Our first day was in Animal Kingdom. Did I mention we were in almost the farthest room from the elevators? It was a little insane. Ben had his scooter, which could happily carry the backpack.
We went to breakfast first. However, on the way, Ben's scooter completely ran out of battery. It went from all the way full to not moving in about thirty seconds. A cast member stopped by and said there was a place somewhat close by to charge. So we pushed the scooter. The location was easily within sight of where we were, but it say it was close was a bit of an understatement. Scooters don't push. They don't really have a neutral, so we really had to put our backs into it. We got it to the plug though and proceeded to breakfast. Luckily Ben can walk a bit. The family as a whole really loves breakfast. Maybe it's because I never put any effort into breakfast (although Ben makes eggs once a week), but I always enjoy it at Disney.
We were close to the Lion King show and the timing was about right, so we did that next. We also got out our hand warmers while standing in line - the morning was chilly! While in line we got Isaac to laugh. It's really easy to make him laugh; everything seems to tickle his funny bone.
The Lion King was fun. We were in the giraffe section, which made Isaac happy. I think most of us like the acrobatic monkeys the best. Afterwards we went to check on the scooter because the place we changed it didn't want us to leave it there too long. We moved it to a different (but still nearby) place...I'm honestly not sure why they didn't just send us there right away. We got a wheel chair for Ben so that the scooter could charge the rest of the day and at least get back to the hotel for an exchange.
We went towards Expedition Everest next, stopping for some quick pictures.
Pretending to be cold was not a challenge.
Ben felt funny as the only one to not have sunglasses on, so he photoshopped some on for the yeti pose.
We didn't tell the kids anything about the ride except that it didn't go upside-down. I got to ride with Joshua the first time, and as we sat at the torn up section of the ride I said, "what's going to happen?" and he thought we were going to just drop down. The backwards was a pleasant surprise. We only rode it once in the morning and then came back in the afternoon to ride it two more times - the line wasn't too long and we ate some snacks in line so it went pretty quickly. Cheryl and Isaac rode in the front the second time and I think Ben and Joshua rode in the front the third time.
After Everest, we slowly made our way to the Avatar rides. We saw some parrots flying as we went over there and they were pretty cool. Yay for Avatar! Ben teased me for the rest of the day because as we were talking about the ride in line I said it is kind of like riding a motorcycle. Ben said, "no, it is like riding a dragon." I maintain my example because there are multiple ways to ride a dragon but there is really only one way to ride a motorcycle. We enjoyed the breathing of the not-dragons-but-I-can't remember-the-name. The ride was fun. Ben didn't get sick this time - the Dramamine was a huge help this year. The only downside was that the 3D glasses were a bit blurry so the 3D effects weren't all sharp.
One of the last big things was the safari. The giraffe came up so close to us and Isaac was thrilled!!
We stopped for some snacks before getting on Everest again. The line wasn't very long, but it was a nice way to to make the time go a bit faster.
We also rode on the railroad to the ...place the railroad takes us to. We walked around a bit, but no one was interested in the petting zoo so we came back and made our way to our hotel.
Once there, it had gotten dark. And we were hungry. We divided everything up...the kids held two tiny tables for us. Ben changed out his scooter, which thankfully got all the way back home without any problems. I walked all the way back to the room to get our drink glasses and then went to fill them up. (My goal at Disney tends to be to walk a lot so that I can eat a lot.) I thought the pizza was delicious, Isaac thought it was edible. It came up in conversation several more times, which was surprising, but we both maintained our stance.
Today I finished cleaning the shoe closet! It was lovely to have a space only take about a month instead of a year. I don't expect the bottom of the closet to stay clean as we all just throw our shoes in the bottom, but it also gets cleaned on a semi-regular basis.
There were several items in the shoe hanger that were really old and needed to be removed. It also got a nice shaking out.
While the closet is still full, I got rid of several coats that haven't been worn in ages, added some bins for better storage and sorting, got rid of several pairs of toddler mittens, and will donate Isaac's sparring gear to the karate school. It went from overflowing to full, so it's still a win. Also, the walls were surprisingly messy so they got cleaned up. The shoe rack and floor were unsurprisingly dirty, so they also got cleaned up.
Next up is the LEGO room. This one will be challenging for two reasons. 1) It is large and 2) it is used a lot so it is hard to "get clean". There are some natural ways to divide it up though, so I'll be contemplating those over the next week. We have some cabinets and drawers, some shelves that will mostly just need a dusting, a wall area, and the LEGO bins themselves. They will probably take more time than expected. It also really needs a carpet cleaning, so maybe that will be part of the process too. (If not, then we'll do it in the summer.)
I feel like I finally got a few things done today, including getting the table and kitchen cleaned. It's amazing how much it makes a difference when they are clean.
A friend came over to work on a puzzle for a little bit which was nice...although it is a harder puzzle than we were expecting.
We went to the Ash Wednesday service at church. It wasn't very long, but that was perfect.
Today was winter break, but it was an odd day. The kids only had a half day, so while I did get some things done it was odd getting the kids. I continued to try and do one of the items from yesterday and failed twice. I added several items to eBay and one sold within a few hours, so that was exciting.
I made more curry today. Joshua recently decided to eat curry (it was previously his skip meal), so instead of eight batches I only got six batches. Between that and bringing Isaac to an ortho appointment, that was about all I got done this morning.
This afternoon I decided to work on items that were someone time sensitive, but I could only manage to get them started and not really finish them. But that's how some things go too...
Isaac had a band concert tonight. His band sounded a lot better than I expected. In the past it's been a bit on the edge, but this time it sounded like they knew what they were doing. Isaac played timpani on the first song and set on the second.
We were leaving right after work and school today, so my plan was to bring the kids to school and then come home and finish the last of the packing before teaching. Before I brought the kids to school I was working on stuff and found out that there was no more kitty litter. *Sigh*. I knew we were low but I thought we had enough.
Luckily Meijer carries the kitty litter we use and luckily I found it before bringing the kids to school, so it was a quick stop after dropping them off. It would have been annoying otherwise.
Classes went fine. Natalie and I had lunch - we were both flying out later in the afternoon but on different flights. We commiserated about getting ready.
Anyway, the flights actually went really well. We had to walk to the next gate during our layover a little faster than we were hoping, but we had time and then that flight was delayed about ten minutes anyway. The biggest snaffu was our Uber ride. Ben had reserved a ride in advance, but when we were ready the ride was 40 minutes away and getting farther away. Dealing with getting a refund from Uber was not the most fun thing, but Ben did manage it. The next driver was there in about ten minutes, but the whole thing took about 30min. Oh, and then at the hotel the kids and I had a hard time finding the hotel room, which was about a five minute walk from the elevators, and Ben had a hard time getting his scooter from the bellhop.
Eventually everyone was in the room though. The kids went to sleep very quickly, and Ben and I went to sleep shortly afterwards.
