What Will You Celebrate?

We spent the last week in Florida enjoying all the spoils of Disney World. It was a great trip. As you may recall from a post I did several months ago (me whining about not being able to go to Disney after Caden was born), this vacation has been a dream of ours for some time now.

When we asked the kids where they wanted to go on vacation this year, the answer was a resounding "DISNEY!" I grumbled and groaned about financial irresponsibility, and my husband looked at me and said "Sometimes, you just need to go."

He was absolutely right. I am so thankful that we went!

Disney's theme for this year is "What Will You Celebrate?", which meshed quite well with the reasons we took our trip. We were celebrating healthy children, God's goodness to us in the midst of the most difficult year of our lives, a strong marriage, and the gift of new life. Most of all, we were celebrating being together, away from the daily stresses and strains of life...being happy and removed from the world for a bit.

Bright and early on Saturday morning (following our great sonogram on Friday), we boarded a plane destined for palm trees and sunshine. This was our second time at "The World" as a family, so our pace was much more relaxed and we were able to do only what we knew we would enjoy most. The character meals were a completely different experience (the kids loved them!), and the kids also had fun getting autographs from all the characters this time around.

We spent our first day at Hollywood Studios. Highlights of this park included visiting Lightning McQueen and Mater, the Power Rangers, and a cool Star Wars Jedi Demonstration:

Our next stop was the Animal Kingdom. We went on "safari" to see all the wild animals, but the kids' favorite part of the day was digging for dinosaur bones in "The Boneyard". These first two pics do a great job of capturing our children's personalities. I love it!

Day three took us to the Magic Kingdom...our favorite park. One of Connor's faves is the Speedway in Tomorrowland. He drove me around (insisting with much dismay that I wasn't pushing down the gas pedal all the way...he gets his SpeedRacer tendencies from his father), and Daddy and Kylee rode together.



Do you think Kylee is excited to be at Cinderella's Castle?

We ended our day with the SpectroMagic Parade and fireworks. Here's Connor gearing up for the action:

Our fourth day found us at Epcot having breakfast with the Princesses. Kylee attended dressed as Snow White. Here are some of the best shots:

Connor, on the other hand, wished the floor would just swallow him up. Mulan insisted on a photo op:

Our last day was spent in Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom. We had a great time riding rides, and started our day with breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and his friends:

We ventured into Ariel's Grotto so the two red-headed princesses could meet:

No trip to Disney is complete without a ride in a teacup:

We also visited Mickey and Minnie's houses. Kylee was super-excited to see that Minnie had a tea set!


Connor decided on this trip that Pluto is his favorite Disney character. We found Pluto's doghouse in Mickey's backyard:

I will end with some amazing pics we snapped of the kids playing on the beach at our hotel and in the flower gardens surrounding the Lodge. I love these shots!

Although a trip to Disney is a HUGE celebration, perhaps the best thing to celebrate was that, upon our return home, we still had so many reasons to be happy. After a year of constant strain and stress, it was incredible to come home able to anticipate the arrival of a healthy baby, enjoy two wonderful kiddos, stable jobs, a comfortable home, our family and friends....and knowing that this trip was an important landmark in our healing process.

We hope and pray that you find something to celebrate...in the ordinary or in the extraordinary....today and every day.

The picture of Cinderella's Castle at night (found at the top of this post) is lovingly dedicated to the Vogel family in honor of their daughter Jael Elise, who was born and received into heaven on March 28th, 2002. Hope, I wish you could have been there to see it with me!