I have to start somewhere!

I'm apologizing in advance. No, never mind. There should never be apologies made for what you write about. I learned that in a writing class I took last summer. So here it goes...the beginning of my chronological entries about Disney. It's a big thing, isn't it? To write about a summer vacation? So I decided I would go day by day. And yes, it's probably more information than you'll need to know, but I'm writing this way so I remember it when I come back to these posts. We'll see how I keep up with that. My goal is to be done by next week. Here we go!

Day 1
The day started out with me waking up the kids about 8 minutes before we backed out of the driveway. I knew we were eating at the airport and I knew they would leap out of their beds (which they did), so I didn't have to allow too much extra time.

Off we went to the airport, bags in hand!

We waited for Mamma and Papa to come too (my parents flew down with us while J's parents met us there on Saturday the 20th). After we were all checked in and grabbed some breakfast, we went to wait at our gate. There we found an unexpected traveler...

Yes, that is the real Bullseye-the Target dog! He was off to LA for some publicity of sorts. The kids loved it! Pretty soon it was our turn to get on the plane. A & C really wanted to carry their own boarding passes, so off they went down the jetway.

I have to say, the flight was the most uneventful thing of the whole trip. The kids were amazing! They were completely content, sitting in their seats the whole flight down. They didn't get up for any reason...although they didn't know there was a bathroom on the trip down. That was discovered on the flight home! They occupied themselves by coloring, reading, looking out the window at this:

It's kind of what I expected, though. Because this was only their second time on a plane-the first they remember-I knew they would be fairly settled with taking it all in. And they did just that! After we landed-which was a smooth one, at that-we were on our way to the Magical Express bus.

It was great because we didn't even have to grab our luggage before getting on!

We watched a little video about Disney and before we knew it, we were there! We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort and it was perfect. I know you're not going to believe this, but I didn't really take any "landscape" pictures of the resort. Shocking, right?! You'll just have to trust me when I say it was perfect. We were on the first floor and were within a few minutes of the pool and food area. We could have been much further away, so I'm thankful for our room placement.

We swam right away after getting checked in. The pool had a pirate theme to it, so there were cannons with water coming out of them and there was also a huge pirate ship in the little kid area. We all loved it. The pool was so warm-warmer than any pool I've been in in a while! We went in the pirate ship area, which had a bit cooler water in it, and came back to the big pool where C said, "Ouch, Mommy! This is the hot tub, not the pool!" That give you a little bit of an idea as to how warm it was.

After about 2 hours of swimming we decided we would try to get to a park for a few hours. We hadn't planned on going, but we were all in fairly good moods and everyone was up for it, so we tried...and then it POURED! While we were on the bus, it started raining. So we were dropped off at Hollywood Studios, only to send J running in the rain to find the bus we needed to get to the Boardwalk area. Once we were on our way (completely soaked, I might add), we found ESPN Zone and ate dinner. Not exactly how we thought our first day would end, but exactly how we thought it would end at the same time. See, that was our original plan-just to head to dinner-so it was really ok for us! As we headed back "home," we were all tired but ready for the next day. The kids got situated in the bed-loving the fact we were connected to my parents' room-and fell fast asleep. Magic Kingdom, here we come!