Our family enjoys being outdoors. We like to go hiking and take walks at the park. Jason and the kids like going on bike rides and as you know, I’m a runner. However, we just recently started going camping as a family. I guess you can say we are officially “outdoorsy” now 😉 To check out my 5 tips for camping with kids, go HERE!
Anyhow, we’d been camping twice and both times to the same place, Navajo Lake in Utah, so for this year’s camping trip we decided we’d try someplace new. We made reservations to a campsite in Central Utah called Kents Lake. We went with 3 other families, all of which had also been with us on our last camping trip. We arrived on a Thursday afternoon and spent 2 nights sleeping in tents and enjoying the fresh air. The weather was a bit warmer than our last trips, but we appreciated it at night. We had one afternoon of showers and hail, which put a slight damper on our lunch and made Elysse freak out, but it cleared up pretty quickly and all was well again!
The main highlight for our family was Diego catching his first fish on the lake! It was so special to see his face light up! Huge thanks to the family fishing next to them for sharing their secret weapon with us and helping him figure out what to do once he’d caught it.
The camp site was fine, but I wouldn’t recommend it as it didn’t have flushing toilets. Now, I understand we’re camping and all, but flushing toilets are a basic necessity for me. They had vault toilets, which is really just an outhouse. Also, compared to Navajo Lake, there wasn’t too much to do around the campsite or on the lake. Of course, when you’re camping with 13 other people and you are all good friends, you don’t need much more than that! We still had a really good time with lots of laughs and new memories were made. We can’t wait to go camping again together, just not at Kent’s Lake this time. We’re thinking of changing it up and doing some beach camping in Southern California next summer. What’s your favorite camping spot? Have you been camping at the beach? Let me know in the comments below.
Here we are at the end of yet another year. Most years go by really fast for me but, I think 2017 didn’t go by as fast as other years. We definitely had some busy seasons with work and travels, mostly during the summer and October, but the rest of the year felt smooth and less rushed than others. I’m so not complaining about that! I am not one to glorify busy and enjoy taking time to enjoy my days and not feel rushed.
A big highlight of the year for me was becoming part of the Rock N Roll Marathon Series ambassador program, called Rock N Blog and I’m excited to be a part of the team again for 2018! This definitely set the tone for my running schedule for the year. I ended up running 18 races! Seven of these were virtual 5Ks, but they still came with some awesome race bling!! One was the Run Love Virtual 5K by Running Skirts and the other 6 were with the Rock N Roll Race Series! I also did a fun non-competitive community 5K with the kiddos. And 2 more 5Ks, one at Rock N Roll San Diego and the other at Rock N Roll Las Vegas as part of the Remix Challenge. I ran 2 obstacle course races, the Vegas Spartan Super and the Badass Dash. Lastly, I ran a total of 6 half marathons this year. By far, the most half marathons I’ve ran in 1 year! My favorite was the San Diego Half Marathon, not because I PRed or anything, but because it was such a fun race! If you want to check out any or all the race recaps, you can do so HERE!
Traveling and getting out to explore new places, near and far, is a big part of our lives. This year, 3 of our trips were race-cations! We traveled to San Diego, Seattle, and Napa for me to run half marathons + we got vacations out of it too, I’d say it was a win-win for everyone! For Spring Break we visited the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Six Flags Magic Mountain, and Malibu. We took our summer family vacation visiting the Pacific Northwest. We spent 2 days in Seattle and rest of our week was spent in Oregon. We stayed in Portland and saw the main sights in the city, as well as visiting the Oregon Coast and the Colombia River Gorge, including the famous Multnomah Falls. We also took a kid-free weekend getaway trip to San Diego, mostly to run the Rock N Roll 5k + half marathon but also to unwind a bit. It was great. Another trip we took was to the Sonoma/Napa Wine Valley. That was a fun trip we took with our friends without the kiddos too. I ran the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon and the rest of the time we visited some amazing wineries and ate some delicious food!
We also planned smaller weekend and day trips throughout the year to Southern California, Valley of Fire, Willow Beach at the Arizona border, and Sand Hollow State Park in Utah. We had a great Summer Bucket List, full of activities and even though we didn’t finish everything on the list, it was a ton of fun! This year we also celebrated my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary!
This time of year, I always like to reflect on all aspects of my life and really take note of what worked, what didn’t, where I can improve, and start planning for the upcoming year. It can be difficult to balance life and I know it’s impossible to get it all right, all the time. The best I can do is learn from my experiences, grow, and start off with a good plan. I hope you too take the time to reflect and learn from this past year and not just dwell on what didn’t go right, but really embrace and appreciate all the good too! XO Jessie
This year Elysse is in a new elementary school and Diego started middle school and both are traditional 9-month schools. Before that they both were in a year-round school that had 3- week track breaks throughout the year. To say they are excited for this summer break is a bit of an understatement. With being in the middle of buying a new house and moving, I’ll admit last summer was kinda lame. We kept our list small and simple! This year we decided to go all out!!! Since I’m scheduled to run 17 races in 2017 (YIKES!!) the kids thought it’d be fun to keep the same theme going for our family summer bucket list. I think this may be our biggest and most ambitious summer bucket list to date! So, without further ado, here is our epic summer bucket list for 2017:
Each year we always find a fun way to display our list so we don’t forget what our plans are! Plus, it’s so much fun to see all the fun we’ve had and all the fun activities we still have to do. This year we wrote each activity on a note card and hung them along our dining room wall. We then plan on taking a photo with our fuji instax camera and trade it out for the note card as we do each activity. We hope that by Labor Day, we’ll have zero note cards and a wall full of fun photos of our summer adventures!
What fun activities and adventures do you have planned for this summer? If your stumped, get your family together and work on your own family summer bucket list this weekend! I promise it will make this summer one to remember. Check out my blog post HERE for tips on how to create your own list and follow the links there for some inspiration from our past summer bucket lists too!
Hey remember me? Yea, it’s been a hot minute since I blogged. OOPSY! These past 2 months away from the blog has shown me that I really do love blogging. Coming here and sharing our family travels, the ups and downs of life, and having a place to log my running and staying accountable to my fitness goals is really important to me. So why did I take a blogging break? Because I got lazy. That’s the plain and simple truth about it. And it cost me. Not being accountable with my fitness goals these last few months has definitely left it’s pounds, um, I mean mark. No, really, the pounds came on too! Plus, I missed having a place to share and update on what’s been going on in this messy life of mine.
But, this isn’t a blog post about regrets and feeling sorry for myself. With a new year, comes a clean slate and I’ve had some time to meditate on what it is I want to focus on with this blog and I plan on sharing lots of great things in the coming weeks and months. I hope you stick around around for the ride.
Before we get started on making It’s a Messy Life better than ever in 2017, I want to look back at all the fun and adventures we had in 2016.
The biggest thing for us in 2016 is that we purchased our home! After living in Las Vegas for 7 years, we finally decided to plant some roots. Although purchasing our home seemed to take up most of our time and resources this year, it was a great decision and we’re excited to be homeowners! I look forward to sharing more from our home, as we decorate and make it our own.
2016 also marked our 20th wedding anniversary in August! My family threw us a sweet 1920’s theme anniversary party at my sister’s house and it was such a fun time. And, Jason and I decided to put off the bathroom remodel in the house and take ourselves on an epic adventure to Peru! We took off without the kids for 8 days and crossed off a few things from our bucket list, including visiting Machu Pichu! I can’t wait to share more from our trip soon and share tips and tricks to traveling outside of the country.
Aside from these 2 major events, I also ran the LA Marathon in February. This was my first full marathon. 26.2! I was so grateful to have my family there cheering me on! You can read the recap HERE and check out the fun we had afterwards too exploring LA with the kiddos on THIS blog post.
In other running related news, I finished the year with a pretty low milage of 327.30 yearly miles. Although it was not a year full of a ton of races, the races I did run were great. I especially loved running the Terrain Mud Run 5K as a family! I just realized I didn’t blog about that, so be on the look out for that race recap, along with some pretty funny pics of my kiddos in mud 😉 For more race recaps of 2016, go HERE!
As a family, we had a pretty fun year too! We went on our 2nd annual summer camping trip to Lake Navajo in Utah. We traveled to LA twice and Ventura Beach. We saw the super bloom at Death Valley, enjoyed seeing it snow up in Mount Charleston in December, we spent lots of spring and fall afternoons hiking Red Rock Canyon, and visiting the water parks this summer.
Although it was a stressful and busy year (yeah, I know, which year isn’t, right?) I still think 2016 was noteworthy and we can always find some good in every season of our life. I hope you also took the time to reflect on this past year and were able to find the good in it too!
One of the best reasons to choose a race in a different city is the opportunity for a race-cation! You know, where you sign up for a race and plan a trip around it! Because I love to run and I love to travel even more, it’s no wonder most of my races are out of town. I love being able to combine two of my favorite things! Mostly, these are just weekend getaways like for the L.A. Marathon and sometimes they are full-on family vacations, like for Disney’s Wine and Dine Half Marathon in DisneyWorld. Either way, it’s always exciting to get away and run in a new place!
Last month I got to race the Ventura Beach Half Marathon and we made a nice little family trip out of it. The kids had already started school, so we let them play hooky and we left Friday morning. We headed straight to L.A.’s The Grove shopping center where Elysse had an appointment with a personal shopper at the American Girl store! You can read all about her amazing experience and my recommendations when visiting this store HERE. While Elysse and I shopped and had lunch at the American Girl Cafe, Jason and Diego spent their afternoon catching PokeMon Go at the nearby La Brea Tar Pits. They also grabbed a bite to eat and even did a little shopping too.
In case you didn’t know, Friday afternoon traffic through L.A. is insane. We thought because we were leaving a few hours before rush hour that we would be ok, but it was still really congested and it took us quite awhile to get from Los Angeles to Ventura. When we finally arrived at our hotel, I realized just how chilly the evenings are in Ventura and we were not prepared! Elysse still got in the pool before we headed to dinner. She’s crazy and maybe I’m a little crazier for letting her get in. But hey, it’s a vacation!
Saturday morning, was packet pickup and our family day at the beach. The first thing we did, was head to Old Navy to get some sweaters because the morning was cold and cloudy and I knew the evening would also be chilly. Then we headed to Trader Joe’s to grab food for our beach picnic lunch later. At this point, we’re all starving, so we had to find a place to eat a late breakfast on Main St. Finally, around noon, we made it to the beach. Packet pick up was right next to the pier and super quick to find and get my bib for the race the next day.
After all of this, it was finally time to relax at the beach for the day! The weather was cool but it did get pretty sunny once that morning fog rolled out. We spent the day lounging, making sand castles, and gathering shells. Diego had gotten a skate board while in L.A. so him and Jason practiced skating along the bike trail. It was seriously one of the most chill out days at the beach we’ve ever had. Even though it was too cold for actual swimming in the ocean, it was a blast! We were all so stuffed from our big breakfast, that we didn’t even have our lunch or snacks until we got in the car to leave.
As soon as we got back to our hotel, Elysse was ready to jump in the pool again! I don’t know how she has so much energy. But, because we didn’t swim in the ocean, we figured why not! So her and Jason stayed at the pool while Diego and went up to the room to get a head start on showers and get ready for dinner.
Sunday was race day and it was perfect! You can read all about my race recap HERE. Unfortunately, with school on Monday, we decided to head back home soon after the race was done. After my race, we headed back to the hotel to check-out and for me to get myself all cleaned up from the half marathon. After breakfast we decided to take the scenic route and find the Musical Road in Lancaster, CA. It was originally made for a Honda commercial. It’s a quarter mile bit of road that when driven on it, it is supposed to sound like William Tell Overature or better known as the theme from the classic Lone Ranger tv show. Was it worth taking the scenic route for this? Absolutely! There are only a few of these musical roads in the world and even though it wasn’t perfectly in tune, it was still a fun little side track.
Click the photo to see and hear our drive over the Musical Road!
We also got to see one of the largest wind farms in the world as we drove back to the interstate. We had no idea we’d be seeing that, but when we kept seeing so many rows of windmills, I quickly googled and found out it was the Alta Wind Project, also called the Mojave Wind Farm, the third largest onshore wind energy project in the world. Pretty neat bit of trivia 🙂
All and all, our family race-cation was a much needed break from the busy months we’d been having with packing and moving and the kids starting new schools. I highly recommend when looking for your next race, consider making it a race-cation! I’m sure the idea of traveling and getting away will be a nice motivator as you put in those training miles!
My daughter is almost 8 years old and she is so much fun to around! Sure, her and her big brother bicker more than I like. And, yes she whines about minor paper cuts or when asked to go to bed. Oh and one more thing, she is so forgetful! It’s kinda ridiculous. BUT….she is also an amazing spirited kid. She has the best imagination and I just love to see her play with her dolls and make all kinds of crafts from sewing clothes for her dolls to making pop-up greeting cards. She’s such a girly girl too.
So, it came to no surprise that about a year ago or so, she began to show interest in American Girl dolls. Now, I was not about to spend that kind of money on a doll for her. It seemed way over priced. Honestly, I’m not big on buying my kiddos too many toys. I can’t remember the last toy we bought them. I’m way more willing to spend money on taking them on fun adventures and experiences. That being said, when she came home with a D in writing on her progress report last year, Jason promised if she brought that D up to a B she would get her American Girl doll. Well, I gotta hand it to her. She put in the work and made huge progress. She came home at the end of the year with all A’s and one B, yup in writing. We were all so proud of her and her grandparents who live in NY, knowing about the deal made with her, sent her the money for the doll as an end-of-the-year gift. She was beyond excited and we were beyond grateful!
When it came down to buying the doll, we considered just ordering it online since there isn’t a store in Las Vegas, but it just didn’t seem as fun. I knew they had a store in L.A. and since we’d be in California in September, we thought it would be a lot more fun to go to the actual store and make it part of an experience! There I go again with the “experiences” huh!
Elysse patiently waited the month or so before our trip and it was so worth it! I did my research and came up with a good strategy to make the best of our trip and not break the bank!
Playing around in the store before our shopping appointment.
With her grandparents already contributing to the purchase of an actual doll, I knew we’d have to splurge a little on clothing and accessories. Jason and I came up with a budget and then I sat with her and we checked out the website and started thinking of which doll she’d like. If you’ve never seen the website, you should check it out. The accessories and clothes are insane! I got an idea of the things she liked and then it came down to deciding. Mind you, we did this at home and not in the store! I didn’t give her an exact dollar amount, I just steered her in the general ball park. We decided we’d buy her doll 1 outfit, a pair of glasses (like hers), maybe a matching t-shirt or accessory for Elysse. Plus the one thing she absolutely had to have, which was a carrying case for her new doll.
When I was checking out American Girl website, I saw that they offered personal shoppers and that it was a totally free service. Well, I was totally up for that and made our appointment. Our personal shopper greeted us as we arrived to the store, gave us a tour of the store, along with a little history on the dolls and each of their stories. It was definitely a treat for us, especially since this was our first visit. This store is huge. It’s about the size of a department store, think Macy’s but only with doll stuff! Plus, it was just super nice to have someone helping Elysse choose her doll and not having to ask for assistance every time she wanted to see a doll or accessory. I also loved that she gave us time to shop without her, so there was no sales pressure! It turned out they were running a sales promotion on TrulyMe dolls, where you purchased 2 outfits and an accessory and received 20% off. So, in the end, she ended up with an additional doll outfit for her doll. She chose a fancy glittery outfit and a gymnastics outfit. Plus, matching glasses like hers and the coveted doll carrier. Once it was time to make the purchase, we didn’t have to go to the check out, but rather we went into the personal shopper office and we sat in comfy couches, while she took care of ringing us up and throwing in a few goodies, like a poster and magazine, for us. I can definitely see the advantages of this on a busy weekend or during the holiday season.
My happy little shopper! The store has 2 levels! It’s that huge.
The other big splurge was having lunch reservations at the cafe. Yes, there is even a cafe in the store. Elysse wanted to eat at on the balcony and it ended up we were the only ones outside. To be honest, there were only a handful of other tables filled during our lunch spot. I’m sue this was because it was a school day and it was also the later lunch slot. You should know it’s not set up like a regular restaurant, but rather you can only make reservations for specific time slots and you choose from a few options in a pre-fix menu. You can also host private parties there. Once seated, the service was just ok. Nothing amazing. They did have a special seat for Ely’s new doll, as well as a plate and cup for her to “eat”. But that’s all. Our food was not very tasty. Think over-priced theme park meals. The food was bland and not very appealing. Ely’s fries were probably the best thing at the table. But, I suppose you pay for the experience. It was not something I would do again.
All and all, the American Girl shopping experience was a success! Elysse and I had some quality mother-daughter time. She absolutely loves her doll and takes her everywhere! It’s super adorable to see her interact with Lilly. I really like the American Girl philosophy and how they work on empowering girls and encouraging them to enjoy girlhood by playing and using their imagination. They also have educational books, movies, crafts, and activities that help girls face various issues as they grow up.
Below is a summary of my tips if and when you take your own daughter, niece, granddaughter, friend. And, if you’ve been before and love it, please let me know that too! I’d love to hear any other tips you may have.
Twinsies out for a stroll!
3 Tips for Enjoying Your Day at the American Girl Store
Prepare a budget and set expectations before your visit. Unless you have an unlimited budget, this will be a lifesaver and especially a money saver! One could easily get carried away in that store 🙂
Get a personal shopper. It’s a free service and they’ll will help guide you through the store. Plus, it’s pretty cool to have that personalized service 🙂
Skip the cafe. Unless your daughter really wants to go and you really want to make it a special occasion for her, I don’t recommend it. As much as I want to say it was worth it, I just can’t. The food is bland and sub-par. I would have much rather made a reservation at a nearby “fancy” restaurant and enjoyed my meal a lot more. I would suggest you do the same 🙂
Our last day at Disney World was at my favorite park, Epcot! The World Showcase is really my favorite because I love to travel and I remember being 10 years old on our first visit to Epcot and imagining I was really traveling to those countries. Heck, I still like to pretend we’re in the real countries 😉
We arrived at 9am to Epcot and the kids were anxious to get on a ride. I tried explaining that Epcot didn’t have the kind of rides found at Magic Kingdom so they wouldn’t be disappointed. However, they were just as excited to ride Spaceship Earth as they were to ride Space Mountain! After Spaceship Earth we let the kids play around with some of the hands-on exhibits before heading to the Mission Space ride where afterwards the kids also enjoyed the hands-on exhibits and games as we exited the ride.
We purchased the kids each a kit (map & stickers) for a new game that was debuting for the Food and Wine festival called, Remy’s Ratatouille Hide & Squeak. It was basically a scavenger hunt to find a Remy statue at each country then placing the corresponding sticker on the map to represent that location. At the end, you redeem your map for your choice of Remy pin. They were excited to get started and we were excited to get started at the Food & Wine Festival! The plan was to do the 1st half of the World Showcase countries and visit the Food & Wine Festival kiosks as we went, then ride the ferry from Germany back to Future World to use our fast passes for Soaring and Turtle Talk with Crush, and FastTrack. Afterwards, we’d go back and work our way around the other half of the countries, have dinner at Chefs De France, and finish the night watching Illuminations.
Although, technically, we did stick to that plan we had a major scare when visiting our first kiosk of the Food & Wine Festival. I was excited to visit the champagne kiosk and was ready to enjoy a glass of fancy bubbly. We ordered Diego a yummy chocolate dessert and Elysse some chocolate truffles. I asked if they had nuts, since she is allergic to all tree nuts and peanuts and was told by the Disney cast member that the truffles were prepackaged and did not have nuts, although they could not account for cross-contamination in the factory. Now, here’s where the problem began. I should have checked the packaging before giving her the chocolates. I feel terrible for trusting the young cast member. Regardless of how sure she sounded, it was my responsibility as her parent to ensure there were no nuts before handing it to her. The instant she took a bite, she said she was full, mind you, she is never full where there is chocolate involved! She never said how it made her feel and we assumed she was just being fussy. With the heat and humidity, we knew the chocolate would melt immediately and Jason just told her to eat the chocolate, it was small, and we’d save the other half. I noticed she was not acting right and finally it started to dawn on me that there may have been nuts in the chocolate. Sure enough, the second ingredient were hazelnuts. We were right next to a store and I ran in asking if they had benadryl, which they did not but I was told to go to First Aid. By this point, she threw it all up and was complaining her throat was hurting. We ran to First Aid, which was not far from where we were. They gave her the benadryl and at that point, I knew she’d be ok. I asked if she wanted to go back to the hotel, but she didn’t want to leave, so we waited it out until she was finally feeling a well enough to continue our day. Of course, she refused to eat much the rest of the day and was kinda blah. We tried to make the best of it and she was such a trooper!
We really did learn our lesson and will definitely be more prepared next time. We’d never had any issues while traveling before and she hadn’t had an allergic reaction for years, so we we’ve been pretty relaxed about her allergies. But, this was definitely a wake up call for us. We already have a much better plan in place for traveling.
Although we had this very scary incident happen, we were fortunate it wasn’t any worse and she was ok. We did the best we could to enjoy the rest of our time at Epcot. We had an amazing 3 days of non-stop Disney World theme park fun. I think our kids were just the right ages (7 & 10) for enjoying everything the parks have to offer! I’m so glad we were able to go on this trip for them and experience a different kind of vacation! I’m ready for another adventure with my crazies! Where shall we go to next?
Our day at Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios was a ton of fun and exhausting. You can catch up HERE and even read a few tips to start planning your vacation to Disney World. Next up is the Magic Kingdom. This is the park that mostly resembles the original Disneyland theme park and although they do share some of the same classic rides, such as It’s a Small World, Space Mountain, and Pirates of the Caribbean, Magic Kingdom is way bigger and you seriously would need 2-3 days to see and do it all! Unfortunately, we only had one day to tour Magic Kingdom. We chose to go on a Tuesday, where the park was scheduled to close early due to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas party scheduled from 8pm-midnight. We were hoping this would mean less crowds and shorter lines, since there were not going to be any fireworks either. Plus, Jason and I figured it would be ok to end the day at 7pm and not push the kids too much more into exhaustion 😉 The park was crowded of course, but it wasn’t cramped and the wait times for most rides were moderate to short. Although it wasn’t a very long day, we were able to see and do just about everything we wanted to. I’d asked my kids if they wanted to meet any of the characters or princesses and they said no. They both preferred to ride the rides! YAY for me! This of course, saved us a ton of time. The only character they wanted to meet was Mickey Mouse and only because before we left, my dad had told them he wanted to see a picture of them with Mickey Mouse!
My son, being the inquisitive boy that he is, had been asking how they figured out the wait times for the rides. Jason explained they handed out these red cards to a random person in line. Once they have the card, it starts to count how long the person is waiting until the person gets to the station, hands the card to a cast member for them to put it a machine that then tells them the length of their wait time and then this considered the wait time at the front of the ride. You can imagine how excited he was (he’s 10) when he got the red card while waiting in line for the Jungle Cruise Ride. You can also imagine how upset he was when we all realized he forgot to give the card to the cast member before getting on the ride! OOPS…
Remember, the My Disney Experience app I mentioned was so helpful in my last blog post? Yup, it has the hours of the parks for each day, so be sure to check it out while planning your trip so you know what day for each park will work better for your family. Another thing we found helpful, was to stop and eat a good meal for either lunch or dinner inside the park. I made reservations for a different restaurant in each park (except Hollywood Studios) and it worked out great. It gave us time to chill out and relax. At Magic Kingdom we ate a late lunch at The Plaza Restaurant. It’s a small restaurant tucked in a corner of Main Street that offers sandwiches, salads, wraps, etc. The quick service restaurants inside the parks can get super busy and hectic during peak hours, and I am not one for crowds or stressing out. I remember too many trips to Disney World walking or standing around with a tray of food waiting for a table to be unoccupied, only to lose it to a kid who’s family was in line ordering and he was sent to save the table. For my sanity, I chose to splurge a little more on our meals and it worked out really well for us. There was no stress during lunch/dinner and it was a nice reset before going back out into the park.
We spent our time waiting in line playing either Rock, Paper, Scissors or this slap game. It helped the time go by and even got other families to play too! What can I say, we were trend setters! LOL
Now, on to the fun stuff! Magic Kingdom was a fully packed day! Since I knew the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train always had the longest wait times and I wasn’t able to secure a FastPass+, we headed over there as soon as the park opened. The line was still 60 minutes long. This was the longest line we waited in, so in retrospect, it wasn’t too bad at all. I tried to plan our day as efficiently as possible and making our way around the park’s 6 themed lands. We spent the most time in Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, since these had the most rides. Of course, we had to get our Dole Whip floats at Adventureland and ride the Jungle Cruise. Those cheezy jokes get me every time 😉 Our last ride of the night, was Peter Pan’s Flight. This ride had the 2nd longest wait times of the day and I honestly was going to skip it. However, right at 6:45pm, the wait time was about 30 minutes and we figured, why not! After the ride, we headed for a gift shop on Main Street to grab the kids their souvenirs from the Magic Kingdom before making our way to the monorail. At this point, Elysse could barely stand up, she was so tired! Somehow, she made it to our car but was asleep before we got to the restaurant for dinner and seriously slept through dinner! I felt terrible she didn’t eat, but I figured she needed her rest!
A selfie with Mickey, because why not. I love this kid!
Ended the day with a little snow 😉
So far, we had 2 really great days at Disney World. The kids behaved pretty good and we didn’t have any major meltdowns or too much attitude from them. Sure, they whined a little here and there, but seriously it was all going much better than I had anticipated. Our last park to visit was Epcot. I’d saved the best for last, as this is my favorite park and I was so ready to head back to the Food & Wine Festival! I’ll be sharing our mishaps and adventures from Epcot on Monday, so be sure to come back then! For now, enjoy the long weekend with family and friends!
After a few days visiting friends and running the Wine & Dine Half Marathon on Saturday, we were ready to hit the theme parks on Monday. 4 Parks in 3 Days. Pretty ambitious plans but I’d planned it all a few weeks in advance and I felt confident we could do it without going crazy! I kept the plans pretty realistic, knowing we couldn’t do every single thing offered at each park. I was able to get FastPasses for pretty much all the rides we wanted, except for the new Seven Dwarfs roller coaster at Magic Kingdom. I also wasn’t able to get reservations for either the Bippity Boppity Boutique or Cinderella’s Royal Table. These reservations must be made many months in advance and I was clueless to the whole Disney thing! Oops! A friend told me about WDW Prep School and thanks to that site, I was able to get some great itineraries for the parks, as well as tons of info on what to expect in regards to crowds, best places to eat, best time for rides, etc. I highly recommend it. I also recommend downloading the Disney World app. It has everything from park hours, wait times, to dining reservations and FastPass+. You can literally plan your entire trip using this app!
Even Domo couldn’t help getting into the Disney spirit! Family Selfie as we walked into the park! Let the fun begin!!
I knew that it would be easy to group Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios together from the years I’d lived in Central Florida and visited the parks. We got to Animal Kingdom right as it was opening and went straight to Kilimanjaro Safari. I asked the kids if they wanted to see a show and they said no, they only wanted to ride the rides! So after riding Expedition Everest, we had an early lunch at Yak & Yeti. I was able to make a reservation, so the wait was minimal. The food was tasty and the cold beer totally hit the spot! Next was, Kali River Rapids, Dinosaur, and TriceraTop Spin before making our way to Hollywood Studios.
At Hollywood Studios, we split up and the boys went to the Light! Camera! Action! Stunt Show, while Elysse and I went to the the Frozen Sing-Along. We met up afterwards and headed to The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Elysse had been dying to ride this one and it did not disappoint! She loved it and even got a Tower of Terror sweatshirt as her souvenir. So,while Diego and I rode Rock N Roller Coaster, her and Jason got on Tower of Terror again. Luck for Diego, we did the parent swap and he got to ride the Rock N Roller Coaster again with Jason. Last on the list of rides was Star Tours. We’re all Star Wars fans, so this was one we were all looking forward to riding. It was extra special when Diego got chosen as the ‘rebel spy’ during the ride and his photo was on the screen in front of us. It really made his day! Honestly, I think it really made his whole trip! Of course, like all the rides, you are lead into the gift shop as you exit the ride and we saw a t-shirt that said “I am the Rebel Spy”. Yup, that was his souvenir from that park! We ended the night with the the Fantasmic! Show. We were pretty exhausted and I think the kids were asleep before we made it to our hotel room!
Next up: Magic Kingdom! Come back to read all about our time there and get some ideas for planning your own trip 🙂
We’ve officially got about one more month of summer left and so far we’ve had our fair share of, “I’m bored!” and too much TV and video games. We’ve also had our lazy days of summer where it’s just too hot to go out or days when life’s boring tasks of cleaning, running errands, and doing laundry take over. But, we’ve still managed to have some fun times. This is why it’s so important for our family to have this Summer Bucket List done early in the summer so we can not only have fun activities and events to look forward to, but to also make the time to make it happen. We don’t want to get so caught up in our daily routine and life’s demands that we forget to have fun!
Our summer has also included days at the pool at my parent’s place and our friend’s place, a fun day boating on Lake Mead, a weekend camping in Utah, jumping at SkyZone, making ice cream, evening bike rides, and watching some family movies!
We still have a few more things to mark off our Summer Bucket List but so far we’re having a great summer making memories and going on adventures! How’s your summer going?
It's a Messy Life 