingdom Park. I never got caught up on my sleep from the traveling so I was pretty exhausted for the whole experience. The kids enjoyed the few rides we took them on, and the highlight for Brigham was seeing all the different lizards, frogs, spiders, snakes, turtles, bugs, etc, they had there. He couldn't go past one without having me read the full description of it. Sarah enjoyed the petting zoo the best.

Ready, Set, Go!

I felt just like this guy.

We all found relief from the heat/humidity by getting into the Finding Nemo show, the show was better than I expected, it was as good as a Disney on Ice show, maybe better? I was amazed that they did such a good production for a theme park show, though all I cared about was getting into some AC, no matter how lame a show I'd have to endure!

The end of the day was spent letting kids play at the dinoyard playground- rope bridges, slides, climbing, and of course they had a little waterfall Brigham had to get in. Sarah was a little too young to let loose in there. I was done with accompanying her on my third time down a super sticky curvy tube slide that you had to climb down because it was so gross and sticky. Being awkward and pregnant added fun to that!

Ironically, the $1 sunglasses we scored from our family California trip the year before didn't make it out of the park alive. My glasses fell out of my pocket on the train ride and Megan and Grady's glasses both broke. We may have to make a trip back to California just for more!

Another sad thing that happened on the trip- my sister's hair got caught in a fan! Ouch!

Our grand finale for the day was eating at CiCi's all you can eat pizza. It was my brother Nate's request because he fell in love with it on his mission in Ohio. The pasta there was terrible and the pizza was okay, I thought it tasted like Totino's frozen pizza with a fluffier crust. Thank heaven their dessert was amazing, the cinnamon rolls and dessert pizza tasted great. The brownies were out of this world! They were cooked all the way but they tasted like brownie batter straight out of the bowl! If I knew this before I probably would have ditched the whole pizza thing so I had room to eat straight brownies. I am a great example to the kids...

Finally in Florida!

While my dad, Matt and Brigham were already enjoying Florida, the rest of my family (8 of us including me and Sarah) spent our day traveling to Florida. We had a three hour long layover in Minneapolis where me and my sister managed to figure out what state we were in, without cheating! The layover wasn't too bad with Sarah because she had her two girl cousins, Lucy 3, and Mollie 2, to play dress up the dolly with. It's really good Sarah can have girls in the family her age to play with. Playing girl stuff with a brother doesn't work.

By the time we got to Florida and picked up the rental van and all our stuff it was late. We went to TGI Fridays for dinner and unfortunately their service was slow, so our dinner was even later. Starving tired people and kids was a bad thing. Everything was better after the food though. We all shared a place (three separate rooms sharing a kitchen and living area). Unfortunately for me the first thing I saw when I turned on the light to the bathroom in the hotel was a scampering cockroach which I had Matt squash. I had the worst sleep that night, waking up twice that night from dreaming that a bunch of cockroaches have gotten into my bed!

Pa, Mollie, Sarah and Lucy @ TGI Fridays

The girls playing with a magnetic dress up doll.

So cute that they wanna do everything together!

The flight to Florida: Matt, Brigham and Pa.

Each year my parents plan a big trip which my family, grandma and my siblings and their family go on. This year we went to Florida to meet up with my aunt and her family to go to Disney World. Traveling in a pack with young kids is pretty crazy and you get looks...

This year we split up- Matt, Brigham, and Pa caught a red-eye flight at 1 am to Florida. Matt and Pa thought it was a better idea to leave at that time rather than wait and get up at 5am to catch a Sunday morning flight like the rest of our group did. They could get some extra time in Florida that way, though they were going to be tired.

Apparently I missed all the fun on the red-eye because the pilots let Brigham go in the cockpit and he got the VIP treatment from them. Then as Matt was walking through first class to get to the seats, he couldn't help but recognize the faces of the two American Idol finalists- Scotty and Lauren. Matt shook their hands and said hi and congrats to them! Sorry no pictures, you'll just have to believe me! Matt said Brigham slept the whole ride and so did he and Pa pretty well, but they had to do a lay-over so they were interrupted and had to pick up where they left off on the next flight. Maybe I won't write off the red eye so quickly next time, having the kids treated like they are super special, not having to entertain a sleeping kid and getting to have a brush with fame doesn't sound too bad.

When the guys got to Florida, they spent their extra time going to church (catching up on sleep), did a Walmart run, and got the room ready for the rest of us. My Dad went to pick the rest of us from the airport while Matt, Brigham and my 5 cousins from Georgia played at the hotel's pool.

Sorry no pictures! There is a picture of Brig in the airplanes cockpit that I'll have to add later!

Scandinavian Festival and grumpy kids.

We went to the Scandinavian Festival together on May 27th, which is a weekend celebration of Ephraim's heritage. There were craft booths, storytelling and settler demonstrations. We ended up getting two new pet froggys for the kids (yes begging and begging can sometimes wear a parent down). Brigham named his "Kitchjo", he said that he didn't want to give his a name that belonged to something else. Yep, I think he did that. He keeps on correcting me and Matt if we mispronounce it too! Sarah's was named "Princess" with her approval.

The kids hated the storytelling so I missed out on that, it seemed like something they could have enjoyed if they would just give it a chance. The food at the festival was pretty good, I mean it's fair food so it's a given that fried stuff is great, but looking back I seriously got a better deal at Disneyworld for the same price....ouch!

The highlight of the day was the little settler village and demonstrations. There was a guy with a beehive display that had the kids mesmerized. I took a walk with Brigham on Snow College campus (where the festival is held) and it was fun to revisit where I went to school. Too bad both of the kids were overdue for some major naps when I finally broke out the camera. I didn't catch any of the festival itself, just some attitude.

Doesn't this picture say it all?

Oh wait, Sarah has something to add to that...

That look is just a preview of what could come. Did you know 5 yr olds can throw really big tantrums?