We're back from surprising our kids– a grateful family -with pics and video.

Well, lucky for all of you, I'm not working right now because I puled my back this morning and I'm laying on the couch letting ice and muscle relaxers do their thing. Not, so luckyfor me because I have so much work to do after being on vacation and I have jury duty the next 2 weeks so I have no idea what will happen with that. (hopefully, nothing). I'm hoping I can work later.


Ok- I’ve teased you long enough. Our flight to Orlando went great and made great time. DS8 started having problems with his ears as we started to descend which caused him big time problems last year when we flew too. By the time we landed at MCO he was absolutely miserable and getting nasty. I know his ears hurt, but, he didn’t need to be nasty – we had a great surprise waiting for him. ;)

We took our time walking from the gate to get the shuttle to the main terminal to give DS8 time to cool down. As we arrived at the main terminal, DS13 wanted to know where we staying and if we were getting a rental car. I told him “we’re staying in a hotel and we have transportation arranged and need to go find it.” Eventually, we made it down outside the area for M.E.
As soon as I saw the M.E. Counter, we stopped walking and DH pulled out his cell phone. At our Baltimore DisMeet a few days before someone suggested pretending to make a call to our aunt and uncle and pretending they didn’t answer…

 
Too cute! I loved the look on DS8's face when he finally figured it out! :goodvibes Excellent surprise! Can't wait to hear about the rest of the trip
 
:goodvibes Oh My!!!! I got chills!!! Your DH played the phone call so well!! They looked so happy! I love the little dance your younger son did!
 

Very cool. We surprised our kids once, but we didn't have it taped and man do I regret that! I'll never forget the moment, but it would be nice to see it again. Ours wasn't as thought out, but it was still fun. We kept the secret for over a year--I was shocked with myself!
Can't wait to read more...
 
Sherri!!! That was awesome!!! This is one of the coolest trips I have read!! I can't wait to hear more!!!
 
Sherri...loving the way you surpriesed your boys. I can't imagine how mine would have acted if I'd showed up at their school and pulled them out. Loved the look on their faces.

Sorry to hear about your back,we can be couch buddies.:thumbsup2
I'll share my Disney videos with you,I think in the last few days I have seen almost everyone of them.
Hope you feel better soon, take it easy.
 
I loved the video! too cute! I still can't believe you held it in all the way through the flight! wow! I give you a lot of credit! :)
 
Too cute! I loved the look on DS8's face when he finally figured it out! :goodvibes Excellent surprise! Can't wait to hear about the rest of the trip

Definitely, not as surprising as that moment. But, we still had a few more tricks up our sleeves.

:goodvibes Oh My!!!! I got chills!!! Your DH played the phone call so well!! They looked so happy! I love the little dance your younger son did!

The boys can get pretty cute when they're happy. I was shocked that DH pulled the phone call off the way he did -normally, when he's doing something like that his lip will curl up so I know he isn't telling the truth. He had the kids believing he was calling my aunt and uncle.


Very cool. We surprised our kids once, but we didn't have it taped and man do I regret that! I'll never forget the moment, but it would be nice to see it again. Ours wasn't as thought out, but it was still fun. We kept the secret for over a year--I was shocked with myself!
Can't wait to read more...

I'm sorry that you didn't get to tape it but you still have the wonderful video camera in your brain. I don't know how you kept the secret for over a year. 6 months was long enough. We were talking about it earlier and decided that we might now wait to the last minute to surprise them again, however, when we go back, we could surprise them earlier on in the planning process. It would still be a surprise.

Sherri!!! That was awesome!!! This is one of the coolest trips I have read!! I can't wait to hear more!!!

Thank you. Next installment coming up later.

Sherri...loving the way you surpriesed your boys. I can't imagine how mine would have acted if I'd showed up at their school and pulled them out. Loved the look on their faces.

Sorry to hear about your back,we can be couch buddies.:thumbsup2
I'll share my Disney videos with you,I think in the last few days I have seen almost everyone of them.
Hope you feel better soon, take it easy.

Thanks. I'm so glad the video came out - I used our new regular digital camera to film it and I really never played with that feature. It's bad enough that I didn't play with the regular features on the new camera so a lot of the pics I took didn't come out.

Just remember - "just keep swimming, just keep swimming."

I've been on the couch for 3 days now and I'm going crazy. How in the world did I lay in bed for 7 months when I was pregnant with DS13? :confused3 Talk about motivation. My back is feeling better - thanks to vicodin and muscle relaxers - good luck tomorrow with the scan and I hope your knee is ok.

I loved the video! too cute! I still can't believe you held it in all the way through the flight! wow! I give you a lot of credit! :)

Thank you. Believe me - I was a nervous wreck!

I showed the boys the video the other night once I had everything on the computer. DS8's first comments were "I still don't get those kids who wanted to go to Dick's house" and he started shaking his head. :rotfl:
 
We couldn’t get over how surprised they were. We knew they’d be happy. DS8’s ears were still bothering him so he was still a little nasty at times.
I got into line for M.E. and they really have their act together for efficiency. Or, at least at that time of day, they sure did. It only took a few minutes until we were standing in line which seemed to take forever and eventually, we’re told which bus to go to. We got on the bus and we took the front rows. The boys were confused at first on why we weren’t getting a rental car.

They still had big smiles on their faces.

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And, we still had more surprises for them. I had put together gift bags for them.

This is the contents of DS8’s bag:

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It had Disney dollars, a little stuffed Mickey that he had liked at the Disney store, the journal, autograph book, a pirate costume, pens for autographs, money, an Epcot passport, a lanyard, pennies for pressed pennies, sunglasses. The bag is a pillowcase that I ironed a picture (from the DISigners) on.

This is DS13’s bag:

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He had a lanyard, pennies for pressing, Disney dollars, money, his old Mickey ears, a bobble head Pluto, and pins for trading.
Time to give them their bags.

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I think that DS13 was confused about the pins…
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such cute bags! I am trying sooo hard to put together a summer trip. I want to spring it on the kids Christmas morning! Oh gosh I want to go!! :)
 
Great update! I love the stuff in the surprise bags. :thumbsup2

We had fun putting them together. I ended up deciding on pillowcases for them because I needed something I could easily stuff into our carry-on. This way, they have the pillowcases as souvenirs too.

such cute bags! I am trying sooo hard to put together a summer trip. I want to spring it on the kids Christmas morning! Oh gosh I want to go!! :)

I hope you can work it out. What a great Christmas morning that would be.
 
The ME bus stopped at POP first. That was the first time we’d ever seen it – considering, we’ve been booked their twice and ended up booking somewhere else both times. Our flight landed around a little after 5 and finally, around 6:45, we turn into…

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and got off the bus.

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Then, into the registration area where we stepped right up for our turn.

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We were helped by Yvette who told us we were getting a room in Casita 1 and I asked her for a room in Casita 4 because this would be closer to the bus stop that we wanted. She asked us if a 2nd floor room would be OK since we had requested a first floor and we both agreed that we would rather have the 2nd floor room if it wasn’t too far off the elevator which she told us it wasn’t. We were assigned room 4223.

So, off to a good start. Got a room in the area we wanted. The scooter that DH had arranged was delivered earlier so DH was able to get his ECV.
We kept going back and forth on whether to walk to the room in daylight and get rid of our stuff or go straight to Pepper Market so we would only have to walk to our room once. The boys won with PM because they were hungry but they wanted to check outside first.

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So, off to PM for our first dinner on the DDP. We enjoyed PM on our last trip and were hoping we would enjoy it this time too.

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DS8 got his usual (pizza)
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DS13 got a chicken quesadilla
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DH got salmon with grilled vegetables
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And, I got the ginger peanut pork with some type of chicken.
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You get a lot of food at PM, especially, for a CS meal on the DDP. Forgot to take pics of the desserts - we got them to go.
 
I want a Disney Pillowcase goody bag:mickeyjum

I don't have any little ones going with us, but maybe I could make my DH an adult fun(mind out of gutter please) filled goody bag for Disney.
Any ideas.

More TR. I want to know what you did every moment.
 
After dinner, we walked to our room. Well, me, DS13 and DS8 walked. DH drove his ECV. Took a little extra to find a handicapped access to get up the walkway but we finally found it and followed the sign to the elevator. As soon as we turned the corner, we saw the quiet pool.

Wow – is that what they call a quiet pool. It’s huge. Again, I was reminded about how I don’t understand why some people complain about having to walk outside to your room at a moderate. This is what we got to see everytime we walked back to our room.

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DS13 couldn’t wait to call someone. He tried his best friend but didn’t have the right number, so, he called my brother in Atlanta.

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Do you think he was still excited?:banana:

The rooms look the same as our last trip and are in need of updating. Unfortunately, we’ll miss that on this trip as they were getting ready to start the refurb. But, we did have the new queen beds! YEAH! Nothing better than a new bed in a hotel. They were quite comfortable.

DS8 couldn’t wait to go SWIMMING! A few weeks prior to our trip he kept talking about how he couldn’t wait to go back to Disney World and be able to swim in the pool at CSR this time. Little did he know.

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I walked with them to the Dig Site which is beautiful at night. DH stayed behind and waited for bell service who was going to bring the water we had ordered and our luggage had just arrived from M.E.

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I got in the hot tub for awhile and then DH walked over and got in the hot tub too. After some major relaxation on our end, and energy expenditure on the boys’ end, it was time to go back to our room and get unpacked and get to bed. We’re going to be up at 6:50 AM for 9 AM RD at Epcot tomorrow!
 
Thursday, October 16, 2008

Alarm was set for 6:50 AM and scared me. Quite loud in a strange room. Rise and shine! After I got out of the shower, I woke up the boys. I’ve never seen them wakeup so quickly EVER! It was our first full day and they still had huge smiles on their faces. DS13 surprised me with not asking lots of questions about our daily itineraries so I told him we were going to Epcot and handed him a map that came out of my Passporter. On previous trips, we’ve called him Mapboy- because he loves reading park maps and knowing where he is.

We ate breakfast in the room. Pop tarts for the boys. Pop tarts are only for vacation in our family so they couldn’t wait. Handed everyone their assigned t-shirts for the day. Off to find the bus stop which I knew would be close by and didn’t have to wait long for the bus. Nobody else was getting on the Epcot bus – maybe, TGM is going to be right?

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A smooth ride to Epcot. Love the location of CSR because it’s convenient to every park. It wasn’t that crowded when we got off the bus and went to get in. We were able to get inside to wait for RD and we were up front to see the opening show and see the characters for the first time. Mickey walked right by us and shook DS8’s hand. He (DS8) was super excited to be seeing his friend again – just like they were never separated.

Here’s Goofy coming out to greet everyone.

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I went over the game plan with DH and both DS several times. The 3 of them stay together and go to Character Connection and I pointed to where it was. I would meet them there after going to Soarin’ and getting our first set of FPs for the day. Got it! I walked with the crowds over to the Land and as I was getting down the stairs I heard “Mommy! Mommy!” and I look up and see DS8 crying with some woman who was showing him where I was. She was shooting me dirty looks like “how dare you want to be in this crowd and rushing when you have a child.” DS8 followed me over to Soarin’ instead if staying with DH and DS13. We got our FPs and as we were leaving the building I called DH and told him DS8 was with me. Over to the Character Connection to officially start off our trip and meet the boss.

Mickey loved DS8’s t-shirt and took him by the hand and kept pointing to his shirt and then pointing to himself and showing it off to everyone. DS8 loved the attention.

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Pluto loved DS13’s t-shirt and got lots of attention from him.
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Donald didn’t like anybody’s t-shirts, especially Mickey’s and he went stomping around. My shirt had Goofy for President and Goofy really liked that one. We also saw Minnie and Belle there. A great start to DS8’s autograph book.

DS13 was able to do his first pin trade of the week. Yes, I know it’s someone from the Dream Team. This happened to us several times. We would get one dream team member who would just chat with us. No dream FPs, no castle stay, no parade family, no shopping spree. Let’s just sit and talk.

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Loved the shirts.
I keep telling everyone here that I am voting for Mickey Mouse for President.
Doesn't go over to well with the people who call and ask who you are voting for:confused3
 




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