We had been trying to plan a Disney trip with my grandparents for quite some time.  We had decided finally to go in late fall/winter 2012.  Well, it ended up we found a great special that would save us a TON of money on hotel AND tickets but the only catch was that we had to go during the month of September to take advantage of it.  We couldn’t say no to savings like this, so we went ahead and planned to meet my grandparents and Jordan’s family in Orlando at the end of September.

We stayed at the beautiful Shades of Green resort (an all military resort for active and retired members of the military).  It was our second stay there and it’s beautiful and so nice.  It’s also very, very inexpensive, especially when you consider it is on Disney property.

We traveled with our Graco on the airplane and then rented this awesome double stroller from orlando stroller rentals.  It was there waiting on us when we got there and we just left it with the bell hop before we checked out!  I loved it so much that I have asked Santa to bring me one in his sleigh for Christmas!

The funny part about our first night there was that we put the boys down to bed because we knew everyone was tired and Jordan’s mom watched them for us and we drove to Walmart to get what we needed for the week to feed all of us.  Basically, our map did not work well and Jordan ended up taking us to Epcot instead of Walmart.  It was the longest night ever and we were SO exhausted when we finally made it home around midnight, but we needed our food for our family, so we had to do it!

I feel very fortunate that my grandparents were able to come with us and make some really wonderful memories.  I know it was a hard trip on my grandfather, but I think he had fun and I know he had fun watching the boys take in everything about Disney.

I still get butterflies in my stomach when we walk into Magic Kingdom and see the castle!  I’m a kid at heart I guess!  We had been when JM was 1, but this was the first time for Matthew and Noah!

I’m so happy my grandparents got to go!

We were very surprised that ALL the boys rode everything!  Here we are waiting in the Pirates line!  The lines were not that bad.  We make sure we use FastPass at our advantage!

At the end of a very long but fun day!

Every single morning as we left to go walk to the monorail the boys wanted their picture made with the American flag Mickey!  They posed every morning!

We headed to Epcot the next day and didn’t do too much.  When you have 3 small children, you just have to be prepared to not do much at a fast pace (at least, this is true for us).  I have a nursing baby, and diapers to change, and potty breaks to take, so you just can’t do it all, and we surely did not try.  We headed straight for our FastPass for Soarin’ and then straight to Nemo!  I could stay there forever!

The next morning we walked to the Polynesian and had a character breakfast with Lilo and Stich.  We usually always do this breakfast.  It’s so yummy and I love getting to see the characters up close.  The wait this time was not very long.

Noah was NOT happy to see the characters.  Bless his heart.

We left totally stuffed and full and happy to have seen a lot of characters!

After breakfast we took a bus to Hollywood Studos.  There wasn’t a ton for our little guys to do but they headed to the car show while I took a little nap/feeding break with Noah.  Matthew LOVED it but it was just a bit much for John Michael, so he left and didn’t stay to finish the show.  It IS pretty loud.

Right across from the car show was the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground.  It was pretty hard for me to keep up with all 3 of them, so luckily I had Jordan and his mom there to help!  They had a great time.  JM surpirsed me because he went in a huge net/mesh maze.  He did it over and over.  They also loved this wall of water.  I think they would have stayed 2 hours if we had let them.  We were all getting pretty hot and it was time for lunch so we finished up at the playground, ate lunch, the 2 littel guys napped in the stroller and JM went on the Hollywood movie ride with Jordan and his mom.  We headed back to our hotel after the movie ride and had an early dinner at the resort.

The next day we were dragging, to say the least.  We were so tired by this point.  All the walking, pushing strollers, working on laundry, swimming, playing at the resort, had really gotten to us.  We only spent a half a day at Animal Kingdom and then came on home for a good nap.  I’ll follow up this post with more from Animal Kingdom and then what crazy decision we made later that night!

More to come!