Day 2: Today we woke up and decided to go to Epcot. We had gotten more sleep the night before and felt up for a day at the parks. It started raining as we were showering, so we deliberately took our time, hoping it would let off. It didn’t.
At 11am we hopped in the van and headed over. By the time we got there it was raining quite hard, so we put the ponchos on the kids and I grabbed an umbrella (I would have happily have used a poncho too except I usually have one of the babies on my back and don’t want to suffocate them.)
All in all it was a great day. We hit a few rides and did a lot of walking. I finally got on Soarin (for the first time if you can believe it - we had had very bad luck with that ride until today) and took the 3 older kids on Mission Space. Meg was a little nervous on the latter, but swore she loved every second.
When we got over to the World Showcase the kids really started to slow down. At that point we had been there for almost 4 hours, so we expected it. DD1 started melting down over the fact that the store didn’t have any Merida crowns for her costume and the smaller ones were all exhausted by that point. I had one of the twin boys on my back sleeping and DH had the baby on his back. Then we had the other twin boy in the triple stroller along with the twin girls - and then our oldest DS was walking. You can imagine we made quite a site.
The funniest thing was that a woman walking by was counting in spanish. She got to cinco and started over, then counted again and said “Cinco!!!” As if she had never seen someone with so many children - and she had missed the one on my back! It’s pretty interesting to hear the comments we get (as I know the other big families here can commiserate with). It’s a blessing to have them - and to show people that large families can go out and live and enjoy the kids' company. There’s such a huge misconception that once you have more than 2 kids that you can’t ever afford to do anything and that all the kids are deprived somehow. Not true at all!
When we got back to the campground it was almost 5, we made dinner and headed over to the pool. The kids were thrilled to see that the slide was still open. We were only there for a short time and then went back to the site to start bedtime.
One of the must-haves for our RV was a tub. Anyone who has camped with kids knows how dirty they can get in a short time (not to mention that it feels so good to be clean after a day at the parks!) So after the pool they all got baths and got cleaned up and put on their jammies. Then it was bedtime and I think at least 4 of the 6 were asleep before their heads hit the pillow!
Finally DH and I had a bit of quite time. We grilled some steaks and got some take-out fries and a salad from Trail’s End (you have to ask them for the fries since they aren’t on the menu, but they were really good!) We listened to the fireworks and music, which was a great way to end the night. We can’t see them from our site but somehow hearing them was almost as good!
