Disney World Trip Reveal

Today we were finally able to reveal our trip to Disney World that I have been planning for almost an entire year! I knew I wanted to surprise the boys sometime, but I didn't want it to be the day of the trip or even the day before. The build up is part of of the fun, and I also wanted their input on a couple of things. BUT, I didn't want them asking about the trip every day for 6 months. This is about 2 months before our trip...soon enough to help make a few last minute decisions, and far enough out for us to watch all the Disney movies we want to prepare for the trip!

I planned a treasure hunt with clues for them since that's one of their favorite things to do. I had the clues placed around the house and taped on the outside of envelopes. 

They took turns finding the clues and Ethan read them to us. 

When they had found all of the clues, they brought them to the coffee table and put them in number order (the envelopes were numbered). 

Then, one by one, they opened the envelopes in order to pull out a card with a word on it. 

Ethan figured out the surprise with one word left. "Disney" sort of gave it away. I love Duke's expression in the background...what is going on???

After they had figured out the secret message, I gave them each a bag of goodies for our trip. 

First, a custom autograph book with their names on the front. They both love doing the autograph thing at Disney, so they were really excited about their new books.

I also had a couple of Disney shirts in there for them to wear on our trip. Mom and I had picked them up on our couple of days at Disney last September. 

Logan got green (his favorite color) and Ethan got blue (his favorite color) for their autograph books. We had two happy boys. I may be even more excited than them, though!

I had made a Mickey pancake breakfast for all of us that morning. It was a lazy-styled breakfast, though. Mickey plates and Mickey shaped pancakes with a special table cloth. And some of our Disney friends piled in the middle. That was it!

Pancakes are always a hit with Logan. No matter what shape they are!

Ethan keeps asking when we are going. I did make a count down poster, but it only starts 35 days out from our trip. So a few more weeks and then we'll bring that out. In the meantime, I made a list of Disney movies for us to watch, so we'll start checking those off! Can't wait for April 30!

Cabo: Day 3

On our last full day in Mexico, we had no plans or company events to attend. We had the whole day to ourselves. We got out of bed when we started to get hungry and headed down to the breakfast buffet. The breakfast buffet was one of my favorite meals...it had everything...including tacos and enchiladas. Yum! And a mimosa bar. Plus, they had chocolate croissants, which I submit were second only to the ones I've had in Paris. They were surprisingly good. 

After breakfast, we gathered our swim gear and headed down to the beach. I should mention that the landscaping of the resort was one of its best features. There were always people watering or working on the plants, etc. It really was lovely and definitely added to the ambiance of the hotel. I really love and appreciate plants and flowers at a resort. 

We made it down to the beach. As it was the day before, there were hardly any people down there. However, the waves were even more powerful and loud than the day before. It was really neat to watch and listen to them roll in and out. 

Casey took my photo...

And then I took his...

But he must have seen my eyes getting big because before I could say anything, he had turned around and seen the massive wave headed his way. He would have been drenched if he hadn't run up the beach in time. 

We walked along the beach for a while and another couple saw us trying to take a selfie with my phone. They offered to take a photo of us, so I handed them my big camera. I put it on auto, and what do you know? It's a decent photo. Now, because of the lighting, our bodies and faces were quite dark in the original out of camera shot. But it was nothing that a little Photoshop couldn't fix...and it was in focus, which you can't fix. 

The waves generated quite a bit of foam because they were crashing into the sand so hard. 

We walked down the beach some more...

Casey decided to make a heart shape with his footprints and then our initials inside of it. It was hard to get the whole thing in my frame from the bottom of the beach because of the rise of the sand, so I took this photo from above even though the heart is facing the ocean. 

At some point we turned around and started walking back to the resort. 

Every once in a while a wave would catch us by surprise and come up past us on the beach. It was just a little cold, but not shocking. 

And at least a couple of times, it came up really far. The bottom of my bag got wet once!

We made it back to the resort and snagged a couple of front-row lounge chairs. 

After applying some more sunscreen, we were ready to chill for the day. 

And this is where we did spend the majority of the day. We were up above the main beach, but had a straight view of the ocean. Sometimes we could tell how strong the waves were by their noise and we'd watch them for a second. Mostly we read and napped. Twice we spotted whales out a little ways from the shore. That was cool!

At lunch time we reluctantly got up and had a bite to eat. We stopped at the very casual burger bar and had a burger, quesadillas, and a small pizza. And of course, a couple of drinks. This one was my favorite...an orange blue margarita. 

After spending the rest of the day down in those beach loungers again, we went back to the room in the late afternoon to shower and get dressed for dinner. 

The resort was really beautiful at night with all the lighting. 

On the way to dinner, we stopped in the gift shop to pick up a couple of maracas and little turtles for the boys. Then, on our way out, we saw market stalls set up in the courtyard. They had all sorts of stuff. I didn't take any photos...probably because I felt badly about photographing all their wares and not buying any. I could never be a street photographer!

A staff member saw us trying to take photos of each other and offered to take one of us together. Again, I put my big camera on auto and handed it over. It's not a bad shot!

Our first dinner that night (yes, first) was at the Italian restaurant. It had a lot to live up to because this was the restaurant I heard mentioned time and time again when reading reviews of the resort before we left. Well, it was really good and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We ordered four small plates to split, and liked all of them a lot. But the shrimp and gnocchi was a favorite for both of us. 

After our first dinner, we strolled around the hotel for a bit and then went back to the room to watch some TV. See, we had a second dinner planned for 9pm that night. Why? Well, Casey really wanted to eat at the Hibachi restaurant, but you have to make reservations, and you can only do that the day of your meal. We were told to call at 7am. And we did. And the earliest reservation they had was for 9pm! So, we took it and included some of other people from Casey's company that were also talking about getting reservations. But, we also wanted to try the Italian restaurant and knew that we couldn't make it all the way until 9pm to eat dinner. Thus...two dinners. 

When 9pm rolled around we weren't exactly hungry even though we'd tried to eat sort of light at our first dinner. But, we were able to try everything. And just as I'd expected, it was good, but not great. We are a little spoiled when it comes to the quality of our hibachi experiences. (I'm looking at you Kobe Steaks). 

We left our second, really late dinner and went back to the room, taking in the peacefulness of the resort at night. 

I didn't take any photos the next day because we basically got up, packed our bags, and left on our shuttle for the airport. We had such a great trip to Cabo even though it was relatively short. It's amazing what a few relaxing days away from your regular schedule will do for you. And I underestimated how wonderful the beach and some warmer weather could be at the beginning of February. I might have to plan a small trip at this time of year every year to beat my winter blues!

Cabo: Day 2

Our second day started out with sleeping in as all vacations should. Casey had an employees-only breakfast meeting from 9-11am, so he took off just before 9 for that. He had to wear his name tag...I had one too, but I made him pose for me with it on. He's a good sport!

The first thing I did  - even before he left - was order room service for breakfast! There are few things more fun than room service in bed. Especially involving waffles and bacon. 

After I had eaten and dressed, I took my camera and set out to explore the resort. We had walked around a bit the day before, but not anywhere close to the whole thing. 

The fun thing was that this early in the morning (9:30-ish), hardly anyone was up and about except the resort staff. 

You'll never see this many open lounge chairs at the pool except first thing in the morning. And maybe late at night.

There were two pools, and we favored this quieter pool over by the ocean. Not only did it have a great view from its infinity edge, but there was no live or thumping music pumped out of speakers around here. We are old. 

Prime view right by the hot tub, which would have been where you wanted to be if you were to get in any kind of water this early in the morning. It was mid-60s. Great for walking around, but a bit chilly for swimming in the actual pool. 

I walked ALL around the resort. I went out to the wedding gazebo, which had great beach views and these lovely grasses around it. There was a yoga class about to begin there, so I didn't linger. 

Instead, I made my way down to the actual beach, passing a Zumba class on the beach deck where we'd had our cocktail party the night before. This beach was gorgeous. They strongly recommended that we not swim in it while we were there because the undertow was so strong. That made the beach practically deserted for much of the day. And even when there were people walking on it and taking in the view, it was so wide and stretched on forever that you still felt like it was just you and the ocean. 

I stayed out by the beach for over an hour just listening to the waves. They were really strong and came up so much farther on the beach that I would have guessed at first. I had fun taking photos of the foam as it rolled up close to me. In fact, I took tons of photos. But they get redundant even to me, so I just selected my favorite three to put on this post. 

I sat down in the sand for a while, snapping photos and just enjoying the beach...one of my happy places. When it got close to the time when Casey would be out of his meeting, I reluctantly walked back to the resort. 

Casey and I met up and sought out food immediately. Not that it had been that long since breakfast, but still...

We chose the grill right beside the pool...the only restaurant open besides the buffet, which we had chosen the day before. I'll say one thing...my main dish was not impressive, but the chips, salsa, pico, and guacamole were top notch. I'd eat that stuff all day long. And Casey's shrimp tacos were excellent too. 

Right after lunch we paid a visit to the bar for frozen strawberry margaritas. I know I said they were mostly just sugar, but they were pretty good after all. 

We also grabbed some good ol' fashioned nachos...even though we had just eaten. Heavens, vacations make you do crazy things. We set ourselves up in these chairs on the lawn looking out over the golf course and the ocean. We had someone bring us an umbrella too. 

And then we had him move it to these chairs when they became available because the view was that much better. And that's where we spent the rest of the afternoon. We slept, ate our nachos, read our books, stared at the ocean, and had the most lovely time. And like I said before, there was no loud music and other such nonsense over here.

We pretty much had to pry ourselves out of our chairs to head back to the room. Casey took this photo of me by the fountain that fed from the main pool. We had to go back to the room to take showers and get ready for the big awards banquet that night. 

Before we headed to the dinner, we had one of the resort staff people take this out of focus shot of us in our finery. Never mind that we're blurry and my hair is subject to the constant wind...we don't dress up often, so it bore commemorating with a photo. 

The awards banquet was held in one of the banquet rooms at the resort and was for the entire company. We had quite a good buffet for dinner and the awards part only lasted about an hour, which was tolerable. Especially since Casey and his partner got their award too for all their hard work in 2015. I was very proud of them and their achievements.