WALL-E

All seven of us went to see WALL-E today. The kids loved it. Keith got a little teary when we thought WALL-E wasn't going to survive. I thought it was a funny movie.

Being a mom of toddlers, I found it hilarious that WALL-E would find the oddest little trinkets to take back to his house with him. My kids are serious garbage collectors and I often find miscellaneous things like bolt washers, bread ties and crumpled store receipts safely hidden in pockets of small clothes when I am doing the laundry.

I also loved that the setting of the story is during a time when humans have created so much garbage on Earth that it is no longer inhabitable. However, in the midst of all this garbage is a perfectly good twinkie (which the cockroach uses for food). I laughed at the subtle jab to the preservative-laden twinkie.

There were so many things that were so true they were both funny and sad at the same time. I will admit that there were a few things that me shake my head in a what was Pixar thinking kindof way. Mostly the whole lighter thing. WALL-E and EVE both flick open a lighter during the movie. While the flame is supposed to be symbolic, I was still slightly bothered that Pixar would make a lighter look like something cool for kids to have their hands on.

Overall the movie was cute. There were quite a few good messages in the movie and no sass.
*
Last night, some old friends of ours invited Keith and I out to go to the movies. Kindof funny how I've only seen 3 movies in the past 5 years at the actual movie theater, and now I've gone twice in less than a 24 hour period! Anyhow, it was great to see everyone. We saw Hancock. I have to admit it was a little better than I thought it was going to be. Not so crazy about the language, but the end was cute. Unlike WALL-E, I think Hancock is one of those movies I only needed to see once. I'm pretty sure WALL-E will find a permanent place in our video library.

Getting out of vacation mode

These are a few pictures from the day we came home (Monday evening). All of the kids are really missing their own stuff since our belongings are in storage. Megan is mostly missing her dress up clothes. Keith and I brought her back a princess Jasmine outfit from our vacation. Megan also got a small Minnie Mouse and Daniel got a small Mickey Mouse and some Toy Story figurines. We bought Joshua a cool Star Wars Weekend t-shirt.
Buying a house is a full-time job. We had the inspection the other day which went very well. Coordinating the arrival of our house-hold goods and coordinating a time when Keith can be around for the move-in might prove to be a bit on the difficult side. It'll all find a way of working itself out.
We are in need of a new outdoor grill. Keith and I brought the kids to Lowes to check out sizes and prices for grills. Daniel got a little distracted by the tractors (lawnmowers). No, we didn't buy one (or anything).

Back to MGM Sunday Night

We hung out at the bus stop for a while waiting for the next bus to MGM to try to catch the Lights, Motor, Action show since it wasn't raining. When we arrived at MGM, there were tons of Storm Troopers directing traffic, making room for Lightening McQueen and Mater.

Daniel was so delighted to see a picture with Mater and a Storm Trooper!
Keith and I actually stood in line for about 20 minutes to get a picture taken with the Cars.

Lightening McQueen was pretty loud, he kept reving his engines. It was funny to watch all the little kids getting their pictures taken - their hands were over their ears.
Keith and I ran into the Incredibles. Mrs. Incredible blew Keith a kiss - I thought for sure I was going to have to take her down, it's a good thing I've been going to the gym.
Handy Manny came over and gave me a high-five. It was Keith's turn to be jealous.
Then June came by.
We caught Handy Manny and June heading behind the building together. See, chicks dig guys that know how to fix things!

While walking around, we ran into more of the Little Einsteins.
We also saw Jojo and her pet lion.
And Goofy and Donald dressed as Darth Vader and a Storm Trooper.
Finally, we got to see part of the Lights, Motor, Action show. About 15 minutes into the show, lightening cracked overhead and since the storm was less than 5 miles away, the show was cancelled, again.

On our way back to our hotel, we stopped at the Contemporary Resort to check it out. Neither one of us can figure out why it is so crazy expensive to stay there. It is a cool building, though.

We ate dinner at the Polynesian Resort. It was quite yummy. On the walk back over to the Shades of Green, Keith said, "watch out for that alligator". I thought he was kidding, because he's a funny guy. But no, seriously, there was an alligator walking across the sidewalk about 2 feet ahead of us. I wish I had my camera ready!

Animal Kingdom

Sunday morning, Keith and I took the bus from SOG to the Animal Kingdom. We were both pretty excited.
Yikes, check out the crowd! This is a tough park to be at during opening hours. Animal Kingdom is set up like a Trivial Pursuit board, similar to the other parks, but because of the waterways and large trees - there are very few walkways to navigate around the crowd.
Eventually, while everyone else was making a mad dash back to Everest, we (and the few other non-thrill riders) walked around looking at the plants and animals.
This tree's carvings were really very cool to look at.
The flamingos made us think of Megan. In Kodiak, our neighbor next door had a plastic flamingo in his yard and Megan would greet the "mingo" every time we'd walk by.

The ride we enjoyed the most was the safari. It was awesome riding along looking at the animals. Our tour guide was a little cheesy, he was really into his role, but it made it all the more fun.
Some of the animals were hard to see, since they are just roaming around. This rhino got a little close.
Keith talked me into going on a water ride. I should have known better when I saw how soaked most people were when they were getting off the ride.
The que, or waiting area, for the water ride had many cool things to look at. Again, this was another ride that we just walked right onto. In fact, I felt guilty stopping to check things out and take pictures. I knew I was in trouble, when we sat down into wet seats and the man across from us grabbed a trash bag and put it on with just his head poking out. Let's just say, after the ride, he was the one laughing!
Keith thought it was pretty funny that I got so wet. Most of my hair was soaked, as well as my entire right side was dripping wet. Keith was sitting to my left, and he was perfectly dry at the end of the ride.

We ate a lot of snacks and drank a lot of water during our trip. I wished I had worn a pedometer to track my steps and that I had logged how much water I drank during the trip. It seems like every time I walked past a water fountain, I was filling my bottle of water. I knew I was on vacation when it was just past 10am on Sunday and I was eating a Mickey head ice cream.
We enjoyed all the live performances that Animal Kingdom has to offer. While we were snaking in Africa, a group of musicians came walking up and started making some music.
We also watched a really cool bird show. It was funny and informative at the same time. I will admit that it almost seemed a little too doom and gloom toward the end when the emcees were discussing the depleting rain forests and how the Earth is just going to heck in a hand basket. I seriously expected Al Gore to jump out from behind the bushes to really drive the point home.
Heading over to the Dinosaur area of the park, we found a huge children's play area, and a few other fun adult things. I forced Keith to go on this twisty little ride - he does not do twisty tilt-a-whirl type things. It was fun, both the ride and seeing if he would really do it. :)
Even though the park itself is set up to be a traffic nightmare, I have to hand it to Animal Kingdom for the mass amount of street performances that were throughout the park helping to ease the flow of traffic. When we stopped to watch these awesome acrobats, the mess of traffic ahead of us was gone and we were able to exit the park. We really enjoyed this park and will probably bring the kids here some day. Again, we were back to the resort and in the pool with some food ordered for poolside delivery by about 1pm.

MGM Studios

I guess the new name is Disney's Hollywood Studios, but I remember it when it opened as MGM Studios. Keith and I were originally planning to hang out in one of Disney's water parks Saturday night, but since we had a nice swim and nap in the afternoon, and since Keith is a big Star Wars fan, we thought we'd see what this Star Wars Weekend business over at MGM was all about. We arrived to a pretty full park. We had heard rumors that earlier in the day, the park had stopped allowing people in because it was at capacity. But since it was nearing 4pm, we figured we'd gamble on the fact that the people who stayed in the park during the major heat of the day were probably ready to head back to their hotel rooms by now.
Someone will have to fill me in on what all this High School Musical rave is all about. The music was cute and catchy during the live show, which we did not watch, but could hear through-out the park.
We saw Chewy and an ewok hanging out in the shade. I'll bet they must have been hot with all that fur.
The dark clouds began rolling in once again, but we stayed in the park, hoping the clouds would just blow right past us.
We were too late to see the Indiana Jones show, but Keith and I both agreed that Joshua would be one happy little boy if we brought him to see it. We did get to the park in time to see the Lights, Motor, Action stunt show. We walked right into the stadium and managed to get really good seats. Unfortunately, the dark clouds brought along lightening. Since the lightening was very close, the show was cancelled. We were both a little bummed since we really wanted to see it.

We ate dinner at a cute little buffet called Hollywood and Vine. The buffet was amazing with tons of fresh veggies, salmon (we're starting to get used to this weird feeling of actually paying for fish!), chicken and bunches of other healthy foods. The buffet also had plenty of unhealthy things, but we were both really looking for something lite and healthy. We loved our meal there, even though we both had a bit of sticker shock when the bill came. We must have missed the sign on the door that said the buffet was $30 per person. We definitely consumed enough proteins and veggies (not to mention snickers cheesecake and key lime tart!) to justify the high cost. Probably not someplace we'd bring the kids, but we'd go there alone again for another good, although expensive, meal.
After dinner, it was pouring raining. We're not skeered of a little rain, after all, we survived Kodiak for 5 years! We had heard that Toy Story Mania was something that we shouldn't miss, so we braved the 90 minute wait. How people manage to wait in line for 90 minutes with kids is beyond me - there was a lot of crying and a lot of scolding going on.
Overall, the wait wasn't terrible, since we were in out of the rain.
We spent quite a bit of time talking about things that needed to be done for our new house.
And some time talking about what to expect at Keith's new duty station.

Potato Head was pretty funny. He had a hidden camera in him so he was actually heckling people in line. He made fun of Keith's bucket hat.
The ride was a 3-D trip through a midway playing a bunch of games. It was really neat and pretty much worth the wait. I was beating Keith the whole way up until the last game, were he scored big and won.
After we came out of the ride, just about everyone was either gone from the park, or over watching the fireworks. It felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. We walked right onto the Star Wars ride.
I will say that MGM (Hollywood Studios) is probably one of the prettiest parks at night. Everything was lit up, and since it wasn't crowded, it was nice to stroll along and enjoy the sites.
Keith was pretty excited to see WALL-E. He can't wait to take the kids to go see it.

Epcot Center

When we were in college, Keith and I had annual passes to Epcot Center. Keith would call me in my dorm room and invite me to a fancy dinner in Paris or a dangerous cruise in Norway. So for us, visiting Epcot wasn't new, but still plenty of fun! We had a great time being able to zip around the park without kids fussing or pushing a gigantic double-stroller. We were also able to ride rides that we would not have been able to enjoy together if we had brought the kids. We enjoyed Soarin', Test Track, The Land, Mission Space, and the giant ball ride (the name escapes me!) all before 11am. We walked on to every ride with no more than 10 minutes of waiting.

Then we walked through all the countries. We ate in Japan, since we wanted to eat somewhere that we had not eaten at yet. It was just okay, nothing spectacular. We walked through quite a few little shops and rode the boat ride in Norway.

We finished seeing everything that we wanted to see by around 1pm. By 2pm, we were napping by the pool back at our resort.


On approach to Epcot, the monorail circles the park telling riders the location of the most popular features.
The monorail approaching us. Between the monorail system and the buses, we never once moved our mini-van out of it's parking spot in the resort's garage.