One morning while drinking my morning coffee I just decided it was finally time to go on a "real" family vacation.  What better place then Walt Disney World!!!

I slept on the thought for a night and then decided first thing in the morning to book the entire package...plane, park-hoppers, hotel and rent-a-car...and we were going in less then 3 weeks.  I was amazed at how excited my 2-year-old and soon to be 4-year-old were at the idea of Disney.  I could get them to do anything, this was better than Santa Clause. 

Two days before we were to leave I had my son at the walk-in-clinic (for the first time ever) with an ear infection (first time ever!) and now on antibiotics (first time ever!)....did I mention this was my kids FIRST FLIGHT EVER!  The morning that we were to leave for Buffalo I had my daughter at the same clinic with a double ear, chest and throat infection.  The only catch with her is that for some strange reason she REFUSED to take any medication what-so-ever.  And she must have bit her tongue so terribly bad in one of her refusals that I thought for sure we'd have her at the doctors down there.  Can you believe the the doctor and pharmacist had told me that for the flight I should give her not only her antibiotics but motrin, dimetapp, tylenol and gravol cause she'd be in a ton of pain...seriously? 

Well I didn't have to worry about over-druging her by any means because this child would have nothing to do with anything (I couldn't even hide anything in her yogurt). So she went with nothing at all...

I had no idea my children could be such angels.  They were amazing...small planes, connecting flights and a 6am departure I barely had to pull any thing out of my 40 lbs of carry-on to amuse them.  The only thing was that she was glued to my lap the enitre time.  Such a waste having to buy her a full price seat ticket but she had turned 2 just 2 weeks earlier.  We arrived in Orlando just before noon and headed off to Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge Jambo House.  My husband went to pick up the car we rented which ended up being a waste.  Used it one time only (the first night) to run to Target to get diapers, snacks, a case of water, beer, bottle of wine and some juice boxes.  Figured the car may save us some money???

Dinner in the hotel the first night and early to bed...we, I should say my son, woke us up at 5 in the morning.  I had booked Donald's Safari Breakfast at the Tusker House Animal Kingdom.  The perfect start to our Disney Adventure.  We spent the rest of the day at Animal Kingdom.  Pretty much planned a park a day and some times "hopped" over in the evening to finish off what we had missed.  We had a 6 day park hopper which was perfect. So many character greats it was unbelieveable.  I brought my autograph book from over 20 years ago and filled it up.  Both my kids were so excited to have their pen and book ready for everyone to sign.  I have never seen my kids eyes light up so much as they watched all the incredible parades go by and have the characters come up to them.

The weather wasn't the greatest while we were there but we made the best of it.  For many rides we were just able to walk right on or wait maybe 20 minutes. We sat front row for every single show we saw (Nemo, Lion King, Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones, Beauty and the Beast to name just a few) and Aiden was chosen to be the honory captain on the Jungle Cruise.

We had another character breakfast at Magic Kingdom, lunch with Playhouse Disney Characters and dined at the Hoop-de-Do Musical Revue and the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show.  When I say we did everything, we pretty much did everything.  There were 2 rides that my son really wanted to go on but he was just under the required height.  He was so sad that for the rest of trip (and even to this day) he totally changed his picky eating habits. One night we had ordered a pizza to the room.  The next morning my son saw it sitting there. He started chewing on a huge slice of cold pizza walking down the hallway at 6 in the morning only to get the park to run and see "if the pizza made him bigger".  The only thing that we paid a ridiculous price for was hotdogs.  My son barely eats a thing so for him to ask for food we were happy to give it to him no matter what...$60 dollars later on hotdogs in one sitting!

Staying within Disney was amazing and so convienient I wouldn't do it any other way.  We were expecting it to be crazy expensive there but found that most things from food to toys were surprisingly reasonable if not cheaper then what we find around here in the GTA.  My son's new found interest while at Disney was Buzz Lightyear so we surprised him by getting him a pretty cool Buzz that does all sorts of things.  I was at the Disney Store here last week only to find the exact same item was $50 more! 

I couldn't be happier that we decided to finally go on a Disney Vacation.  Some people may think kids this age are too young but it was perfect.  My daughter may not remember but I know now we will definately be going back.  They were still each in a stroller, napped in the afternoon for a little while, which gave my husband time to choose a ride to go on and time to sit down and relax. We thought the kids were nearly begging for us to buy them something because they were so well behaved but they just "liked looking"!   Unbeleiveable...too bad the magic of Disney must stay there in Orlando. It truly is wonderful.