Archive for September, 2009
Ava has now added furniture assembly person to her resume. So far she’s been practicing veterinary medicine (Please, oh please, let this one actually happen!), is constantly working on her Wal-M*rt greeter skills, and is forever perfecting the Homecoming Queen wave.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that after a very long wait for a dining room table that was backordered forever – apparently to let the dang trees grow – that an extremely ginormous box was conveniently delivered the day after our return from Disney. Since J is powerless to resist unpacking and putting together anything (it’s like a red flag to a bull if something arrives flat-packed and marked Some Assembly Required) he and Ava tackled this immediately. With an audience, even. J said she insisted that “Ava do it” and by gosh, she did.
Will you look at how big my baby is getting!?!. How on earth is it that she can use a wrench already? Okay, maybe not effectively, but still.
Let’s knock this out, shall we? I’m a month behind on blog posts and I’d really like to get Halloween pictures up sometime before Christmas so I’m combining the last few days of our trip.
Day 8:
Would it be sacrilege to be grateful that our time at Disney was nearly done? A great time was had by all but it was definitely time to head home and get back to the real world. Ava really needed to get back on her schedule as she prefers things very structured and all of this flex time was doing a number on her. Not to mention that we all missed the dogs and (gasp) maybe even the cats.
We started the day out early at the pool. Come on,y’all knew there would have to be pool pictures at some point, right? It’s not like Ava didn’t beg to get in the pool nearly every time we walked by it so we’d promised her some time in the water before we hit the road.
She took to it like a duck to water. Err, like ducks (plural) to water, I guess. These guys were already at the pool when we got there.
No matter. We were headed for the kiddie pool anyway…
where we spent an inordinately long amount playing fetch and/or keep away with a discarded dive ring someone had left by the pool. I honestly had no idea we could keep the toddler occupied for that long by simply tossing the dive ring and having her return it to us. She thought it was great fun to go after it over and over and over and over and over again.
Until. UNTIL. We FINALLY got to see the geyser near the pool area erupt. It’s random so you never know when it’s going to happen so Ava was thrilled to be right there for the big moment.
J got in a few laps (and a quick swimming lesson) in the big pool once the ducks finished their morning swim.
And then we bade a fond farewell to the Lincoln Log Wilderness Lodge.
After lugging all 900 pieces of baggage to the car (that would be J, not me) and a few aborted topiary photo ops later we headed out to Downtown Disney so we could (potentially) buy more Disney crap memorabilia and use up our remaining food and snack dining plan credits before hitting the road.
J tried some hats on Ava right before we headed for lunch.
I was somewhat concerned with the intensity in which she was channeling Rastafarian Mickey – note the extreme attention she’s paying to the beads on the faux braids. I think she could have sat there for hours sliding the beads up and down the braids. Hmm, Disney ‘magic’ anyone?
She was not terribly thrilled about the hats nor about the Lego store that I practically had to dynamite J out of. (What is UP with grown men and legos, anyway?) She let us know this by having the worst potty accident EVER while we were having lunch. I mean, it was bad – like dripping down the highchair and puddles on the floor bad. This was surprising because we’d had so few accidents lately so we’d apparently gotten lackadaisical on the follow up with her. Fortunately no one seemed to notice and we used all the napkins we could find + all the Clorox wipes in my purse to do the bulk of the clean up on her, the chair, and the floor. J rushed her to the car for a change of clothes (stupid, stupid, complacent parents – didn’t throw a change of clothes in the stroller like we ALWAYS do) while I tried to find someplace where we could use up our snack credits. We ultimately ended up trading them for about a gazillion bottles of water and then headed out for (near) Savannah where we were overnighting again.
After a wrong turn or six plus no fewer than three stops on the interstate to buy tacky souvenirs, fruit, and pecans, we made it to the Holiday Inn in Pooler, GA only to discover that we were staying in a hotel overrun by college football players. To be fair, they were extremely polite and the coaches definitely ruled with an iron fist. They were quiet as church mice and in bed by 9 PM. The hotel itself was pretty decent and, in true Southern fashion, I knew the life stories of both desk clerks and the housekeeper within 10 minutes of arrival. They’d also referred us to one of the best Italian restaurants EVER where we got take out – massive amounts of homemade lasagna and spaghetti. Enough to eat for days…except it was so good that we ate it all right then and there.
The only downside was the crib they provided for Ava. It was metal and looked for all the world like the cribs I’ve seen in a million and one pictures of Chinese orphanages. I promptly sent it back (that’s how I got the life story of the housekeeper, who, by the way, was in her 70′s which made me feel like total crap for asking her to move it after they’d just brought it in to us.) J ended up helping her with it and bringing up our own pack and play which was in the car.
To wrap up the day: After the mountains of pasta that we consumed we all slept like the dead. Even Ava, which was soooo nice.
Day 9:
We drove to my Mom’s house, weeklong doggie camp extraordinaire, where I was very glad to see my pups and hand Ava off to other people to entertain her for a little while. My gosh, we were all in need of a quick breather after all the family time we’d just spent together. Honestly, I think she was a little sick of us by then.
We also passed out the souvenirs we’d bought and ate pineapple oranges until we were sick.
My niece loved her pirate ears, I think. Or at least she faked it long enough to get a picture.
Day 10:
More driving and then home at last. The cats were all alive thanks to our neighbors who kindly fed them – although they declined to take one of them home despite my offer of cat in payment. They did take the lovely German cookies we left for them, however. Smart people. I would have made the same choice.
Oh, and I forgot to mention. Lazarus, the miracle fish, was ummmm, not so much a miracle after all. He departed this watery life just prior to our departure for all things mouse.
So that’s it, y’all. We loved it and we’re already tentatively planning our next trip back. I can assure you of a couple of things, though. It will not be in the summer. Or even in the fall. I’m thinking early December 2010. And we will most definitely not drive again. Air travel next time, for sure. And I honestly do not know how people can live in that part of Florida and function outside in the summer – it was just way too humid for me. We have humidity here, of course, but we can always count on a break in the weather often enough to give us a breather. There – not so much it seems which is why December or January sounds much more appealing.
Our last full day at Disney. Finally. (Yes, there was a tiny bit of relief knowing we would soon be heading home. Yes, there was also a whole lot of OMG we have to get back in the van and drive for hours and hours and hours, too.)
We tried artfully posing her by a Mickey topiary with her ears on one last time. It didn’t work – but we did get some action shots as she screamed and ran away.
We got to the park super early for the extra magic hour and it worked out much better for us this time. We headed straight into Fantasyland where Ava got to ride, well – pretty much everything. She loved the Peter Pan ride, was kind of ‘eh’ about the Winnie the Pooh ride, adored the teacups, and was in toddler heaven riding the carousel with both Mama and Daddy. We rode Dumbo again, she blew off Ariel in the grotto, and she headed straight for her fave WTP play area as soon as she could make a break for it.
She was the only kid in here for about 30 minutes so she was in hog heaven running hither and yon with no one to impede her way. She played in the water, crawled through the hollow logs, went down the slides, and would stop every so often to sing the WTP song (old version ’cause it’s the only one I know) and break into an impromptu dance just for the sheer joy of being here. This was the second time on the trip that I wished for the video camera (still at the hotel, of course) because the exuberance of her dance was such that my still camera couldn’t capture it well enough and, honestly, I didn’t really even try too hard because I was so caught up in watching my beautiful girl and wishing that I could stay in that moment forever.
After a spot of pretend tea with Daddy we headed off to the Tomorrowland speedway. J was reliving his childhood a bit with this one. He initially wasn’t sure about taking Ava on this ride but with only a little bit of encouragement he scooped her up and headed off for his very first experience with teaching his daughter to drive.
Being that she can’t yet see over the steering wheel it appears we have a while to mentally prepare ourselves for the real thing. In the meantime, she’s continuing to practice that homecoming queen wave.
She got a bit impatient about this time. They ended up in a traffic jam and had to sit for about 5 minutes while some of the other cars unloaded. I was hoping J wouldn’t start the ‘How to be a Successful New York Driver’ portion of driver’s ed – but I’m thinking he did. It wasn’t too much later that I heard her say, “Move it, cah” as we were driving. Hmm….
We walked around a bit more and ended up in the Swiss Family treehouse which I found to be no fun at all. Let’s see, a million stairs + Ava who didn’t want anyone but Mama to carry her up those million stairs + a Mama who could barely walk up them herself (much less carrying a squirmy toddler). Yep, J carried her. She was not happy about this and weepingly pleaded (pitifully and especially loudly) with me to “Pick up, Mama” the whole entire time we were in the darn tree.
Oh. But then we encountered a random block party – which is like a mini parade where characters pop out of gift boxes and people on stilts try to drag you into the street while other disney cast members in full costume and makeup are singing and dancing their hearts out in 540 degree heat. Ava LOVED it. I mean, went absolutely bonkers over this. She waved, she made up her own lyrics and sang along, and she grabbed hold of J and bopped right on out into the street to dance.
She almost got within arm’s reach of a character. Goofy (except she still calls him Pluto) was dancing only a few feet away from her. She came to a dead stop when she saw him and then took a few tentative steps his way when a super rude person stepped in between them and shoved her kid into Goofy’s arms for a photo op. Guess we’ll never know if Ava would actually have went to him – I vote probably not. She didn’t seem to mind anyway because the next thing I knew J and Ava were headed down the road in a conga line.
We did lunch at the Liberty Tree Tavern again. Remember – I don’t need variety. If I find something that I like then I’m okay with doing that until J puts his foot down and refuses. The food was good – not quite as good as the dinner service – but our waitress more than made up for it and we had a fantastic meal.
And then we did the smartest thing we’d done all week. We went back to the hotel and all of us took a long, long nap. Because I am slow and stupid sometimes, I didn’t realize how much better this would have made all of our days. I knew Ava needed naps…but it never dawned on me that we were go, go, going sooooo much that we were as exhausted (probably more so) as she was.
We headed back again in the afternoon and watched shows and rode rides (Pirates of the Caribbean was a huge letdown and the Jungle Cruise is a hidden treasure) and ate and walked and still didn’t see everything we wanted to. In part because Little Miss Ava wanted to ride the The Magic Carpets of Aladdin.
Over and over and over (and over) again. 5 times in all. Good thing the line was short and the ride attendants were happy to let us just stay on.
Roller coaster hands on the last ride. Livin’ on the edge for sure.
Another surprising hit? Tom Sawyer’s Island. We got kicked off because it was closing. Ava could have stayed there all day.
Ava was winding down fast by this time..out of the stroller and nearly asleep in the MeiHip carrier on me so we decided that we would skip the parade and head back to the hotel. I mean, heck, we’d already seen a couple of parades so we didn’t think it would be that different.
Apparently I needed to do a bit more research on Disney than I actually did. This one was beyond spectacular. Lights, music, characters, WOW!
We ended up watching the parade, of course. We got all the way to the end of Main Street and got trapped by the floats coming out. Since we couldn’t leave and we’d now found ourselves (inadvertently) in a prime viewing location we decided to just roll with it.
J plonked Ava on his shoulders. She was soooo tired.
And then…
You can see all the magic of Disney right there in the look on her face.
That’s what made the whole trip worthwhile.
The ducks at our hotel started their day out with a splash. They appeared to be having a great time beginning their day with a nice, leisurely swim.
But, Oh My Heavens, the day started out badly for us. Mainly due to tactical errors caused by vacation brain as well as poor pre-planning when making food reservations and not fully realizing that just because something is on a named resort doesn’t actually mean it’s even remotely close to the similarly named theme park.
First issue: J left his wallet, complete with cash, debit cards, and driver’s license, in the hotel. He discovered this just about the time we got to Animal Kingdom the first time. Since I had nothing beyond an ID with me, we had to turn around and go back to get his. About an hour lost here.
Our sit down meal of the day was at Boma in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We found our way there only after driving to the park (twice), parking a gazillion miles away, taking the tram, getting almost all the way to the gate, and then realizing that just about the time we would make it into the park we would have to turn around and head right out to go over to the hotel. So we trudged back out to the car and headed for the lodge with all of us grouching the whole way. In hindsight, we should have ditched breakfast and just stayed at the park.
Made it to the resort and had a bit of time to walk around. Lovely place and we were there early enough to see some of the animals being fed. Ava loved this part, of course. What she didn’t love was being made to go back inside to actually sit down and eat breakfast herself. What I didn’t love was the fact that Boma was a buffet. In fact, I really, really hate buffets when it’s just two parents and a toddler. You can’t have an ongoing conversation over a meal because one person is always up when the other is sitting down with the (unhappy and loud) kid. Again, poor planning on my part. (We saw our China adoptive family from the WL hotel here, too. By this point I’m sure they thought we were stalking them and they clearly had no intention of even looking our way.) After breakfast was finally, blessedly over and I’d pilfered half the buffet bakery into Princess ziploc bags for snacks later in the day we convinced Ava to stop whining by letting her play on the little playground and look at the pool. By the time we were finished here it was naptime and Ava was conked out in the car before we could drive the short distance back to the park – so J drove around Orlando (duh – geocaching) while she napped in the A/C.
What this all means, of course, is that we didn’t even make it in to Animal Kingdom until around 2PM after being forced to park even further away (and walking across the miles of parking lot because the tram was slow). We thought this was okay because the park was open longer for Extra Magic Hours and a good friend/Disney veteran told us that we really only needed half a day here at AK.
He was wrong. We loved this park and we didn’t get to see/do half of what we wanted to. It’s probably my biggest disappointment from the whole trip – in part because I failed to understand that even though the park is open for extra magic hours it doesn’t mean that the attractions you want to visit are open. Most at Animal Kingdom weren’t so we missed a lot that Ava would have really liked.
Ava and I sat down to check out our guidebook while trying to (belatedly) formulate our plan of attack.
Our planning was futile however. It was about this time that J spotted Expedition Everest and nearly left us in the dust in his hurry to get there. He and I both rode it (at separate times) by utilizing the single riders line. J waited 4 seconds and I waited not at all to get on. It’s a good coaster. I just hope, one day, to actually ride a roller coaster with J again and not with random, screaming stranger in the seat beside me.
Next we headed toward Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama where we all rode the TriceraTop Spin.
She was thrilled, can’t you tell?
She actually quite liked this area. Just not the part where we made her stand on a wooden box behind a fake car with dinos around her. (Ohhh, spotted another China adoptive family here – they actually SMILED at us and pointed out Ava to their daughter. Shame they didn’t speak much english. I think they were probably Dutch.)
And she LOVED this playground. We ran across it while we were looking for the Boneyard (which we never found, by the way). I think her goal here was to give me a heart attack as she started swinging from the bars in an attempt to reach the top of the slide without actually walking up the stairs. The very next picture (not shown) is of me rushing over to pluck her from the faux rocks and direct her back up the stairs.
And then we get the “Who, me? Holy terror? No way – I’m too sweet and innocent.” look.
After bribing her away from the play area with leftover muffins from breakfast we headed over to the Nemo musical. Now you must understand that we love, love, love musical theater and I desperately want Ava to be able to experience and enjoy live entertainment as much as we do. It’s hard to find age appropriate (read – short for the 2 year old attention span) shows so we were excited to see this one.
Except they seated us in the very front row. Right in front of the big singing puppets and people dressed up like fish and turtles and sharks. It was kind of loud and scary and not good.
Until they started blowing bubbles into the audience and then all was mostly well in her 2 year old world again. Except she had to tell the whole audience, loudly and at the most inopportune times (like the dramatic moments when it was dead silent in the theater), that “Mama, I POP the bubbles.” She also now thinks all fish are named Nemo. Mind you, she’d never seen Nemo before we got to Disney and, honestly, I still couldn’t tell you anything about him other than he’s a clownfish with a little fin and an overprotective parent.
While waiting outside the theater Ava and I were goofing around while J was, unbeknownst to me, taking pictures. I love these shots and can’t choose which I like best – that’s why you get to see the whole series. I can’t help it. I think she is just breathtaking. That laugh had EVERYone who walked by smiling and laughing right back at her.
We detoured down a few side streets and did a little shopping until Ava found some “wa-tuh”. It was super hot so we were happy to let her soak herself in the hope that it would cool her down some.
She made some friends and then asked J to lift her up into the fountain so she could stick her feet in the water. He did…
except she didn’t want her FEET in. She wanted her head in.
And she most definitely did not want to leave here so she threw the worst and longest lasting tantrum we’ve ever seen. Seriously bad, y’all. I’m not usually the type to get embarrassed or upset with things like that – but man, this one had me wanting to crawl into a hole. She was madder than a hornet and made sure everyone in the Maharajah Jungle Trek knew it – all of whom apparently thought I was the worst mom on earth for allowing it to continue ’cause I sure got some nasty looks. J was conveniently 400 feet ahead of us purportedly photographing everything for me since there was no way I could actually see anything as I was schlepping 24 pounds of howling righteous indignation around.
She finally calmed down about the time I began considering feeding her to the tigers.
After the tigers we rushed through the rest of the trek so we could grab something to eat and head over to another part of the park seeing that we still hadn’t even made it out of Asia and into Africa. It was about this time that we realized our planning and time management sucked. Most of the restaurants were closing as were the animal attractions and the (gasp!) train. I was about to get seriously mad about missing the Kilimanjaro safari so we took off at a gallop in that direction. Thank goodness they were running slightly extended operating hours. We were able to get right on a truck with a great driver and and we happened to hit the animal jackpot. Because it was around 5:30PM and the animals are normally fed and watered about this time we saw everything – lions, giraffes, elephants, and lots of other African animals that I’d previously only seen stuffed on my boss’s office walls (he’s a big game hunter).
J took pictures (see immediately preceding post) and I held Ava. She was over the moon with all the animals to see – so close she could almost reach out and touch them – and I was sure she was going to vault over the side if given the opportunity. I did have to do a quick litter grab after she sneezed all over the woman’s arms in front of us (“I schneeze, Mama.”) and immediately tossed the tissue in her hand out the open side of the truck. I was able to do a successful save and realized that I need to teach my kid about litterbugs.
We walked around a bit after the safari but everything else was closing – except the gift shops, naturally – so we headed toward the entrance with a short detour through the gardens to admire the landscaping. Pretty amazing, actually.
Ava appears to have the same fascination with pink flamingos that I do. I knew my girl had taste.
We wrapped it up soon afterwards with a very late dinner (for us) and an early bedtime (for me, anyway). One more day of Disney to go…
