Tales From the Minivan

Monday was spent doing a little park hopping. We started out at Disney Hollywood Studios (aka MGM Studios as I’m used to it being called). Disney now has professional photographers all over the place that take photos for you. They give you a little credit card size card with a bar code and each time you get your photo taken by them they scan your card and you can look at the photos online. There you can crop, edit, add borders and other fun things to the photos. Here’s a few from when we first arrived at Hollywood Studios:

Yes we’re all in tie-dyes, and we weren’t the only ones either!

I love that last shot. The photographer told us all to point at that one spot and when told is there’d be a surprise in the pic!

We decided to go grab some Fast Passes for some of the more popular bigger rides like the Tower of Terror and Areosmith’s Rockin’ Rollercoaster. You may be asking, “What is a Fast Pass?” At the majority of the bigger rides, Disney has set up a FastPass Distribution. You put in your Park Pass, and out pops a ticket telling you when to come back to the ride. They normally give you a timeframe of an hour. What this allows you to do and pass by the longer line up and only wait for a few minutes! It was great, I highly recommend using this feature. The most we had to wait for any ride was about 15 minutes, but the wait times listed on the rides were much longer.

After getting our Fast Passes we knew we had about an hour to explore some other parts of the part and happened upon the Star Wars ride called Star Tours. The boys were very excited about this. Ciaran just made the height restriction of 40 inches. I was a little worried about this as I had been reading online that some kids were being turned away when they got to the ride even though they were measuring fine at the first part of the line. Star Tours is a flight simulator ride, where you flying through space and a silly robot, with not a lot of flying skills is at the helm. Ciaran wasn’t too sure about this one! As with most Disney rides, the exit to the ride flies you into a themed giftshop, here’s the boys with there Star Wars Helmets on.

I figured the kids would love the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Play area. On the way there we manged to spot Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable!

Liam was only concerned with getting to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, so wouldn’t get in the photo. Who could blame him, it’s a huge play structure that’s made to look like the movieset, ie. all of the toys, insects and other objects are giant. We figured this would be a good place for them to play, while we decided to utilize our Fast Passes.

Here’s a shot of my Mom and Ciaran

The HUGE Super Soaker

A cool slide that’s a roll of Kodak Film

Ant riding

Worlds Largest Playdough Container

For the majority of the bigger Disney Rides, they also allow you to Baby Swap. Baby Swapping allows both parents and the rest of their party to wait in line together. When it’s their turn to ride, one parents stays back with the baby and rides. When the ride is over they swap the baby to the other parent and their part rides again. We figured that we would take Finn with us and then Katelyn the little daredevil could get to ride twice! In theory this was great but did not work so well. Both the Tower of Terror and Rockin’ Roller Coaster would not let Finn into the lines, so I had to wait back until they were of the ride then get back in line again. It took twice as long to ride because of this! Very frustrating! We did manage to take some photos of the monitors displaying photos taken of us on the ride. Notice my look of sheer panic!

Andrew and Katelyn in the front row

Yes that’s me in the back on the right!

After taking a lot longer than we expected we rushed back to the Kids playset to find out that it was just closed due to a quick shower. We found the rest of the gang just getting ready to have lunch. While we were eating Andrew noticed a co-worker! It was so funny, of all places to run into someone! It really is too small of a world sometimes! We then did the Movie Backlot Tour which really hasn’t changed a bit since I worked there in 1992. Finn decided this would be a great place (and so did I) for him to have a nice little nursing session while on the Backlot Tram.

We then decided to take the boys to see the Playhouse Disney Show and take the bigger girls to the Animation expo. Mackenzie is really interested in computerized animation, so I decided this would be fun to do with her and Katelyn and brought Finn with me. Andrew and the two Nannies took Liam and Ciaran, just as they were looking for the entrance my mom decided to ask a Cast Member (Disney’s name for employee) where it was and he said to them, “Don’t worry about that you guys come right with me!” He made them the Playhouse Disney Family of the show and they got front row seats and a cute little certificate!

Finn the girls and I also had our own little magical moment when we came out of the Animation Presentation. We got to meet Fantasia Mickey! This was Finn’s first Muckey Meeting and the Disney Photographer captures it so well! Here’s a few shots:

That’s it for Part one, I’ll update soon with Part two !!!

This morning we woke up to a beautiful site the most gorgeous rainbow hovering over the Caribbean Sea, both Andrew and I agreed that this was something we could get used to! The sun comes up early here as they don’t switch over to daylight savings time, so the sun also sets early around 7pm.

Take a look at these shots, they are stunning!

As most of you know I’ve been cloth diapering Finn, and decided that since I knew we’d have a washer & dryer in our condo that I would continue to do so while away. I remembered to bring a few clothespins and a string to hang his covers while the inserts I dried in the dryer. I took this photo for my fellow CDC members!

We decided to head across the street to pick up some groceries to make some meals here to take advantage of the kitchen in our unit. I was prepared that the grocery prices would be very high, but surprisingly they were very comparable to home with something actually less expensive! The biggest thing I noticed was that frozen, snack and convenience foods seemed to have the highest premiums. The selection of foods was very impressive, I think we spend close to 2 hours browsing around.

**Note for Mackenzie***- take a look at the photo below, I thought you’d like this

Once we got home from the grocery store, we decided to take a walk into Georgetown, which is the “downtown” on Grand Cayman, and home to many of the world’s most prominent financial institutions. They have their own currency, but the US dollar is also excepted everywhere, however it is taken at .80 cents Cayman dollar so in order to buy $1 CI it costs $1.25 USD. Now that the Canadian dollar is at par with the US Dollar, this makes things much more affordable here for us Canadians. The currency is very similar to Canadian money.

After browsing around a few shops and finding a wireless connection to update my blog (unfortunately our resort does not have one ) we had dinner at a restaurant that specializes in Caribbean cuisine (Andrew’s favourite ). Finn also had a quick drink but was more interested in entertaining everyone else in the restaurant. On the walk back to the condo, we ran into Greg out for a walk with his daughter Evelyn and invited them over for a drink and to play. Finn and Evelyn are almost the same size despite a 6 month age difference, so it’s so cute to see Evelyn walking circles around him and Finn trying to figure out how to pull himself upon everything.

This morning Ciaran, Finn, Mackenzie and I attended our Local Breastfeeding Challenge. I have to give all the credit to Sarah for putting together the great gift bags and prizes! I think everyone really enjoyed themselves.

I came up with the idea of making some matching t-shirts for the boys and I. We all know breastfeeding works by Supply and Demand, so I decided to take a little spin on that! My shirt said iSupply, Finn’s said iDemand and Ciaran’s- iDemand More. I used the same font Apple does and put the little logo under it. Here’s a few pics from our morning:

This afternoon is all about getting the house ready for my mom. Andrew, Finn and I are taking a little vacation for a week down to Grand Cayman! My mom is coming to stay at our house with Ciaran, Liam and Mackenzie. Thank you Mom!

As for the Dinner Fix Challenge, I still plan on making meals while away, as our resort has a full kitchen, I already have my trusty veggie peeler packed and some meals ideas planned for the week!

My next post hopefully will be from the sun-drenched Cayman Islands (if I can find a wireless connection!)