Some of my birthday fun

Last weekend (not this last one but the one before...yep, slacker here) we skipped on over to the Mouse for a little birthday fun for yours truly.  My birthday was actually on a Thursday (the 9th, to be exact).  And wouldn't you know it, but Disney was doing a free afternoon at Blizzard Beach for passholders, which we are.  Since it had been since the water park first opened that I had been there, and none of my beloved peeps had ever been, we thought we head over there for the afternoon.  (I didn't take my DSLR into the water park.  So I snapped these with my iPhone.)

We had an absolute blast!  We started in the kiddie area just to introduce the whole water park concept to the kids without intimidating them.  It worked.  They had a blast in the pre-teen area, walking on "floating ice" and going down the big family raft among others.  We also managed to hit a few head first mat using waterslides, and they LOVED them! I was worried about Madeline's ability to hold on to the mat and whether or not the lifeguard would allow her to slide down.  But she was able to do it, and it wasn't an issue. Woot!  Woot!

It was a great way to spend my birthday.  As I said last year, I just love seeing my kids happy.  That's all I really want on my special day.

We actually stayed that night in a local hotel (we normally just drive home) so we could hit up Epcot on Friday.  The kids had fun checking out the local maps and such while we got checked in.

The next morning we ventured over to Epcot.  The HGTV Flower and Garden Festival was lovely.  The topiaries throughout were beautiful.  Flowers in bloom everywhere.  And vendors too.

Normally our dumplings don't wear flip flops to amusement parks.  All that walking requires good support.  But since we first went to Blizzard Beach, Patrick and I both forgot to pack their sneakers! lol.  Oops.

We ate lunch at the Biergarten restaurant in Germany.  The food was delicious!  Thankfully they had roasted chicken because that's all Madeline ate.  Oh that and Black Forest cake.   Caleb, on the other hand, was adventurous and ate lots of different and new things.  I'm so proud of him.  And the entertainment was quite good too!

We didn't want to miss the 360 degree movie in China. So we made sure to catch it on our way out.  Can you tell it was in the afternoon and quite hot by then???? 

Thankfully there was a freshment stand that shot mist up out of the ground.  These two absolutely loved it!  And got a little soaked while they were at it.  (Good thing for those flip flops!  Who knew?!)

It was so hot they dried off pretty quickly.  We had to take a ride on Spaceship Earth just before exiting. 

And because we still had to drive home, we stopped for a little coffee for the grown ups and donuts for the dumplings.

This boy of ours was so great at pushing his sister around in the stroller.  He's all ready to be big brother times 2!

For those of you who don't know April to June is love bug season in Florida.  They're everywhere!!!! They're harmless but sure are annoying.  When you're driving on the highway, it sounds like it's raining, but it's really love bugs being smashed against your car.  This is what our car looked like when we arrived at Blizzard Beach!  A whole host of dead love bugs.  Nice.

So when we arrived back home, we had some cleaning to do.  Fortunuately, my mother-in-law once told me that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers really do wonders on love bugs.  The dumplings couldn't wait to clean my swagger wagon.

That lasted all of one day because the following afternoon we headed back to Orlando to visit my sister to celebrate our birthday/Mother's day together.  Stay tuned for those photos.