When we finally made it to Naples Monday afternoon, both boys were happy campers!  Maxwell went straight to his firetrucks (no surprise)…

and Spencer went straight to cleaning out the kitchen cabinets!  (which was all fun and harmless until 3 days later when he pulled out a glass baking dish and it shattered all over his bare feet. good times).

The most fun surprise was this AWESOME fire station that GJ had made for the boys!  It was made of felt and went over a card table and was complete with letters in the mail box and apples that you could pick off the tree!  It was made by Etsy seller MissPrettyPretty and the boys thought it was the best fire station ever!

They were in and out of that thing all week long!

We quickly got into a nice routine that included afternoon walks around the neighborhood with the trike and beep-beep car…

and morning trips to the beach and pool!

This picture is almost too much for me to handle…

and this video? My heart can barely take it.  Beach Walk.

The boys had a blast in the sand…

and honestly loved the Gulf. Spencer was pretty brave in the water as long as he had a hold of a finger and Maxwell was wading out really far!  Super proud of him!

But, as much fun as the beach was, both boys were really more pool lovers!

Maxwell did spend some time in his floaties but, after we got him a pair of goggles the next day, he was swimming a ton with no floatie at all!  Go swimmer go! (which reminds me – Maxwell has been taking swim lessons for almost a year now and, for some reason, I still haven’t blogged about it.  Swim lessons blog to come!)

We made a trip to Target (of course) and Maxwell came home with a treat (of course). But, how can you say no to this?

Ha!  He went snorkeling every night in the “big bathtub” in my parent’s room…

Both boys loved that “big bathtub”, especially with the jets on to make bubbles!

The week was filled with plenty of other fun like checking out the cars…

getting new fire trucks (this kid’s not spoiled at all!)…

finally seeing Frozen and watching plenty of Disney Jr…

and loving on GJ!

I’ve got even more pictures tomorrow!  yahoo!  Isn’t looking at other people’s vacation pics the best?  And, why yes, I do try to dress the boys as twinkies as much as possible.  Thanks for noticing.  🙂

When we finally made it to Tampa, GJ was there waiting for us. Maxwell couldn’t run up to her fast enough!  We all piled in the car and started driving. Maxwell thought we were going to Naples but, about 2 hours later, he saw some giant Mickey ears and knew we were at Disney!  Even better, we were going to get to see Nate and Delaney!  fun!  Well, mostly fun – I honestly think Maxwell was a little disappointed we weren’t going to Naples.  🙂

Doesn’t he look excited…

But, when we got into the park (with only minutes remaining on our First Pass I might add!), Maxwell was super excited to see his cousins (and clearly I was too!)…

We quickly hopped in line for our first Fast Pass…

which was to see Mickey Mouse of course!  He actually talks now…fancy!

I just love being at Disney and so do these little cuties…

This one wasn’t so sure about being stuck in the stroller all day.  Poor guy!  I tried to let him out as much as possible but he’s fast and can get away quick!  He wore me out!

Still, we all had a blast riding our favorites in the Magic Kingdom.  We hit up Dumbo…

Buzz Lightyear…

Winnie the Pooh…

and ended the day with Small World which was a total flashback for me as I hadn’t been on that ride in probably 20 years.  I loved it and Maxwell did too! Poor Spencey was half asleep the whole ride.

By that point, it was around 6:00 and we had already had a very full day of travel and fun so we called it quits and headed back to the hotel.  Besides, Maxwell had already told GJ an hour earlier that he was ready to go to Naples now!  🙂  We had a restful (lie) night all sharing one hotel room…

and then had plans to swim the next morning before heading out.  The weather had other plans though but it all worked out fine.

After some Mickey waffles and fun around the hotel…

our tired little guys were happy to get in the car and head on out to GJ’s house!

Full Naples fun to come but for now I say…

ps – happy April Fool’s!  I got nothin for you this year but check out some of my best tricks in 2013 and 2011.

Happy Monday!  What a GORGEOUS and FUN weekend we had. Pictures to come but first I need to close out the Disney trip!

After Friday at the Magic Kingdom and Saturday at Hollywood Studios, we finished the trip on Sunday at Animal Kingdom.  This was actually my first trip ever to Animal Kingdom and, while I don’t feel the need to go each time I visit Disney, it was fun – especially for my animal loving 3 year old!

The first thing we did was the Kilimanjaro Safari – a must to see some elephants!

We did see some elephants (phew!) and plenty of other animals too…

But the neatest part was when we were literally surrounded by giraffes and even had a giraffe meandering along the path in front of our jeep…as our driver said, we had a “giraffe-ic jam!”  hahaha.  I think doing it first thing in the morning before it got too hot was smart because all the animals were out to play!

After that we wandered around and checked out the park.  Pretty soon it was time to meet up with the cousins for a character lunch at Tusker House…

The characters there were great and I loved the food too – lots of good indian and other cuisines.  yum.  Plus, they actually had PBJ and apple sauce which made my boys happy campers!

Spencey slept through most of lunch…

but did get to meet Mickey before we left!

So fun for all!

After lunch we walked around some more, checked out the monkeys…

and then Robert and I got to ride the roller coaster Expedition Everest before leaving.  awesome!  🙂

We headed to the airport for a (thankfully) uneventful trip home.  I would like to officially thank the late, great Steve Jobs for inventing the iPads and making our travel bearable.

It was an exhaustingly great trip to WDW…can’t wait to go back!  🙂