Update--Disney World trip

Well, I haven't written in this blog with anything substantial in about forever, so...why start now? Just kidding.

For Thanksgiving we drove to Orlando, Florida, to meet my parents at their time-share and go to Disney World for 5 days. It was a really nice trip. The kids were even pretty good in the car. Thank goodness for portable DVD players, of course.

Disney World was fun. It was nice to have grandparents there so that we could split up the boys. Plus, Ethan loves all the fast rides and Matt...not so much. Ethan went with Grandpa Nielsen and they waited in the lines to ride the fast rides they wanted. Disney has this cool thing now--aside from FastPasses (where you insert your park entrance ticket in a machine and you get a return time to come back to the ride with little to no wait). The cool thing is "rider switch." Both parents go to the beginning of the line with the kids, and if one of the kids is too little to ride, they'll give one parent a rider switch pass (which is just like a fast pass) so they can wait with that child, and as soon as the other parent (and/or other kids) comes off then the second parent can go without waiting in line again. The really cool thing is, if you have other people with you (like grandparents, aunts, uncles, whatever) the second person can take 2-3 other riders with them on a rider swap. So, some of the people get to ride twice in a short time. And, if it was a ride that you had a fast pass on in the first place, all the better.

Anyway, that was cool. When I was younger, I was willing to wait in lines, but now with kids, No Way. Even by myself I wouldn't wait longer than 20 minutes I think. I just like to walk around and look at stuff. We took our stroller, and that helped a lot. Another good thing is that you can take in your own food and drinks, unlike Sea World. We upgraded to park hopper tickets, but never used them, so I wouldn't do that again. Each park is enough to keep a family occupied for a whole day and more. We got a great deal with the military special. Russ got his 5-day pass for free, and each of our companion passes were only $99 each (no charge for Lizzie who is 2 years old), with $25 extra per companion to upgrade to park hopper. I believe it is a lot more for the general population. Also, as a retiree, I think my dad got a free pass and my mom got a companion pass as well.

The only unfortunate thing about the trip was that on the drive home our driver side window just exploded all of a sudden. It was about 9:30 p.m. on Saturday night. We were on the highway in Louisiana and there was a loud POP and then glass shattered and blew in all over the car. Amazingly, neither the driver (Russ) nor any of the rest of us were hurt. Lizzie was in a car seat directly behind the driver, and there were little pieces of glass in her car seat, a large chunk of glass that flew right past her head to land in the middle of the van, glass all along the side of the van, driver's side, even all over the back floor where Matt, Val and Ethan were sitting. It was tempered glass--maybe that's why the glass didn't cut anyone? Matt and I actually had our heads bowed together at the time it happened, because I was praying with him before he went to sleep. That was a blessing, since we were in line behind the driver and Lizzie. All in all, it was an amazing experience, and a witness to us that God answers our prayers. We always pray for safety whenever we embark on a car trip, as we had that day.

We learned from our last car trip (when we hit a deer) that it's a good idea to lower our insurance deductible to $0 before a big trip, which we did, and boy are we glad. We got a short length of heavy duty plastic table cover from the sewing section at Walmart to cover the window, duct taped it on, and drove home the next two days with it like that.

We've all been sick here the last week and a half. Matt has had adenovirus for over a week now (fever, coughing, extreme fatigue, conjunctivitis, and overall zombie-like appearance--haha). I'm hoping he'll go back to school tomorrow. Ethan had a bad asthma attack last night, and I was worried that he might get what Matt has, which would be so much worse with asthma. Then, Lizzie has conjunctivitis now. Her eyes were glued shut this morning. I have appointments for all three tomorrow. So, I'm thinking that the boys will be fine, and Lizzie will have eye drops so hopefully nobody will be contagious with anything by this weekend.