Disney post. No really, I promise.
I do have this hugely long document that is about two thirds of the trip, but I'm kind of sick of trying to get that thing wrapped up for now and I just want to put something up, because it was a good time! I'm honestly curious how you get writer's block on recounting a vacation, but whatever. That document doesn't want to be finished right now and I've got a hundred others that do. Make hay while the sun shines, or something.
So, I'm just putting up some pics and [sometimes lengthy] captions for now. If you just want to browse all the pics, they're on Flickr. I think they're all captioned, too.
Unfortunately, I'm terrible about remembering to take pics at stuff like this. So, I'm missing a lot of really awesome times that other people caught. Like huge blocks of time. I'll have to track down links to all of those at some point, I guess. I've saved a lot off as well. But right now, this is all I have the energy for. We're keeping ourselves stupidly busy right now. Seriously, I feel like we're so busy I might be incurring brain damage from it. But I'm enjoying every minute of it so I can't complain in the least. I'm very engaged in life right now. And very exhausted.
One of many shelves of sour beers at Hop City in Atlanta. We stopped there on our way down and spent... too much on a case and a half of beer. The half case was a bargain price on Oksar Blues Old Chub. I love that the cans say "It's like Sputnik!" on the front. Every time I grab one, I say "spherical, but quite pointy in parts!" And now I want to watch So I Married An Axe Murderer and drink an Old Chub. But it's 11am... and Wednesday...
Sunset near the Florida/Georgia border, if I remember right.
Though I wasn't very dedicated to the game, I decided the first night that I found a fake hidden Mickey right after we arrived at the hotel, that I should start a game of finding fake hidden Mickeys and only take pictures of them. None of the actual hidden Mickeys. I only got these two. But to be fair, I really didn't take a ton of pictures.
I was exhausted and extremely loopy and found out that morning that my dad was going into surgery for bladder cancer as I was packing to go to Disney World and run my first half marathon. I was just kind of batshit crazy by midnight when we got to the hotel. And I took pictures like these and then showed them to Chris and said things like "if I was an iPhone user, I'd Instagram the hell out of that shit!" FYI: the lobby of Shades of Green is fabulous, but also echoes quite a bit. It's all those fake hidden Mickey rocks on the walls. Also, it's not as funny a couple of months later when Android users have Instagram now. Oh well. It might not have been funny at all, ever.
An awesome pic of Caitlin and Christina with Stitch at breakfast at O'hana's Friday morning.
A cute pic of Jonah and Kayli with Polynesian Resort Mickey™ (or something).
Happy little shoes at the race expo.
I could have taken pictures of this tree all day long.
Jonah with Thumper. I'm just glad he's over his fear of mascot costumes. That's a new development in the past year or two. I was a bit worried about that actually, because we've not had many encounters since the traumatic ones of toddlerhood. But he was excited about all of them.
Walk like an Egyptian in fakeMexico.
Walk like an Egyptian across Abbey Road in fakeMexico. If you look carefully, Jonah is the odd man out not walking like an Egyptian and it sort of looks like he's photobombing. He looks more like he's jazz-handing in fakeMexico. That's my kid, I guess.
I really loved the visual balance of this shot. The Epcot sphere looks so awesome lit up at night. Surrealistically perfect. I guess that's kind of Disney's whole bag, isn't it?
Jonah in the wrong corral before his 200m race Saturday afternoon. We've got some video and there's a great photo that we need to order before it's gone of him running. He did a fabulous job. I think Chris has a shot of him after he finished and with his medal and all. My phone died or something and I think it's on his phone.
The starting line of the Princess Half Sunday morning... Saturday night. Whatever. I'm up that late sometimes. It felt like the race never did thin out. I was dodging people the entire time. I think I vowed several times to myself to stick to smaller races. I don't like that feeling. But overall, it was an awesome experience. There was a pivotal change in me after finishing that I can't quite explain and won't even bore you with trying.
This was around mile 7 or so. As I rounded the corner and came through the castle from the other side, "Deathdealers Deploy" from the soundtrack of the first Underworld movie came up on my playlist. I started laughing maniacally, probably making everyone within a two person radius of me a little bit nervous.
This shot doesn't even attempt to convey the relief I felt somewhere around mile 10 or 11 here, at the top of the third and final hill in the past mile, seeing the Epcot sphere and realizing I was less than a 5k away from being done and I still had plenty of energy to burn and my legs felt great and I had only stopped to walk while I drank at water stops. And then a mile later, my phone died and I panicked a little because I never, ever run without music and those mileage updates in my ear are invaluable to my motivation and pacing now.
And indeed, the Epcot sphere just barely on the horizon here was a tease and I sort of hate this photo now because the last two miles of that race are the longest two miles I've ever experienced. You get into Epcot and you think, "hell yeah! I made it, I'm here. This is where it ends!" And then you wind around through the park itself and out to the parking lot in a neverending final mile. But when you're finally there and you high five Minnie Mouse and you look a thousand times more downtrodden than you feel and volunteers try to offer you two bottles of water because you look like you might keel over even though you feel like starting over and doing it again, RIGHT NOW and you truly believe you could. All that sort of eclipses the tedious last mile. But yes, I kind of want to yell at the Epcot sphere in this photo, "YOU'RE A GREAT BIG PHONEY!"
As an aside, I'd like to thank the calf compression sleeves I bought at the race expo on Friday for keeping my body together all weekend long. Seriously, I wore them every single day, even just walking around the parks. I have no idea how bad of shape I would have been in if I hadn't done that. I also took gel insoles that I kept in whatever shoes I was wearing all weekend. My feet would have been toast without that.
After riding the Maelstrom with Cindy, we spotted this in the gift shop which I had somehow missed the first time through on Friday night. Because sometimes Norwegians feel a little bit tractor. Just a little bit pink and purple metallic tractor.
A blurry pic of Meredith and Kayli dancing to the German-ish band at the Biergarten restaurant in fakeGermany. They're also available for bar mitzvahs and... oh that's just not even funny. *shame* But I don't think there's a more perfect post race meal than a liter of pretty decent Hefeweizen and a buffet of rich, heavy German foods. That might just be the Schomberg/Schomburg in me talking.
Jonah twirling this little boy he instantly befriended down in front of the stage. He had such a blast dancing and I was glad he got a chance to run out some energy. Except that meant we had to carry him on our shoulders quite a bit after dinner. After being up since 3:30am, running a half marathon, and drinking our way around Epcot with Cindy for the better part of the afternoon. I'm tired and sore just thinking about it.
Obligatory bad family photo taken by random stranger in front of Cinderella's castle.
This next series of pictures from the Mad Tea Party are rather poignant when coupled together:
The boy is a natural spaz. I mean, we already limit his sugar and try to give him plenty of outlets to run out energy throughout the day. This is after a morning at Magic Kingdom. By the time the shutter would close, he'd get distracted... THREE TIMES IN A ROW! This perfectly illustrates what my days are like with Jonah. But he wouldn't be as much fun if he wasn't such a spaz, I guess. More on that in the next post.
Nothing like a little light rain to drive people away, giving us fantastic views for both the light parade and the Wishes fireworks show. It had actually poured raining a bit earlier... while we were on Splash Mountain. True story.
I think you can barely make out Elliot from Pete's Dragon there in front of the castle.
I got several really fantastic shots of the castle and fireworks. Not many of the projections came out, but that was possibly the most awesome part of the show. I mean, Nashville puts on at least as good of a fireworks show. Granted not nightly... thank god. I pay taxes in this town! But the digital projections onto the castle were wicked awesome.
I like how this is out of focus, but you can see the outline of all the people.
And then it was extra magic hours and we had our pick of the park and it was our last night there. With the rain earlier, the place was practically empty, by Disney standards. We could have ridden Space Mountain over and over and over and over, just running through the line as fast as we could and hopping back on. We only rode it twice though. Jonah pretended to sleep in the front of the car.
The back of the castle, which is my favorite side anyway.
We also got to meet back up with Maggie, Doug, Meredith and Kayli, which was a ton of fun. We let them talk us into going on It's a Small World. Somehow. I think sometime around midnight they called it quits, but we waged on for at least another hour. Chris wouldn't ride the teacups with us and Jonah wouldn't let me spin it except a couple of times. Party poopers. But we must have looked like complete sad sacks on our way down Main Street and toward the boat to the resort where we parked earlier in the day. At least two photographers mentioned how we were almost to the exit. I was so completely exhausted. We had done just about everything, spent about 13 hours in Magic Kingdom that day, the day after running a half marathon, and the last of four days of walking around in the parks. And we had to get up in the morning and drive ten hours home.
But it was fun.
When we finally got to our hotel that night, this was on the bed:
They're just not even trying with these hidden Mickey's anymore.
So, I'm just putting up some pics and [sometimes lengthy] captions for now. If you just want to browse all the pics, they're on Flickr. I think they're all captioned, too.
Unfortunately, I'm terrible about remembering to take pics at stuff like this. So, I'm missing a lot of really awesome times that other people caught. Like huge blocks of time. I'll have to track down links to all of those at some point, I guess. I've saved a lot off as well. But right now, this is all I have the energy for. We're keeping ourselves stupidly busy right now. Seriously, I feel like we're so busy I might be incurring brain damage from it. But I'm enjoying every minute of it so I can't complain in the least. I'm very engaged in life right now. And very exhausted.
One of many shelves of sour beers at Hop City in Atlanta. We stopped there on our way down and spent... too much on a case and a half of beer. The half case was a bargain price on Oksar Blues Old Chub. I love that the cans say "It's like Sputnik!" on the front. Every time I grab one, I say "spherical, but quite pointy in parts!" And now I want to watch So I Married An Axe Murderer and drink an Old Chub. But it's 11am... and Wednesday...
Sunset near the Florida/Georgia border, if I remember right.
Though I wasn't very dedicated to the game, I decided the first night that I found a fake hidden Mickey right after we arrived at the hotel, that I should start a game of finding fake hidden Mickeys and only take pictures of them. None of the actual hidden Mickeys. I only got these two. But to be fair, I really didn't take a ton of pictures.
I was exhausted and extremely loopy and found out that morning that my dad was going into surgery for bladder cancer as I was packing to go to Disney World and run my first half marathon. I was just kind of batshit crazy by midnight when we got to the hotel. And I took pictures like these and then showed them to Chris and said things like "if I was an iPhone user, I'd Instagram the hell out of that shit!" FYI: the lobby of Shades of Green is fabulous, but also echoes quite a bit. It's all those fake hidden Mickey rocks on the walls. Also, it's not as funny a couple of months later when Android users have Instagram now. Oh well. It might not have been funny at all, ever.
An awesome pic of Caitlin and Christina with Stitch at breakfast at O'hana's Friday morning.
A cute pic of Jonah and Kayli with Polynesian Resort Mickey™ (or something).
Happy little shoes at the race expo.
I could have taken pictures of this tree all day long.
Jonah with Thumper. I'm just glad he's over his fear of mascot costumes. That's a new development in the past year or two. I was a bit worried about that actually, because we've not had many encounters since the traumatic ones of toddlerhood. But he was excited about all of them.
Walk like an Egyptian in fakeMexico.
Walk like an Egyptian across Abbey Road in fakeMexico. If you look carefully, Jonah is the odd man out not walking like an Egyptian and it sort of looks like he's photobombing. He looks more like he's jazz-handing in fakeMexico. That's my kid, I guess.
I really loved the visual balance of this shot. The Epcot sphere looks so awesome lit up at night. Surrealistically perfect. I guess that's kind of Disney's whole bag, isn't it?
Jonah in the wrong corral before his 200m race Saturday afternoon. We've got some video and there's a great photo that we need to order before it's gone of him running. He did a fabulous job. I think Chris has a shot of him after he finished and with his medal and all. My phone died or something and I think it's on his phone.
The starting line of the Princess Half Sunday morning... Saturday night. Whatever. I'm up that late sometimes. It felt like the race never did thin out. I was dodging people the entire time. I think I vowed several times to myself to stick to smaller races. I don't like that feeling. But overall, it was an awesome experience. There was a pivotal change in me after finishing that I can't quite explain and won't even bore you with trying.
This was around mile 7 or so. As I rounded the corner and came through the castle from the other side, "Deathdealers Deploy" from the soundtrack of the first Underworld movie came up on my playlist. I started laughing maniacally, probably making everyone within a two person radius of me a little bit nervous.
This shot doesn't even attempt to convey the relief I felt somewhere around mile 10 or 11 here, at the top of the third and final hill in the past mile, seeing the Epcot sphere and realizing I was less than a 5k away from being done and I still had plenty of energy to burn and my legs felt great and I had only stopped to walk while I drank at water stops. And then a mile later, my phone died and I panicked a little because I never, ever run without music and those mileage updates in my ear are invaluable to my motivation and pacing now.
And indeed, the Epcot sphere just barely on the horizon here was a tease and I sort of hate this photo now because the last two miles of that race are the longest two miles I've ever experienced. You get into Epcot and you think, "hell yeah! I made it, I'm here. This is where it ends!" And then you wind around through the park itself and out to the parking lot in a neverending final mile. But when you're finally there and you high five Minnie Mouse and you look a thousand times more downtrodden than you feel and volunteers try to offer you two bottles of water because you look like you might keel over even though you feel like starting over and doing it again, RIGHT NOW and you truly believe you could. All that sort of eclipses the tedious last mile. But yes, I kind of want to yell at the Epcot sphere in this photo, "YOU'RE A GREAT BIG PHONEY!"
As an aside, I'd like to thank the calf compression sleeves I bought at the race expo on Friday for keeping my body together all weekend long. Seriously, I wore them every single day, even just walking around the parks. I have no idea how bad of shape I would have been in if I hadn't done that. I also took gel insoles that I kept in whatever shoes I was wearing all weekend. My feet would have been toast without that.
After riding the Maelstrom with Cindy, we spotted this in the gift shop which I had somehow missed the first time through on Friday night. Because sometimes Norwegians feel a little bit tractor. Just a little bit pink and purple metallic tractor.
A blurry pic of Meredith and Kayli dancing to the German-ish band at the Biergarten restaurant in fakeGermany. They're also available for bar mitzvahs and... oh that's just not even funny. *shame* But I don't think there's a more perfect post race meal than a liter of pretty decent Hefeweizen and a buffet of rich, heavy German foods. That might just be the Schomberg/Schomburg in me talking.
Jonah twirling this little boy he instantly befriended down in front of the stage. He had such a blast dancing and I was glad he got a chance to run out some energy. Except that meant we had to carry him on our shoulders quite a bit after dinner. After being up since 3:30am, running a half marathon, and drinking our way around Epcot with Cindy for the better part of the afternoon. I'm tired and sore just thinking about it.
Obligatory bad family photo taken by random stranger in front of Cinderella's castle.
This next series of pictures from the Mad Tea Party are rather poignant when coupled together:
The boy is a natural spaz. I mean, we already limit his sugar and try to give him plenty of outlets to run out energy throughout the day. This is after a morning at Magic Kingdom. By the time the shutter would close, he'd get distracted... THREE TIMES IN A ROW! This perfectly illustrates what my days are like with Jonah. But he wouldn't be as much fun if he wasn't such a spaz, I guess. More on that in the next post.
Nothing like a little light rain to drive people away, giving us fantastic views for both the light parade and the Wishes fireworks show. It had actually poured raining a bit earlier... while we were on Splash Mountain. True story.
I think you can barely make out Elliot from Pete's Dragon there in front of the castle.
I got several really fantastic shots of the castle and fireworks. Not many of the projections came out, but that was possibly the most awesome part of the show. I mean, Nashville puts on at least as good of a fireworks show. Granted not nightly... thank god. I pay taxes in this town! But the digital projections onto the castle were wicked awesome.
I like how this is out of focus, but you can see the outline of all the people.
And then it was extra magic hours and we had our pick of the park and it was our last night there. With the rain earlier, the place was practically empty, by Disney standards. We could have ridden Space Mountain over and over and over and over, just running through the line as fast as we could and hopping back on. We only rode it twice though. Jonah pretended to sleep in the front of the car.
The back of the castle, which is my favorite side anyway.
We also got to meet back up with Maggie, Doug, Meredith and Kayli, which was a ton of fun. We let them talk us into going on It's a Small World. Somehow. I think sometime around midnight they called it quits, but we waged on for at least another hour. Chris wouldn't ride the teacups with us and Jonah wouldn't let me spin it except a couple of times. Party poopers. But we must have looked like complete sad sacks on our way down Main Street and toward the boat to the resort where we parked earlier in the day. At least two photographers mentioned how we were almost to the exit. I was so completely exhausted. We had done just about everything, spent about 13 hours in Magic Kingdom that day, the day after running a half marathon, and the last of four days of walking around in the parks. And we had to get up in the morning and drive ten hours home.
But it was fun.
When we finally got to our hotel that night, this was on the bed:
They're just not even trying with these hidden Mickey's anymore.