Are You There God? Its Me, Allyson.....: The UNHappiest Place On Earth

Yes, I am officially going on record by saying that we did NOT like DisneyWorld. Loathing to the point of hate actually. It could quite possibly be our own fault though......

The kids were coming up on their 5th birthday. We thought that would be a good age for them to go. Instead of going in their birthday month of April, we went in February to avoid school crowds and the heat. We opted for the 4 night package but there was a special going on, Buy 4 Get 3 Free. What a mistake.....

Josh and I were still trying to fix our marriage so there were some very raw emotions still out there. NOT the best time to take a vacation. For 8 days. With two 5 year old children. Needless to say there were a LOT of tears shed.

I made reservations for some really great meals and we enjoyed those so much!! We didn't care for the in between meals where you're herded around like cattle for a dinky overpriced chicken strip meal. We didn't have to ride the bigger rides because they were still so little so that wasn't too much of a problem. What drove Josh crazy was the character signatures. At 5 years old, when the kids saw a princess, they wanted to go meet her. If they saw her again, they wanted another autograph. Those characters were the equivalent of me running into Julia Roberts (by the way, my most favorite actress in the history of ever). We stood in line after line to get those autographs and it drove Josh crazy. There were several other things that led to the demise of our vacation. At one point, Josh had one kid and I had the other and we were in completely separate areas of the park.

Yeah, this was a baaaaaad idea, as you can tell from Ethan's face. Good thing you can't see Josh's face. Not Emmy though!!

The street performers kept jokingly saying "Shhhh don't wake the baby!" and Emmy did not like it at all. She grabbed his hand and told them to stop making fun of her brother!!!

I remember pulling into the driveway when we got home. I met Amanda in the middle and just hugged her like crazy. Lost it. Boo-hoo'ed.

We had a LOT of work to do on our family. What we were doing wasn't working. I really hated that our trip went so bad. I'm hoping that one day, before the kids get too old, that we will be able to go again and have a much better outcome!! Josh and I just recently talked about trying to go back since we're in a better place and the kids are older. We are either going next Fall or wait for our niece Lillian to get a little older so we can all go as a family.

Later on that year, Emily had surgery #2. Frenulectomy. Know what that is? Google it :) Our dear sweet Dr. Davis took care of Emily. Her surgery didn't last 10 minutes. Recovery wasn't too bad either!

Since we had such an awful vacation in Disney, we desperately wanted to make it up so we planned our 4th cruise. This time we left out of Miami and cruised to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Key West.