The Mouse's House, Disney World

We left Tampa and made our way to pay a visit to the mouse. We stayed with a 1-week reservation at Disney's campground, Fort Wilderness and ultimately stayed 3 weeks. It was nice to be able to tell people that we legit lived at Disney World!

We stayed at the Fort before and the last time I said that the next time that we came, I would definitely be getting a golf cart. I rented a cart from Tee Time Golf Carts. Disney has forbidden all golf cart vendors from delivery carts on Disney property, so you have to go offsite to get it. It wasn't a terrible process- head out, get the cart on a trailer, and take the trailer back out to the meeting point. Pretty easy, but took me a good 70 minutes from start to finish.

We were crunched for time and I left after we got the camper backed-in, leveled-up, and electric plugged in. Mandie ended up handling the rest of the outside stuff- water, sewer, and our pin box cover. She had the outside and inside setup by the time I got back. Two snaps and a twist! You go girl!

For this trip, a few of the Fulltime Families were signed up to do the Princess 5K. We ended up being parked next to a couple of different friends, the Goffs and the Arnolds. And, a few more families also participated in the 5k but stayed others places, the Travaglinos, the Churches, the Shutes, and the Grahams. Because we were going to be camped near a handful of other people, we opted for a 6-person golf cart vs. the standard 4-person one. Having the extra space was good because Paige was back in a wheelchair and we had Logan's stroller *AND* we had a gaggle of people.

Once we got the golf cart sorted, we made our way over to Magic Kingdom to take Logan back to the barbershop. He loves getting his hair cut there and it's not terribly expensive like you'd imagine.

Only Disney is allowed to spike his hair

We headed back to the campground while we awaited the arrival of Mary Beth and her 4-Ts.

Mandie and Mary Beth ran out to the store and I finished setting the site up:

Our awning lights, old fashion bulbs + Mickey heads

Once they got back- we headed back out to the Magic Kingdom for a night of a couple of rides.

The next morning, we had a bright and early breakfast at the Cape May Cafe at the Beach Club resort. This was a fun one with the different character meet and greets. Plus, there's a ton of yummy food!

After breakfast, we Mary Beth had to go back to her camper for some work and we took the clan of kids to Epcot for the day. We laughed so hard all day long! Definitely make time to watch the video of the kids trying Beverly.

Mary Beth caught up with us in time for riding Test Track where her true colors as a roller coaster junky started to emerge!

That evening, I almost learned a very important lesson in how to charge the golf cart. The next morning was a whirlwind of professional photos by Magical Pix by Candi Clark for a couple of families. We LOVE the photos. She did an amazing job.

Friday was Disney's Hollywood Studios for the day with the Goffs. We had a good time again.

Mary Beth's Bad Assery on Rock 'n' Roller Coaster showed up. The stark contrast of experiences in this picture make me laugh so hard.

We got up on Saturday for the 5K. The 5K is cool in that it walks you around Epcot and even through some of the "offstage" working areas. The catch is, it has to wrap up before the park opens for the day. This means that we woke up at "Holy Crap" O' Clock in order to catch the bus by "This Hurts" O' Clock and be at the race start an hour ahead of "Dammit It's Not Sunlight Yet" O' Clock. But, like usual- we were wound up and having a good time.

After the 5K, we had a breakfast with a bunch of the families (in addition to those above, we added the Sims and the Simpsons). There ended up being about 40 of us for breakfast. Sadly, I have not a single picture from it. However, we had a wonderful time.

Believe it or not, after all of that we and the Goffs headed to Magic Kingdom again.

On Saturday, we went back to Hollywood Studios.

That evening, we had dinner at the Grand Floridian at 1900 Park Fare. We got there a little early and I made a terrible error in judgement by offering to take all of the kids for a ride on the monorail while the moms caught some quiet alone time. I can honestly say, the 6 kids and I ruled the roost. At any given point, there was a kid or two wandering off (the Wanderlust is strong in our families!). By the end of the "quick" loop, I WAS POOPED! But, my cheeks also hurt from laughing!

The laughter kept up through dinner. The evil step mother was her usual hilarious self. Prince Charming was caught quite off-guard when I offered to throw a jellybean for him to catch in his mouth.

We said our goodbyes to the Goffs on Sunday and explored some of the old railroad bed at the campground. However as we saw them off, we went to get Grandma Lisa from the airport that evening.

I was then abandoned in the house while I worked while Mandie and the kids headed into Magic Kingdom without me. (sad face) Mandie said the interaction with Gaston was fantastic (as expected!).

On Tuesday, Mandie had vocal chord surgery. It was to remove polyps. It is the same surgery that she had a couple of years before. Apparently polyps are known to periodically come back. The fun side of surgery, it was because of surgery that we decided to extend our original week reservation to be 2 weeks. I didn't want to move on the day of her surgery or even the first days afterwards. And then there was no sense in wasting a weekend day. So, a whole extra week it was!

It was also the week that the plague infested our house. We were all sick (even Grandma who claims she wasn't). To put it politely and kindly, it sucked. We did nothing all week.

Friday night, we had dinner at T-REX. It's always a fun time. Afterwards, we did a little shopping at Downtown Disney.

By Saturday, we were starting to feel slightly more human (though, still hugely crappy!). The five of us headed over to Magic Kingdom.

And then Paige crashed. Horribly, ugly, and messily crashed. A plague infection for the ages. She slept almost all day long; did a crazy sleep talking terror thing; and then suddenly felt better by 10 or 11pm where stayed up for the rest of the night. It was so sad and hard to watch her go through. A good parent is supposed to say, "I wish it was me and not you"; but daaaaammmn, it was ugly. I was secretly glad it wasn't me!

Avoiding the plague, Logan and I took his R/C truck for a walk. We explored the canal and then found the group camping sites.

On Monday (after staying up all night), we did get Paige out on the golf cart for a trip around the Fort. To be honest, we were putting off packing up for the next day's move day. We checked out the old River Country waterpark ruins (at least what you could see by peaking through the fence).

(it was about this point that security came and chased us out, I ran like the wind)

Before we headed back- Mandie lobbied me for an extra week at the Fort. I folded like a dirty politician- quickly and easily!

Tuesday night, we picked up Grandpa Alan. With our newly found love of Mellow Mushroom, we decided to stop there for dinner. Things went great- we ordered dinner and our pizzas just arrived as Logan threw up all over himself and the bench and the floor. Needless to say, we boxed our pizzas and GTFO. Fortunately, this is the only picture of it that I have:

With Grandma and Grandpa down, we all went down to watch fireworks at the beach. We had quite the crew- the Shute family joined us and one of Alan's work buddies stopped by. After fire works, we then caught up with another fulltime family, the Thomases. (I think I have my days right; or I don't... oh well- we saw all of those people!)

We hung out at camp with Grandma and Grandpa until Saturday when they headed on up the road. Part of their reason for coming down was to take Grandma June back to York. We said our goodbyes and headed into Animal Kingdom.

On Sunday, we headed back into Epcot. We have been wanting to do some of the Agent P's World Showcase Adventures (which used to be Kim Possible). This was pretty neat and we really enjoyed it. Epcot's Flower and Garden festival was going on. The topiaries were pretty neat and the flowers were stunning in colors and beautiful.

Our last night at the Fort (for real this time), we made our way back to Magic Kingdom. Paige was video chatting with Rachael. Paige found it funny that she got to take Rach on rides with here. Here we are about to drive the cars from hell: