Days 2 & 3: Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios

On Day 2 of our trip we went to Animal Kingdom.  Our first stop was the safari!

The kids had so much fun looking at all the different animals.  Giraffes, lions, rhinos, and elephants were all really close to us.  It's so funny because there's a whole premise about poachers and baby elephants, and Wyatt is obsessed with it.  He literally asks (still) about the poachers.  Like, he asks how they keep getting back in the park at night!

We decided to head over to visit Rafiki - he's a favorite around here.  Reese does a really great impression of him saying, "Correction.  I know your father."

We continued on our princess journey to find Pocahontas.  Reese was very excited to see her!

We were able to fit in a showing of The Festival of the Lion King and do a bit of shopping before an afternoon rainstorm hit.  We visited with Tigger, Pooh and Eeyore, but the rain lasted longer than we expected. We set the kids up with popcorn and Netflix on Brian's phone, but they couldn't be entertained for too long!  We ended up leaving early and then headed to Downtown Disney that night.

On Tuesday we went to Hollywood Studios.  We got our fast passes for Toy Story Mania (seriously, it's the only way to get on the ride without waiting forever, and you have to go get your pass first thing in the morning.  They seriously run out of times.  We got one at 9 and our return time was 3pm!), and then went to Star Tours.  Wyatt was even the person chosen in our little pod to be the rebel spy - he thought it was cool!

We visited with a few more characters.  The kids were very excited to get to visit with the Green Army Man from Toy Story!

And Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates was there!  Reese was holding out hope for Izzy, but she isn't there!

And this would be where we had one of our moments.  Brian and I both just reached our breaking point.  We were asking them over and over and over again to listen, be good, stop fighting, stop interrupting, be kind - and none of those things were happening.  We decided to take a little time out and get some popcorn and rest.  When I took the popcorn away because only kernels were left, Wyatt got major attitude.  And we walked out!  That was probably the lowest point of the trip.  I know that it didn't help that they were going to sleep a little later and waking up earlier (my best sleeper, Hudson, became my absolute worst on our trip - waking up at 4:30 in a hotel wide awake - I thought I was going to die), but they knew better! It was so hard to discipline them there because our solution to bad behavior at home when we're out is to leave, and we didn't want to ruin our vacation with punishment.  Brian and I also knew we were probably being a little tough because we had unfair high expectations because we were at Disney World.  But it was something we had to do, even though we paid all that money.  And it was the worst!  We went back to the hotel and had a talk and things got better from there.

I can't even lie - these are just the pictures that I took - Brian has a lot more on his phone, and we got the Disney photo pass, so there are even more.  So sadly enough, you will probably be subjected to even more pictures!