Magic Kingdom Day 1

I saw my sweet friend Courtney yesterday and her face was all lit up and she said, "Sooooo???? How was it... Are we not ready to talk about Disney yet?" hahaha... I needed a good 4 days to decompress and catch my breath before I could start re-hashing so.... I'm ready to talk and here is part 1! :)

We surprised Harrison and Hudson with a trip to Disney World for their 5th birthday! On Thursday night we had family over and at the end we gave them a little present and told them we were going on a special trip and for them to guess where we were going... they opened the little Mickey that said "1st Trip" and said, "Disney World." No screaming, falling out or dramatic guesses just Disney World in monotone. We figured out that they had NO IDEA what Disney World was so that helped my feelings a little since I had been planning this for over 6 months and was so nervous about telling them :/. Saylor got to stay with Mawmaw and Pawpaw and Nanny and Pop while we were gone because she is too little to ride all the boys wanted to ride and still takes 2 naps! We missed her SOOOO bad! We picked the boys up from school on Friday at noon and drove all the way to Orlando! It was an even 10 hour ride, with a few stops to stretch our legs and eat. I had re-joined the Disney Movie Club a few weeks before so we had 8 new movies to watch, here is the first 24 hours in pictures!

Here is how they rode, Angry Bird throws and headphones ON. They have always been good car riders so the drive was pretty non-incidental.

The first day of our Magic vacation, we checked in and they got their "Official" Happy Birthday buttons, which if you wear one of these, every.single.person. in the park says "Happy Birthday!" Hudson wanted to take his off about an hour into the day, he prefers to fly under the radar!

The very first character and autograph they got was from Buzz Lightyear, he has always been a hero at this house and as you can see from the awkwardness they had not been trained in character photography poses yet :) 

After riding one of the favorites, "Pirates of the Caribbean" twice they got some pirate weapons and this happens to be one of my favorite pics from the trip, very candid and the castle is right behind them.

This face is during the Wishes night time fireworks show, it was amazing, nostalgic, magical and as a mom a little emotional. They were enraptured with the whole atmosphere, the castle was lit up in different lights and the fireworks were huge and the classic song among many others "When you wish upon a star..." was playing as many different characters, namely Jiminy Cricket quoted lines from Disney movies about making a wish.

These are the moments that make all the effort worthwhile!

We were lucky enough to be with two BIG boys that really liked to ride all the things that we liked to ride, here we are in line for the Haunted Mansion and I had to get their pic with the headstone of "the twins" that was out front, this was at 9pm so they were total troopers!

The castle that triggered a million questions that were all precious, "Do all the princesses live there?" "Do they have any pets?" "Where do the boys live?"

This is right before we boarded our bus back to our room, a full day and a comfy stroller.

This is what we put in their pockets in case they got lost.

The boys bed on our first night, they thought that was so cool.

First family pic in line for "It's A Small World"

Another favorite (look at this face) Buzz Lightyear's ride.

This is me and Harrison after we shot up all the enemies and got our score, he assured me that we tied ;)

In the heat of the day on Jungle Safari.

Hudson wanted to try to carry the backpack, that first day we had our biggest backpack LOADED down with food and drinks....needless to say we seriously downsized after this day.

A few of the deets from the trip:

• We stayed 4-nights on the grounds at Coronado Springs Resort (bc this was the only option we had that had a QN/QN room and JP is too long for a Full!)
• We went in this order: Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom (Downtown Disney), Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom again (on their real birthday)
• We got the free dining plan and had one character meal each day.
• We rented a stroller from Orlando Stroller Rentals for a few different reasons but was very glad we did, we loved it!