Summer Days

Chapter 57

I had to admit, I'd never imagined that a vacation at Disney World would be so amazing but here we were. Almost through our WDW portion of the vacation and I was having the greatest time.

We all were.

Jessica was having a great time too. It was so much fun to be at Universal with her the other day as we dragged the boys all over the park but kept going back to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as often as we could. Of course, we were all dressed in house colors.

Erica made a wonderful Professor McGonagall.

North in solid black was our fill in for Professor Snape. Which was a fact that Luke spent all day laughing about.

But it was just as much fun as our Disney days had been. I'm glad that we thought about just going to one park a day. We were able to explore all the options and enjoy all the rides and food we wanted to. We had at least one more day this week and we were planning on park hopping our way through the day so that we could go back and hit our highlights from each park.

Next week was our week to have fun in Orlando. We were going to play a round of golf and Silas and I were going to have our date at the Red Sox vs. the Rays baseball game. The others were sitting elsewhere and to be honest, I was excited to be at a live baseball game with him.

I'd have to say that the way we'd managed to dress for our theme park days was really fun and I'm happy that Gabriel got so in to the idea and he'd put together the perfect outfits for each of us.

I am so glad that I found that website about Disney bounding. It meant everything to me that we were able to get even North to "dress" up for the most part. Even if we did just keep everything black. We found plenty of characters to call him because black was their thing.

Let's see. We went to Magic Kingdom on the first day. Well that just said Princess to me and Gabriel agreed. I was dressed in Pink as Princess Aurora, we accessorized me with a pink sleep mask just for fun, because I had just had a super long nap. Jessica was in teal with a few arrow accessories so that she could be Merida from Brave, Erica made a good Belle. Silas was Naveen from Princess and The Frog, Kota was Prince Charming, Owen was Prince Phillip, Sean was Eugene, you know, Flynn Rider from Tangled. Luke managed to pull off a Cinderella gender bend. North, well, was there any other choice for him but the Beast?

The answer is no.

Gabriel was happy with his choice of a Mulan gender bend and Victor chose to call himself my fairy godfather while Nathan chose to be Prince Eric.

We made such a great group, we ended up getting pictures taken and I'm sure there were plenty of pictures taken of us. Such a great first day. We watched fireworks and the electric parade. It was well after midnight when we got home and I managed to get myself inside the rental just fine but Jessica had fallen asleep and Silas carried her in.

Our second day was in Epcot. I think we were all a little surprised to find out that Jessica fell in love with the France area. I think she would have stayed there all day, perfectly happy to eat French pastries.

There was a cool night time show over there too but we weren't there as late as we were at Magic Kingdom the day before because Epcot closed earlier.

We still made a big scene with our choice of costuming. Our second day choice was Alice in Wonderland.

Why yes, I was happy to be Alice. It was pretty easy, blue shorts and a white tank top with a headband and a strappy pair of black flats.

Jessica was in pink and purple to be our Cheshire Cat, Erica had pulled off an amazing Queen of Hearts. Luke and Gabriel, well it was probably no surprise that they were Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Owen was the White Rabbit. Sean was the Mad Hatter. North and Silas were dressed in black but North had a Club symbol and Silas the Spade to counter Nathan in red to be the Diamond and Victor also in red as the representative for the Hearts. Kota wasn't sure that he was down with the idea of us doing Alice in Wonderland but he did have a choice between the March Hare or the Caterpillar. I laughed and told him he could choose flamingo.

It earned me a dirty look and he went with Caterpillar. He was an adorable Caterpillar.

For animal kingdom, we decided to dress as animals from the movies. North was thrilled with this decision because it meant that he could wear all black, I know, surprising, and be Mordeau from Brave. Kota went with mostly green as a shout out to the frog portion of Princess and the Frog. Erica also chose mostly black with a pair of teal and green plaid shorts so that she could be the Queen in her bear form out of Brave. Silas chose a bright blue with yellow accents and insisted we call him Dory for the day. Gabriel grabbed the orange and black stripes and became our Tigger, or maybe he was Raj from Aladdin, he didn't exactly clarify. But maybe the fact that Luke chose to be Abu from Aladdin should have explained things for us. Owen's choice of all gray, left us no options but to call him Eeyore. I rather think he enjoyed it. Nathan's choice of red was not at all surprising, especially when he wished us all dishonor on our cows. Mushu was an excellent choice.

Victor wore white and surprised us a bit when he insisted we call him Bolt. Jessica stuck with pink and made a perfectly adorable Piglet. Sean was wearing purple and green as a gender bend for Princess Atta from Bug's life and I was rocking some purple and black because, well, Ursula was a sea witch and a Disney villain BUT she was also an octopus. Animal. So there. I always mentally add that in my head because I had to fight with Gabriel to make him understand and there may or may not have been a tongue stuck out at him.

Our visit to Hollywood Studios meant going back to our classic ideas. Snow White was the choice. Kota reprised his role of Prince Charming. That was easy since he'd already pulled that off earlier in the week. I was Snow White, Erica made a great evil queen in spite of the fact that she tried to talk us into letting her be the old hag. Silas was the huntsman while the others each took a role of the dwarves. Sean was Doc, no big surprise there either. Luke had claimed Happy a long time ago, North, also unsurprisingly, made a fantastic Grumpy. Owen was Bashful, Gabriel was Dopey, Nathan claimed Sleepy and that left Victor as Sneezy. I did feel bad because that really didn't leave much room for Jessica to fit in but she laughed and said that instead of playing a woodland animal or a jewel in the jewel mine, she was fine with being the apple. Gabriel pulled that one off like no one's business and because he went ahead and put her in a pink toned red and called her a Pink Lady apple, she was thrilled. He even braided her hair to make it look like a stem and leaf. She looked amazing.

Our last day was going to be spent hopping to all the parks to ride rides again and eat the things we wanted to eat from each park. I probably shouldn't have to mention that Luke was planning on eating churros at every opportunity all day long but he was more than excited about the churros. We went classic again and pulled off Peter Pan. I think the group Peter Pan was the one we were most happy with and I know Gabriel has made some notes about pulling out everything again for Halloween. I, of course, was Wendy. Sean, since he is the one of us most likely to never grow up was a perfect Peter Pan. North claimed Captain Hook while Silas insisted that he wanted to be Mister Smee. Owen played Wendy's brother John and Luke was happy to be the other brother Michael. Erica made us all laugh when she decided she was better off being Nana the St. Bernard nanny. Jessica made a cute Tinkerbell and the other boys filled in as the Lost Boys.

We were epic. The photographers commented on it all the time when they took our pictures.

This has been the best vacation.

I didn't actually have anything to compare it too because, well, a car ride to move from Illinois to South Carolina shouldn't ever be called a vacation. I just hoped we could do something every year as a family that would be as much fun as this vacation.