Our Happily Ever After.....: Animal Kingdom!!

Sunday morning we were up around 7 to get ready to head out for our day at Animal Kingdom. The kids all got dressed....I wasn't sure what to do about clothes so I just put them in pants and long sleeved shirts...which turned out to be a mistake. By noon they were all asking for shorts, which Joe was the only one who was wearing them! So I learned the next two days to bring those along!

We headed down to our lobby and were happily surprised to find they had Mickey Mouse waffles!

We ate up and headed out the door to be there when the park opened up at 9.

This was when the kids got super excited!

Ready to start our day!

We decided to start at the safari since it was not too hot and we figured the animals may be out more than later in the day.

Before we had even seen any animals Emmie was giggling away loving the bumpy ride.

And we figured out pretty fast that she was going to be a great roller coaster rider since she threw her hands up everytime the driver sped up or went down a hill!

We were right on about the animals...there were giraffes, lions, hippos galore at every turn.

Owen was about as impressed as me by all the animlas. lol

this was the only picture I snapped of animals. And it was only because the girls said, "take a picture of the baby giraffe!"

Joe on the other hand was snapping pictures left and right of all the wildlife......but you know my stance on animals.....zero desire to have a picture of one.

Now about 3 or 4 of these things below came walking right beside our cart. If you can see it's huge pointy antlers they were a little scary! The little girls were sitting by the window and I saw Joe pull them in quickly. He was pretty sure they were gonna pierce the girls if they got any closer!

The park wasn't crowded so we took our time walking around just letting the kids take in all the different things. The girls found some drums to bang on and about this time I noticed that Josie had gotten super quiet. Not her usual self.

I asked her what was wrong and she said she had a headache. Thankfully she wasn't running a fever....but I could tell she did not feel good and I was not wanting her to spend her whole day feeling bad. So Joe took the other 3 off to ride the dinosaur ride while I hunted down the first aid center to get her some tylenol. (the one thing I didn't pack with me!)

Well thankfully within 15 minutes of finding Joe and the other kids she felt great (her exact words).

So we decided to not ride anything that may bring her headache back right away and headed to see the "It's tough to be a bug" 3D show.

Now let me start with saying this show may be Joe and I'd biggest parenting failure. lol We have taken all the kids to Disney around the age of 3-4 and each time the 3-4 aged child is petrified of this 3D show. Yet everytime we go back we take the next little one to the show again!

This time was no different. We head in, checking out how the tree looks so pretty and finding all the animals carved in it.

These three remembered the show and were talking about how when they were little it scared them....yet it didn't really occur to me that Em may be afraid.

Emmie was so excited and loved her Bug 3D glasses.

She and Owen were all set to see the show!

Josie looking cute and stylish in her glasses.

Getting ready for the show to start. Emmie is on the other side of Owen having no clue about how she'd feel in about 10 minutes.

Well the show begins and the room gets dark and within a few minutes it fills with smoke (a part of the show) and I hear Emmie screaming, "I don't like bugs, i want to leave NOW i don't like bugs I want to leave NOW!" over and over. she makes her way to me and continues to say this. I felt so bad for her because in her little voice I could tell she really was afraid. The scary part didn't last long but she was past giving this show a chance and continued to say she wanted to leave. So Joe headed out the side door with her. When the kids and I got out she was stll not happy we had drug her into that.

Sad faced Emmie Jayne!

After that I decided to take Emmie to something a little happier. Like meeting Mickey and Minnie!

Joe headed off to tackle Everest roller coaster with the other 3. Josie was beyond excited that she was tall enough to ride because I had told her on the way there I wasn't for sure if she was or not.

She just made it, which made me a little nervous but there was no telling her she was not going....so I hoped she liked it as much as she thought she was going to!

We got to Mickey and Minnie and I was happy to see about a 5 minute wait to get in!

Emmie ran straight to Minnie and gave her a big hug! It was so sweet.

She smiled and danced around with them for a minute and than posed pretty for a picture. (In typical Burke Kid fashion, lol)

We headed back to find Joe and the kids who had already ridden Everest twice.....

And found this little cutie ready to ride a 3rd time! She loved it.....which is crazy as this coaster is HUGE and fast and steep and pretty much what alot of 5 year olds would view as scary!

Not our little Josie though!

We than went to watch the Nemo show...which is one of my favorites and the kids all love it as well.

Joe took the 3 older kiddos back to ride Everest again, so Emmie and I went to grab a snack and watch the parade which was getting ready to start. We lucked into some great seats as well!

And after the parade was over it didn't take much walking before I looked down to see Emmie had crashed out on me.

Emmie is a big napper still at the age of 3.5. As in a good 3 hour nap everyday!

Thankfully even Disney didn't stop those naps from happening.

I met back up with Joe and the others later in the day and took Josie with me and Emmie to go dig for dinsoaur bones while Joe and the older 2 went to ride another ride that Josie wasn't tall enough for.

We made a pit stop to ride the dinosaur ride that Emmie loved so much again as there was no wait!

We headed to the dinosaur dig after that which was a great resting spot for me while they played.

They had fun until some little boy decided to throw the dirt and go all over both of my girls....which is when we decided to leave and go get a snack.

Emmie Jayne giving Josie some love....