The New Family Tradition TR About This Page:

[wdwlovers]

Great start!

[Cam22]

Sorry about that putrid coffee spill. But you've made it to Orlando!

[jlhill4444]

Absolutely adorable picture of you and sleeping Cameron! There is nothing better than a sleeping child, except a sleeping child on the way to Disney!!!

[honeybee723]

Even with the minor travel day hiccups, it sounds like everything went okay. I would have washed that blanket as soon as I got to the hotel...ewww!

[stardust190]

Originally Posted by shnewell

Yay -- you're there!!! Sorry about the nasty coffee on the plane -- ick! But otherwise the flight sounded like it went smoothly. Glad you were able to make up the lost time from the maintenance delay.

How cool that you're wearing a pedometer! I'll be interested to see how many steps you take each day.

The coffee was definitely a bummer, but we made it there so that's all that matters. I usually wear a pedometer at home, but I didn't wear it on our trip in 2009 and I found myself wondering how many steps we took per day so I wore one on this trip. I will say I was surprised by the amount of steps we took each day.

Originally Posted by lexiemom

What a first day! That really stinks (literally) about the spilled coffee. I am glad you were able to have connecting rooms, sounds like it made things easier!

Connecting rooms were great. And Cameron was so cute every morning. He had to knock on the door to go see Grandma, Grandpa and Auntie. He hadn't really understood knocking on doors until this trip. It's always fun to watch him learn new skills.

Originally Posted by OhToodles!

All caught up! And now you've arrived. That sounded like a long day! Love the picture of Cam sleeping on you on the plane. Very sweet!

It was a long day, but travel days usually are. That picture was taken before my arm fell asleep and I started questioning how heavy his head actually is. Had it been taken later he would have still been cute, but I probably would have looked uncomfortable.

Originally Posted by Tabitha34

Just joining in! We were there the same time as you guys! We stayed at POR. It will be interesting to see if we crossed paths at any time.

I hope you guys had a lovely time when you were there. And maybe our paths did cross. You never know.

Originally Posted by KMB733

Glad the flight went smoothly, and you've finally made it to Disney!!!

Thanks. Flights are a little more difficult with a toddler, but it went well.

Originally Posted by Colexis Mom

Glad you made it to Disney! Sorry about the spill on the plane!

Thanks! Once we get to Disney the coffee spill on the plane is far from our minds.

Originally Posted by ilovedisney247

You've made it and it sounds like your arrival went pretty well--except for the coffee of course!

Arrival did go well, but it was definitely a long day.

Originally Posted by wdwlovers

Great start!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Cam22

Sorry about that putrid coffee spill. But you've made it to Orlando!

I never knew coffee could smell so disgusting! I'm a big coffee drinker, but this stuff was gross. It didn't matter much though once we made it to Mickey's house!

Originally Posted by jlhill4444

Absolutely adorable picture of you and sleeping Cameron! There is nothing better than a sleeping child, except a sleeping child on the way to Disney!!!

Thanks! Kids are adorable when they're sleeping. Mostly because they aren't causing trouble.

Originally Posted by honeybee723

Even with the minor travel day hiccups, it sounds like everything went okay. I would have washed that blanket as soon as I got to the hotel...ewww!

Everything went fine when you look at the big picture. We were so tired and hungry when we got to the hotel that I didn't make it to the laundry. I did soak the blanket in tub just to make sure it wouldn't get stained. Of course that meant Cameron didn't have his blanket at night. Luckily for us he's not that much of a blankie kid.


I was going to try to get another update in this week, but it's not going to happen. Cameron and I got sick this week and today Nate has LASIK surgery so my weekend is probably shot too. So next week I'll get the real party started with this TR. Our first full day and first park. Any guesses as to what Cameron's first ever Disney ride is? HINT: we'll be at EPCOT!

[shnewell]

Sorry you and Cameron are sick! Hope you get better soon. Good luck to Nate with his surgery. Every year I keep telling myself this will be the year I get Lasik, and then the whole year goes by and I haven't done anything about it!

As for the first ride, I'm going to guess Spaceship Earth.

Looking forward to hearing more next week!!

[Tabitha34]

Sorry you guys have been sick!

First ride... My guess is The Seas With Nemo and Friends.

[KMB733]

Sorry you've been sick! Hope you're feeling better soon!

[MGW]

Great start! Can't wait to read more!

On the 25th we will be at Pop Century! Can't hardly wait!

[OhToodles!]

Hope you & Cam feel better soon! The boys have been sick too and now DH is getting something. Hope Lasik goes well; I'm jealous! I went for a consultation a few years ago but wasn't a candidate.

[mickeyforlife]

would it be finding Nemo? hope you guys feel better soon.

[ilovedisney247]

Hope everyone is feeling better soon!

[Jessie092408]

Just jumping in. I'm really enjoying your TR so far. Sorry about the smelly coffee. You handled that a lot better than I would have. Any sort of bad smell usually makes me gag. Yuck! Keeping my fingers crossed that that was the only truly yucky thing you encountered on this trip.

[stardust190]

Originally Posted by shnewell

Sorry you and Cameron are sick! Hope you get better soon. Good luck to Nate with his surgery. Every year I keep telling myself this will be the year I get Lasik, and then the whole year goes by and I haven't done anything about it!

As for the first ride, I'm going to guess Spaceship Earth.

Looking forward to hearing more next week!!

Nate's surgery went well. He was in pain for about 6 hours. He said it felt like he had contacts on inside out and that it felt like there were little rocks in his eyes. He woke up Saturday and they didn't bug him so much. He's currently got 20/25 vision and they're expecting that to improve. Considering he couldn't see anything before that's a HUGE improvement. I'm considering getting mine done next year, but we shall see. They'll have to give me a LOT more valiume than they gave him!

Originally Posted by Tabitha34

Sorry you guys have been sick!

First ride... My guess is The Seas With Nemo and Friends.

Originally Posted by KMB733

Sorry you've been sick! Hope you're feeling better soon!

Thanks guys! We're kind of feeling better. Cam was fine on Saturday, but Sunday he was back to being sick. He's home with his daddy today, but he'll get rid of this cold eventually.

Originally Posted by MGW

Great start! Can't wait to read more!

On the 25th we will be at Pop Century! Can't hardly wait!

Have fun! Pop was nice, I'm sure you'll have a great time!

Originally Posted by OhToodles!

Hope you & Cam feel better soon! The boys have been sick too and now DH is getting something. Hope Lasik goes well; I'm jealous! I went for a consultation a few years ago but wasn't a candidate.

Maybe the Lasik technologies have changed. Nate wasn't a candidate a few years back, but he is now. There was also another type of surgery they could have done for him. Maybe you would be a candidate for that.

Originally Posted by mickeyforlife

would it be finding Nemo? hope you guys feel better soon.

Originally Posted by ilovedisney247

Hope everyone is feeling better soon!

Thanks guys! We're on the mend. It's just a slow process...

Originally Posted by Jessie092408

Just jumping in. I'm really enjoying your TR so far. Sorry about the smelly coffee. You handled that a lot better than I would have. Any sort of bad smell usually makes me gag. Yuck! Keeping my fingers crossed that that was the only truly yucky thing you encountered on this trip.

Thanks for joining. I will say I almost gagged the smell was that bad. I was just so excited to finally make it to Orlando I kind of forgot about it.

[stardust190]

January 29th, 2012

After a long travel day and a semi-late bedtime for Cameron the night before I decided not to set an alarm and instead just go with whatever time we all got up. I woke by 8:30 AM and started getting ready. Cameron was up by 8:45 AM and everyone else shortly thereafter. I made the coffee run for Nate and I and noticed it was a little on the chilly side this morning. Once I got back I grabbed a sweatshirt for Cameron and put it on the stroller. Nate also went and put Cameron’s blanket in the laundry to get the coffee out of it. YUCK!

Everyone was having breakfast when I returned, but I noticed that they had a bunch of stuff that I hadn’t ordered from Garden Grocer. I then learned that Jean had packed a TON of food in her suitcase. She had yogurt covered raisins, yogurt covered crasins, a gallon sized baggie of mixed nuts and a gallon sized baggie of trail mix. Plus other things I’m sure. I was a little bothered by this as I had spent a lot of time communicating with them about the Garden Grocer order and even added trail mix to the order when they had asked. Even so, Jean packed a bunch of food. And I had sent them all the Garden Grocer order confirmation so I know they knew what I had ordered. Plus I was fairly certain that I had ordered too much food as it was. I guess the situation just made me cranky, but I bit my tongue as I didn’t want to start a fight on our first park day.

We were out the door by 10:30 AM and headed for the bus stop. Cameron loved watching the buses pull up:


My goodness that boy needs a haircut! The wait for the buses was short and we were soon on our way to EPCOT:


We arrived at about 11:15 AM, which made me a little cranky as World Showcase was already open. I would have much preferred to get there earlier, but it was our first day and I was going to take it a little slower with a toddler. We headed for the lockers and put half our stuff in there so the stroller wouldn’t be so full.

Our first order of business was to go get FastPasses for Soarin’ as my Lines app was already reporting wait times of 30 minutes. So off to the land we went. Cameron liked the “loons” hanging from the ceiling of the building so he looked at those for a while. We noticed that the Living With The Land boat ride was only a 5 minute wait and since it was right there we decided to hop on. Now I have nothing against this ride, but when we got off I realized that from now until forever Cameron’s first ever Disney ride is going to be Living With The Land and that made me a little sad. I kind of wish his first Disney ride was something that people recognize as Disney. Finding Nemo, Spaceship Earth or something along those lines anyways. But no, Living With The Land. Oh well. I think Cameron liked the boat ride for a while, but he was bored before the ride was over.

Since it was nearing noon we decided to just grab our lunch at Sunshine Seasons as we were already there. I think everyone enjoyed their food. Well except for Nate who got the Tuna Noodle salad. He wasn’t impressed. I think Cameron’s favorite part was the dessert. Chocolate Cake!

After lunch it was off to find the infamous missing fish. I think Cameron spotted his favorite fish from across the way and squealed in delight.


“I found him mom. He’s right there.”

The “Mine, Mine, Mine” birds were also a BIG hit with Cameron. He loves that part of the movie and stood by the entrance to The Seas for quite some time shrieking “Mine-Mine-Mine-Mine-Mine. We finally convinced him to go on the actual ride and he really seemed to like it. He would point at all the characters and tell everyone their names. After finding “Ma-mo” we explored the tanks a bit. And then headed over for the next showing of Turtle Talk with Crush. I think Cameron liked Turtle Talk, but he was pretty tired at this point and kind of just sat with Nate and zoned out. He will say “sweet” if you say “totally” these days so he must have been paying attention.

After Turtle Talk we were going to put Cameron back in the stroller and walk around a bit to try and get him to nap. Well he spotted his favorite BRUCE and we had to go visit him. (I think I’m in trouble Cam’s favorite in Nemo is Bruce, his favorite on Sesame Street is Oscar the Grouch and his favorite on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is Donald Duck. He might end up with a little anger management issue in the future.) We got our picture inside of Bruce:



We stopped in the Nemo gift shop and picked up some bath toys for Cameron, an autograph book and a Mine, Mine, Mine pin. Jean and Jim also purchased Cam a toy Crush. This boy isn’t going to be spoiled or anything on this trip. We sent our purchases back to the room – minus the autograph book.

We decided to make our way over to the World Showcase as Cameron needed a nap and probably wouldn’t enjoy it over there quite as much. By the time we were halfway there Jean mentioned needing to change shoes so she and Jim went back to the locker while we continued on hoping Cameron would fall asleep. We made it to the World Showcase and Cameron was still awake so we decided to just circle around the little pond area outside of the baby care center building. Of course at this point I didn’t realize that the baby care center was RIGHT there so we just kept walking. After a few laps we realized Cameron was NOT going to go to sleep. Then I noticed the baby care center and decided to give that a try. I took him into the nursing room with the rocking chairs in hopes that he would settle down. To which he said “NO WAY!” as he had seen the room of toys when we entered. So he squirmed away and made his way over to the toys. I was getting upset at this point because I didn’t want to deal with over tired toddler meltdowns and I really didn’t want to go back to the resort as we had only been in the park for about 2 hours. We decided to just see how things went and just keep moving along hoping that Cameron wouldn’t completely meltdown.

Jean and Jim met back up with us and our first stop was Mexico. Where Nate started back up with his tradition of putting stupid things on his head and having someone (mostly me) take a picture:






Then Cameron decided to play along:



We rode the Donald Duck ride, which Cameron enjoyed a lot as his favorite duck was there. He also really liked the “boom, booms” at the end which made me happy as we would be seeing Illuminations that night if everything went well. We stopped to watch the glass blower in Mexico for a bit and Cameron sat there saying “hot” and “pi-wa” (fire). That made the guy blowing glass chuckle a bit. We would have spent more time in the shops in Mexico, but Cameron doesn’t really like shopping so we started to move on. And then Cameron spotted the kids coloring. He’s just now getting into coloring so we got him a Duffy bear to color. And then I remembered that people mentioned in their trip reports that they only had sharpies. I had secretly been hoping that you all had been delusional or lying or something, but you were not. Why, Disney, why do you only have sharpie markers for the kids to color with? Why? Do you hate me or something? I should have brought some washable markers from home. We let Cameron color a little and within seconds his hands were red. We decided the temporary screaming was a price we were going to have to pay to save the rest of his skin and his outfit so we pried the makers out of his hand and headed out of the pavilion.

I stopped in the rest room to change Cameron’s diaper and try to wash the permanent marker off his hands. The marker was definitely staying. I decided I should also use the facilities and brought Cam with me. Well he has figured out how to use the door locks in the restrooms, which has not been very fun for me as he doesn’t ever wait until I’m done to try to escape. Well this door he was trying to get open and I think the lock stuck or something. He started screaming. I realized that not only had the lock stuck, but he had gotten his finger caught and it was now bleeding. So I rush out of the bathroom telling Nate “He’s bleeding”, but not really explaining anything. We got a band aid and went back in to wash our hands and clean up the injury.

After that fiasco we headed to Norway and wandered around that pavilion a bit. The line for Maelstrom was about 40 min and our Soarin’ Fast Passes were still preventing us from getting another one so we decided to skip it.


More stupid things were perched atop my boy’s heads:






By this point Cameron was SUPER cranky. I figured he was tired and that he might need a snack. We headed into China and found him some coconut cookies to munch on. He seemed to like them, but his mood still wasn’t great. Nate and I decided to try walking around with him again and hoping that constant movement would lull him to sleep. The rest of our group stayed to explore China and Germany while we headed back towards Mexico. By the time we got to Mexico Cameron was still awake so we headed back over by the baby care center. We walked our loop around the pond and after about 2 laps Cameron was out. We called Breanna and learned they were still in Germany so we headed back there. We stopped at Karamelle-Kuche to get some treats. I love caramel so I was happy to visit this place. I loved the German chocolate covered caramel. So yummy!