Owen's Swamp Park Field Trip

 This year's first grade field trip was to the Okefenokee Swamp Park.  Owen was excited to get to visit the park with his classmates and with Granny Mel (who was kind enough to chaperone).  I gave Owen one of our old cameras so that he could take a few pictures of his trip.  It was really interesting to see all of the things that he thought were important enough to take a picture of- among them being several pictures of the alligators.

 Owen spent his time at the park with Granny Mel and his friend Brody.  They saw several exhibits and animals and took a train ride.  At the end of the trip, Granny Mel bought both boys a rubber snake- which Owen has since used to try and scare the living daylights out of everyone.

Granny Mel reported that the field trip went well and that a great time was had by all.

Easter

We had a great time celebrating the resurrection of our Lord on Easter Sunday.  We all attended morning worship and then met up at Granny Buie's house for lunch afterwards.  All of the kids (and adults) were dressed up in their Easter best, so we had to get some pictures.

On the Saturday before Easter, the kids dyed their eggs and laid their baskets out for the Easter Bunny.  When they woke up, their baskets were filled with candy and other goodies.

After lunch, it was time to hunt eggs.  It takes a lot more effort to hide the eggs these days.  The kids have gotten really good and sniffing them out.  In the end, they all found a good number of eggs.

Downtown Disney

 After spending close to a week at Disney, it was time to go home.  Before leaving, though, we headed to Downtown Disney for one last hurrah.  The kids had some money that they had won in a Superbowl bracket, and they had been dying to spend it all week.  We told them that they could spend it on the last day.  Both kids wanted to build a lightsaber, so that was first on the agenda.  Owen chose green while Olivia opted for a purple saber.  This brings the total number of lightsabers in our home up to six.  I dare the Empire to try and attack our house- we have two trained Jedi and six lightsabers.  Owen also chose a Duffy bear and an outfit to go on Duffy.  Olivia picked a stuffed Stitch, a bracelet, and a Duffy keychain.

 While we were downtown, we had lunch at T-Rex Cafe.  This was a cool place to eat, and the food was really good as well.  After eating, we rode the bus back to our hotel, got in our car, and drove home.  We had a great time on our vacation, and we look forward to returning in a few years.

Disney Characters

 The older kids are officially out of their "let's meet the characters" stage.  They were much more interested in riding than in meet-and-greets. Julianna was all about meeting the princesses, so it was fun to watch her- but the other kids didn't really care all that much about it.  The Sanders' family strategy was to meet the characters as we came upon them if the line was short.  We didn't really seek them out at all.  Even with doing it this way, we were still able to meet several.  The character that Owen was the most excited about was Duffy Bear (???).  I remain baffled by this.  Owen even chose a stuffed Duffy bear as his souvenir.  Duffy is not exactly a well-know character, so I this just seemed sort of an odd choice.

We did have to meet a few princesses.  We love Mulan.

 Olivia is pretty fair-skinned and she was interested in seeing if she was more fair than Snow White.  It was a close call, but I'm pretty sure that Snow White remains the fairest one of all.

 We ALL wanted to meet Elsa.

 Stitch is one of Olivia's favorite characters, so he was a must-meet.

Epcot

Our last full day at Disney was spent at Epcot.  I kind of feel like Epcot got short-changed because we were so tired when we visited.  Five full days at Disney will really take it out of you. Still, Epcot is a nice park and we enjoyed our time there.

 The Garden Festival was going on when we visited so we had the chance to see all sorts of topiaries and other floral arrangements.

 Two rides that we were able to check out were Test Track and Soarin.  I have been wanting to ride Test Track for several years now, so I was glad to finally get the chance to do so.

 After lunch, we went to explore the countries in the World Showcase.  We were going strong through the first half of the countries, and then we got worn down.  We kind of flew through the last couple.  Before leaving, we had dinner at the San Angel Inn restaurant in the Mexico pavilion.  This was a fun place to eat because it was located inside of a pyramid.  Owen deemed the restaurant "a good place to go on a honeymooon".  Sometimes I don't know where this kid gets stuff from. He tickles me.

Magic Kingdom: Beyond the Rides

While we spent most of our time at Magic Kingdom on the rides, there were a few other attractions that we enjoyed as well.  One of those things was Enchanted Tales with Belle.  This experience assigns roles to various kids and lets them reenact the story of Beauty and the Beast as a surprise for Belle.  Each of our kids was assigned a part to play: Ava was the wardrobe, Claire was Mrs. Potts, Julianna was a plate, Owen was Phillipe the horse, and Olivia was the Beast.

Owen did a great job and appeared in the scene right on cue.

Olivia's role involved her roaring.  She also did a great job.

Since she was playing the role of Beast, Olivia also got to share a dance with Belle.

Beauty and the Beast took a bow at the end of the performance and then Belle took a picture with all of the performers.  This was a very cool experience.

Later we had the chance to watch the Festival of Fantasy Parade.  We had a good spot for viewing the parade, which featured all of our favorite Disney characters as well as a fire-breathing dragon.

We had lunch reservations for the Be Our Guest restaurant.  This has been added since our last visit and is a really cool place to eat.  It looks just like Beast's castle from the cartoon.  We just had to try "The Gray Stuff" (and, yes, it was delicious).

Another fun attraction was the Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor.  Audience members had the chance to text in a joke before the show began, and Owen's joke got used during the show (and he got a shout-out for it).  Owen was also one of the audience members chosen to be interviewed and he did a great job.

On our last night at Magic Kingdom, we stuck around for the Wishes fireworks show.  It was really really crowded and Brian and I ended up having to hold Olivia and Owen the whole time so that they could see.  The show was really good though, so it was worth the pain.