Day 3: Typhoon Lagoon

We decided to make today a swim/ water day since it had been so incredibly hot. We were all excited to cool off and relax a bit. We also had a nice surprise this day. The night before as we were walking through the hotel to go to dinner, a lady asked me if I wanted some free tickets for a character breakfast the next morning. I kind of brushed her off and asked her what was the catch. I figured we'd have to go to some condo presentation or something, but she said it was completely free with no obligations. Raytheon is doing a display in Innovations at Epcot, and they sponsored it as a "thank you" to the military. I was quite shocked, but sure enough, it was a great buffet breakfast and 100% free with no presentation or obligation whatsoever. Not to mention, we got to see several characters too...Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, Donald, Pluto, Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Cinderella, and Belle. It was a real jackpot for Jesikah to get all those characters in one place for her autograph book. So we made our rounds to the characters and enjoyed a yummy breakfast.

The girls had fun interacting with Cinderella. We found that it was more fun to interact with the characters who had real faces.

We had fun with Minnie and Mickey. Their interactions with the kids were cute. Minnie even kissed Alex on the cheek. Alex was embarrassed, but bragged about it later. :) I was bummed that the photographer had my camera because I wouldn't have missed that.

This was the Mickey inside the Shades of Green hotel.

This picture was taken as we headed out of Typhoon Lagoon. We didn't get any pictures because we didn't want to take the camera out since it was wet everywhere. We all had a fun day, but you can see they're all a bit tired. We all enjoyed the Lazy River, the Wave pool which had huge 5 ft waves (even Jarem learned to ride the waves with some help from Eric), and (of course) the slides. There was a pretty long lazy river and Jarem and I went on it together. As we were nearing the end, he saw a lifeguard on the shore and asked him, "When can you get out?". The lifeguard told him, "Never, it just keeps going and going." Jarem was like, "Oh no!". He was afraid for a minute that it really did just keep going and going. Then, he saw the stairs though. It was pretty funny.

Eric used to enjoy surfing in his teenage years, so he wanted a "hang loose" picture next to the surfboards.

That evening, we checked into our new place. We divided our time between Shades of Green and a cabin at Fort Wilderness. We had ordered groceries from Gardengrocer.com and they were waiting in our cabin when we got there. That was awesome!

Once checked in, we changed and headed out to Downtown Disney where we planned to have dinner at Rainforest Cafe and then spend some time at the World of Disney store and Legoland. I called ahead to Rainforest Cafe, but they weren't taking reservations so we headed over. We waited awhile, but finally got in. We had A nice (but expensive) dinner.

We had given each of the kids some money to use for lunches, snacks, and souvenirs for the whole trip. They don't often have money, so they were pretty excited to have some say over what they wanted. It was exciting to see them shopping so carefully in World of Disney(the hugest Disney store anywhere) for their perfect thing and we didn't hear any begging or crying for things the entire trip. It's amazing to see what they are willing to go without when it is their own money. Alex bought an expensive lunch the first day. After he realized how much money he spent, he saved half of his lunch for the next day and carried it around all day in order to make it last for two meals. It was a good experience and they each found just what they wanted for the right price.

These pictures of Legoland I took with my phone because we forgot the camera...

This is a large dinosaur made completely out of Legos that they had on display

Jarem building an airplane from some of the Lego bins they had outside.

This is a bigger view of the covered outdoor area that they had for free exploration. It was very large. Jarem loved it, but the other kids were more interested in the inside.

At Legoland, the kids were so excited to see all the legos. We got there when it was almost ready to close, but Alex had only purchased a small souvenir and had saved his money for legos. He was so excited (and Alex doesn't get excited often) about all the Star Wars lego sets they had that he had never seen before. He found a rare one that he bought, and the girls went in together to split a "girl" set that made two little houses. Jarem bought a Lego alarm clock, and a 3-pack of guys. We got out just as they closed at 11pm. We were very tired!