Disney Day 1

   After months and months of planning and preparation the day had finally come: Disney Departure day!!!!  We were all so, so excited!  When we first planned the trip, we decided to fly out of Colorado Springs on the red eye that left Friday night at midnight and arrived Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m. in Orlando.  I was really excited because I had planned that we would head straight to the parks and get a full extra day of park time.  However, Frontier, notified us shortly before our trip that we would now have a layover in Vegas for several hours and not arrive in Orlando until late Saturday morning.  This did not sound like a fun time with five kids, so we had to book different tickets.  We ended up flying out of DIA first thing on Saturday morning.  Flying out of DIA is a pain, but at that point we we were just happy to get a flight at all.  

    We all met at Katy's house, loaded up in two cars, and headed up to DIA.  The Disney excitement in the car was palpable.  We couldn't believe it was finally time to go!  

Ready to go to Disney World!  

Gracie trying out her cool shades

Katy and I did the girls nails with a Mickey theme before we went.  They got lots of compliments on them during our trip.  

    Check in went well and security lines were not bad at all.  We were at our gate in no time.  We grabbed breakfast from McDonald's while we waited to board.

They definitely couldn't keep calm!  

Look how excited she was!  

Let's do this!  

     The flight was very uneventful and went by quickly.  Everyone got a little rest because they knew once we landed, it would be constant on the go until we headed home.

Ella getting her beauty sleep

Silly boys

    Once we landed, we made our way towards the Magic Express.  We waited quite a long time for our bus.  It finally, arrived and we got to sit right in the front.

Waiting for the train

Love this sight!  It means we are finally in Orlando

Since we were sitting in the front of the bus, I finally got a picture of the sign

     When we had to reschedule our flights, it had us landing in Orlando around 3:30 and our dinner reservation was for 5:30.  We knew it would be very tight.  We got to the the Beach Club right in time for our reservation.  We were eating at Cape May Cafe which has kind of become our new tradition for our arrival day.  It is in the hotel and the fact it is a buffet makes it convenient.   We were starving since it has been a very long time since our breakfast in Denver.  The food was great as usual and the adults really enjoyed all the crab they could eat.  It hit the spot!

Food time

      After dinner, we decided to go check out our rooms.  We were staying at the Yacht Club this time which is really our favorite hotel.  They recently refurbished the rooms and we loved the updates!  Our rooms were also all right next to each other which is what we prefer.  The best part was when we opened the curtains and discovered that we had a view of the water!  We couldn't have asked for better rooms.  We were so pleased!

The Yacht Club rooms

The view from our balcony.  I never got sick of this view!  

     We were all pretty tired at this point, but we were in Disney World and sleep is never a priority when we are there!  We had to ride some rides!  We made the short walk over to Epcot.

Ella had these silly glasses for some odd reason

The girls posing for a pic on the way

    I had booked some fast passes for Saturday night because I had figured that we would want to go ride some rides even if we were tired.  Our first ride of the trip was Test Track and it did not disappoint!  Gracie was finally tall enough to ride a lot of rides this trip, and she got to ride Test Track for the first time. She loved it!

    After Test Track, we had to ride one of our all time favorite rides, Spaceship Earth.  Dawson said it never feels like a Disney trip until we have ridden Spaceship Earth.  It was the perfect way to end our day.  When we got off, Gracie said, "That was awesome!"

Love this sight!  

On Spaceship Earth

   We made the short walk back to the Yacht Club.  Our bags had arrived, so we did some unpacking and got situated for the week.  We were so excited when we discovered that we would be able to watch fireworks from the balcony every night!  What a treat!

Gracie was so excited to have her own little bed again.  She wanted to do some "light"reading before bed.  

Our balcony room at night