Walt Disney World Vacation || Part 2

Sunday morning, the guys had a Tee-Time at the Magnolia Golf Course. They said the course was beautiful.

While the guys golfed, my mom and I just hung out around the hotel with the kids. We took them over to the main building and we went to the gift shop to see about getting the kids some autograph books. :-)

 When the guys got back, we headed back to Disney Springs for a lunch reservation at T-Rex! We also went to the Lego Store!

 That night, we had tickets for the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party! So we got the kids all dressed in their Halloween Costumes and caught the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom. It was so much fun! We made sure to get good seats for the Boo-To-You Halloween Parade and the Happy Hallo-Wishes Fireworks Show. They were both amazing!! We also rode a few rides (Tea-cups, Dumbo and Jackson's favorite... Space Mountain to name a few). It was such a fun first visit to the Magic Kingdom with my parents and the kids! It was quite warm that night, so the kids costumes didn't last very long. Jackson dressed up like Kion from the Lion Guard, so as you can imagine, his costume was rather warm.

Avery showing me her scary face while we waited for the parade to start! Ha.

The parade was awesome!
The headless horseman started things off...

Jackson watching for the start of the parade.

Avery's face when she finally got to see Mickey and Minnie at her first Disney Parade!! Such a magical moment!

A cool character to see in the parade was Wreck it Ralph. You don't usually get to see him and he's one of Jackson's favorites. Such a cute movie.

I loved all the dancers! So cool.

Clara Bell Cow was another cool character that we got to see that you don't normally get to see. She was in the Halloween Parade as well and the kids were excited to see her from seeing her on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

And a couple favorite Disney Villains... Captain Hook and Maleficent.

Our first ride of the night was the Mad Tea Party!

And next we rode Dumbo!

After riding a few rides and stopping to say hi to Goofy, we headed over to get a spot for the fireworks.

After the fireworks we rode a few more rides, including Space Mountain... Jackson's favorite ride. We rode it at Disneyland last year when he was just barely tall enough to ride it. He was a little scared of it, but still couldn't wait to ride it again. So he rode it with Jake and I while my parents stayed back with Avery. Then he wanted to ride it again so my parents took him while Avery and I joined the Monsters Inc. dance party which was so much fun!

Don't let his look of terror fool you in this picture, ha!!

A little tidbit of information (for what it's worth), I highly recommend ordering the Disney Photo Pass ahead of time! It was a little pricey but really was worth the money. We were able to get so many cool pictures in front of the different landmark buildings and on the thrill rides and it made it to where I got to be in some of the pictures instead of always behind the camera. :-)

We rode a few other rides before heading home after a super fun night at the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party!

 The Halloween party was from 7:00 til Midnight, so needless to say both kids fell asleep in the stroller on the way home. We were able to wheel the stroller right onto the monorail without having to get the sleeping kids out, which was awesome!

 
Another little tidbit of information, I highly recommend renting a stroller from one of the several stroller companies Disney World works with. It was a life-saver for us. The first night we were there, we didn't have a stroller and had to carry both sleeping kids all the way from where the bus dropped us off at the resort, all the way up to our room. We had originally planned to rent a stroller from the parks each day, but after that, I went down to the front desk at the resort the next morning and talked to someone and they had a paper with around 4 different stroller companies that we could choose from. I called the first one on the list and rented a double stroller for the entire week. They had it ready to go for us that afternoon! It was so great and much cheaper than renting from the parks everyday. I could load it up the night before and have it ready to go the next morning.

So that was our first full day at Disney World and it was so much fun!! Part 3 should be up tomorrow and if you missed Part 1, you can check it out here!

Walt Disney World Vacation || Part 1

We got back from vacation 3 weeks ago and already it feels like forever. We had such a wonderful time! I really do think we're having withdrawals and have already started pre-planning our next trip (which we are planning to go to Disneyland in California sometime in 2018).

After getting back, I've jumped right into Fall photo sessions and have been super busy with that, so I just haven't had much time for blogging, but I've been itching to get some of my Disney pictures up here for you all to see. I took SO many pictures that it has taken me this long just to go through and edit some of my favorites. I thought I'd try and get it all done in one long post, but that just isn't working, so here's part one of several Disney posts. I hope you'll follow along! 

We left Friday at lunch time (Jake and I each had to work in the morning). We had the rental car all loaded up the night before and we headed out of St. Louis at around 1:00 Friday 9/23. We rented an 8-seater Ford Expedition so that all 6 of us would have plenty of room for such a long drive. It was the perfect vehicle for the drive and accommodated us all very well. My dad and Jake golfed one day while we were there, so we attached the golf clubs to the roof rack to give us extra room for luggage in the back. It worked out great.

We stopped in Nashville for dinner at Donatos Pizza which was quite good. After dinner, I put pajamas on the kids and we drove on to Atlanta. We had a hotel room reserved in Atlanta for the night. The next morning we had breakfast and headed to Orlando!

Both kids did really great on the drive there and back. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they did with such a long drive.

 Such a happy moment when you finally get there and drive through the Disney World Gate!!!

We got to our resort at around 5:00 and got all checked in and settled. We are Disney Vacation Club members and this was our first stay since joining. Our "home" is at the Grand Floridian and to say it's a beautiful resort would be an understatement. It was amazing! It was the resort I never thought I'd ever have the chance to stay in and it was really awesome to actually get to stay there all week. I can't say enough great things about it.

(The lobby of the main building.)

The Grand Floridian has several buildings. The particular building we stayed in was for Disney Vacation Club Members. Our villa was on the top floor overlooking the Seven Seas Lagoon. It was all just gorgeous.

The beautiful lobby in the building we stayed in.

This little kids corner of the lobby was so cute!

The kids loved the pools and the view from our balcony was amazing. Our villa had a kitchen, an amazing bathroom and washer/dryer. The kids loved the big jacuzzi bathtub and they loved that the mirror right across from the tub had a t.v.!! Pretty cool.

 After we got in and settled, Jake and my parents went to the grocery store for some groceries for the week while I took the kids to the pool! I definitely got the best end of that deal!

Then later that night we rode the Disney bus to Disney Springs for dinner.
It was very crowded, so we just got some quick food at a couple different stands and called it a night.

 It was a great first day at Disney World! Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2!