Our Florida Family Vacation: May 2013, Days 1-3

In early May, we went to Florida for our 2nd family Florida vacation! The last Florida vacay was exactly 5 years previous to this one. We left on Saturday May 4th in the am... Steph, Kenny & the kids met us at our place and we headed to Detroit for our 2pm flight! We arrived in Orlando in the evening on Saturday the 4th.

Day 1

Rachel was so excited for her first time (that she remembers) in an airplane! We very strategically selected our seats so all the girls were together so we could enjoy our flight together.

 Rachel was so excited to look out the window into the "cotton candy" clouds!

The first day that we arrived, Rachel spotted the pool in the back and needed to go swimming. Even after a long day of driving, flying, grocery shopping she still went into the pool in the evening. She was sooo tired afterward!







Day 2

Sunday was a Downtown Disney day where we headed in to downtown Disney to look at the stores and displays!

This is us leaving in the morning for Downtown Disney. This was our house for the week! 5 bedrooms that housed all of us really well with lots of space!

Entering Downtown Disney!

After a little wandering around trying to find one another, we had success! We learned after this how easy it is to lose one another while driving (in 3 cars!), or in the parks...

Here's Rachel super excited to ride the merry-go-round! At this time, she didn't know the excitement that awaited her at Universal Studios and Magic Kingdom with rides and attractions... excitement for Rachel continued to get better the whole week!

This is just Minnie, Mickey, Rachel, Aleksy and I hanging out at Disney....

Aleksy's looking pretty hulky these days. He's blocking the huge hulk made out of lego! They had everything made from lego at the Lego store: the dragon in the water, the seven dwarfs from snow white and buzz and Woody on the other side of the hulk!

After arriving back from our day at Downtown Disney, Rachel needed to go into the pool as soon as possible. She was not afraid to jump right in and swim around.. deep end or shallow (with her awesome water wings).

Aleksy and I hanging out by the pool, swimming, and trying to get a tan (with not much success). We had lots of sunny days in Florida that week!

Later that Sunday night, we wen out for supper at our favorite spot to go when in the States: Eat At Joes!

This is us enjoying the MASSIVE hurricane drink that left me feeling dizzy after dinner! Well Aleksy couldn't have much because he was driving so I helped him out with that...

This is the same drink I had when we were black friday shopping in Michigan and it was so delic I needed it again!

The men all aproned up ready to eat their pots of crab legs

Also that day, 2 of these Florida birds: which we later googled and learned to be Sand Hill Cranes decided to hang out right in front of the house. The crowd of us was not enough to scare them away!

Day 3

On Day 3 we headed to Universal Studios for the day.

Well, we all thought we were heading to Universal until we stopped here in front of the gates of Magic Kingdom!! We took the wrong exit and had to get through the booths where we were supposed to pay for parking and turn around. This is Aleksy checking in to ask... what do we do now?!

But... we made it!
We had to wait for the Universal globe to turn for this picture so you could read it!

When first heading into Universal we went through Seuss Land. As you can see Rachel was very excited for this: her first ride in Universal on the One Fish, Two Fish Red Fish, Blue Fish ride! She loved it.

Guess who else loved the Dr. Suess ride?! Thats correct, my Dad and brother Matt. Matt just couldn't stop talking about this ride after universal...

It was also a great remembered moment right at the end of this ride when the water stream drenched my Dad and not a drop landed on Matt!!! Aleksy and I may have died from laughing since we had front row seats to watch the drenching happen!

More Suess Land rides: the front cart! 

The Harry Potter section of the park would have probably made more sense to me if I would have read the books (or seen the movies). But nonetheless, it was done up with so much detail (as everything in Disney is!) and they were serving butterbeer and pumpkin juice. I was a little curious about the butterbeer, but didn't want to buy it in case there was actual butter in it. Because that'd be gross.

The Dinosaurs were an awesome part for my Rachel who loves dinosaurs sooo much!

She got to take pictures with a few different kinds of dinosaurs!

The we stopped for some lunch after the dinosaurs. Disney still hasn't branched out far from their burger and fries menus...

After lunch, we headed into the Marvel part of the park with the comics and super heroes!

And Rachel was very excited to meet Spider Man. She would have gone a little extra crazy if it was Iron Man, but still a good find.

Now, I'm no expert when it comes to comics and superheroes, so I can't remember who this was. However, I'm sure this character is pretty cool and exciting to meet... may Green Goblin? That's my guess for his name...

Most important in this picture is my nephew who has grown such a crazy amount since the last time in Florida 5 years ago!

Aleksy and I outside of the Hulk ride after riding it twice back-to-back. We seemed to have lucked out with lines at Universal (and Magic Kingdom!) and we didn't wait more than 30 minutes for anything. This particular rollercoaster we went straight onto the ride so we took advantage and rode again after!

This was a good ride, but I think my fav was the one in Harry Potter Land...

This picture is after me, Steph and Rachel got drenched on the Popeye ride! This was definitely another one of my favorite rides because its hilarious to watch other people get soaked. It was nice because it was a circle where all 8 of us were facing one another. One of the best parts of this ride (which Dad and Matt knew from experience) was the section where people who have finished the ride can use water guns and spray the other people who are on the ride! Find your target and drench them!

Just soaked:

After a long day in the park full of awesome rides, entertainment, and meeting characters, on the way out, Rachel saw this water fountain and saw it just like a ride in the park! Good times in the simplest of places!!









Sat tuned for a post for days 4-7! More good times to come.... Just as Rachel says, I want to go back to our Florida House with the pool.