Erica pictures

This is Erica's first time in a bouncer. She loved to bounce when you had her stand on her legs, so we thought she would like it. She seemed to!

WDW Trip!! :) This was edited on Nov. 23

Ready to start our adventure!

Inside our first room before the switch. The rooms are all pretty much identical with the southwestern theme. Being from Las Vegas, based on theme alone, this would be the last resort I would choose, but based on the best transportation system and convenience to the parks, you can't beat it! It also has one of the best food courts and pools on property.

Coronado Springs resort...a view from outside our building.

Overlooking at bridge at Coronado Springs (our hotel).

Inside her tied for favorite ride, Tower of Terror!

Alli wanted to have her picture taken with these japanese "princesses" at the Pirate and Princess party at the Magic Kingdom. She loves the asian culture.

Courtney swimming at the hotel's pool The Dig Site. She loved the waterslide.

While waiting at the turnstiles at MGM, we were chosen to be the first family and open up the park. We were taken to a VIP waiting room, in the air-conditioning and out of the heat, and given cold waters while waiting until it was closer to the park opening.

Courtney was so happy to be out of that HOT Florida September heat!!!

It was such a pretty room with alot of Disney memorabilia.

Courtney and I in the VIP waiting room.

Here is our special pic we got taken for us, while everyone was still waiting at the turnstiles.

The show they put on at the opening of MGM Studios....oops I mean Disney's Hollywood Studios. It was really cute, and we got to have a part in it, and be taken down to Tower of Terror in this cute little old fashioned car that Walt himself used to drive. We were the first to go on Tower of Terror, and we had our own elevator!

In Epcot overlooking the World Showcase.

Allison and Courtney on the busses heading to the parks!

Courtney outside of Magic Kingdom one morning.

We asked if we could have a window table at the California Grill, and got the best one of all, the Magic Kingdom view. This was a magical meal, and we all loved it and had a great time!

This was a BLT flatbread. It was the yummiest flatbread I have ever had!

Best filet mignon ever...melted in your mouth! The meal for the 3 of us cost over $200, and we got it for free...awesome!!!

Courtney loved the cheese pizza at California Grill! This restaraunt was probably my favorite one at WDW.

Expedition Everest. Probably Courtney's favorite ride in WDW, and mine. I cannot wait to take Jared on this!!!

On our last day :( we finally win something from the dream team. This still is a sore subject for me, because I was one table away from winning the night in the Cinderella Castle suite on a different day. :(

We won the Magic Kingdom dream fastpasses...the best one to be won in my opinion, since the MK has so many rides to use it on, some of which do not offer fast passes. Since it was on our last day, and we were on our way out, we never used them. I was stupid and did not give them to Dan and Isabelle thinking the day was slow enough they would not even need them, but we should have anyways, and kicked ourselves later. SO Sorry, guys!

Aubree loves Minnie Mouse and the princesses! :) Courtney and I absolutely loved watching her at Disney. We have got to all go again next time!

Courtney and Isabelle with Cinderella.

Aubree waving the magic wand at Cinderella's breakfast!
We were so happy to see Dan, Heather, Isabelle and Aubree on our last night, and last day. We got to check out their room at the Wilderness Lodge, and even hang out a bit and watch most of Big Brother! :)

We had breakfast with them the following day at Cinderella's Royal Table. We wished our trip would have overlapped with theirs more.

TRIP OVERVIEW:

Courtney and I (my sister met us there) went to WDW September 1-12 to take advantage of FREE dining!
We had a great time, and experienced some new things. We stayed at a moderate (Coronado Springs) for the first time and also entirely used the Disney transportation system for the first time. Both were excellent (depending on where you stay of course.)

The hotel was beautiful. We transferred to a different room after the first 2 nights, and we really enjoyed the closer location better. Coronado Springs also has the best bus system on property....I never waited more than about 5 minutes for a bus, and our stops were always the closest to the parks.

We even went to the last Pirate and Princess Party of the season on the 3rd (its an after hours, special ticket) and we loved it! I have NEVER seen the MK so empty at night before!!

Back from Barcelona

More Med cruise pictures coming. All of the pictures from the beginning part of the trip is on a different computer. I will post them in this post, they will be out of order, but oh well. The following pictures are of the last few days when we arrived in Barcelona, Spain. So I am posting the ending, and will update the beginning later. LOL
Now THIS was an interesting performer along Las Ramblas (Barcelona). The whole walkway was lined with them, but this one was one of the most interesting to me. He would snip at you with his scissor hands if someone got too close...made them jump!
There were some pretty strange, creative, talented and sometimes WEIRD performers along there.

Our room in Barcelona at the Renaissance Inn next to the airport. Chase must have been moving because he is pretty blurry.

These next pictures are out of order, but I had some other Barcelona pics I wanted to put in this post. Chase is sad to be getting off of the Mickey boat in Barcelona. He was not a happy camper.

Awww so cute!

After getting in from Barcelona, we were able to stop over in New York and see Dan, Heather and family. It was just overnight and part of the next day, so it wasn't even long enough. :(

I am glad we were able to see their house and where they lived though! We had never met Aubree before!

There was some great food!

The newest show, and we were the first to see it. Great shows for families!

A cute towel animal monkey was left with Chase's monkey we got in Gibraltar.

We also went to Gaudi's Park Guell (pronounced WAY). The columns seen up above, none of them are straight ...on purpose. It was a very pretty and interesting park.

La Sagrada de Familia in Barcelona...a look at the new parts being adding onto the old. You can see a stark difference!

This is usually how we found the Mickey pool....empty! We had to get Chase and have him have one last swim when we saw the fountains going. This is our 3rd DCL cruise and we have never seen them on before. He had a great time, and there was another little boy in, but when he got out, Chase got out soon too.

Look how happy he is!! :)

Our servers Sachin from India and dang, I forgot her name! She is from Europe, but I forgot where. :(

They were nice enough to celebrate Chase's 5th birthday even though it was not until a few weeks later!

We have not updated our blog in so long! From November until now, its pretty much been a big blur, so we will try and post some pictures, and try to keep more current.

Probably most of you know we just got back from our transatlantic cruise to Spain a few weeks ago. Our oldest 3 kids had to stay home due to not being able to miss 2 and a half weeks of school (especially at the end of the year), and they were really looking forward to a vacation away from Chase (who we took with us).

The cruise itself was wonderful---very few and minor complaints....great service, great place for a family, great kids clubs. In fact, there were only about 4 nights out of 14 that Chase even had dinner with us. He loved playing in the Oceaneer Lab. We had alot of time to ourselves.

The ports of call were really good too. We stopped at:

Castaway Cay--on Mother's Day, can't get a better Mother's Day for me than that!
Tenerife (Canary Islands), Spain
Cadiz, Spain
Gibraltar, UK (even though it is technically in the country of Spain)
ending in Barcelona, Spain

I liked Cadiz and Gibraltar the best, mostly because of the excursions we went on in those cities.
As for Spain in general, I was not really that impressed. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, and there were some beautiful cities, but I guess I like cities that have more famous sites to go to. I felt myself wishing that I were in other countries again. I guess I felt it lacked a little something, but I cannot put my finger on what. Maybe I just did not get access to more history about the cities so I did not know much about them.

We stayed a day after in Barcelona, and I was wishing the whole time that we were just heading home instead. We walked around the city, and walked down Las Ramblas, but I just was not finding much that interested me (we had gone on a city tour and had seen the Sagrada de Familia and the Park Guell the day before)....We were also pretty tired and were ready to get back the the kids.

So I would rate the cruise an A!
Excursions a B+ (all averaged in)
flights a B+

I will post pictures soon.

Formal night and Gingerbread House

The finished house. We were not allowed to take it back ashore, so they said it had to be eaten or thrown away.



This year I finally got us tickets for making the gingerbread house on the ship. Last year, we didn't think you needed to sign up, so we missed out. It was only one per family, and when we asked if we could have another house, since we had 2 rooms and more kids, they said they had over 50 people on the waiting list. Hayley, Courtney and Chase had so much fun decorating it. Chase actually just loved eating the icing! All of the pieces were prebaked and fit the little box house that is at the bottom of the picture above. The pieces just needed to be stuck on with icing as the glue. It was the most authentic gingerbread house we have ever made, with the least amount of hassle---no prep, set up, or clean up. :)
Courtney on formal night. The kids never stuck around long for dinner. They would eat and get out of there. That was ok, because Jared and I could eat in peace!
For some reason, Chase was never too happy at dinner time. It wasn't the food, because they had cheese pizza every night.