Catching up.

I know that I'm getting behind because my wife has told me that I'm in trouble because of how infrequently I blog. I didn't even know she knew I had a blog... Oh well...

Quin's doing great! He's 7 months old now and is quite mobile. No, he still doesn't (really) crawl, but has developed a rolling technique that enables him to get pretty much wherever he wants to go. He's also started to try out the "all fours" thing by getting up on his knees and lunching towards things that are slightly out of his reach.

I'm pretty sure I've written about this in the past, but I have a feeling that we're going to be in a bit of trouble in our household before too long. Quin appears to be taking after his big brother in the talking department. He is capable of babbling on and on for minutes on end. He also manages to use several consonant and vowel sounds. On occasion he will even try to mimic something that somebody else is saying!

Wednesday marks our court date. After that, Quin will be a bonafide Grady at long last. We'll post pictures then!

Guess who has a tooth?

No, it's not Ethan, and it's not Barley either. That's right, Quin's first tooth has finally busted its way through his gums. We were wondering why he's been so crabby lately, and the old "well, he's probably teething" excuse was wearing a little thin some 4 months later. But lo and behold, it really was true this time!

Here you can see him having a deep conversation with an old Elmo doll. He seems a little skeptical I think...

It's the best state fair...

Last week, Quin got to partake in his first State Fair. He "fared" pretty well, though I'm not sure it was entirely his cup of tea just yet. Ethan had a blast, at least for the most part. We started out by getting a wrist band and going on the rides. This is really the first year where Ethan was ready to go on the "big kids" rides. Unfortunately we were there with Micky and her kids, and they aren't quite ready. Not to worry, we split up for an hour and allowed Ethan to go on several rides by himself, and he had a blast. He even got to go on the bumper cars while I talked with a couple of Chicago guys waiting for their kids. The only things he was not able to go on were the rides that had a 52 inch height limit. Apparently he isn't quite 50 inches yet. Guess the NBA isn't necessarily in his future!

After the rides, we grabbed some dinner then went through the animal barns, like you are supposed to at the State Fair! Ethan's definitely a city boy. He was amazed that the cows would poop wherever they were. He also told me that this goat had its udders in the wrong place! Then there were the "racing sheep" that had blankets on them. To be honest, I suppose they could have been racing sheep for all I know. I don't know why they where those blankets!

Quin is doing very well now-a-days. He is now able to roll in both directions, which sounds great in theory, but is a bit of a pain in reality. This means that he is mobile, to a certain degree. I placed him on the floor in our living room the other day and went into the kitchen for something. When I returned some minutes later, he had migrated to the other end of the floor and was playing with the coffee table! I just can't wait until he can crawl or walk!

The last few nights, Quin has treated us with full nights of sleep! 10 hours minimum for 3 nights straight! Let's hope I haven't jinxed it by writing about it!

"Where the hell did they put them?"

Time is flying by. Quin is starting to get more and more independent, which is nice as he was being a bit clingy for awhile there. He is very good at rolling and can sometimes even roll from his back to his stomach. His latest trick is to stay in a seated position if we put him in one to start with. He's also reaching for toys and other things that are out of reach, which I'm told is a developmental milestone. So way to go, Quin.

Ethan has had a couple of funny situations in the last few days. First, we were over at Tony and Michelle's, Ethan's aunt and uncle's for a birthday party. Many of Jenny's family members were outside being eaten by mosquitoes and playing cornhole, when a policeman pulled into the driveway. Apparently a 911 call was made from a cell phone at this address, so they were coming to check it out. Well, I guess Tony's sister knew the guy, so she invited him in to look at Tony's shed. While he was touring the place, Ethan came up to me and said, "Dad, it's cool to have a cop at your party, don't you think?" I told him he probably won't think so in 9-10 years...

Fast forward to yesterday (that sounds kind of funny, doesn't it?), Ethan had some friends over the day prior to play Wii and look at Ethan's new Bakugon - a Pokemon knockoff. One of his friends apparently asked if he could keep one of his characters, but Ethan said no. Well, yesterday Ethan was looking for his little guys and could not find them. He immediately assumed that one of his buddies took it. He became suddenly obsessed with finding the toy, looking all over the upstairs. After about 5 minutes of furious looking, he said loudly, "where the hell did they put them?" After my initial shock, I calmly told him that that word was not appropriate for kids to say. He seemed to accept that, but called us out on using those words... Guess it's time to start watching our language again.

Ethan the Triathlete

This past weekend was the Pewaukee Sprint Triathlon. I ran in this event last year along with a team that we had assembled known as "Big Sky Multisport." We had our own jerseys and a whole bunch of people. Ethan was so impressed when he came to watch! He wanted to be "on my team."

This year we did it again, and they have a kid's event. So I ordered Ethan a jersey and he competed in the kid's triathlon. Well, it was actually a duathlon this year since we've had so much rain this summer that the lake where we swim is closed with algae problems... At any rate, Ethan is now offiially a Big Sky Multisport member.

When I first gave Ethan his jersey, he wore it everywhere! Of course, the jerseys are made of some sort of moisture absorbing, space-age material or something, and they don't always agree with the wearer's body parts. After Ethan wore his for awhile, his nipples started to get very sore. So before his race on Saturday, he asked me to put some band-aids over his nipples so the shirt wouldn't irritate them. They worked like a charm, but he forgot to take off the band-aids when he got home, then went to a friend's house to go swimming. His friend's mom told me that she knew quite a bit more about Ethan's nipples than she ever wanted to know.

Quin's doing very well, also. Jenny and I had to get up early this morning for our race (at 4:30) and it was my night to get up with Quin. I was very happy when I woke up at 4:30 and found that I hadn't been interrupted in my sleep the past night! He may not sleep through the night consistently, but he seems to know when it's imperitive to do so. He's also added the raspberry sound to his ramblings, which is pretty funny.

Milestones

After having been read the riot act by my mother, I have decided to finally make a most delayed post. In the past two weeks, Quin has been passing milestones by the handful and I have neglected to document them here, so here goes.

Two weeks ago Friday, Quin passed not one, not two, but three milestones in a 12 hour period. First, he ate rice cereal for the first time, and gobbled it up completely. I mean, he really liked it! Next, after his meal, Brett and I put him on the floor and he was observed for the first time rolling over (he had previously rolled over in bed two times, but this was the first time another human saw him). To top off the act, Quin slept for 9.5 hours that night from 8:30 to 6:00!!! That was the big one in my book!

Now, two weeks later, Quin is eating cereal and fruit on a daily basis. He has eaten pears and bananas so far and has really liked both of them. He also rolls over ALL THE TIME! It's actually to the point where we have to watch him more closely because he is starting to use it as a means of propulsion. Unfortunately, the last item on the list hasn't taken quite as quickly. He has ripped off a couple of 8-9 hour sleep nights in the intervening time, but has also reverted oddly back to the 4 hours sleep and up pattern at times. That is VERY frustrating as he has set a high water mark now and I expect that to be met on a nightly basis! I guess I haven't reached too many of my milestones as a second parent yet, unfortunately.

Dexterity

I'm just sitting here doing some scout stuff and Quin is sitting right next to me in one of his bouncy chairs. What's different than normal is that he is grabbing everything within reach.  He has access to a bunch of toys within reach and he is studying each one of them intently.  This is a first for him and quite exciting for us.

A rough 36 hours...

It all started out innocently enough.  We were going to church on Sunday morning, after which Ethan was supposed to attend a birthday party for a girl in his class.  While in the "gathering place" after mass, Ethan was horsing around with a buddy of his when his head got bumped and one of his loose teeth started bleeding.  On came the waterworks!  He insisted that he was in no shape to go to the party.  We drove to where we were going to meet to discuss with hosts, one of who was a dentist no less, all the while Ethan was crying in the back seat.  Luckily for us, the party was postponed due to inclement weather.

Let's back up.  It has been raining here in Milwaukee for the last 4-5 days straight.  I'm not talking about Seattle showers, I'm talking about torrential downpours.  There is standing water to spare, and flooding is the norm rather than the exception.  Today I saw a statistic that we've gotten over 9 inches of rain in June, already making it the third highest precipitation accumulation for June ever, and it's only the 9th.  What's more, our average rainfall for the entire summer is 11 inches...  On Saturday, there were several tornadoes spotted and detected with radar, high winds, inch hail, you know, basic apocalypse stuff.

So the party was postponed.  No problem.  That should give Ethan some time to recover and he should still be able to go to the party later.  After we met with Tatum's parents, we were asked to check out Aimee and Steve's basement for water.  They were away for the weekend and had troubles with water in their basement in the past, so they are a bit sensitive.  We agreed and took the trip over to Ixonia to check out their basement.  On the way, Ethan managed to work his front tooth out!  We were very proud that he managed to stop crying long enough to do so.  What's more, during the 15 minute trip over to the house, he managed to work the other front tooth out without so much as a whimper.  "Yes!!!"  He exclaimed as the second tooth lost root in his mouth.  Hopefully he will remember this next time a tooth gets loose and bleeds a little bit!  Anyway, now he has no front teeth.  You can see for yourself how he looks!  What's funnier is to hear him talk.  He's not too bad, but you can tell he has some troubles with "s" and "th" sounds.

Crisis averted!  The rest of the day went innocently enough.  Ethan bragged constantly about how he pulled two teeth.  We found jobs to do in the house because the sky had opened up yet again with some more rain.  Eventually, the rain stopped for a bit and we decided to grill out.  After supper, we were giving the boys baths when I noticed that Quin was feeling quite warm.  I didn't think much of it, and gave him a bath, thinking it would cool him down.  Well, about 30 minutes later, Jenny noticed how warm he felt, so we (read Jenny) decided we should take his temperature.  Imagine our surprise to see the thermometer reading 103!!!  OK, Tylenol, the doctor said we could give it to him, so we did that.  Unfortunately that wasn't enough for Jenny, she wanted a doctor to see him.

Gone are the days when we could both get in the car and worry equally about our baby at the doctor, we have another baby at home that needs to go to school the next day.  So I drew the short straw (because it was Jenny's night to put Ethan to bed) and headed out to the emergency room at 7:45PM, right as the sky had opened up again for another barrage of water.

Apparently Sunday is the busiest day in the ER in Oconomowoc, because I couldn't find a parking spot.  So I parked in the front only to find that the front doors were locked at 8:00 on Sunday.  It was 8:03.  So around the building I walked with Quin, a diaper bag, and a big umbrella that was struggling to do its job.

The ER was not entirely that interesting, but let me hit in the highlights.  Quin was feeling quite a bit better after the Tylenol, but the doctors wanted to make sure they checked thoroughly for anything they could treat.  They started checking the ears.  Once that yielded no results, they did a chest X-ray, followed by urine and blood samples.  I was wondering how they were going to get urine from a baby, like if they would try to squeeze it out of the diaper...  Nope.  Catheter baby!  I couldn't watch.  In all, we were there for just shy of 4 hours and found out that there was nothing treatable wrong with him and we should just give him Tylenol.  While we were there, I did get to hear some interesting conversations from people trying to score some narcotics from the ER staff as well as some woman involved in what sounded like a horrible car accident, so the night wasn't a complete loss.

Around midnight, Quin and I rolled into the driveway.  It was still raining, and the storm was picking up.  As soon as we walked in the door, the power cut out!  No problem, I knew where the flashlights were, so I was able to get the house prepared for the night.  Of course, one of our babies was sick, so we had to sleep upstairs.  As soon as I hit the pillow, I was out.  The power had still not yet come back on.

When the morning arrived, things appeared normal again.  Quin's fever had not spiked like it had the night prior, the power was back on, and it had finally stopped pouring rain (it was still sprinkling).  After getting breakfast ready for Ethan, I went to get his toothbrush ready and found out that we had very low water pressure.  I figured immediately that we must have thrown a breaker on the water pump, so I went downstairs to check it out.  I'm not sure what possessed me to check the sump pump.  It has never run a single time in the 5 years we've lived here.  In fact, it has been bone dry!  Not this morning.  The water in the sump was up to the brim!  I can't believe it didn't come out.  The pump was working just as hard as it could, but it was fighting a losing battle.  I guess I'm not going to work today!

After a while, I realized that I needed to divert the water deeper into the yard as it was collecting right next to the house.  That seemed to appease the drain tile for awhile, but the pump just kept on working, and working, and working.  At one point, worrying that the old pump wouldn't make it, I went out and bought a new pump just in case.  Turns out that was a wise decision.  I bought the new pump at 8:30 AM.  One of my neighbors went to the same place I bought mine an hour later to find they were completely sold out!  Oh, and the pump came in handy.  With two pumps going, I was able to finally get ahead of the water coming into the sump, at least briefly.  But the water was still coming in at an alarming rate.  It was like somebody hooked up a fire hydrant line to my drain tiles.  As I sit here at 10:00 PM, the sump pump is still working more than it is resting.  Apparently the ground has reached its maximum tolerance for water and the rest was going to follow the path of least resistance, which was my drain tile.

I don't know the end of this story yet, but my nerves are about shot.  I'm going to try to get some sleep if I can.  I'm sure I'll dream of breakers flipping and basements flooding, and that will prompt me to once again go into the basement to look at the sump pump doing its job.  At least the tooth fairy was good to Ethan and Quin's fever broke, though.

The "Forrest" is strong with this one...

Birthday Boy

May 17th was Ethan's 7th birthday.  To celebrate, we invited the boys from his class to join us at the YMCA for some cake, games, and swimming.  Unfortunately, Ethan has only 5 boys in his class, including himself.  Even more unfortunate, one of the boys didn't show up, so there were only 4 boys there.  Actually, that ended up being lucky for us as boys are crazy!  The spent the bulk of their time wrestling and smashing into one another.

We did manage to get them all into the pool in one piece.  Our Y has a very nice family pool that is separate from the competitive "lap" pool.  It has a small lazy river, therapeutic area, a play area with fun water toys, and a big water slide.  Ethan's always been afraid of the water slides, which is too bad since we go to the Dells at least twice a year in hopes that he'll start going down them.  Each time we've gone, we've been disappointed.  We tried everything.  We picked out any 3 year old girl that was going on the slides and point them out, we'd question his manhood, but nothing would work.  He was very stubborn.  Finally we thought we had found something that would work to get him to go on waterslides, movies.  He loves movies, particularly Spiderman and Star Wars.  We have not let him watch the Star Wars III and Spiderman 3 because they were PG-13 and that made him mad!  His friends got to watch them, he would tell us, to which we would retort, "your friends probably aren't afraid to go down waterslides."  Yes, nominate us for parents of the year right now...  So we told him that if he would go down a waterslide, we would let him watch one of those movies.  Well, he finally went down the waterslide at the Y, not because he wanted to watch a movie, but because all of his friends did it and he felt like he should as well.  He did not hesitate to tell me immediately, though, that he intended on watching Star Wars Episode III that very evening.

Episode III

Ethan has been a fan of Star Wars for quite some time.  He has recently renewed his love for the movies when he discovered Lego Star Wars, the Wii video game, a couple of weeks ago.  Since then we have watched all 5 episodes (besides Episode III) several times.  Watching the movies with Ethan means enduring a constant barrage of questions and comments about the movies.  As late as three weeks ago, he still referred to the "Force" as the "Forrest."  It was all I could do to answer him with a straight face when he would ask me, "Dad, do you believe in the Forrest?"  He finally conceded that it was the "Force" after some heated arguments and re-viewings of the movies.  All that time, though, we insisted that Episode III was too dark and scary for him to watch.  The fact that it was rated PG-13 helped us to convince him that he couldn't watch it.  After surprising us by going down the waterslide, though, we had no choice but to let him watch.

After the party, we quickly went to church (fun birthday, eh?), went out to eat at one of his favorite restaurants, Burger King, then rushed home, got into our pajamas, popped some popcorn, and settled down to watch Episode III.  It had been awhile since Jenny and I had watched the movie as well, so we were excited to watch the movie as well.

My impressions of watching the movie with Ethan are mixed.  On one hand, I thought he had an incredible amount of insight in the movie.  He understood many things that I never would have thought he would understand.  For example, he figured out early that the Chancellor was only pretending to be kidnapped.  On the other hand, he never shut up for the entire movie!  Over the last few weeks, since the Star Wars craze started up again, he had been barraging me with questions about Episode III.  I told him what I remembered and never left anything out.  From that, he was able to predict a good portion of the movie.  It was pretty annoying, though, because he would constantly be saying, "Is this the part where such and such?"  I'm sure there was not an entire minute during the movie where he didn't say something.  One thing that he said that I found hilarious was during a scene where Anikan and Padme were talking about what they were going to do with the baby that they had accidentally created together.  Padme said something like, "Do you think Obi-Wan could help?"  Ethan started snickering to himself, so I had to ask him why.  He said, "I'm thinking how funny it would be if Obi-Wan helped with the baby.  Like if the baby got stuck coming out, he could use his light-saber..."  Perhaps the PG-13 rating should have scared me away.

In the end, I'm glad I let him watch the movie.  He actually is very good at following these movies, perhaps even better than some adults (myself included).  He has a very good attention to detail and is not afraid to ask questions about anything that comes to mind.  The bad part, of course, is that he asks it when it comes to his mind, regardless of whether it is during the movie.  One of his favorite questions is, "who is your favorite character" and all variations around it.  An example of his variations on this question is "who is your favorite bad guy in the second episode?"  Ultimately, he wants me to say either Boba or Jango Fett, his two favorite characters in all the episodes...

Quick Quin Update

I feel bad that I've not written much on Quin lately.  It seems that the second child syndrome has set in.  Reading back on the blog entries on Ethan, I wrote at length on gripping topics as the consistency of his bowel movements to the exact pitch and tone of his coughs.  With Quin, however, we have been through that, and we choose not to worry ourselves about it so much.  There, another reason to get that nomination in for parents of the year!

Quin is progressing as one would expect a three month old to progress, I think.  He has become quite interactive.  He rewards us often with smiles and laughs.  He is also starting to discover that he can grab things with his hands and explore them.  Right now he is very hesitant and cautious about grabbing things, and is still trying to get the hang of controlling his limbs to such a fine degree.

He's still eating about 5 ounces at a time every 4 hours or so.  He has started sleeping a bit more at night, but it's not very predictable.  He has gone 9 hours before eating at night in the past week, but that 9 hours went from 6PM to 3AM.  Eventually we'll figure out how to get him on somewhat of a schedule.  It is more common for him to go 6 hours between eating at night, and he still goes to sleep almost instantly after eating when in the middle of the night.

Oh, he talks a lot!  I'm not sure if I'm ready for another kid that talks as much as Ethan!  The funny thing is that I really believe he thinks that he is talking.  He will look you in the eye, smile, then babble at you for minutes on end.  He repeats sounds sometimes as well!  I'm wondering if those repeated sounds actually mean something?  Do babies come out with some sort of default language that they all speak and we just don't understand it?  I always thought all babies came out speaking a Chinese dialect since they had about a 1 in 4 chance of being born in China, but now I'm not so sure.  The things Quin is saying don't sound Chinese to me...

At any rate, Quin's doing well.  I'll update more as more exciting things occur to him, like getting teeth, rolling over, eating his first solid food, you know, the really exciting stuff!!!

Superheroes

It's not secret, Ethan is a HUGE superhero fan.  He loves all things Spider-man, Superman (to a lesser degree), Batman, Fast Guy, who he now knows as The Flash, you name it.  He even thinks Ghost Rider and Blade are cool.  On Friday, he had a book fair at school where he become the proud new owner of a Spider-man encyclopedia.  It is a book that has many of the characters from the Spider-man universe, gives a brief dossier on the character, and shows a picture.  He was very excited to show me "Spider-girl" from the book.  In fact, he told me that he had Spider-girl in his collection!  He rushed upstairs and grabbed his most European looking Spider-man action figure (he has very many), brought it down, and showed me, explaining, "see, dad, this is Spider-girl.  She doesn't have very big boobs, but it's definitely her!"

"No, son, she doesn't have very big boobs at all, does she?" I replied, temporarily stunned...  I didn't even know he knew the word boobs!!!

The above picture is promotional art for Amazing Spider-Girl #1.  Art by Ron Frenz.

One Rough Vacation

This past weekend marked one of the most trying vacations we've had as a family.  In fact, it was one of the most trying 24 hours we've ever had as a complete family.  Let me explain...

We rented a condo in Wisconsin Dells this past weekend with Aimee and Steve (Jenny's sister) and Tim and Laura, and their respective children, all of whom range in age from 6 months to 2 years.  The weather in Wisconsin had been wonderful, until this weekend.  Friday night on the drive up we witnessed gale force winds along with tsunami strength rain.  Apparently there was a tornado in one of the areas through which we drove!  Not to worry.  The resort we were staying at had indoor facilities which we fully intended to utilize.  Despite the weather, Friday night went off without a hitch.  Everybody got up there safely and the sleeping arrangements were more than adequate.

Saturday was nice also.  We spent a large portion of the day in various wave pools and water play areas, no problem.  The real fun didn't begin until later in the evening, after a healthy taco meal!  It started right at the tail end of supper, actually.  Ethan started complaining a bit about his stomach not feeling well.  We just assumed he had jumped on one too many lilly pads and discounted it.  I ushered him into our room to get him ready for bed.  Before he could get there, though, he gave a bit of a squeak, ran into the hallway, and threw up everywhere.  He managed to get about 1/2 of the seemingly endless supply of vomit into the tiled bathroom, but there was still a healthy supply on the carpeted hallway.  While Jenny settled him down and cleaned him up, I got the puke from the carpet as best as I could.  At this point we were still dismissing this as overexposure to the water park.

Fast forward two hours.  By this time, Ethan had thrown up all over both of our beds and sheets.  At this point, we knew that it wasn't overexposure and it was indeed some sort of bug.  Not having a bed to sleep in anymore, we decided to head home around 11:30 in the evening.  Before we could go, our friend Tim suffered a similar fate to Ethan's.

The ride home was uneventful, if you don't count Jenny having to hold a plastic bag in front of Ethan to catch the various bouts of vomiting.  To make a long story just a little bit shorter, we got home, Jenny threw up, I lasted a couple more hours before I got sick, and Quin seemed to weather it all without incident.  Unfortunately for him, none of us were able to get up or do anything until about 4:00 the next day.  Luckily he slept a large portion of that time.

So yeah, Quin's second family vacation was probably not too memorable for him.  The rest of us will remember it, though!

Big Update

Quin is 9 weeks old now!!! We've had a good couple of weeks with him so I thought I'd share with the lot of you.

First off, he's now eating about 5 ounces at a time every 4 hours. Unfortunately, he's still doing that at night as well. Although, some nights he's been known to go 6 or more hours between feedings, and when he does wake up to eat, he's very good about going back to sleep promptly.

Next in line, Quin has started to smile. Up until now, smiles were pretty elusive, but as of today he's doling them out to deserving individuals on a regular basis. Here you see him smiling at his mommy while Grandma Grady holds on to him. Last Thursday, he was really giving it to his Grandpa Tibbett while giving him an earful at the same time. Yes, it seems to be that we have another talker on our hands!

Last Thursday, Quin had his 2 month well baby checkup. He weighed in at 12 pounds 1/2 ounce and was 23 1/2 inches tall. That qualifies him for the 50th percentile in each category. He also got his first booster shots, which he really didn't like at all! Jenny and I heard a cry from him that we hadn't heard to that point. He was really mad!

Finally, we took Quin to meet the rest of my family last weekend as my brother, Bryce, got married in Minnesota. He was a big hit, as we knew he would be. Lucky for us, he is a very good rider as we had a 6 hour drive from Minnesota to our home.

The Trip Home

The Trip Home

At 6:30 we got up "officially." Jenny had packed the night before so we could maximize our sleep, but Quin had different ideas. By 7:30 we were showered and ready to go. A bellman picked us up at our room and took us to the "Common House" for checkout. Here we were actually able to check our bags onto the airplane and get our boarding passes. This Magical Express thing was really nice!

The trip to the airport was short and sweet. The driver did his best to get us in a good mood, but nothing could change the fact that we were about to reenter the real world in less than 24 hours.

In the airport, we grabbed a bit of breakfast then went over for the body cavity search line which looked to be significant. Orlando is perhaps the least friendly airport I've ever been in. We had a stroller and a 6 year old, but were afforded no slack in getting through the security line. First we were yelled at because our stroller didn't collapse small enough, then we were yelled at because I was trying to hold Quin in one hand while replacing my belt and shoes with the other, all the while my bags were still on the conveyor. Pricks.

We made it to the gate quickly enough that we had to wait for almost an hour. Mom tried to find Ethan some gum as I had lost hers on the way there. She was unable to locate any. So if you are travling to Orlando and need gum to fly, buy it before you get to the airport. The worst part of the trip was that we were sitting all over the airplane. Apparently they had overbooked the flight by 4 passengers. I'm not sure how we got so split up since we checked in 3 hours prior to the departure, but I suppose everybody else paid the $10 to select their seats. As it was, I had to trade with some other person in order to sit next to Ethan. Luckily he was very nice and traded with me. Jenny, on the other hand, had to fend for herself with Quin three rows in front of us.

When we finally got home, collected our luggage, and drove back to Oconomowoc, it was around 3:00. We purchased a pizza since we didn't have anything to eat at home, cooked, ate, and unpacked, then mom and dad headed home for Neillsville. Our vacation was officially over.

Trip Summary

In all, it was a wonderful vacation. We would do it again, though perhaps not over spring break. The Saturday was much less crowded than the other days, so perhaps including an entire weekend would be good one way or the other. I would definitely recommend going to Disney, particularly if your parents or inlaws were willing to pay for it (thanks mom and dad!).

Insiders Tips for the Disney Traveler
Here is a list of things that we've found that will make your trip to Disney just that much better:

• Stay on the resort. It may appear to cost more, but it is much nicer. There is no need to worry about parking, transportation, accommodations, and they pick you up and drop you off at the airport.
  

• Get the meal plan. It is much cheaper. Quick service meals average around $12 and table service meals around $25 per person without the plan. It's nice not to have to worry about paying for meals.

• You can buy alcohol at the shops. It's expensive, but cheaper than getting it in the bars.

• Plan ahead. It takes around an hour to get from any one place on the resort to any other place as long as you don't have to switch modes of transportation. If you have to switch, plan more time.

• If you want to do pin trading, purchase pins before coming to the park. You can apparently purchase them on Ebay for a fraction of the cost. Pins cost between $6 and $10 from what I've seen, though they could be more or less. All you need is some to start and you can trade with any Disney employee, who are required to trade unless they already have one that you are trying to trade.

• In EPCOT, there are kids stations all over the park that kids can stop and get a badge and a stamp. It's something fun for them to do and may buy you a couple of minutes to look around.

• Get dinner reservations in advance. It's hard to get reservations at normal meal times otherwise. You can make reservations up to 6 months in advance of your vacation.
  

• Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios are less attended than other parks and may get you out of the hustle and bustle.

• Downtown Disney isn't really all that cool. They do have nice bars, though.

• Do a character meal. Your kids will like it more than you think they will.

Disney Day 5

Morning Swim

Finally, our last day at the parks. It's been a pretty eventful week. A bit tiring, but definitely memorable. Today we had reservations at EPCOT early, 4:45, so we planned on spending the day there again. There was a lot at this park that we haven't yet done. Also, mom and dad really like the world showcase, so there seemed plenty to do for the entire family.

We woke up late again today. It was a bit of a rough night with Quin. He had been very good all week up until, and for the most part including tonight. This time, though, he was up a little bit in the night, not awake, but fussing. It made it a bit difficult to get really good sleep. Ethan didn't have any troubles, though, which was all that really mattered.

Since we got up later anyway, Ethan and I decided to go for a quick swim when there was nobody in the pool. We had some fun playing Marco-Polo and Leech, but also got to do some aerial stunts. Specifically, I threw Ethan in the air and he did flips. He was surprisingly good at them, so that was pretty enjoyable. Of course you can only do that if nobody else is in the pool with you, especially a life guard. This morning, all of those conditions were met.

After a quick serve breakfast, we caught the bus to EPCOT. Quin and I got to ride with a woman and her grandchild who were from Menominee Falls and Slinger respectively. They were very nice people. The grandmother was only 54 years old and was there with her daughter and granddaughter only. Grandpa had stayed home to run the family business that they had just sold the year prior. He had a two year contract to continue working there until he was going to retire at 55. They had a house in Arizona and one up by Wisconsin Rapids where they planned to spend their retirement. I envy them...

Epcot Take III – Ethan, Jenny, and Brandon

We got to EPCOT around 11:00 and decided to split up. Jenny, Ethan, and I were going to try to get on some rides in Futureworld while Grandma, Grandpa, and Quin were going to take in the World Showcase. After splitting up, I took all of our passes and Fast Passed Soarin'. Even though I was early, our Fast Pass tickets didn't come due until after 3:00. No problem. We were planning on meeting mom and dad around 1:00, so we could all go and check it out. The bad part was that there were 2 hours until we could Fast Pass again.

Knowing that, we headed over to the other side of the park to see if we could get on Mission: Space or Test Track. The line for Mission: Space was only 20 minutes long, but Ethan didn't really want to go on that. Instead, we got into line for Test Track, which was 60 minutes long, but we didn't have anywhere to go anyway. GM sponsored this ride, and the line decorations were pretty neat. They had different stations that explained different stages of actual test tracks. They also had some literature of one of their actual test track centers in Michigan where they had over 100 miles of specifically designed roads in which to test their cars. While in line, we got to see how Disney measures the length of their lines. It appears to be an automated system. At the front of the line is a box. When that box beeps, an attendant goes over and grabs one of may red lanyards and scans it at the box. They then give this lanyard to the next person that gets into line. When that person gets to the front, another attendant takes the lanyard and scans it again, and viola, line time is determined. It is really very accurate.

The ride was very cool. Six of us got into a car that took us through several test courses. Of course they had the mandatory orientation video with a famous person giving the talk. I think this person was the guy from A Mighty Wind and Best in Show. Anyway, the different agility and brake tests were all fine, but the real fun started when they took us on the outdoor track and sped up to somewhere around 100 MPH. I'm just guessing on the time, I don't really know how fast we were going, but it seemed very fast and was very fun.

After Test Track, our Fast Pass was available to use again, so we fast passed Mission: Space under the guise that there is a kids and and adult version of the ride, which there is. We had about 40 minutes to wait for that, so we tried to get on the Universe of Energy ride which was 40 minutes long and we walked right onto. After an 8 minute introductory video, they opened the doors to reveal an area with many church-pew looking benches. After getting about half way into that area, Ethan decided we weren't going to go on that ride and tried to leave. After getting about half way out the exit, he decided we could go on it, and we went back in. Half-way in again, he decided finally that this wasn't the ride for us, and we left for good. Oh well.

Instead, we spent some time in a playground and in the Walt Disney Flower and Garden Exhibit Pavilion, which had a bunch of flower and garden stuff. While there we saw a video that detailed the making of some of the various topiaries around the park. These things are amazingly detailed as you have seen in some of our pictures. All of the matter that goes into these topiaries is organic and they don't use any paint as far as I can tell. It also underscored just how many people work for this company as there were dozens that worked on these topiaries alone, not to mention the greenhouse, modeling, and welding people that all coordinate to make these structures. These things are so complex that they have their own internal irrigation systems!

At last, it was time for us to go into Mission: Space. At the beginning of the Fast Pass line, one of the “Cast” asked us if we wanted the Green or Orange experience. Green was for “babies,” he said, or orange for “big boys.” I said, “I think he can handle it,” referring to Ethan. He said it wasn't Ethan he was worried about. An astute observation. Under the guise of color-blindness, I told him we would go on the orange, while still convincing Jenny and Ethan we were going on the beginners ride. When we finally got in, Jenny caught on to the fact that we were on the adult ride, but Ethan still didn't know. It didn't matter. He loved it. The ride itself was pretty amazing. They put you in this spaceship in astronaut couches. You are strapped in so that you can see a screen and some controls in front of you. On the screen they show a movie. It starts on the launch pad and simulates G-force for takeoff that was very realistic. As far as I could tell, they rotated the cabins and spun them to do the simulation. Very cool. This went on for another 5 minutes or so when we finally landed on Mars with a dramatic landing on the edge of a cliff. After getting off, I explained to Ethan that it was the adult ride. It turned out to be his favorite ride in any park! Jenny, on the other hand, was not so impressed.

We still had an hour or so before our Fast Pass for Soarin' came available. We had long since called mom and dad to coordinate a later meeting time, so we went to the Journey into Imagination with Figment. This was a pretty lame ride that had a dragon in it and was hosted by Eric Idle. Nothing too great here. Outside of this building were the dancing fountains that Ethan was so fond of, so we messed around there for awhile.

At last it was time for Soarin'. Jenny wasn't feeling too well from Mission: Space, so Ethan and I went in alone. This time he wasn't scared at all! Hopefully something on Mission: Space convinced him that these rides weren't that scary. The ride itself was pretty cool. They put you in this seat with a harness and raised you up in front of this mammoth circular screen where they showed different aerial views of California. There was an ocean fly-by, a golf course, complete with a ball just narrowly missing us, a hang glider, climbers, etc. It all ended flying over Walt Disneyland in California during the fireworks. Pretty cool ride, but Jenny probably wouldn't have liked it.

Now it was time to meet Grandpa and Grandma, so we headed over t our predesignated meeting spot, the pub in England.

Epcot Take III – Grandma, Grandpa, and Quin

Though details are sketchy on what Quin, Grandpa, and Grandma did for the 5 or so hours while we were separated, I do know they they had a good time doing what grandparents do with 6 week old (yes, he is 6 weeks old today!) grandchildren. They walked from country to country, sometimes taking in a show or 360 degree movie, sometimes just watching people, sometimes getting a beer from Germany (they have good beer). They seemed more relaxed than we did when we met up with them just before 4:00 in front of the pub in England. Off Kilter was playing on the border of Canada and England again, as we started our combined adventure for the evening.

Epcot Take III – Combined Adventures

After meeting in England, we grabbed a Bass from the pub and started walking the world. If you've never been to EPCOT, the world showcase is a small representation of many different countries throughout the world. Basically they have shopping, food, and maybe a ride at each of them. They are put together very well, even though they are pretty much aimed at shopping. We traveled the long way around which took us through France, Morocco, Japan, Italy, Germany (where we got more beer), Kenya, China, and finally Mexico where we were going to eat for the night.

Our dinner this evening was at the San Angeles Resaurante in Mexico, which was traditional Mexican food. The food itself wasn't too bad if not a little too traditional for our tastes. We could have used a few more tortillas and rice and beans. The atmosphere was very cool, though. It was set at dusk near the Aztec Pyramids. Very cool.

We ended our stay at the park in a shop trying to find presents for all those that we hadn't bought for yet. We got Jenny a shirt and Quin a stuffed Micky. Finally we boarded the bus and went back to our rooms where we could make final arrangements for the trip home tomorrow. On the way to the buses we spotted an apparently unused building. We walked over by it and found people guarding the doors. My dad asked what the buildings were, and was told that they were for conventions and meetings. Just like Disney. They have so many people that they can pay people to watch empty buildings!!!

Nightcap

At the hotel for our last night, Ethan wanted to go swimming one last time. He also wanted to show off his high flying acrobatics to Jenny, who I'm sure was quite as impressed as she sounded. After depositing him back in the room, I walked the property to get some essentials that we just couldn't do without until the next night. I was struck at how nice this resort actually was and immediately regretted not having more opportunity to spend time here. There was a cheesy old guy band playing at the bar, kids were walking on the running path, a beach party was going on in the middle of the lake, it was a hopping place and looked very fun. Next time we'll spend more time relaxing (yeah, right).

Knowing that we had to get up by 6:30 or earlier for our checkout and shuttle to the airport, we called it a night one last time in Walt Disney World.

Disney Day 4

Late Start

Quin was up during the night and we were getting tired, so we slept in a little bit this morning. Jenny and I got out for a run around the 1.4 mile running path that goes around the resort (we went twice around), we gave the kids baths, then we grabbed a leisurely breakfast at the Shutters food court at our resort. It was a good jumping off point for the rest of the day, which we planned on spending at Animal Kingdom.

Animal Kingdom

Disney's Animal Kingdom is their newest theme park. Mom and dad had been at the park once before, right after it opened in 2001 when they chaperoned my Brother Brett's high school choir trip to Disney world. Our expectations were low as my dad said the park wasn't very big and there wasn't much to do at it. Apparently they have done some building since then, because we had a full day of fun and excitement at this park.

Our first inclination was to Fast Pass everything, so my dad and I sprinted towards the rides we wanted to go on while Jenny, mom, and Ethan tended to Quin, who was ready to eat already when we got there. We first Fast Passed the Jungle Safari, then went and tried to do the same to Kali Rapids. There, however, we were met with an invalid ticket. The woman behind the kiosks explained that we could only Fast Pass once within a period of time, and that period of time changed depending on park conditions. Another Fast Pass was not available to me for 2 hours, for example. I noticed later in the day after Fast Passing another ride that the wait was only 35 minutes, so the length of time must have something to do with the number of people using them or in the park.

We went back to gather the family and headed to the Tree of Life, the centerpiece of the Animal Kingdom. Underneath the tree was It's Tough Being a Bug, a 3-d interactive movie about bugs. It was pretty good, and a little scary. At one point they called an attack on the audience and some bees stung us from behind our chairs.

After our bug adventure, it was time already to go on our safari. First, dad and I traveled to the Dinosaur area to Fast Pass Dinosaur. On the way back, we were waylaid by two people who wanted to talk about Quin, "how old is he," "boy is he adorable," same old stuff. We got a lot of attention during this trip. Anyway, back to the safari. It was awesome, many of our party's favorite attraction of the trip. It took us on a rugged Jeep-like vehicle through the animal reserve where Disney keeps an entire savanah of African animals, elephants, giraffes, zebras, ostrichs, there were a lot of animals. At one point our truck got stopped briefly while an ostrich decided to stand in the road.

Back to Dinosaur, we had heard from one of Ethan's teachers that he would love this ride. Well, we'll never know because he wouldn't go on it. No amount of bribery was getting him on this ride, for some reason. Well, after Jenny, dad, and I actually went on the ride, it turns out he was probably right, he would have been very scared. It was a pretty neat ride, on a roller-coaster like vehicle called a "time machine" that took us back to the Cretaceous period. There were dinosaurs all over the place and the sky was starting to fall (the asteroid was about to hit). Yeah, Ethan would have probably wet himself on this one!

For a change of pace, and to get off our feet, we went to the Birds of Prey show, which was basically a bunch of birds flying in and out of scene. It was OK, nothing to write home about. Before we went to that, though, we Fast Passed Primeval Whirl, a twister-like roller coaster that Ethan actually wanted to go on. He wasn't scared at all to go on it, so Jenny and I went on it with him. I can't believe this was the same kid, because he just loved this ride. Jenny and I, not so much. We don't really like spinning rides. On the way off the ride Ethan noticed a pile of vomit along the boardwalk returning us to the earth. He thought that was pretty cool.

At this point, we had finally timed it just right to see a Disney parade. Ethan and Jenny had decent seats, though they were looking right into the sun. Apparently it was a pretty good parade. I stayed back with Quin and got to glimpse some old guy that was so tired that he sat in the rented stroller for what I assume was his grandchild. We also struck up a conversation with a woman that I can only describe as a "Disney Freak." She told us all about this Pirates and Princesses breakfast that we should have sent Ethan to. They get to dress up and eat breakfast with a character, oh and it costs like $250. Sorry, not for me.

We had to burn a little more time before dinner in Africa, so we caught the Lion King circus show, which was excellent. There were acrobats dressed up like Monkeys and suspended rope artists dressed up like birds. We passed the rest of the time taking a walking tour of the animal reserve that we had previously driven through earlier in the day.

At last, we went to the Tusker House, a restaurant in the Africa area of the park. This was a buffet with African flavored foods, and I think most of us agreed that it was the best food we had the entire trip. Cous-cous, curry chicken, breads, it was all good. Of course, we were very hungry, so that might have had something to do with it. While there we had beer called Tusker Beer, a Kenyan beer that wasn't too bad. I may have to look it up and get some.

We left the park a little early by Disney standards, around 7:30. This park closes earlier than the others, I assume because of the animals. It was all fine and good, though, because Jenny and I had plans for the evening. On the bus we met a family from Hartland that had tried to get to Disney on the Friday before Easter. If you live in the Milwaukee area, you know that as the Friday of 14 inches of spring snow! Needless to say, they weren't able to fly that day. The worst part was that AirTran didn't have another flight schedule to Orlando until the following Tuesday, so they decided to drive down.

Downtown Disney

After getting Ethan and Quin ready for bed, we left the kids with grandma and grandpa and caught a bus to Downtown Disney, another new attraction since the last time I was here. This area is just like the rest of the parks without the rides. In other words, there were restaurants and shops, and still lots of people. We found a couple of trinkets and souvenirs to buy, but quickly ended up at an Irish pub near Pleasure Island. After a beer each and half of our second, the bartender came over to us and asked, "Mickey Mouse kicking your ass? You have that look about you." He couldn't have been more right.

Downtown Disney was all fine and good. The best part was just to be able to sit upright and have adult conversation for a little while. The beer was good, too. We were both struck by how many kids were still out at this time of night which was hovering around 10:00-10:30. At any rate, we caught a bus and were back home before 11:30 so we could prepare for our last day at the parks.

Disney Day 3

Magic Kingdom Part II

Today we decided to try something a little different. Rather than sleeping in and dealing with the crowds of people, we thought we'd leave a little early in hopes of getting on some more rides in less confined areas. So we took off early for the bus (OK, I think we still got on the bus around 9:00) and headed for the Magic Kingdom. If you've never been to Disney, the Magic Kingdom is one of those parks that you can spend days and days in, so our two half days really didn't do it justice, but it would have to do.

We arrived just after the park opened and everything was as we hoped, there weren't that many people there, but there were still a lot of them. We caught the end of the castle dance review before heading over to Adventureland where we would find Pirates of the Caribbean. On the way we got stuck at the Swiss Family Robinson area, which looked kind of lame, so I took the park passes and went to Fast Pass some other rides. I caught the Jungle Cruise right away and continued down to Pirates, but it did not accept fast passes. Oh well.

After pulling Jenny and Ethan off of the treehouse, and gathering mom, dad, and Quin, who had found another family to talk to, we went to Pirates which didn't have much of a wait at all to get on it. It wasn't a bad ride, another one of those that were designed much in the same vein as It's a Small World in that it was a boat and we went through a bunch of rooms with characters in it. You can tell this ride is somewhat old, though, as it was pirate themed, and the pirates were doing what pirates do best, namely drinking and harassing women. Not sure how this ride would go through the committees that oversee this type of thing now-a-days. They also added Captain Jack and Davey Jones to the experience, which was kind of neat. It was strange how the movie was based on the ride to begin with, then the ride was re-inspired by what they did with the movie...

After getting off of Pirates, our Fast Passes came due for the Jungle Cruise, which is a pretty neat ride only in so much as the dialog is really enjoyable. This ride is, again, in the same vein as It's a Small World again in that we got on a boat and looked at stuff, but it differed in that there was a live person on the ride giving us a tour and it was outside. The woman giving the tour was delivering the canned tour dialog very well. Some of the bits I can remember include, "OK, everybody listen very carefully, I have some very complicated boarding instructions, wait, wait, wait, OK, get in," and "Perhaps at the end of this ride you will find their buried treasure. Oh wait, this is Disneyworld, you are probably going to find a gift shop." Overall, it was a very old, crusty ride, that was made fun by the dialog they had put together for it.

After Jungle Cruise, Ethan wanted to go on a fair-like ride calld Alladin's Magic Carpet ride, so I took the opportunity to Fast Pass another ride, this time in Tomorrowland. When I returned, I gathered the family and we decided it was time for some lunch. Lunch was taken in Frontierland (I'm not entirely sure on the names of these areas, so please, if you are a Disney purest, forgive me) at Pecos Bill Tall Tale Cafe. This was one of our quick service meals and was not bad at all. Burgers, wraps, whatever. I think Ethan actually got to eat something other than chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese for once at this restaurant. As an aside, I was shocked at how limited the children's choices were for food at Disney. You would think that they would cater (so to speak) specifically to kids when offering food choices, but most of the places only had chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese.

Having nourished ourselves, we left Frontierland and crossed back over to Tomorrowland where we rode on one of the most enjoyable rides we rode during our entire stay, Buzz Lightyear's Spin Attack. This ride was basically a moving shooting gallery. You get in this pod thing on rails that took you through an area setup with a bunch of Zurg things with targets on them. There were two guns mounted on the pod and a steering wheel. Ethan and I manned the guns while Jenny steered. As you were going it kept score. I scored 33000 points, which I thought was awesome until I saw the point breakdown at the end. They had a category for over 1,000,000 points! I guess I suck worse than I thought.

We departed the Magic Kingdom at last after getting a picture with Buzz Lightyear himself and touring Tomorrowland on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. The parade had just finished up along mainstreet, we had missed it again. I was intrigued to see they had people out with vacuum cleaners to clean up the confetti and leaves that had littered the streets. I guess I hadn't noticed it before, but the Magic Kingdom is freakishly clean. I guess now I know why.

Break Time

Having experienced very long days the two days prior, we decided this time to take a couple of hours to relax at the resort. So we departed from the Magic Kingdom and did just that. Of course Ethan doesn't really know yet how to relax, so he and I had to go to the pool and play "leech," a game where Ethan clings to my neck and won't let go and I have to try to get him off of me. It was hard. We did get to see a bunch of cheerleaders acting like cheerleaders in the pool which was mildly amusing. They were doing a bunch of throws and pyramids and stuff in the pool. Again, mildly amusing. My mom came out for a little while to swim with us. She never really learned how to swim, but she barely gets wet due to her huge amount of buoyancy. Ethan, being a know-it-all, started to tell my mom how to swim. Actually, he was doing a pretty good job of explaining it...

EPCOT Part II

Our master plan for the day had us going back to EPCOT for an afternoon of rides followed by dinner in China. On the bus on the way, we ran into the coach of the Germantown softball team who was down there with his team competing in some Disney softball thing. It was funny how many people we had met from Wisconsin, but this guy even knew a guy that I officiate with, which made it even stranger. Also on the bus we ran into a family who had a 9 month old boy that looked just like Quin, or rather, Quin looked just like him. He was a very smiley thing and was grabbing the hair on my arms and stuff. It was pretty fun to see what we have to look forward to with Quin in the coming months. They really grow quickly!

As we finally got into the park after bag inspections and ticket scanning, my parents decided they would like to go on Spaceship Earth. Knowing Ethan's track records with getting on rides, we decided to go off on our own and allow them to partake so we went over to the Nemo Adventure in The Sea. The ride itself was a bit lame, and broke halfway through, but at the end they had some pretty neat aquarium animals on display including two manitees.

We ended our afternoon at EPCOT at the other half of Innoventions. Jenny and Ethan were exploring the wonderful world of garbage at the Waste Management area while Quin and I tried to find Grandpa and Grandma. After we had all met up again, we finally headed over to China where our reservation awaited at the Nine Dragons Restaurant.

It took a small miracle to get us into this restaurant. My dad had to go up to the podium and bust some heads after several walk-ins were admitted before we were, and we had a reservation. Apparently they had called our name and some other family walked in and took our table. Not to worry, we were seated right by the window, which gave us good seats to watch the fireworks later, which turned out to be the only time we got to see the fireworks during our stay. The food was excellent. Even Ethan ate Chinese food for the first time.

After dinner, we browsed the shops where Ethan bought some rare earth magnets and I bought a flower stick, some juggling sticks that look like fun. It was getting late at this point (9:30), so we decided to start heading back to the bus area. Along the way, we somehow convinced Ethan to go on a Viking cruise, another boat ride through a building with stuff in it (it's a small world after all...). We departed from Norway at almost 10:00, the park was closing...

We had almost gotten out of the park when my parents convinced Jenny and I that we should go on Spaceship Earth since it was such a neat ride. They didn't think Ethan would like it that much, so Jenny and I got in line. The line wasn't very long, but it turned out that only resort guests were being admitted, and then only with a wrist band. So out of the line quickly to find the wristbands, then back in and we were admitted almost immediately. This ride was on a time machine which the two of us sat in. At the beginning they asked a bunch of questions which you inputted the answers on the touch screen in your time machine, and they took your picture. The ride then started with Judy Dench giving a verbal history of human progress, mostly concentrating on communication. There were some very interesting things that I did now know, like the Phoenicians invented the alphabet that we use today because they traded with so many different cultures, they wanted to have an alphabet that was compatible with all of them. Another thing they asserted was that the personal computer was invented in a garage in California, basically saying that Jobs and Wozniak invented the PC. I'm not entirely sure that is true, but it was interesting anyway. At the end, you are treated to a view of the inside of the ball which is completely lighted up with stars in a night sky, very breathtaking. Also, as we rode back to the "present," they showed us a presentation with our pictures of how our future would look. It was neat technology, but the funniest part was Jenny's picture. The algorithm they had to remove the background from the picture apparently thought her eye was part of the background and blacked it out, which made her look like a pirate. We laughed... Guess you had to be there...

Disney Day 2

Good Night's Sleep

Our first night in the hotel was blissfully uneventful. My biggest worry coming to this resort with an infant was that he would be up and unconsolable in the night and he would wake people up. Turns out I had nothing to worry about all along. In fact, I would say that Quin probably slept better at the hotel than he does at home. That is most likely because we were so close by and it was easy to get up to tend to him. Either way, it worked out well and I had nothing to complain about.

Ethan slept in Grandpa and Grandma's room the first night, as we thought he might be kept awake by Quin more than by Grandma's snoring. Nothing really stirred him, though, and he slept quite well through the night.

In the morning, Jenny and I got up somewhat more rested than the day before. We slept in until around 8:30 having only gotten up once each with Quin during the night, so we felt good enough to try out the 1.4 mile track that surrounds the lake in the middle of the grounds. The Caribbean Beach Resort is a number of buildings organized into Islands. Ours was Martinique. Each of the islands surrounds a big lake in the middle with beaches surrounding it. Each island also had its own pool, which we took advantage of several times. Anyway, Jenny and I went for a small run then stopped by the central shop to get water for Quin's bottles and some snacks for breakfast. After that, off to the parks!

EPCOT

Our first stop for this day was EPCOT, which again stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. We grabbed a quick snack for breakfast as we had reservations in EPCOT for a character lunch, then jumped on the bus to EPCOT.

Have I mentioned how big the Disney World Resort is? Let me put it another way in case I haven't properly explained that yet. From our hotel, we could see Spaceship Earth, the big ball in the center of EPCOT. It seemed not at all far away. However, after boarding the bus in the morning, it took us no less than 20 minutes to get to the park! Now, after having consulted a map, I now know that it took a long time to get there because the park entrance was all the way around the park, forcing us to weave in and out of several highways to get there, but still, 20 minutes, and they are both on the same property!

EPCOT, much like the Magic Kingdom before it, was BUSY! There were people walking all over the place. The weather was somewhat better than yesterday, but still not hot, which was OK since there were so many people around, hot weather would have made things uncomfortable.

The first look at EPCOT is no less amazing than that of the Magic Kingdom. The huge Spaceship Earth structure dominating the sky right at the entrance, with the Beach Boys music playing (why the Beach Boys, I couldn't say), water fountains splashing about everywhere... They definitely went the extra mile with this park to make it seem different.

EPCOT is separated into two separate parts, Futureworld where there are a bunch of rides and attractions that deal with imagination, conservation, and life in the future, and the World Showcase, which has buildings and attractions attempting to capture the feel of different countries around the world. Since it was quite busy, we decided to check out the newest attraction first, Soarin', which was located in "The Land," one of the buildings in Futureworld. Well, that line was already around 2 hours long, so we did the next best thing, we caught a couple of shows.

The first show we saw was called "Live With the Land," which was narrated by Pumba, Timone, and Simba from the Lion King. This, along with most attractions, seemed to have the actual actors doing the voice work for the video, which is impressive. The show was pretty neat. It was all about how we should conserve and live with the land instead of against it. I found it somewhat ironic that Disney of all companies was preaching conservation when they pump millions of gallons of water through their fountains and use tons of plastic to deliver food to their hungry customers each day, but hey, the message is still important, and the show wasn't too bad.

The next attraction we took in was again in The Land. This time we boarded a boat (a common theme in many Disney attractions) and toured through some labs that Disney had setup in an attempt to grow things in different ways. This trip was pretty cool as it showed all kinds of different plants being grown in a huge greenhouse. They also tried new ways of growing things, like suspending tomato plants in the air so that the air can get to the leaves properly, or growing tomatoes upside-down. Fairly interesting stuff.

We had made reservations for a character lunch in The Land's table service restaurant for around 2:00, but after taking in our two shows we still had some time to burn, so we headed outside and went into a building titled "Imagineering." This was basically a big hands-on playground of all sorts of technology that could change the future, stimulate the imagination, or educate in some other way. They had stations setup with video games, fire alarms, a pizza game, but most impressive, a Segway area. Mom, Dad, and I waited in line for what turned out to be one of the most fun adult rides in the park. No kids allowed on these! We first sat through a 10 minute orientation video, then we got to go out into the larger area and drive one, and I have to say, it is a lot of fun! I want to buy one!

After peeling Ethan away from the video games, we worked our way over to the Harvest Cafe for our character lunch. I really didn't think much of a character lunch when we got there, and actually had no intention of scheduling one thinking Ethan was too old for them. Boy was I wrong. The food wasn't too bad, but Ethan really liked the characters. Any time one of them came around, his eyes got really big and he shouted to one of us to look at them. He was particularly excited about Pluto, though why, I can't quite figure out since he didn't even know who he was. The characters we ended up getting to meet were Chip, Dale, Pluto, and Mickey. Dale stopped by for an especially long time having developed somewhat of an obsession with Quin. That was a little creepy, but we moved on.

After lunch, we left Futureworld and decided to try to get to Disney's Hollywood Studios. We had read earlier that we could take a boat there, which meant we didn't have to take a bus, so that sounded good to us. To get to the boat, we had to go through part of the World Showcase, Canada and England to be specific. Canada wasn't that spectacular to just walk by, but they did have a band present called Off Kilter which was a rock band with a bagpipe player as one of the main instruments. It was quite interesting. England was more interesting to walk through, but still, we had a mission and intended to accomplish it. So we went through the park exit and boarded Friendship 3, a boat that serviced some of the EPCOT resorts and ultimately Disney's Hollywood Studios.

The boat ride was actually a blast. Everything at this park is an experience, I have to tell you. It was commanded by two old guys who clearly didn't need to be working any more, but probably did because they liked people and they got to drive a boat around all day. They had fun talking with the people on the boat and driving it around all day, so it made for a pleasant ride. Along the way we stopped at several EPCOT resorts which looked quite nice. In fact, if we weren't there with kids (although, what would be the point of that?), I think one of these resorts would be ideal since it was very close to other things to do, like a brewery, the ESPN Club, and dancing places. With kids, though, our resort was very nice.

Disney's Hollywood Studios

Disney's Hollywood Studios, formerly Disney's MGM Studios, is a smaller park, and had fewer people in it, which was nice! The layout was pretty neat as well. After entering, you are placed on a street that looks much like the entrance to the Magic Kingdom, but with a Hollywood feel. Like Magic Kingdom and EPCOT, the park is split into zones, but these zones are different movie themes. One area was a full scale replica of a street in New York City!

The first show we saw was the Indiana Jones stunt spectacular. This show took place in an outdoor theater with a huge set piece at the front that looked like the cave from the opening sequence to the first Indiana Jones movie. Before the show, some casting member came out and got volunteers to do silly things in front of the audience, which was cute. Once the show started, though, was when the real fun began. The first stunt had them doing a rendition of the opening sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ethan has never seen that movie, and he was hooked. The even did the ball rolling towards Indy, and him getting squished, which I think they added for this show. After that stunt, the entire stage moved aside on huge tires and revealed a middle-easter scene in the background where they staged another stunt. All in all, they did three different big-set stunts. Ethan's favorite part was whent hey fake punched each other, so don't be surprised if he asks you to let him pretend to punch you!

After Indiana Jones, my dad and I went on Star Tours, a ride themed after Star Wars where you ride in a transport shuttle through some space battles and other things. For me it was the first ride where I stood in line and didn't have the benefit of Fast Pass, and I didn't like waiting very much! Jenny, Ethan, Quin, and Grandma went to the Muppet show 3-d movie, which I heard was great.

After meeting up with them, we took in some miscellaneous other rides, some of which we had to skip because Ethan developed a fear of dark places that he could not overcome on this day. Ultimately we ended up at Hollywood and Vine, our second table service meal for the day. This restaurant is a buffet and serves American style food. It wasn't too bad, probably the most ordinary of all of our table service meals, but they did have a decent beer selection, so that made me happy.

Wore Out Part II

After a full day of park hopping, we were pretty wore out yet again. We decided to forgo the light show, which looked pretty cool, and head back to the hotel so we could live to play another day.

Things we Learned Today about Disney

• Do a character lunch even if you think your kids won't like it.
• Disney's Hollywood Studios is a smaller park, but attracts fewer people. It's also a lot of fun!

More exciting commentary coming tomorrow!

Disney Day 1

A Note on These Posts

I'm doing these posts a little out of sequence. I've written notes as things happened, but I'm going back and filling in the blanks as I get time to write them. At times it may seem a bit disjointed, so please forgive me. The dates will be posted as though they occurred on the days in which the events actually occurred, however they will not be written or posted on those actual days. Please adjust your expectations accordingly.

Overview

Mom and dad (Glen and Cheryl) decided that it was time for some reciprocity and treated my family to a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. When I say reciprocity, I'm of course referring to the numerous vacations that I was unable to attend with the family since I was too old when they went. Sure, we went to exciting places like Philadelphia (in a car), California (in a car), and Colorado (in a car), but my younger brothers benefited from my having finished college on time by getting to go to places like Hawaii, Dominican Republic, and Peru – and none of those were by car! Anyway, it was a very nice gesture on their part, and Ethan is at a very good age to take advantage of their generosity.

We planned the trip several months ago. Knowing that we were in the middle of the adoption process, we purchased insurance for our trip, thinking that we might have to forego the trip if an adoption came through. As luck would have it, an adoption did happen, but we didn't have to forego the trip and Quin was able to come as well. You may think we're crazy taking a 5 week old infant along on a trip like this, but our rationale was that he is really at a very good age to do this. He can't move yet, so he can't get into anything, and he's still pretty light, so carrying him around shouldn't be too hard. We'll see how it goes.

The Trip Out

The day started out very early today. Last night was a rush to get to sleep while hoping Quin would cooperate. For the most part he did. He slept really well all night, waking up twice to eat quickly then go right back to sleep. Still, we had to get up before 5:00 AM to get ready. We had packed the car the evening before, and Jenny had all the bags ready to go for the morning, so we were out of the house by 5:45, our desired departure time.

Traffic was light at that time in the morning, which was good. Of course, the parking structure was completely full except for exposed parking on the 6th floor. The exposure was a little rough to take since spring in Wisconsin just means it's just as cold but with more wind. Still, we were to the airport by 6:30. Checkin was smooth, we grabbed a bite to eat, then headed over to the security check to have our body cavity searches. One thing we found out early at the security line was that traveling with a 5 week old infant gets you a lot of attention. One of the gate agents started ogling immediately and then called one of the other agents over to ogle as well. Needless to say, we didn't have too many issues getting through security. It seemed like they shut down an entire security line just for us, which we pretty much needed.

At the gate, we met a young lady who was traveling with her grandmother that didn't know where she was going. Her mom had purchased her a trip to Disney but didn't tell her about it. We didn't get to see her when she got there, but I can imagine it would have been something to behold.

While waiting for the plane, my mom explained to Ethan that he would have to chew gum or something so that his ears would pop on the takeoff. This scared him, so as we were boarding he was telling us about how nervous he was that he was going to hurt his ears. Nice one, mom. When we got onto the plane, Ethan made sure he had a piece of gum in his mouth and another one nearby in case he lost that one. Once we took off, though, he was having a great time in the air. He loved flying! Jenny, on the other hand, didn't fare quite as well. She doesn't really like flying. Quin did great. He slept the whole way with no issue. The flight was uneventful. Everything went about as you would expect it would with a 6 year old. I tried to listen to my MP3 player, but I only got through 1 song through the entire flight. Also, I tried to read a magazine, but only got through 1 article. Ethan was very curious and wanted to talk about a lot of stuff during the whole flight!

As an editorial aside, Jenny was very nervous about flying AirTran Airlines for some reason, but once the flight was completed, she was pleasantly surprised. The service was exceptional, the airplane was clean and as roomy as airplanes can be these days, and the flight left and arrived on time. Nice work, Airtran.

Upon our arrival in Orlando, we headed towards the Disney Magical Express on the ground transportation floor. My parents had purchased this option which allows us to skip baggage claim and go directly to our resort. This was awesome. Basically all we had to do was take our carry on bags onto a charter bus and ride to the park. It was a brief 20 minute ride during which time we were treated to an orientation video that told us all about our life at the resort.

The Resort

After our brief bus ride, we arrived at the “Caribbean Beach” resort located across the street from Epcot (which turns out to be probably a mile or two away, I'll let you know when I actually find it). The resort is nothing spectacular, but nice. Our room was decent size. Enough with the hotel room, though, we wanted to eat something and to check out the facilities. It was 1:00 local time at this point, and we had been up since 4:45 (5:45 local), so we were getting hungry. Luckily, my parents had splurged and purchased the dining package, which entitles us to 1 table service, 1 quick service, and 1 snack per day each. We went to the central area of our hotel complex (which is somewhere in the area of 2200 rooms) and found the food court.

The food court counted as a Quick Service meal for the day, but we were to find out that you get way too much food at this meal to eat in one sitting. If you are going to be visiting Disney, I would recommend this option. I don't remember the cost, but each of our meals would have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $13 if we would have purchased them individually.

After lunch, we explored the resort a little bit. It is huge! I mentioned before, it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 2200 rooms. It is called the Caribbean Beach Resort, so there are something like 6 different building groupings, each named after a Caribbean island. Our area is Martinique. There are also areas for Bahamas, Aruba, Jamaica, among others. In the middle of all of these buildings is a medium size lake with beaches surrounding it. In each area is a heated swimming pool and in the center is a showcase swimming pool. Unfortunately the showcase pool is closed at this time.

Swimming

After our explorations, our luggage still had not arrived in our room – oh, I forgot to mention that we didn't have to carry our luggage to our rooms. Instead it was delivered to our room cruise style. Very nice. Anyway, our luggage had not yet arrived, so we decided to make do with what we had packed in our carry on luggage and went swimming. It was a little chilly out, in the low 60s, but the pool was heated to 85 degrees, so Ethan and I had a blast. He is really starting to swim well. He had no trouble swimming all over the pool, including the deep areas. When he and I were in the pool together, he swam underwater with me, raced me, and rough-housed with me for the better part of 90 minutes. I tired out early and left the pool to have a beer with my parents and Jenny on the deck while Ethan continued to play for another 20 minutes. We were finally able to coax him out of the pool with promises of visiting the park...

Reservations

Before we left for the park, we had read that it was a good idea to get reservations for any table service meals you planned on taking. Since we had used our quick service meal for the day already, we set out to find a table service dinner. I called the reservations number but was met with completely booked restaurants pretty much throughout the resort. There was literally nothing available in any of the resorts we checked! This was going to be difficult. Taking this as a hint, we decided to make our reservations for the rest of the week at this time so we would at least be able to use our table service vouchers this week.

Free tip to those that might be traveling to Disney in the near future. If you are getting the dinner plan, call a week or two ahead of time and make your dinner reservations. Otherwise you may be stuck without dinner one night... We ultimately decided to use another of our quick service vouchers and make a reservation for table service later in the week for earlier in the day, so it all worked out in the end.

The Magic Kingdom

After our complicated reservation process, and our luggage having arrived, we packed up and headed out to the Magic Kingdom, Disney's first resort on this property. It would seem logical to walk there since we were staying on the Disney property itself, but it turns out we are like 5 miles away from the Magic Kingdom. Everything is huge on this resort! So, to get there, we boarded a bus and took a 15 minute drive to the park.

I can't say it enough, this place is huge! I had visited Disney when I was younger, and I don't remember it being this big! To get to the park, you can take a bus, the monorail, or a boat! They have big lakes where you can boat across from the parking lot and resorts to get to the park itself.

When we finally got to the park, we scanned our passes and gave a print of our fingers (to stop pass-backs) and arrived at the Magic Kingdom. If you've never been to Disney before, the first impression of the Magic Kingdom is impressive. You are placed in the midst of a thriving downtown. A cobblestone street travels down the middle of many shops and food stands, and there were people everywhere!!! We found a statue of Walt where we took a picture, and we saw a bunch of people with balloons (LOTS of balloons), but there was nothing quite like the look on Ethan's face when he first saw Cinderella's Castle. He was completely amazed and his jaw pretty much just dropped.

After getting over the initial shock of Cinderella's Castle, we headed over to the “It's a Small World” attraction, a staple for any first time Disney visitor. The line wasn't terrible, about 25 minutes, and Ethan really seemed to like the ride. I remembered it from my last visit, and it didn't seem that much better from that time, but hey, it's for the kids. At one time during the ride, I looked up (because it wasn't very interesting looking at the attraction), and I saw ceiling tiles at the top of the building. They were painted a dark color, some had sprinklers in them, some had things coming through them for the attraction. In fact, it was those that caught my attention, because they manner in which they broke these tiles to get the pieces through was sort of funny. It looked like they just broke it with their hands and stuck the things through. This is kind of funny because everything else in the park is so well thought out and perfectly done. At this point we passed a staircase covered in old carpeting with an illuminated exit sign over them. Seeing that combined with the sprinklers on the ceiling made me think of how funny it would be if the ride burned down. It would look just like that scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The little small world people smiling and dancing while they melted down, their voices distorting while the blaze envelops them. I think I would like to see that...

Prior to getting on It's a Small World, we scanned our cards at Mickey's PhilharMagic show's Fast Pass station. Scanning this allows you to skip ahead in line if you agree to just come back later. Our scan allowed us to skip ahead if we came back between 6:30 and 7:30, which worked out well. The show itself was a pretty neat production of many different Disney shows from the past 25 years all made into a 3-d show with smell-o-vision and water effects. If you've been to the SpongeBob 4-d adventure at Noah's Ark, it's pretty much the same thing, but with Disney characters.

At last, Ethan told us he wanted to go to the Buzz Lightyear ride, so we walked over to Tomorrowland and scanned our cards at the Fast Pass station. While we waited, we decided to go to Stitch's Great Escape which only had a 10 minute wait. I was unable to go on the ride since I was carrying Quin (using a Snugli infant carrier, which worked very well), but Ethan, Jenny, mom, and dad all went on it. I was concerned since the brochure said it could scare young children. I'm sure they meant three year olds, but I had a feeling it might be a problem for Ethan as well. Sure enough, Jenny informed me that they had somewhat of an episode getting Ethan to actually go into the ride when it finally got down to it. It was another one in the same vein as the PhilharMagic ride, but in smaller vessels. He did end up going on the ride, but it wasn't without its drama.

We decided to grab one more quick service meal, since we were unable to obtain reservations for a table service meal, before we tried to go on the Buzz Lightyear ride. After eating, though, we were all pretty beat, so we left the Magic Kingdom just minutes before the fireworks started and headed back to the resort.

Winding Down

At this point, we are all pretty beat. We're going to rest up and prepare for another big day tomorrow.

Interesting Tidbits

Epcot stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.