Day 5: Downtown Disney

I didn't know such a thing existed. Downtown Disney is a whole different section with no admission, just stores and restaurants. Chad was in classes all day. The rest of us ate at an Irish pub. It was yummy. But Everett took one last bite and then just held it in his cheek. He's terrible about doing that! We call it chipmunking; it really is a big problem b/c he'll do it all day so he can't get his teeth brushed or go to bed... After lunch we went to T-rex cafe (it's like the rain forest cafe, but with a prehistoric twist.) They have a place where you can go dig for bones. So we let Chloe do that. Everett didn't get to b/c he was chipmunking. Chloe loved it though. She loves treasure hunting and rock collecting.

After that we went to the Lego store. That was a blast. We spent a long time in there! I don't know if you can see it, but in the back seat are T-Rex and Hamm from Toy Story. Toy Story 3 was everywhere since it just came out. This was part of a whole city.

And he's adding to the city

There were lots of tables both inside and out for us to play at. This is one where you build 3 people, put them in a box and buy them that way. We had fun playing.

With help from one of the workers, (I couldn't find a Dr. torso) I built a Chad. I wanted to do some super heroes, but that's the one type of thing they didn't have. There was plenty of pirates and star wars stuff, but no super hero stuff. This Mexican wrestler and Robin Hood were in little surprise packets we bought for the kids.

This is the wall behind the registers. It was fascinating to me to look at all the little people and see what all they had. There was a even a chef.

And of course Woody.
You can see Everett is still chipmunking. He didn't get to play at Legoland either. It drove him nuts. Me too b/c I really wanted him to play. He would've loved it!

And of course outside was lots of fun stuff too. Here's a transformer.

And a dinosaur.

In this little porthole, there's Nessie who's head pops in and out of the water and the Disney castle.

In this one the alligator moved.

And Nessie herself.

After Legoland, we went to the Disney store. It is of course MASSIVE. Upon entering, they sprinkled Chloe with fairy dust and Everett with pirate dust."

Of course we spent lots of time there too. Inside there's a "Bibbity Bobbety Boutique" where they give little girls makeovers, do her hair and turn her into a princess. There was a big burly punk dad with a skull on his shirt and a long scraggly goatee coming out with his two little princesses. It was so cute! We went to the boys/CARS section and Everett still was not allowed to play. Finally, he swallowed his food! And was allowed to play with all the CARS toys and other fun stuff.

Then it was time to go, but we had to let the kids ride the train first. It just went in a little circle, but look at those faces! It doesn't get better than that! Everett turned around with his elbow out the window and totally looked like and engineer. It was awesome! SO glad he swallowed his stinkin' food!

It took us a long time to get home. So I had to rush and get ready to meet Chad at his conference. I joined him for the closing ceremony type of thing. It was at a Gaylord hotel. I didn't know there were others. There's a huge one that we've gone to in Nashville that has riverboat tours and all kinds of crazy cool stuff. This one was much smaller and didn't have a river, just a similar feel and style. It was a beautiful! Anyway, we started in a conference room. They did some thank yous to the sponsors and whatnot, then they had two pretty well known comedians, Frank Caliendo and John Pinette. We had seen most of Frank Caliendo's routine on TV; he doesn't update it. But John was really funny. After that we moved into the atrium and had dessert and a laser show. We left during that. It was such a fun date!!

The next day we packed up and drove the 8 gloriously uneventful hours home. Seriously, the kids were great both ways. And it was not 10 hours as we expected before taking this trip... lemme tell ya, that is a wonderful surprise! And a total shock considering Florida's neighboring states take about the same amount of time. In retrospect, the whole vacation was fun (except of course for Universal.) But at the time I did not handle the heat and crowds well at all. We'll go back in maybe 2 years or so. But in the future, I don't care when Chad's conference is. We'll send him alone and go back down during the spring or fall. Since then we've had the back-to-work, nothing-to-look-forward-to and grandparents-spoiling withdrawals... fun. I gotta figure out what to do with the rest of our summer.