I have given the Easter Bunny a bad name.

Over the past week I have come across some things that would go great in Jack's easter basket. And because I am a full-time mom, Jack is usually with me when I find these things. I don't mind, because I like to make sure that he approves of my choices, before I go throwing money away on them.

I have learned that Jack LOVES peeps. He picked out a big 12 packer of purple peeps. He asked for them over and over that night and I told him "Jack, I gave them to the Easter Bunny to put in your easter basket." To which, he replied "Whhhy?" and I told him easter is coming soon, and the Easter Bunny was filling up his basket.

The next day I saw a great LeapFrog game that Jack could use to learn how to write his letters, (thanks to LeapFrog, Jack can sound out any of the 26 letters of the alphabet.) Jack saw it come out of the box that came from Amazon and chased me up the stairs as I quickly threw it on the top shelf. He followed me in and said "Mommy what was that?!" and I said "It's something the Easter Bunny wanted to put in your basket."

Then today I found a cute little Mater Pez dispenser. Perfect for his little, growing easter basket. Jack approved it, and I hid it when we got home. "Mommy, where are my toys with the candies?" to which I again replied, "The Easter Bunny took them to put in your basket. Easter is coming up really soon."

And Jack sat in silence for a minute, then asked "Mommy. When is the Easter Bunny going to stop taking all my stuff?"

And I realized, I've made the Easter Bunny out to be nothing but a dirty crook.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

So we made it full circle. This was our last day at the Village. So we packed up and said goodbye to our Villa, and stopped at the front desk to check out. Upon checkout, we received another package of stuff. It included:

-A Gold star for Jack to take home (like the one for the magic castle)

-A big picture of our family and Mickey and Minnie

-A disc of all the pictures taken of us at the village, along with a disc of pictures OF the village

-A family passport to 100's of theme parks across the US that we have free admission to each park, once, for a year. (Yes, Lagoon is on there, score.)

So our flight didn't leave till 5pm, so we used our tickets to Universal Studios. This park is amazing, because it is TWO parks (Universal Adventure Park) in one. (For us at least, our tickets got us into both.) So we went to the regular one first, because we knew there was something in there Jack loved. But first, we hit a roller coaster that he was actually tall enough for. It was the Woody Woodpecker Coaster and it was really fun. We went on it about 6 or 7 times. Then we took Jack over to his favorite place in this big, wide, world The Curious George House of Flying Balls and Craziness. You'll remember he went there last year, in California and never wanted to leave. It was a lot like that here.

There were endless guns to shoot, buttons to push, vacuums to suck and bags to fill, but unfortunately there weren't nearly as many balls in this one, so the shortage created a sort of hoarding frenzy. But Jack loved it. I took cover for awhile because there are stupid middle aged men that think it's funny to shoot at me, I don't know why, but it drives me nuts.

So after the huge fit from leaving there, we rode the roller coaster a couple more times, and decided that with our 3 hours of park time, we should head over to the other park.

However, on our way, we saw the Rock'n'Rolla roller coaster, and Josh and I each took a go. This is where I said goodbye to my sunglasses, that I had tucked away in my shirt. I didn't tuck enough. But this coaster was really fun, and each seat had an MP3 player for you to choose a rock song to listen to on the ride, then you could buy a DVD with your song, and YOU on the roller coaster. Hilarious. But fun.

From there we headed over to Universal Island Adventure, and we got a distant glimpse of the new Harry Potter Theme Park. It is built to scale, and Hogwarts is huge, and snow-covered.

This park was CRAZY. They had a whole Dr. Suess Land, that was like an acid trip. We busted right through there to the Jurassic Park. I don't know why I don't have any pictures, but we took a really fun ride on this Tera dactyl thing where we were hang gliding around in a jungle. Jack went twice, once with me and once with Josh. Then we played in this big rope jungle gym, that you could run around in, climb, and go down slides. Jack could have stayed there forever too.

But our time came to go, and we headed out of the last of the 6 amusement parks we hit this week. It was so much fun, and we were treated so well, SO WELL- that we can never return.

(Thank you to MAW, thank you to Westland Elementary School, and thank you to our families. This was a trip of a lifetime, and will never be forgotten or taken for granted. Jack will have many things to remind him of how special he is, and how much fun he had.)

Monday, March 22, 2010

This is what Jack had for breakfast at the Animal Kingdom. Bad mother, I know. It is a Zebra Cupcake. It was massive.

The Animal Kingdom is huge, and the day was a little cloudy, but really nice. We went on the "Safari" and saw all sorts of animals ranging from low to high on the food chain, all fenced in to one area.

I heard flamingo's got their color from eating shrimp, and I thought it was a joke. It's not. But I still don't know why they all face the same way when they sleep.

I tried to take a few artistic shots since I had been treating my camera like crap.

Jack really enjoyed the drums. Whether it was watching people play them, or playing them himself.

After walking through the jungle, we decided to find a fun ride that Jack was tall enough for. So we stretched him out on the measuring stick to see if he was tall enough to go on the Rapid Rivers ride. He WAS. So all excited that Jack got to go on a "real" ride, we got on the raft and headed to the top of the hill. The raft twisted and turned and crashed at the bottom of the waterfall, and the three of us- our of the 6 people on the raft got DRENCHED. Jack, especially. His face immediately turned to utter discomfort and his brow stayed furrowed till we got off the ride. So I changed his shirt, and took off his pants and covered him with my sweatshirt. Then Josh and I took turns on the EVEREST ride. REALLY, really fun roller coaster.

We headed home for a rest, then went back out to what was supposed to be Epcot, but in the interest of Jack, we went back to Hollywood Studios and did the Toy Story Ride 5 times in a row. Josh and I also got to do the Tower of Terror, because Jack was asleep when we arrived at the park. So he got in a good nap, and we got in a good ride.

That night, Mayetta wanted to show Jack the "World's Largest McDonald's Playplace" which sounded like my biggest nightmare, but again, this is Jack's trip, and I knew he would enjoy it. This McDonald's was incredible. It had two floors, and the menu included the usual junk, then taco salads and pastas and wraps.... and the crawly-play-land place was huge. So huge, that we lost Jack a couple of times in there. He found a friend and followed her in and out of the place for what seemed like hours. By the time we pulled him out he was kicking and screaming in some sort of possessed fit, but later apologized for his behavior.

We said our goodbye's to Larry and Mayetta (thank you guys for coming, again) then headed back for our last night at the Village.

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

We woke up to some clouds, and high hopes. The day began nicely, we had breakfast at LArry and Mayetta's place again. Then Jack showed us his "puppy face" from BOLT:

(He did a spectacular impersonation now that I look at them side by side..)

We headed off to SeaWorld. Our first stop was to be the dolphin's, because we wanted to get there at a good time to feed them- when they were still hungry. But we ran into the sting ray's first. It seemed like there were hundreds of them in this one pool. They were flapping all over the place, splashing people. Mayetta bought some fish to feed them, and you put it between your fingers then put your hand into the water and their vacuum mouths SUCK it up. It is awesome.

This bird was hilarious. There was a dolphin trainer with buckets of fish, feeding the dolphins. The bird would tip-toe over to the bucket to steal a fish while she had her bad turned, but never succeeded.

GKTW gave us one free tray of fish to feed the dolphin's, but the nice guy gave us two. The sweet dolphin's were so friendly and loved their fish. It went by really fast, but it was fun. The first time I've touched a dolphin I think.

This is a pretty flower.

We went to the Shamu show, which was the same one as the one we saw in California. But with a number of changes. 1. No trainers in the water, 2. No awesome whale-trainer tricks, 3. The big elephant in the room that was "which one of these whales did it?"

But it was still enjoyable. We didn't get wet this time. That is, until later.

We took Jack on one ride and it started to dump rain, so we had lunch, and decided to go into the Arctic, where we would be indoors. We saw the cool beluga whales, the polar bear and some walrus.

After we got out it was STILL raining and Jack was about to hit a wall. So we left Larry and Mayetta behind, and trekked to our car in the torrential down pour. We all got soaked. So much for staying dry at the Shamu show.

We went home and tried to nap and took it easy. Our little family ate dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings (yum) and watched Celebrity Apprentice- then went to bed.

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Today was a simple day, we went to the beach.

We headed over to New Smyrna, and after a couple of tries ended up on a nice stretch of beach, camped out right in front of the water. I learned something new about Florida. They allow driving on the beach. So although it's nice and peaceful lying there, listening to the waves, I was constantly helping Jack "cross the street" that was in between our set up, and the water. It was so bazaar to me, these cars driving all over the sand and parking right next to their little camps.

Anyway. Jack spent most of his time by the water with Josh, digging a hole and building mounds of sand to knock over.

Then to my surprise, Jack let me bury him. For a child that has a HUGE problem with restraint, I was impressed that he allowed me to do this, and held still so I could.

So Jack started as a little cocoon, then progressed into...

A beautiful butterfly.

After the beach, Jack slept all the way back to Orlando. Then due to the everlasting sanitation of our Village, (they brought in a high school dance team, handed them each a bottle of Clorox wipes, and sent them out to scrub the whole Village..) we ate dinner OUT again, and had Five Guys. Yum.

We got home to find a complimentary bottle of Clorox wipes on our table.