Swimming in Hudson & More Disney!

Our family enjoyed yet another busy, fun-filled weekend. After having Laura's side of the family in town last weekend, it was time to hang out with some of my side of the family - cousins, primarily.
My cousin Casey recently bought a house in Hudson, Florida with her boyfriend, Brian, and this was our first opportunity to visit their new home and spend time with them. We spent most of our time in their pool!

Kinzie was a wonderful swimmer, as she always is, and Maeby really enjoyed her second time ever in a pool!

More pool fun...

... Laura took a lot of pictures of the pool fun!

Kinzie was the Queen of the Nile on this poool raft.

... and a mermaid with her noodles.

Maeby practiced jumping in the pool, with my help.

... and not to be out-done, Nala displayed her pool-jumping abilities.

And Mackinzie finally convinced her mommy to join in on the swimming fun.

Casey was happy to finally have another 'Rode' girl in the family.

.... and Nala wanted a 'taste' of the action.

We ended our Friday night with an exciting game of 'Motor Mouth' - a board game from 1990 based on the speed-talking guy from those old 'Micro-Machines' commercials.
We had a great day on Saturday comprised of more swimming and lots of grilling out. There were also lots of games like darts, shuffle board, and Wii Bowling. It was definitely a relaxing weekend in Hudson and it was great to catch up with Casey & Brian.
On Sunday morning, Laura and I got the girls up at 5am and we hit the road back to Leesburg. We dropped Maeby off with Aunt Pat and swapped her out for my coustin, Artie, for the day. Laura, Kinzie, Artie and I headed off the Disney's Animal Kingdom to start off a day at the theme parks.

As soon as we entered the park, we stumbled across Stitch! He liked playing with Kinzie's pig-tails while we took their picture. Our first stop at the park was the Kilimanjaro Safari. We saw lots of wild animals, including a white rhino standing and eating no further than 4 feet from our vehicle. It was awesome!
While at the Animal Kingdom, we also enjoyed the Festival of the Lion King show and the Finding Nemo Musical.

While strolling through the "jungle" we came across Baloo from "The Jungle Book" and took the opportunity to add his autograph to Kinzie's "sign book", as she calls it.

Baloo even taught Artie the proper way to scratch your back up against a tree.

After a rather huge fiasco, Kinzie opted not to participate with the Dinosaur ride and it was probably for the best because it was a pretty scary ride. Instead she mustered up the courage to have her picture taken in front of the T-Rex skull.

Kinzie's bravery only took her so far... she made it inside the theater to see "Its Tough to Be A Bug!" - starring the characters from "A Bug's Life".

We all had a laugh taking pictures in our funny bug-3D glasses...
... but after about 5 minutes of stink bugs, bee stingers, giant grasshoppers, and smokey-fake bug spray, Mackinzie had had enough and she wanted out - immediately!
I guess our next showtime there will have to wait until she's a little older.

Our next stop of the day was Disney's Hollywood Studios where we met "Sully" from "Monster's Inc.".

Unfortunately, Sully's hands were too big to autograph Kinzie's "sign book", so we settled for a picture.
It was also unfortunate that the park closed at 7:00pm. We definitely would have liked to enjoy more of the rides and shows yesterday, but time just ran out too quickly - although we were able to do and see a lot, including the Aerosmith Rock N' Roller Coaster, the Tower of Terror, the Beauty & the Beast show, the Voyage of the Little Mermaid show, the Great Movie Ride and the Backlot Tour. We were also able to catch the new American Idol Experience finale and see some guy named Kevin Dees sing "Go The Distance" and win a "dream ticket" to the front of the line at any real American Idol audition. It was a very cool show altogether and very much like watching American Idol on television. Hopefully we'll make it back to Disney Hollywood Studios one more time before we leave Florida so that I can take the opportunity to audition myself!

I'll close out this blog post with one final picture of Mackinzie, rockin' the pink camo stroller and having another great day at Disney!
-Bert

a little chit chat from Maeby

longest blog of my life haha...

So Wednesday night we drove to the airport and picked up our friend Tana. She was a good sport playing with Kinzie :)
The next night (Thursday) we went back to the airport and picked up PopPop, GiGi, and Sissy. Then Friday we all got up crazy early and poppop GiGi and Sissy stayed home with the baby while Bert, Tana, Kinzie, and I went to the Magic Kingdom! Finally!

It turned out to be a really great day! :) When we got there, Kinzie wanted to go on the snow white ride first... there was a 0 minutes wait... .and then most of the rides after that we just walked right on! It was pretty unbelievable!

Here is Kinzie and Bert on the Peter Pan ride which had no wait but later we saw was up to a 50 minute wait! (yikes!)

Here we are on Mary Poppins Carousel

We spotted the Sword in the Stone.... Kinzie couldn't get it out....

....but boy was Bert determined haha...

And it still did not budge (but man did it push down Berts ego ;) haha)

Next was the Dumbo ride! This is Berts attempt to get a picture of us with the castle in the background... do you see the castle????? (don't look too hard - its not there haha)

Here is Tana and Kinzie on the Winnie the Pooh ride.... which turned out to be her favorite all day

Here's something new we didn't do last year... we met Ariel!!! :) She was a very nice mermaid :)
Then we did the 3D Mickey mouse something or another (I forget the actual name). This turned out to be favorite among the adults (I am including Bert in this count ...this time haha)

Then we played in Pooh's playground

Here is Kinzie with Alice and the White Rabbit

then here is the first time my heart was racing for my daughter.... we got on goofys rollercoaster... but it was a pretty intense roller coaster for a 3 year old.... but bert assured me she could do it... look at the people in the picture to show just how huge ths rollercoaster is....

So I held my breath... and it turns out that she liked it!!!!

Good for her... but bad for me... because this just opened up a world of possibilities (in Berts mind) of all the great rides Kinzie could now attempt to conquer.... (ugh!)

Here is Daddy, K inzie, and Rafiki (We know you are jealous uncle Bear!!!.... I'm sure you'd much rather be meeting rafiki than being in hawaii!)

When we finally made it over to the pirate ride.... Kinzie was so tired that she was actually drooling on Bert within 2 minutes haha...

So she slept through the pirates ride.... but no worries... we are with Bert... of course we are going to go on it again before we leave ;)

Then it started POURINGGGGGG!!!!!

It poured for about an hour.... we just stood in a store.....

Then the sun came back out and we met Peter and Wendy!

Now here is the next time my heart skipped a few beats for my little girl.... Bert wanted her to get on Splash Mountain!!!! He even decided to prove to me that she is tall enough.... and I mean JUST tall enough....

Here is a picture of the mountain....

I can't believe I allowed this (insert nervous laugh).... but she did it.... there wasn't even a lap bar! i was so scared... and was yelling at Bert the entire ride to hold her down .... Here she is when its over... she said that she liked it (which was a total front because she didn't want to dissapoint daddy) and when I asked if she wanted to do it again she quickly said no because the fox is too scary (note that the fox is NOT scary at all haha)... so I guess only time will tell if this tramatized her for life....

bert then wanted to take her to go on Big Thunder Railroad... which I pleasantly said absolutely not haha.... so we did a few more rides and then saw some of the parade and of course had to fit in the pirate ride one more time before we headed home... this time Kinzie was awake!

Here is Bert trying to Twitter during the ride...

Okay.... moving on to the next day.....

Pool time!!!!! Tana and I stayed just for a minute to grab a few pictures and then headed back because it was too hot for the baby .... and sneakily to make sure we got hat showers before everyone got back haha... sneaky sneaky sneaky....

Here's our crazy family in the van.... Bert and I had to yell at the kids in the back to settle down and stop hitting each other quite a few times....

We had a nice dinner at Kobe's

After dinner we headed to downtown disney...

This picture is for Uncle Play-Doh!

Pretty Girls

The best picture I could get of Sissy and Kinzie playing in the fountains

And of course the infamous shots....once again.... (can you find the hidden PopPop?!)

haha... and we gotta switch up the routine of this a little bit..... Minnie Mouse is now on my hit list ;)

PopPop enjoying his dessert... mmm!

And Kinzie finally got what she wanted... as much as I wanted her to get the Pocohantas Dress.... she got her Alice in Wonderland dress....

She watched the movie and did everything Alice did.... here she is laying in the flowers....

Now we are caught up to last night.... Prince charming and Cinderella's Happily Ever After Dinner!!!! Here Kinzie caught herself a good one! ;)

And here is her twin

And PopPop's dreams finally came true! ( He had been talking about this moment for awhile now haha)

The Fairy Godmother

Anastasia was so funny

and Drizella was nicer than we expected... Mackinzie made sure to tell her to be nice to Cinderella!

Bert was sooooo excited that they had the strawberry soup again (which I think is supposed to go on fruit??)

After dinner, we took a monorail ride , shopped in some stores, and Kinzie danced on the "stage"

Prince charming found her lost shoe.... and it fit! :)

Back at home we played games where Bert and I dominated PopPop and GiGi in Sequence and the Bert won in phase 10 ...
And Kinzie and Sissy took a nice "relaxing" (yeah right haha sorry sissy) bubble bath together! ;)... (ps. Sissy had a bathingsuit on)

So today they went to the pool for a little bit before it started raining and now we are relaxing and i'm about to bring up a rematch of phase 10... We take the Sroka's back to the airport tonight... but what a wonderful visit!