Lifelines

We only stopped once for food the whole day there!

Disney won’t allow you to come in with a cooler but if you take a giant backpack and layer it with snacks and diapers, snacks and sunscreens, snacks and other crap, they don’t seem to bat an eye.
Regardless, we saved a ton of money on food.
(I think I read somewhere before to allocate $200 a day for meals for a family of four while at the parks. We would have spent way more than that, especially if we’d been buying waters all day long but managed to keep our costs under $60. Not bad for this family, considering that that’s what a trip to Panera costs us for lunch!)

We stopped at some little pizza place in Fantasy-Land (Jen, it’s Pinocchio’s something and it’s good!) and I kept the kids busy while Charlie took seven hours ordering the food.

Sweet moment with Greer and yep, you guessed it, that flower is another beautiful snatch by Rhyse.
I wasn’t joking before when I said I thought there’d be an angry landscaper after him with gardening shears!

That Flip of mine has more uses than one.
In moments of desperation, I video-tape Creux being a his monkey boy self (he’s usually mid-tantrum by the time I whip it out so he’s nice and loud and ornery–he makes for good, animated viewing!) and then play it back over and over again.
This worked wonders until I let Rhyse use it and then realized he filmed five minutes of some poor lady chewing her salad.
(What must she have thought?!? Rhyse is by no means stealth, you know what I’m saying? He was probably turned directly to her and cackling the whole time. Little troublemaker!)

THIS is how I didn’t know what Rhyse was doing.

Creux was busy pulling my face apart so I was a little preoccupied with keeping my eyes and nose intact while waiting for Charlie to finish MAKING the pizzas or whatever he was doing that was taking so long.

After this, we rode one more ride and we’d been waiting for it all day long.
It’s a good one–one of our favorites.

To Be Continued…
(Hopefully one last time.)

This is absolutely one of my favorites from the whole day.

I’m so tired tonight, I can’t even upload today’s batch of fun onto my computer.
I wasn’t even going to blog but then I sit down to check my email and my photo file starts calling my name.

I’ve just a few posts left from our day trip to Disney so I’m going to try and wrap that up quickly.
With so much going on and this baby looming (who will be coming to Blog Hog in a MAJOR way), it’s sort of now or never.

These photos are new to me because this was one ride that I couldn’t go on which STUNK because it was Creux’s first roller coaster experience!
And not surprisingly, HE LOVED IT!
He’s still talking about it today, actually.

Here’s my gang on the Woody Woodpecker’s Barnstormer or something goofy like that.
(Me, I was in the Princess line, holding the spots for my little barnstormers when they were done to come and meet those lovely ladies!)

Note to Jen Nalli: The Princess tent is right across from this ride and you would be wise, my darling friend, to send someone to wait for the Princesses while one of you rides this with Margot. It will cut down on the amount of time that Mason will drive you crazy. XO

Love this shot of Creux.
You can tell it’s an action one because his faces reads: Holy. CRAP!
He’s like frozen in place!

Not bad for a kid from Columbus, eh? :)

I haven’t been so good about Greer’s swimming progress, have I?
But we DID make some terrific gains with her (though she left not exactly swimming on her own but fully mobile around the pool–OFF THE STEPS, which has been her safety perch for two years now).

Day one, she kept that vest on and though would jump in, there was no face-wetting involved.
By Day two, Charlie convinced her to take the vest off for a bit and just play around for awhile.

There’s more to Day Two but I’m just taking a quick break from cleaning and promised myself I’d only blog for ten minutes and then I’d get back to work :)
This day and day eight were actually the days of biggest progress and I’m so glad I kept my camera busy because I’ve got all of her “milestones” just sitting in my travel file, waiting to be shared with her.

(And I can with, just the click of a button, access her “swimming” (or lack thereof) last year and show her how far she’s come. Love this whole blog keepsake thing. Love it.)

Back to the potties…sigh….

He was not hard to find at the beach–I just followed his fat little hoof-prints.
I LOVE these baby feet.
I do NOT love finding shoes for them.

We don’t need these in October or November, our “usual” time for Disney parking.
I still prefer it.
But with us slating our “spring breaks” in May after everyone else, I would go back at this time of year.
May wasn’t necessarily worse, it was just hotter.

You can’t see him but Creux tucked in there with me, smashing the baby the whole time :)

And a great one by Charlie:

After a very long afternoon of frantically hopping on and off rides one after another (we even ate lunch in lines, letting the kids have their sandwiches and strawberries and carrots as we waited here and there), it was a RELIEF to stumble upon this ariel tram in Tomorrow-Land.
It went all through the Tomorrow-Land section so we could peer down below at the people walking by but also took us through parts of rides–the Buzz one and Space Mountain in particular.
During the Space Mountain part, we were in total darkness just like the coaster riders and we could hear all their squeals and screams.
It was just a nice, relaxing ten minutes or so.
I did NOT want to get off :)

Highly recommend this one, don’t skip it if you get the chance to go…

His face looked like this for most of the day–he was just adorable.
He was still a monster but he was an adorable monster :)

And speaking of monsters, that monstrosity is what we rode next.
WAY fun.

…but it was ALMOST as good!