Just the beginning of a family tradition!!

[jenharring]

First let me introduce everyone.
I am 29 yrs old, will be turing 30 in August. wow that is so hard to believe, I just don't feel my age and never really have. I am sleep tech for sleepmed, the largest sleep company in the U.S. I have been doing sleep for 3 1/2 yrs and love it, though there are times I get very board.
My dh is 40yrs old and disabled. He was in the navy for 4 yrs and hurt his back. He had back surgury back in 1991. He then went back to work for an a/c plant and reinjured his back in April of 2002. He tried to go back that dec. but was not able to handle the work. He then tried again the end of Jan of 2003 and was still unable to handle the work. He has not work since. That is when I decided to go back to college and now help to support us. My husband is on disablity. We have been threw sooo much since he hurt his back in 2002. At that time we had a 3 yr old and 13 mo old.

Our little characters and oh boy do I mean characters:
DD- 9 and a straight A student which is also in the eagles program for gifted (smart) kids. Her name is Brittany.
DS-7 and not the brightest crayon in the box, but we love him anyways, he has cp with a spongy upper body and has been going to speech therapy since he was 2 1/2 yrs old. His name is Seth
DD-4 little ms night owl with an attidute, she will be celebrating her 5th birthday while at the world; we have special ressies at the castle for that night. Her name is Hannah or Hannah banana
DS-7 1/2 mos (10mo at travel time) He is in to everything now. His name is Dylan.

I am so much an ocd planner it is unreal. I get on here at least every other day if not every day. I am soo addicted.
We went to WDW from June 3rd and left the 11th. I work the 2nd at night and when I got home we packed up the van and then headed for Orlando.

 

[wigdoutdismom]

I'm first, I'm first!

 

[wigdoutdismom]

I have that same lime green baggallini!

 

[jenharring]

Only 37 days to go!! Here are some of the shirts I have made for our trip.

these have a front and back to each one. Some here are fronts some are backs.

One is for the baby and one is for the 7 year old, but they both will have one of each.

 

[jenharring]

This was not our official start to our disney vacation. We decided a few months before our vacation to add a day and stay off site for one night so that we could wake up and be right there at disney. This was a suprise to the kids. They started to catch on a little as there noticed there countdown calendar was not adding up right. I was slick about this too.
My husband picked them up from school on Tuesday and told them they would not be going to school the next day and they need to make sure they had everything. All my oldest daughter could say was thanks mom I didnt get to say bye to my friends. But it didnt take them long to get excited.
I got off work and we loaded the van as soon as I got there. We were on the road by 8:30am headed to orlando. The kids were so excited they didn't even want to stop for bathroom breaks. Which is very odd since we usually stop at least 2 or 3 times just on the way to ga, which is only a 4 hr trip. We arrived in orlando at around 3:30p.m. We only had to stop for gas 1x and the bathroom 1x, wow that was amazing.
We checked into our hotel and went to do some shopping. We went over to the character store at the buena vista outlet. We were not very impressed with this store. We then headed to dtd.
this is the kiddos as we pass under this wonderful wdw sign.

We were getting hungry by this time as it was already getting dark which ment it had to be close to 9pm. And of all places where do we end up eating dinner. take a guess from the pictures

I of course went in and got our food. I then on the way out dropped 1 of our drinks and had to send my husband back into refill it. What a great start to a vacation.
We then decided to head over and get some mickey ears. I thought it would be great to make some personal ones. Here are a few pictures of the hats.

as will see from most of her pictures she loves to have her picture taken. This is hannah which is now 5.

This is Seth. This is not the hat he got, but threw out the trip loved tring on hats when ever we went into a store. He only wore his hat that very first night. Note the shirt he is wearing: can you tell what it says?

As you can tell from this picture my hubby even wore his mickey ears. He was one of the ones wanting to get them. I personally could have cared less, but I played along and go some. Stay tuned to see just how long I wore those mickey ears and what my big addiction I have now is.

I just realized my son is not wearing his mickey ears in this last picture which was the first night. Wow they didnt last as long as I thought they would.

 

[jenharring]

A few more pics from our first day!
this is dylan our wonderful 10 month old, now only if he would learn to sleep threw the night every night.
Peek A boo I see you. We were tring to find something in the bottom of the stroller and he decides to start playing peek a boo. this was the first time he had done this. I should have got it on video too.

my miss priss

My silly girls!

I am pretty sure my oldest dd took this picture. I guess I was tring to figure out where we were headed and mind you this was me up for oh 29 hrs straight at this point.

my dh- think my daughter took this one too

my ds- he wanted those legos bad

 

[jenharring]

I'm first, I'm first!

Yeah you made it! I love my bag! It worked great at disney, but I think I'm gonna get a vb hibster and see just how well I like them and how much it holds. Of course I'll have to have the bigger ones. I want to attach my pins to the front of it. The only thing I didnt like about my bag was it covered up my shirts so you couldn't see them as well. I guess I'm gonna have to start looking on ebay.

 

[wsushocker]

I am here......waiting for more!

 

[wigdoutdismom]

Yeah you made it! I love my bag! It worked great at disney, but I think I'm gonna get a vb hibster and see just how well I like them and how much it holds. Of course I'll have to have the bigger ones. I want to attach my pins to the front of it. The only thing I didnt like about my bag was it covered up my shirts so you couldn't see them as well. I guess I'm gonna have to start looking on ebay.

The baggallini holds more than the hipster, and if you don't have locking pin backs don't try the pins on your bag, they will fall off......... I know this because it happened to me in March and Lady Lallie in May, she was just lucky enough to find her pin stuck in the bottom of her shoe!

 

[jenharring]

The baggallini holds more than the hipster, and if you don't have locking pin backs don't try the pins on your bag, they will fall off......... I know this because it happened to me in March and Lady Lallie in May, she was just lucky enough to find her pin stuck in the bottom of her shoe!

I do have the locking pin backs. I bought some after losing a pin off of my lanyard I also had one break and I showed a cm and they did not have that pin anywhere as it was an old one and they replaced it and let me keep my broke one too. It was one of my favorite that broke too. I was so sad. But its ok. I am going to try and do an update now.

 

[jenharring]

This is the officially the first day at disney. We had to meet with a disser for to get our fridge from the fridge swap at 8a.m. over at ASMo. When I pulled up I let the guy know what we needed and he said they would bring it right over to ASMu for us. That was so great, b/c I was going to have to walk over to the resort so we could get it in the van.
We had already checked in online so checking in to the resort was a great. We got our kttw cards. We had adjoining rooms and they were not ready. So we headed for our first character breakfast Cape May Cafe at the beach club. I called the day before to check and see if they had anything for Cape May and they did for 10am. I was so excited as I had already tried to get in here the week before and couldn't. We took the bus over to dhs and then a boat over to bc. It was a nice little ride. Will we waited for our boat to pick us up we had a few guest waiting with us.

We were so glad to let someone else drive as we had just driven 7 hrs the day before. We got to the beach club early, if I had wigd and shockers number I would have called and we could have had a dis meeting. Oh well
We got to meet Minnie, Goofy, and donald. When we were first seated Minnie came up and my 5 year old went straight under the table. This was just too funny. My hubby and I had talked about it several times in the past few months what she was going to do. We finally got her out from under the table with our waitress help. It didnt take much and she fell in love with minnie. Needless to say she went home with 3 minnie mouses.

this is hannah

Brittany

Dylan- all of the charaters just loved playing with him and it was so cute.

seth and hannah

my hubby and brittany

all of us

like i said she warmed up real quick

We then headed back to get on the boat for dhs. I took this pretty pictures while walking down the dock.

This was the kids first park they visited. All they wanted to do was ride rides. I let them know right away there were not a whole lot of rides here. We walked over to tot and it was about a 60 min wait so we got fastpasses for later. We then rent and road star tours. My husband for some reason got in a fawl mood and said he didn't want to ride not to worry about getting him a baby swap. We didnt wait but about 20 mins. We loved it and when we got off he decided he wanted to ride. Fyi my husband is a huge sw buff. Well he had to stand in line for about 45 mins or so. Serves him right. I think this taught him a lesson too, he never did that again the rest of the trip. While waiting on them to get off the ride at around 3pm, I decided to call and see if our rooms were read and sure enough they were. When they finally got off the ride we headed back to the room for a break and let me unpack and get everything organized.

 

[jenharring]

We didnt quite finished and decided it was time to head out for our dinner ressie at Teppan Edo in Japan at EP. Well we decided to just drive over to EP well it start raining after we got in the van and then pouring. We got to EP and I just HATE the way there parking is set up. We didn't realize it but when you go down and isle if you dont park and keep going you will leave the park. Well at that point I looked at my husband and said, "Lets just drive back to the resort and park in the check in parking lot and we will take the bus. Such a better idea. I had him get the ponchos out of the bottom of the stoller and I just ran over to the waiting area. I apparently had only graped 2 packs which ment we only had 4 for 5 people. Oh well, I just let them have then and did with out. A little rain never killed anyone. I also told my hubby to just leave the stroller since it was raining soo bad.

The only reason we went threw so much trouble was because I LOVE japanese food. We were at least 30 mins late. I was afraid they would not take us, but they did and we had to wait because of it. But it was worth the wait.
We were finally seated and ordered our drinks and apps. I had the salad with ginger dressing

and my hubby had the assorted tempura which was basically fried vegs.

They were yummy!!

a mickey valcano

he killed mickey
Our chef was great! For dinner we both chose the filet mignon, which was yummy as well. My daughter and I shared with each other. She had ordered the chicken.

you can see the steam coming off of it. For dessert we both had the chocolate ginger cake. We had them back up our desserts to go.
Once dinner was over I wanted to go ride Sorin since I had heard so much about it. We went in the land and it was about a 45 min wait. I had to go and pick up my sister so there was no way I was going to be able to ride it.
We then went back to the resort got the van and I dropped my hubby and kids off. I headed over to pick up my sister at the orland int. I didnt know the road was a toll road. That was not a very evental ride as all I had on me were dollar bills not change! I hunted and hunted, nope none no where to be found at all. I had my dollar in my had looked at the camera and though oh boy what am I to do. I cant turn around oh now. I was about in tears. I had no choice I had to keep going. I did pay at the rest of the booths and on the way back. But I though well great now I might just get a ticket for that one. I got to the airport and picked up my sister and 2 yr old nephew. You will see pics of her later. We went back to the hotel and like a dummy instead of going straight at the red light were the mcds is I turned. I no more than turned and realized oh no I wasnt suppose to do that. Crap, I had to go all the way back around. Once we Finally get back to the resort I get my shower and hit the sack. It was 1230 by this time.
With all of this crazy round and round we decided at that point we ARE NOT driving the rest of the trip. We like the disney transportation just fine. At least they know where they are going.

Stay tuned for a supercalafraglist day!

 

[cmskok]

Jen, Teppan Edo looks great! We are eating there on our first night at WDW in Sept!!! Woo Hoo!

 

[wigdoutdismom]

Jen, Teppan Edo looks great! We are eating there on our first night at WDW in Sept!!! Woo Hoo!

I agree, Teppan Edo is making me hungry!

Jennifer, great update! Love the the story about your daughter diving under the table to hide from Minnie! She gathered her courage quickly it seems.
Can't wait to read more!

 

[jenharring]

Jen, Teppan Edo looks great! We are eating there on our first night at WDW in Sept!!! Woo Hoo!

I agree, Teppan Edo is making me hungry!

Jennifer, great update! Love the the story about your daughter diving under the table to hide from Minnie! She gathered her courage quickly it seems.
Can't wait to read more!

Thanks it was yummy!! I know this is one of the resturants that will be on our to do list every time. I love japanese food. The only thing that made me sad was the sushi is not on the dining plan.
She did gain her courage quick and I sure was glad seeing how we had a bunch of character meals. I am going to get another update done tonight. I had planned on doing one Friday night, but I didnt have all the pictures I needed uploaded to photobucket.

 

[jewjubean]

Great update!!! Your kids look too cute. I love the baby pictures at disney...they are the best!

 

[Pumbaa_]

but i want to read more! If you have time to chat, you have time to write another chapter

i am hooked, can't wait to hear more about your trip

 

[jenharring]

Great update!!! Your kids look too cute. I love the baby pictures at disney...they are the best!

thanks he was to cute with the characters. I cant wait to see his reaction in Jan.

but i want to read more! If you have time to chat, you have time to write another chapter

i am hooked, can't wait to hear more about your trip

LOL you are just way too funny. I will get to work on that right now just for you, but no promises.

 

[MeMom]

all of us

Very nice.

It looks like somebody may have a little crush on a certain feathered friend!

 

[jenjolt]

I'm subbing in!! Looks like you had so much fun so far!! The character meal looked fun and I'm glad your daughter and the rest of the gang enjoyed the characters!!!

Can't wait to read and see more!