The Amazing Disney World Experience

Airplane Trip from Salt Lake to Denver to Florida........ Since James is still younger than 2 years old, he got to sit on my lap with his sister (baby bump). Thankfully the first flight was not very full so we got all 3 seats to ourselves and he was able to buckle up and fall asleep, but of course only for the last 15 minutes of the flight. Since it was his first flight he was totally curious as to what was going on in his surroundings. He was excited and I kept him occupied the majority of the time with books, toys, coloring, eating snacks and looking out of the window. He did such a great job, but by the end of 2nd flight he was tired and did not want to sleep, because of being overly exhausted. When we arrived at the Florida airport, we were the first of the family to arrive. We then met up with mom, dad and Lindsey, than had to wait for Amber and Brad. We were all pretty sick of flying. As you can tell Linz and I were pretty tired. Here I am exaggerating the experience as I am pushing out as much as I can to look as big as I can. We rented a van and a car and were finally off to our beautiful Arabian Nights resort, which was about 10 minutes from all of Disney Worlds main attractions. We met up with Stacy, Josh and their kids. They drove from Virginia. We had two pretty good sized pads that were connected and mom and dad had their own resort that they stayed at during the nights. We all chilled out together and pretty much just enjoyed the warm evenings and beautiful luscious greenery around us. Sunday came and we slept in, well at least everyone but me slept in. I don't know what it was, but James never slept in, he awoke at like 6:30 most evenings and if I was lucky maybe 8:00. Later we all went to church of course, and isn't it great how our church is all pretty much the same, know matter where you are in the world. That evening we went for a walk around our huge resort, and fed the ducks and fish. Amber even saw an alligator out there. I guess it's a norm to see alligators running free in the swamp areas. James loved seeing all the fish jump up and he got a little to daring with the ducks. He almost got attacked a few times, these ducks didn't seem to be to friendly or even cute. Almost every night James and his cousins had tubbies together. Lilli and Izzy are so great to James, he loves being with them. On Monday we just hung out at the pool and played a ton in the water. James even had floaties on and he could float a little by himself. He is such a little dare devil in the water that I can't take my eyes off of him even for a second.

ANIMAL KINGDOM

The next morning we were out and about to see what Disney World had to offer. Wow, it was a lot bigger than I ever imagined (so many different parks). We went to Animal Kingdom. James was in complete heaven. One of his favorite things in the world are animals. He was so mesmerized by all the real live animals he had seen in books that he actually stayed still for more than a few minutes. The Safari was his favorite. We were all loaded into a jeep and animals were roaming all around us, no gates or anything around them. We saw giraffes, lions, hippos, elephants, rhinos, ostriches, monkeys and so many more animals we don't see everyday. We even saw a tree woman, James was kind of scared of her, she was on huge stilts and when she stood up straight she blended in with all of the other trees.All of us girls went on a dinosaur water ride that we got drenched in, James and his cousin, Talmage were having their own fun in the fountains. We had them down to their diapers, yet it was so hot they dried off pretty fast. We had the pleasure of seeing these gorillas really close. They are so similar to humans, it is scary. Just watching this mother play with her baby was amusing. They are so dang cute. There was also Dino Land that James loved. He really enjoyed going on the rides. He was scared at first and didn't smile once, but then got used to it. All day he would point to animals he was excited about. While James and Talmage slept or to make it possible for all of us to go on rides, we would take turns in groups. We went to a 3D movie, Bugs Life, and it was quite entertaining and almost seemed real. My little nieces were in pure heaven and just stunned by all the adventure. By the end of the day James was zonked and thank goodness to Uncle Brad and Grandpa for holding him, because being 7 months pregnant and holding a 26 lbs child doesn't always feel good at the end of walking all day. This is one of James' new faces. He is such a comedian and he really cracks us all up. I'll catch all of you up about the 2 other weeks we were out vacationing. But as for now, I need to pack because our little family is going to California for the Nielson family trip. I'm living the life, trip after trip.