A little of this, a little of that, WDW US IOA SeaWorld Legoland Oct 12 PTR

[kdka421]

Following over from the FB group, and just finished reading through your whole PTR so far!

I love the photo of your Mom with Mickey - I laugh becuase my Mom is the same way, when hubby and I took my parents to WDW last year for their 30th anniversary (they've been before, not WDW newbies), there was more than one instance when DH and I went to go ride some thrill rides, and then went off to character meet & greets.

All your plans sound awesome. It's really cool that you're getting to do Sea World and Universal as well - Harry Potter would absolutely be something I'd love to see someday.

Can't wait to keep reading!

 

[sammyjo1871]

and also a picture of their autograph book bags. I bought these 2 trips ago and we love them. It holds their books and pen so I don't have to dig them out constantly, and they can put their pins on the straps.

These bags are so cute! Where did you find them? It's a great idea, because I got tired of my son saying 'come on momma, I need my book now'.

I'm really enjoying your PTR and getting some inspiration for a movie night countdown for our next trip. So sad that ours is still over a year away.

Enjoy your trip!!!

 

[DrMomof3]

I totally love the autograph books and bags!
Thank you for all of your good advice!

Amanda

 

[Chelley00]

All your plans sound awesome. It's really cool that you're getting to do Sea World and Universal as well - Harry Potter would absolutely be something I'd love to see someday.

We've never been to SeaWorld, and haven't been to Universal since they were building HP, so we're excited. DH is mad he doesn't get to go to the Universal part

These bags are so cute! Where did you find them? It's a great idea, because I got tired of my son saying 'come on momma, I need my book now'. :

I got them from etsy, a seller names nickaroo5055. I had her make one for my nephew, and then had her make 4 for the kids of one of my dearest friends who went on a WISH trip. She does a great job and they hold up well.

I totally love the autograph books and bags!
Thank you for all of your good advice!

That's what friends are for



It was a long, hot weekend on the soccer field, Saturday with DS16 and Sunday with DS19 (playing in a 18-25 year old age group rec league) Full sun soccer fields in 93+ degree temps isn't fun. Really not fun.

On the flip side, we had a good weekend for mail, getting our Universal tickets and photopass plus package.




Updated To-Do List

Costume ideas for MNSSHP??
Place grocery order
Fill out passporter pockets
make Epcot passport
make travel days reservations
Contact special diets, add allergies to reservations
Call WBC with room view request
invitation for Pirates League for kids and nephew
train sub for work
oil change/tires etc for car

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

You guys have so much fun with those movie nights, that's awesome!! And Love love those autograph book bags. Great idea to keep them all organized with the pen, book and even their pins!

 

[Chelley00]

DH is working nights all weekend, so we had a simple Movie Day lunch instead of Movie Night. Cars!

Minnie holding the checkered flag (and the movie)

Place settings

Menu and activity sheet

Making stoplight cookies

Doc Hudson Hoagies

Stoplights

Buffet

Lightning Lemonade

Car races

 

[DrMomof3]

Another brilliant movie night! I want to move to your house!

Amanda

 

[tangled up]

Wow wow wow, loved it all, read through everything. Love your movie nights!!

You have a beautiful family, and are a great Mom doing all this fun stuff with them.

Looking forward to more xx

 

[Chelley00]

Another brilliant movie night! I want to move to your house!

Amanda

Come on over!

You have a beautiful family, and are a great Mom doing all this fun stuff with them.

Thank you. I'm pretty proud of my gang



Well, it's been a rough day at our house. DD10 is trying to assert her "tweenagedom" and I had to clamp down on her pretty hard. It was not pretty, but I think we're back to being friends again.

Tonight I have all the youth group girls coming to my house for a slumber party. Ask my why I volunteered and I have no answers. They are all pretty excited about it. It should be less than 20 girls and then 2 other "old ladies" plus me. The girls are great, it's just that I had to clean


So last night I was stupid and started thinking, and that ended up in rearranging 4 of our days, plus canceling and remaking some ADRs. I really need to stop thinking.

So, my reasoning is I decided to make an onsite reservation at Universal. Since it will most likely just be me with the 2 kids (my mom will probably skip to hang with her BFF) I really want the FOTL and the hour early entrance. On our scheduled US/IOA days there were hardly any rooms available. It made me look and realize it's HHN nights. If I moved our days up a week, there are no HHN scheduled, parks are open an hour later and rooms were available everywhere. It makes sense, I promise.

Plus, we can now spend 2 full days at Epcot and 1 1/2 days at AK instead of the other way around

So, here's our new line up:


Oct 14: sleep in since we arrive late the night before. Late breakfast at 1900 Park Fare (a first for us) DTD to pick up Babycakes snacks maybe, maybe a swim before a rest time and then MNSSHP that night.

Oct 15: Check in to one night at Royal Pacific Hotel, go to Universal Studios

Oct 16: Early entrance to WWOHP, the rest of the day at Islands of Adventure

Oct 17: Epcot. Kids YES class. F&WF for lunch. Meeting newly arrive Brother, SIL and Nephew for dinner at Chef Mickeys

Oct 18: Seaworld for my 4, brother, SIL and nephew someplace else. She mentioned meeting for dinner somewhere, so we'll see. I want to try and book Dine with Shamu though.

Oct 19: MK with SIL and nephew. Brother will join us later. We'll do CS stuff for lunch and dinner since they have QS dining. The kids are all doing Pirates League

Oct 20: AK, dinner at Trex Cafe

Oct 21: Pool day, SIL joining us mid evening, Giordanos for dinner

Oct 22: DHS with brother and nephew. SIL will join us for dinner. DHS is a TERRIBLE place for me to eat with food allergies, so I made reservations for my kids, mom and I at Sci Fi.

Oct 23: Brother, SIL and nephew leave early this morning. We're heading to MK with my mom for a surprise for her: breakfast in the castle. She LOVED Akershus, so I thought we'd show her the other side of the princesses I don't even think she knows you can eat there! Dinner tonight is my mom's request, Ohana.

Oct 24: DHS again, Mama Melrose for dinner

Oct 25: Epcot. I booked San Angel just because Mom said it looked pretty last time we were there and I'd like to do something different, but I'm debating switching this. Biergarten? Teppan Edo

Oct 26: Legoland,

Oct 27: Check out, AK for the morning, DD's choice of Rainforest Cafe for late lunch and start the long drive home.




Updated To-Do List

Costume ideas for MNSSHP??
Place grocery order
Fill out passporter pockets
make Epcot passport
make travel days reservations
Contact special diets, add allergies to reservations
Call WBC with room view request
invitation for Pirates League for kids and nephew
train sub for work
oil change/tires etc for car
order shirts for Pirates League

 

[momabaarjo]

I followed you over from my TR...can't wait to catch up!

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

STOP THINKING!!!

But really it looks like you have it all figured out and well planned now...

 

[Chelley00]

I swear, my PTR must be one of the lamest in the world. It always ends up on page 100! Maybe I should update more often.


The kids went back to school on Wednesday......that's the price we pay for that 2 week fall break. So far so good.

DS7 loves his teacher and most of his friends from last year are in his class.

DD10 is at a new school thanks to redistricting and basically knows NO ONE except for one girl from karate (which she doesn't even take anymore)

DS16 made the soccer team again (it's very competitive school, so there's always that chance that it could go bad)

DS19 is all packed to leave college. He is taking this week to visit with his dad and girlfriend and then he'll move on the 13th.

It was a rough adjustment getting everyone up and out the door on time, especially DS16 who has soccer conditioning at 6am and DD10 who is not a morning person AT ALL and has to be on the bus at 7am.



On the trip planning front, I've managed to do a few things. SIL and I talked for awhile yesterday just firming up a few plans. I made sure that Pirates League was okay and she said it was fine, that nephew was really into pirates because of Wii Pirate Legos, so he'd be thrilled. I ordered the 3 kids shirts from etsy to wear to PL, and when they get here we'll send nephew his with a PL invitation.

I got these for DS and nephew

and this for DD

Updated To-Do List

Costume ideas for MNSSHP??
Place grocery order
make Epcot passport for DS (DD has one leftover from her birthday trip)
make travel days reservations
Contact special diets, add allergies to reservations
Call WBC with room view request
invitation for Pirates League for kids and nephew
train sub for work
oil change/tires etc for car



Next up, Lion King movie night

 

[Chelley00]

DD chose the movie and was my helper

table

Minnie minus the movie (DD couldn't find it)

Place setting. Both kids had a safari animal paddleball set. I forgot to take a picture of them outside playing

Menu and activity sheet

Buffet

paw print cookies

Pumbaa punch

DS on a safari hunt for animals

DD. Not sure why it's so blurry

 

[momabaarjo]

Your making me miss doing movie nights...hmmm, maybe we need to get back in the habit. This summer was so hard!

 

[Chelley00]

Your making me miss doing movie nights...hmmm, maybe we need to get back in the habit. This summer was so hard!

We've got a few more to go before our trip, and the kids have asked if we could keep doing them. I said maybe, but definitely not every weekend. A special occasion here and there maybe.


I actually marked a couple of things off my to-do list today.

1. Made our hotel reservation for our travel day down and for our travel day back. We might decide to cancel the one on the way down and drive it straight through, but that really sucks to do it that way

2. DS called Granny and made her decide on costumes, and she's decided that she wants to stick with pirates. We had been talking around here about each of us representing a ride from a different park (DD being a Kiliminjaro safari guide, DS being a crash test dummy etc) or all of us just going with crash test dummy or something. Apparently we're stuck with pirates (which, by the way, is our movie theme for this weekend)

Updated To-Do List

Order pirate costumes
Place grocery order
make Epcot passport
Contact special diets, add allergies to reservations
Call WBC with room view request
invitation for Pirates League for kids and nephew
train sub for work
oil change/tire rotate etc for car


on a sad note, oldest DS leaves for college on Tuesday

 

[Chelley00]

Yesterday was our Pirates of the Caribbean movie day.

Minnie with the movie

Table

Place setting

Buffet line

Pirate ship pizzas

Pirate Punch

Pirate Cake

Painting treasure boxes

Playing the pirate game I found at Party City on clearance

The pirate ship cake after the attack

 

[KTgE]

I'm a wee bit late but I'm subbing. We'll be there October 12-16. Love all your movie nights...I can see us doing that when our kids are a little older. Our oldest would love it now but baby sister is busy busy at 14 months.

 

[lbuzz52]

We've never been to SeaWorld, and haven't been to Universal since they were building HP, so we're excited. DH is mad he doesn't get to go to the Universal part



I got them from etsy, a seller names nickaroo5055. I had her make one for my nephew, and then had her make 4 for the kids of one of my dearest friends who went on a WISH trip. She does a great job and they hold up well.



That's what friends are for



It was a long, hot weekend on the soccer field, Saturday with DS16 and Sunday with DS19 (playing in a 18-25 year old age group rec league) Full sun soccer fields in 93+ degree temps isn't fun. Really not fun.

On the flip side, we had a good weekend for mail, getting our Universal tickets and photopass plus package.




Updated To-Do List

Costume ideas for MNSSHP??
Place grocery order
Fill out passporter pockets
make Epcot passport
make travel days reservations
Contact special diets, add allergies to reservations
Call WBC with room view request
invitation for Pirates League for kids and nephew
train sub for work
oil change/tires etc for car

i definitely have to check these bags out. they look perfect! we have a bad habit of going in somewhere for a meet and greet and then realizing we left the books on the stroller, so these could be a lifesaver. thanks for the info!

great movie nights as usual!

 

[Chelley00]

Love all your movie nights...I can see us doing that when our kids are a little older. Our oldest would love it now but baby sister is busy busy at 14 months.

The one nice thing about my kids ages is that I can sucker them into helping do the work

i definitely have to check these bags out. they look perfect! we have a bad habit of going in somewhere for a meet and greet and then realizing we left the books on the stroller, so these could be a lifesaver.

I love the bags. It's so nice to make them responsible for their things and it's a couple less things I have to drag around.



It's been an exciting week here. Oldest DS, his girlfriend and my ex arrived Monday afternoon from ex's house 3 hours from here. After dinner all 4 of my kids were outside playing soccer. DD took a turn in the goal, and DS19 hit a shot that DD stopped, and broke her wrist. They had to sedate her to reset the bone, put her in a splint and wrap and now we wait for the swelling to go down to cast it on Tuesday. DS feels terrible and came to the hospital to sit with her while we were waiting for her procedure. The doctors were giving him such a hard time about "leaving his sister something to remember him by".

We got home from the ER around 2am, bed around 3am and then up at 7am to put DS7 on the bus, drop DD off at ILs house and then drove DS19 to move him in for his first year of college Today I had to work for a couple of hours, and then DD and laid down and took a much needed 3 hour nap

2 years ago before our trip DD busted her head open and had to get stitches 7 days before we left, and got them out the day we left. This year she's going to be in a cast for 6-8 weeks, and if she makes that full 8 weeks, she'll get her cast off right when we leave.

 

[oboedm]

Cute Pirate night! We have a Pirates night coming up in the next few months. I love the treasure box painting! I will need to look for some sales on those so that we can "steal" your activity idea!