February 7th - Animal Kingdom - Chapter 3
I forgot to mention that while we were eating at Pizzafari, Michael's tooth was really bothering him. See, a couple of days before leaving for the trip, Michael mentioned to me that he felt something kind of "pop" in his tooth. It wasn't really bothering him though and I asked him again the next day (the day before we left) if it hurt at all and he said "no, it was fine" so I didn't think much more of it. Here we were....first full day of the trip and it was bothering him enough that he was having a hard time eating. Poor guy. I gave him some Children's Tylenol and we finished up eating and headed out.
I'm thinking it was about 1:30 at this point and we decided to split up. One group headed towards the Tree of Life to see It's Tough to be A Bug, and the other group headed to grab fastpasses for the Safari. We were going to meet up in Asia by the Maharajah Jungle Trek. The Bugs Life group was myself, Shawn, our 3 kids, Charlene, Luke, Kaitlyn, Dave, Peggy, Hunter, and Megan.
I think.
The other girls went with Nichole, Michelle, and Monica to grab the passes. Along the way they also caught some of Divine's performance. Drat - I was really hoping to catch that this trip.
We entered the theater and were let in to a showing almost immediately. The theater is very cool and the kids all thought it was pretty neat to be "inside" the tree. We donned our honorary bug eyes and got set to watch what I knew might not be the most favorite of 3D attractions for everyone (me included). It was gross at times but that didn't bother anyone. The kids all laughed. But then that dang Hopper came out and boy, does he look menacing! I can see why I hear more screams coming out of this theater than I do on Everest! Good grief. All our kids seemed to be fine though. I sat forward in my seat because I knew about the "stinger" part and really didn't want to feel it. We all liked it ok I think, but it certainly isn't my favorite of Disney's 3D choices! I'll take apple pie smells over stink bugs any day.
We left the theater and made our way over to Asia.
Other than to go on Everest, we have never ventured deep into Asia. This is not by choice, it's always our intention to get over to the MJT, but it just has never worked out for some reason. I was excited to be finally getting to go see the tigers and bats! At this point though, the boys were all about Everest!
All the way over it was "When are we going to Everest"? "Can we go to Everest next"? "I can't wait to ride Everest"! "You said we could do Everest"!
AHHHHH!!!!
So, we determined at that point that the plan would need to be Tigers, Everest, Safari, Lion King.
There.
Done.
Shut it.
The rest of the crew was sitting off to the side in front of the Jungle Trek waiting for us and once we met up we decided to get a group shot of the kids in their matching shirts!
Apparently, they thought we were hilarious for some reason. Either that, or Hunter was laughing....which means everyone would start laughing as his laugh is contagious! Either way...I love this picture!
Apparently, Michael didn't "get" the joke! LOL!
So then some of the kids and husbands took pictures of just us Moms.
In their attempt at impersonating a photopass photographer, they had us pose in our "animal" poses and this shot got dubbed the "Cougar Mom" shot!
The kids at this point were very happy that we were sort of tucked over to the side and out of the public eye for the most part! What kind of Moms would we be if we didn't embarass them a few times, right? I'm regretting that we didn't get a shot of the two men in the group though!
Well, we managed to get some crazy shots of the younger boys though!
(Apparently, Luke has not mastered the "making crazy faces" like the older boys have! He has just mastered adorable!)
We ventured towards the Jungle! First up was the giant Tapir. The CM standing there said it was a female and she was like 16 years old and weighed upwards of 600 pounds I think! Yowzers - I don't think I would want to meet up with her in the jungle! She was kind of hidden over to the side but here is the best shot Shawn snapped.
We made our way further in to hopefully see the Komodo Dragon, but no luck. The CM said it was too cold and they would not be out in this kind of weather. Drat. Ok, on to the bats.
As much as they freak me out, I was really looking forward to seeing the bats.
At least briefly.
And from a distance.
Well, no bats were out today either. Apparently, the cold was keeping a lot of these animals out of sight. This is the closest we got to seeing any bats:
Let's hope we have more luck with the tigers. They have lots of fur for pete's sake - they shouldn't mind the cold, right?
JACKPOT!!!
They were so fun to watch!
Now where?
How about this way?
Yes, I had to keep pinching myself over that view! We were so pleased!! 
It was a lot of fun being there all together - we had a blast! 
I just love reliving that day through your report. 
. 
