Walt Disney World in November

Recently I posted about an upcoming trip to Florida.  We have decided on November and started making our reservations now.  We will be back up here in time for Thanksgiving so my sister doesn't have to spend it alone, but will be gone for the month up to the day or two before Thanksgiving.  In fact, we will be leaving here at the end of October, and spending Halloween in Missouri.  Elliott has decided that he wants to see Casting Crowns in Missouri instead of trick or treating, so if we can get tickets, that will be our Halloween plans.  Since Elliott can't have anything with artificial dye anyway, I can see why trick or treating would lose some of its appeal.  We'll just take him and buy him a bag of his one of his favorite dye free candies instead. :)

As for our time in Florida, we will be staying 11 nights.  Part of them will be on Disney property, and part of them will be nearby in Celebration.  We'll be going to Disney World, the Disney water park that is open, and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas.  We'll also be visiting Sea World (we all get in free through the military appreciation program) and Lego Land (Carl's ticket is free there as well) while we are there.

Elliott and I have been having a lot of fun planning our trip.  Almost every day when we take a break from school work, we work on vacation plans.  Elliott has been putting together a list of must rides, and characters he must meet.  We met many of his favorite characters last time, but he's looking forward to seeing many of them again.  Plus there are characters that we missed that he wants to see this time.  Then of course there are also some new characters that weren't there 3.5 years ago.

As for rides, last time we went he was barely 5, and was afraid to ride a lot of the rides.  He was also really afraid of the dark.  This time he will be almost 9, and is no longer afraid of the dark.  There are still several rides that he thinks would be way too scary, but his list is much longer this time. 

Last time we didn't make it to any of the water parks, and that is on Elliott's must do list this time.  He's pretty excited about some of the rides there as well.  He hasn't ever been to a water park, but has really enjoyed water slides at hotels we've stayed at, and birthday parties he's attended.  One of the places we are staying has a water slide at one of their pools.  Elliott's really looking forward to that.

Over all, we can't decide what we are most looking forward to, but we are all definitely looking forward to our vacation!

Happy Independence Day!

I hope all my American friends are enjoying our nation's birthday.  We live in an area where we can still do our own fireworks, so yesterday Carl and Elliott went a little crazy with buying them.  It's been a while since Carl was so excited to buy them, though, so we bought whatever he wanted, within reason.  They've already been doing a few daytime things.  We'll have a lot to do late tonight, though.

Carl is grilling hamburgers right now for lunch, and will be grilling brats, hotdogs, and ribs tonight.  Nothing like grilled food all day. :)  My sister is actually off work tonight, so she will be joining us later.  We're excited.  She's had to work every 4th since she moved up here, so it will be nice having her here!

This is just part of our stuff.  It's missing one big thing, plus most of Elliott's stuff he can do himself (smoke bombs, sparklers, snakes, etc)

Happy Memorial Day

We've had a busy weekend full of family fun this weekend.  We went to Bismarck to go to the zoo on Friday (it's much larger than the Minot one, with more room for the animals).  Saturday we spent the night in a hotel with a pool with two waterslides so we could go swimming.  I think Elliott ended up going down the slides about 200 times. lol  We were at the pool for about 5.5 hours Saturday and then Elliott and Carl went back for another hour Sunday morning while I was getting ready for church.  Yesterday after church, a couple from our church invited everyone to their house for lunch.  Elliott finally played with the other kids from our church and had a blast.  Right now Carl is outside grilling.

We have had a great weekend, but we are also taking the time to remember why Memorial Day is a holiday.  As a military family, it hits close to home.  We don't personally have any close friends that have been killed in action, but it's easy to see that it could happen.  And people that are willing to give their lives for us deserve all the respect and admiration that they get, and even more.  Memorial Day is such an important holiday to teach children about.  We've talked about it several times with Elliott this weekend, and I think he really gets it now.