FLORIDA!

We had such a fun trip to Florida. We still can't believe we were able to surprise my parents! We had to keep a lot of secrets and it was such a relief once they finally knew. We had a condo right down the beach from them so we were able to see them a couple times during the rest of their stay. We went for walks on the beach, looked for shells in the dark, had a delicious dinner at their place, and even learned a new sport...Pickleball!
My parents seemed to enjoy having us around, maybe someday they will tell us what they really thought when they saw ALL of our kids come running down the hallway the night we showed up! My mom actually skipped her flight home and decided to stay with us as we went on to Disney World for a few days!

Our Disney World portion of the trip started off on a rough note though...when we booked our 2 room suite online some of the reviews mentioned a terrible smell and bugs. We figured they were being dramatic and went with the Enclave Hotel anyways. Jokes on us though, as we checked into our room we found we had a roomate waiting for us...a half-dead cockroach :) The smell was also quite awful. So we aired out the room and sent our new cockroach friend to a new place and put all of our luggage up on tables! Fortunately, we weren't going to be in our room much so we decided it was not a big deal. That night we stopped by to visit a good friend of mine and her family who also happened to be vacationing in Disney! Afterwards we checked out Downtown Disney...along with the rest of Florida!

The next morning we woke up early for our day at Magic Kingdom. We got to the park right as it opened at 9am and stayed until Midnight!! It was a fun-filled day for all of us, I am so glad we got to go. The girls loved going on almost every ride at the park, the guys enjoyed the adult rides, and my mom and I enjoyed shopping! There were a few rides not running for a couple of hours around lunchtime so Kenny went to speak with a manager to see if there was anything they could do for us. Well, it was worth it! We got a special pass that allowed us to skip any line and get on the ride through a special door. It was amazing! Some of the lines were an hour long, so with 3 kids it was so wonderful to bypass all the waiting and just get on the ride. I did have a little guilt though! After our long day at Disney we went back to our "questionable" hotel and crashed.

Our flight home the next day went very well because all of the kids were so tired! I wish I could say the same about my experience going through security by myself (Kenny had to go return the rental car) with all of our kids, the double stroller, 3 backpacks, 3 blankets, 2 stuffed animals, a diaper bag, a camera, gifts, and 2 car seats!

It was a trip we will never forget, our first big adventure as a family of 5! And we are so relieved to say that we finally brought Graham to Disney World, we were feeling like terrible parents :) These are some of our favorite pics from the trip~