Gorgeous photos! Seriously, they are breathtaking!
We are taking DD5 and DD1 in a few weeks! It's fun to see someone with the kids that age range.
Love the photo of Jack concentrating on taking his photo! Like father, like son?
Thanks!
Wow - it's been a week and a half since the last update. I've really been slacking off!
Picking up from the last update... Mrs and Leila were taking a nap, and Jack and I put on our swimsuits and took off for the water play area, or "Uwanja Camp" as Disney calls it. Geographically, we were quite close to it, but had to walk all the way to the lobby, outside, then back in the same direction a bit to get to it. (The parking lot prevented direct walking to it.) Of course, as soon as we got there, we had to make another bathroom stop; this time in the locker area at the "Survival of the Fittest" exercise area. I had to take a quick picture of the towel return basket - great theming as usual!
We then made the short walk down the stairs, past the pool slide, to the water play area. I had remembered seeing it in drawings when they were first talking about Kidani Village but hadn't looked more closely since then, but I remember that it looked very nice. I was not disappointed! It's terrific, with lots of room to run around and things to do. At one end is more of a playground, with a rope bridge...
In the middle is the big leaky water tower...
...and the other side is a rock wall with a slide and some water cannons.
Since it was still not super warm and was in the afternoon in the middle of the week, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.
Near the rock wall were a series of buckets and such... there was a ton of stuff to keep us busy!
The spitting snakes had movable nozzles; here is Jack trying to spray me!
After a while, we headed into the main pool, which had a bunch of inflated ball-shaped jungle animal pool toys that we had fun with. There was a children's slide that Jack did a few times and he even did the big slide once. Unfortunately, he's not as good of a swimmer as he should be so I had to keep a close eye on him... (he starts swim lessons again tomorrow night!
)
It was getting late (and cold!) so Mrs Groucho finally woke up Leila and they came down to join us. Leila wasn't so sure but she enjoyed this one spot which had warm water circulating.
A look up at the lights showed us that on top of everything else, it was starting to rain, too!
Jack and I took one final run through before we headed back.
The masks here would spray out mist occasionally when you walked by. We also noticed a
tiny frog halfway up the side of one of the columns here but I wasn't able to get a decent photo.
We were all getting pretty chilly (and hungry), so we went back to our room and threw clothes on, then went to Downtown Disney.
It's hard to go wrong with Earl of Sandwich for a quick bite. The place is always packed, which is not surprising as the sandwiches are great and they are relatively cheap, compared to other options. I had to get the same sandwich as I'd gotten on our last trip... the holiday turkey sandwich, with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc... it sounds weird but is very good!
Our next stop was Once Upon a Toy, where Jack played with the Mr Potato Heads...
...and Leila played with some stuffed animals.
Next stop was Tren-D, which is not particularly stroller-friendly, but full of unusual details.
At this point, we just
happened to find ourselves at Ghiradelli's...
The kids ate a little bit but neither one is a big ice cream eater. It would be nice if Ghiradelli offered some smaller sized options. I like sundaes but they're so big that a good amount of it goes to waste. (It didn't help that they gave me two scoops vanilla and one of strawberry, when I asked for two of strawberry and one of vanilla!)
We stopped into World of Disney, and soon after, both kids were sound asleep in the stroller...
We wandered and just got a couple small things and took a few photos. The 40th Anniversary merchandise was beginning to appear, and I liked some of the designs but there was no combination of design and product that appealed to me enough to buy it. Since then, they started selling a big jigsaw puzzle - my boss is down there now and has instructions to pick one up for me.
We made our way back to the bus stop and had to do the usual task of handling sleeping kids and a stroller... it would really be helpful to have a sherpa or nanny or something! I don't know how people with more than two kids do it!
Believe it or not, the day was still not over for me... more pictures in the next installment! Thanks for reading and thanks for your patience!
Not to mention we drove from Iowa the last time we went 
).
What a wonderful TR, your photos are amazing 
. I hope that my photos will turn out even half as good as yours. Can't wait for more updates.
