Hello there! It's been a few weeks! Between Disney & planning a 4th birthday party, blogging has definitely fallen on the back burner. But here I am, attempting to get back on track! This will definitely be a lengthy post with a million photos, but you better believe I was beyond camera happy in Disney. Trying to narrow down out of 500 photos which ones were blog worthy was no easy task! But here we go, I hope you enjoy!
For starters, before we left, I knew I was going to need a new stroller. I hated our current double stroller, as it was the size of a small bus and had no storage. I sold that online, and immediately began the search for the perfect one (that didn't cost an arm & a leg). After doing lots of research, I finally found the one I wanted. A friend recommended a website where I could purchase it at a discount cost, so I was sold! I received it the day before we left & couldn't have been happier with my purchase!
We ended up with the City Select double stroller from Baby Jogger. The greatest thing about this stroller is that it can easily transition from a single to a double. Christian generally walks everywhere, but I knew Disney required a LOT of walking, and I didn't want to test our luck with not having a place for him as well. I purchased the parent console & snack tray for accessories and we were set & ready for our trip!
The trip down was separated into 2 trips...the first half was about 8 hours and then we stopped in Macon, Georgia for the night. We made several pit stops along the way to stretch our legs & fill our tummies. The boys did amazingly in the car...way better than I expected! Endless amounts of cartoons, movies, snacks & games kept them plenty entertained.
The second half of the trip was only 4-5 hours, depending on traffic. We stopped for our customary "we're in Florida!" photo before getting stuck in an hour's worth of construction traffic. I felt like the second day took much longer because of the traffic, but we finally made it to our hotel around 4pm.
We checked into our hotel...Art of Animation Resort...did some exploring, figured out how to use our Magic Bands, grabbed dinner, put on our new Mickey pj's & called it a night.
Chef Mickey's was by far our favorite experience all week long. The boys have never been happier in their short little lives than when they met all of the characters. Of course I cried every time they met someone new...blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but seeing them so excited and happy melted my heart.
After lunch, we went back to the park, explored some more & Christian and Dustin rode the fun roller coaster rides. It was Christian's 1st time riding a big roller coaster, and he had a blast.
We left the park for naps and then finished out our first day playing at the pool. I think the pictures speak for themselves on how the boys felt about that. ;)
The rest of our vacation was hit & miss. I'm so glad that first day went so perfectly, because we all had to adjust our expectations for what was to come.
The second day was supposed to be dedicated to Magic Kingdom again, to finish the things we weren't able to do & see on the first day. We decided to take the bus today, as the ferry took forever. We went for the opening show & then straight to our breakfast reservations at The Crystal Palace. The boys once again loved meeting more characters...this time Winnie the Pooh & the gang. Gavin's favorite was Piglet and he did not want to let go of him!
As soon as breakfast ended, things went downhill quickly. For starters, when we picked Gavin up out of his high chair, we suddenly realized someone had a blow out diaper. Mess everywhere. We rushed him to bathroom to get him cleaned up, only to quickly realize, we were out of baby wipes. Luckily, I remembered there was a baby care center next door, so we headed over there to finish cleaning him up. I was in such a hurry to get him cleaned up, I accidentally dragged Christian down some stairs. Talk about great parenting! So now he's crying with a bloody knee and Gavin is still covered in poop. Fabulous.
I threw Gavin at Dustin, ran into the first aid center to grab band-aids (because of course I didn't have any on me...that would have been too smart) & cleaned up Christian's knee so he would stop crying. I then went back into the baby care center, bought a new pack of wipes, ran back out, grabbed Gavin, back in, cleaned Gavin, back out to hand a naked Gavin to Dustin, back in to wash Gavin's outfit in the sink & then back out to dress him again. Whew. Dustin went in the bathroom to clean himself up. We get the boys all settled in their seats.
Take a deep breath. Reset.
I told Dustin I needed to use the bathroom really quickly and then we could head over for our first fast pass ride. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for what I was about to see as I came out of the bathroom. Dustin was covered in puke. Gavin was covered in puke. There was puke all over the brand new stroller. And Christian was off playing in the water fountain completely oblivious.
Gavin had thrown up everywhere. I stood there in shock for a couple seconds while there were people over & over asking me what they could do to help. The Disney workers happened to be right there and immediately started handing us towels. I peeled Gavin's outfit back off, started wiping him down & held back tears. Was this really happening right now?!
The staff was amazing. One lady left immediately to find Gavin a new outfit. The other two ladies offered to take our stroller and clean & disinfect it. So while they were doing that, I took Gavin back to baby care & used the rest of the wipes I had just bought to clean him up...again. And then he started puking...again.
I knew at this point we were going to have to leave the park. I was so thankful we had taken the bus, because the ferry would have been a nightmare. Gavin seemed to be feeling better, so we put him back in the clean stroller, in a new clean onesie & high-tailed it out of Magic Kingdom before he started up again. He passed out almost immediately and slept almost the whole way back to the resort. He woke up just before we got back though & started getting sick again. Luckily we were prepared with a bag and we're able to catch it without creating a mess.
Back to the hotel room for the rest of the day! He threw up 2 more times, laid down for a nap & woke up acting like he had never been sick. Since Christian was pretty sad about leaving the park, I had Dustin take him to play at the pool. We took it easy the rest of the day & tried to figure out how to make up for our lost day at Magic Kingdom.
So day #3 of Disney was supposed to be a pool day, followed by Bahama Breeze for dinner & Epcot for a couple rides and fireworks. Instead we decided to stick with taking it easy during the day, pool before naps and as long as there were no more "episodes" we would head back to Magic Kingdom & try to make up for the lost time.
Everyone seemed to be feeling great during the day, so we took showers, got dressed & headed to an evening at Magic Kingdom. The park was so accommodating for what we had went through & gave us 3 more fast passes on top of the 3 we already had. And Dustin was able to make last minute reservations at Be Our Guest restaurant for dinner...so off we went!
Be Our Guest was amazing, but Gavin was such a handful. We weren't sure if it was because he still didn't feel well, or he's just at that really tough age, but he refused to sit in a high chair. So one of us had to hold him & entertain him the entire meal. However, the food was amazing and the atmosphere...unbelievable!
We got to ride every ride on our list without wait thanks to our extra fast passes, bought fun new souvenirs, including Gavin's 1st Mickey, which he LOVED & then got settled in for the parade & fireworks show. Once again, Gavin was a handful, as it was way past his bedtime, but he finally fell asleep after fighting it for a good hour, and slept through the entire fireworks show! At this point though, it started pouring rain, so walking back to bus was a tad annoying. However, Gavin made it through the entire day without throwing up again, we had a wonderful evening at Magic Kingdom & all seemed to be back on track...oh, how wrong I was!
Day #4 we had a day at Hollywood Studios planned. The main thing we wanted to do here was have lunch with the Disney Jr characters & ride the Toy Story Mania ride. I knew we weren't going to be able to do any of the shows, thanks to Gavin's age & temperament, but we still wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Our reservations were at Hollywood & Vine, where we met Sophia, Handy Manny, Jake & Doc McStuffins. Once again, happiest boys alive.
Afterwards we walked around, discovered there wasn't much else to do for the ages we had with us, and decided to head back to the hotel for naps. Our fast pass for the Toy Story ride wasn't until 4pm, so we napped, headed back to the park afterwards & rode the much anticipated Toy Story Mania. It really was a lot of fun and I'm glad we came back to ride it. Christian had a blast & so did I!
We grabbed some dinner & decided to call it a day. Day #5 was our last day at Disney and we we're planning on Animal Kingdom, something I was really looking forward to!
About midnight however, we woke up to the sound of more puking...from the other little boy. And unlike Gavin's 4-5 episodes, Christian threw up all night long, every 30 minutes. I laid right next to him all night with a bucket. And then at 4am, I hear Dustin run to the bathroom and start throwing up as well. Seriously? Seriously?!
At this point I just broke down. We spent our entire tax refund on this trip. We spent months planning & had such high expectations...why was this happening?! I had a serious pity party for myself and my boys for a good couple hours. Plus, I was exhausted & I knew Gavin was going to wake up in a couple hours and any chance of sleeping was out the window. But, luckily, Christian seemed to get it all out of his system by 8am, so the three of laid in bed and watched cartoons all day long while Dustin was sick in the other room.
At this point, I considered just going home and skipping out on Animal Kingdom. Sure, it would be a huge waste of money & I wouldn't get to see the main things I had wanted all week, but we were supposed to be leaving early Saturday morning, so what other option did we have?
Luckily, Dustin started feeling better around noon & talked me out of my pity party. We said that if everyone was feeling better after spending all of Friday resting, we would do Animal Kingdom in the morning on Saturday & leave afterwards. And instead of driving through the night, we'll just stop halfway through again. Problem solved.
So from noon on, everyone started recovering & keeping liquids down. We all slept on & off all day long and woke up Saturday morning puke free! We packed up our bags, loaded up the car and headed off to Animal Kingdom. It was so amazing and I'm so happy we decided not to skip out on it! It was probably my favorite park...between the Jeep Safari ride, the tree of life & the amazing atmosphere, I was very impressed. We had lunch at Rainforest Cafe & then said our final farewell to Disney.
We hit the road & decided we would try to make it to Atlanta before stopping for the night. Unfortunately our bad luck wasn't quite over, because I started feeling extremely nauseous a couple hours in, fell asleep & woke up to Dustin getting pulled over for speeding. Woohoo. He wrote us a nice little ticket, we hit the road again, my nausea kept getting worse and wouldn't ya know it...by the time we stopped at our hotel in Atlanta, I was the one throwing up all night in the bathroom. Once I got it out of my system, I felt much better. The rest of the trip home felt like forever, and the boys got restless about an hour out. BUT we made it home safely and we're never happier to see our own beds!
All in all, it really was a good trip. We learned to roll with whatever was being thrown at us, and looking back, we made a lot of great memories. After doing some research & talking to the pediatrician, we think we contracted the Norovirus from contaminated food. The way it works is once it hits your digestive system, you get sick. And since everyone's digestive track is different, we all got it at different times. Obviously, Gavin is a tiny little guy, so he got it immediately. The boys have pretty normal digestive systems, so they got it around 24-36 hours later, the normal time, and then lucky me...I have the digestive track of a snail thanks to pregnancy hormones, so I was days later. Regardless, next Disney trip will be filled with LOTS of hand sanitizer and maybe skipping out on the buffets.
So that about sums up our trip to Disney...we are still recovering from what I like to call vacation hangover and trying to get back in the swing of things. Christian's birthday party was yesterday, which hopefully I'll be able to blog about today or tomorrow, & his actual birthday is this week. I'm also nesting like crazy & dying to get started on operation nursery & the shared boys' room. We are planning on taking a trip to IKEA this weekend as well, so it should be another jam-packed, crazy week...but would I really want it any other way?!
If you stuck with me through this whole blog post...kudos to you & thanks for reading!
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