Disney World--Day 3

Our third day at Disney was the coldest of the week with highs in the 50s. Everyone in Florida was of course complaining about the cold and we too were definitely chilly. However, it was still warmer than back home! Our plan was to go see Animal Kingdom, the newest Disney park built in 1998, and Matt and I were both looking forward to the new adventure since neither of us had ever been.

I took this picture in our bedroom shortly after we woke up...Matt was sitting in our room reading and having coffee and Sadie wanted to come sit by him. She had so much fun writing on the window and it was one of those moments that I felt like I would miss one day. At some point in our lives, the fun of drawing on a chilly window in the car or in the house looses it's luster and we grow beyond it. I am thankful that Sadie is not yet there. Just look at those cute little feet!

On with our day...Just a little info....Animal Kingdom is the largest park of all 4. We learned while we were there that all three of the other parks could fit inside Animal Kingdom and there would still be room to spare. It's based around the idea of conservation and really was amazing to just stop and look at everything.
See all the different types of trees and plants behind us? Matt was reading that there brought in over 4 million trees, plants, shrubs and grasses from every continent except Antarctica. There are 250 species of animals here and over 1,000 animals, including the largest group of Nile hippos and African elephants. When you stop and think about it all, it is truly amazing! But enough of the encyclopedia and more on our trip.

The first thing we did when we got to the park was head straight for the African Safari, which takes you on one of these 'trucks' through the African savanna.

It was about a 20-minute journey where we got to see all these animals.....it truly was amazing and obviously the pictures don't do it justice at all!

I had to keep my mouth shut while seeing the hippos because I am SO terrified of hippos. Back in high school, I watched some show about hippos and learned that they are exceedingly fast, strong and ferocious....I have since been scared to death of them. (Matt finds this hilarious because I will obviously never encounter a hippo in the wild....but this was close enough!) I think he was looking right at me!

My favorite part was watching Matt point out everything to Blake...Blake LOVED pointing to the animals and being able to name them.

(the male lion was lying down just behind the female...did you know the females are the primary hunters while the males are the protectors? So the males spend most of their time at home watching for predators while the females are the ones that go out and gather food...just interesting...also, the males sleep about 20 hours a day!)

When we finished the safari, we went to see a live Nemo show, which was amazing to see how the actors/actresses played fish and sea creatures!

After the show, we walked over to see the Tree of Life. It's over 14-stories tall and is obviously man-made. But it's so beautiful.

And if you look closely, you can see a few of the over 325 animal carvings in the tree! 325! And the plaster they used allowed only 6-10 hours to complete the carvings.

Attempting a picture of the kids in front of the Tree of Life...I had to include this picture because whenever we would take a picture and Wyatt and Sadie would squat down to be closer to Blake, he would do the same thing!

..so we just asked them to all stand up.

And Blake....just chillin'

We had started to walk away and told him we were leaving, but that never works with this kid. Clearly, he didn't care about staying with us!

It was about noon by this point and all of our kids were EXHAUSTED! It may have had something to do with the fact that they couldn't fall asleep until about 10pm the night before we left and woke up at 5:30 and had been going non-stop since! And since animal kingdom is most enjoyable if you can walk around and marvel at all the detail and work that went into making it, we decided we wouldn't be able to enjoy much more that day. So we headed back.

And thank goodness we did because all three kids crashed for over 2 hours. Matt and I both got a run in and had some time to relax as well. It was much-needed for our whole family!

When the kids woke up and we were all feeling rejuvenated, we decided to head out for dinner. Matt and I were both feeling like Mexican food, so we got on a bus and headed to "Mexico" in Epcot!! How easy and great is that!

Clearly everyone was feeling much better!!

Matt and I initially weren't planning on spending much time in Epcot as several people had told us that our kids wouldn't really enjoy it since it's mostly geared toward older kids and adults. But that was not the case at all! The kids loved getting to see, as Blake called it, "the HUGE ball" or "the golf ball". And it was so much fun to get to walk around to the different countries.

Wyatt's picture of Matt and I from the other side of the ball

And a family picture, of course!

We ate dinner in 'Mexico' and the food was amazing!! Earlier in the afternoon I had posted on facebook that we were going to be eating dinner there and both my mom and sister reminded me of the Donald Duck boat ride in Mexico that goes through a restaurant....I had completely forgotten about it but sure enough, it was still there. We walked over to get on it and wouldn't you know, right as we were about to get on the ride, someone pulled the fire alarm! So they had to clear out the entire restaurant and boat ride. The kids didn't want to leave without going on it, so we walked on to 'Norway'.

Blake loved all the Viking gear..

But Wyatt and Sadie immediately exclaimed, aloud, "But we don't like the Vikings!" We had to quickly explain that there were real discoverers called Vikings that actually weren't bad football players. Several people, including the native Norwegians working in the shops and other tourists, looked at our kids a bit oddly!

We finally made it over to Mexico and, after going on the Donald Duck boat ride (which brought back great memories for me), we meandered around the market area.

We ended up staying at Epcot until 9pm and got to see the nightly Illuminations laser-light show over the lake. It was so much fun for all of us and everyone was able to truly enjoy everything after getting some rest.

So Day 3 started out a bit rough with the exhaustion and cold temps, but it ended with such great memories and we planned to come back to Epcot at some point before our trip was over.

I do have to say, however, that at this point during our trip, the kids kept asking when we were going to see the castle (that you see at the beginning of all Disney movies) as well as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. (We had planned to do the other parks first since we figured everything else would be a disappointment after seeing Magic Kingdom.) It was a good thing that the plan for Day 4 was breakfast at Chef Mickey's and our first day at Magic Kingdom--the place where dreams really do come true!! (and where Mommy just can't stop taking pictures of her kids enjoying everything that she once did as a little girl!)