The Journey of Parenthood…

Disney Day 5: Splash Park ~ Heading Home

I have read that most kids come home from their Disney vacations saying that their favorite part of the trip was the hotel pool! When we stayed at this same resort for my 25th birthday I remember seeing a splash water park area and thinking how much Kye would enjoy it someday (at the time he was only like 8 months old). Visiting the park was on my list of things to do during our trip but with the rain forecast I assumed it wasn’t going to happen!

When we got back to the room from our morning at Magic Kingdom, Mom and Mrs. Charlotte gave lots of goodbye hugs and kisses then hit the road and Kye napped. Zach and I used the time to start packing up the room and stuff then when Kye woke up we decided to try our luck with the weather and hit up the splash park! It was actually sprinkling when we got there but no thunder or lightning and other people were there so we figured it’d be okay at least for a little bit.

Splash Park

Kye was a little unsure at first

Zach showing him the fun!

He asked for Mommy to go to so I did!

once he got in he LOVED it!!!

I really think we may have a future track star or nascar driver on our hands. At home he LOVES to run around in circles and at the splash park he spent over 30 min just running around the circle around the park! Over and over again and he thought it was the most fun thing ever!

focused on winning the race against himself

this reminds me of Mrs. Charlotte’s funny faces at Disney 😉

Zach stood at one section of the circle and I stood at the other and just say hey to him every time he ran by. Other families were cracking up at him and was eating it up. He’d pass by them and wave and say “hey!” Such a ham!

Finally Zach was able to draw his attention to the slide and, after several times of watching Daddy do it, he started to go down it too. He then went from running in circles to running up the stairs over and over again for another slide down!

Yay! He did it!

Here’s a video of Kye going down the slide!

Daddy took lots of turns too (and almost knocked a few kids over haha)

swimming

and spitting…

love how he’s looking up at his daddy

We ended up staying at the splash park for almost 2 hours! The rain went away and the clouds stayed clear. Did we not luck out with weather or whhhhat?!?! I seriously couldn’t BELIEVE that we never got stuck in a storm and no rain ever caused a single issue with our Disney plans. Literally the ENTIRE trip went flawlessly!!! I went in with little expectations as I had read that toddlers are not predictable and my not love it as much as we want them to. Kye not only LOVED Disney but he loved it WAY more than I thought he would!!! He was SUCH a BLAST to be around and it was truly a perfect family vacation!

We enjoyed having the afternoon just the three of us as it was nice to get some quality family time together. Back at the condo Zach worked on fixing the leak in Kye’s mattress so Kye and I played with some Disney stickers 😉 And sang some songs (here’s a video!)

I enjoyed our nights at the condo and especially enjoyed reading from our Pixar bedtime story book we got him for his birthday. It has practically every character we met or saw at the parks in it and it only helped add to the excitement of our stay 🙂

Zach and I were both EXHAUSTED but got all packed up for check-out the next morning then had a little date night to ourselves. There was an Olive Garden down the street from the condo so Zach picked us up some take out (I know all you Valdosta natives are SO jealous…) and we watched the finale of The Office Season 5.

Guess I’m turning into a Valdostian b/c I was pumped for some pasta and bread sticks!

It was SUCH a great way to end a wonderful vacation. As you can tell, we made some amazing memories on the trip and had a BLAST. Something else I will always remember is how sweet and loving Zach was the entire trip. I think Disney cast it’s magical spell over him 😉 Every night he was so loving towards me and said some of the sweetest things. He took SUCH great care of me and I loved feeling like he was my protector (us girls like to have a hero ya know it?). He also took great care in making sure the trip was everything I wanted it to be. He said his goal for the vacation was for me and Kye to be as happy as we could be and that that is what makes him the happiest. Did I get a catch or what?!?! I know he’s not a huge Disney fan but I think he had a good time! My hope was that he’d love it so much that he’d want to go back every year…I’m still working on it!

Obviously I don’t want to go back for a BIG trip like that until Blitzen is Kye’s age, but I’d like to just take Kye to one day at one park per year to keep it as something he enjoys doing and to experience it with him at different stages in life. Plus I straight up LOVE it. Hopefully Zach will come around to the whole mini-Disney trip idea 😉 We’ll see!!!

We got up and left first thing the next morning as Zach had to get home then drive down to Tallahassee for work (what a pain!). Since I had only given Kye one of the prizes I bought him on the trip, we decided to use the other two as tools to help him happily leave Disney and get home happy too. We gave him the little cell phone when we left and he enjoyed playing with it in the car. I was really impressed by how well he did leaving. We said “bye bye Disney house!” and he was fine with it! Once we were home I thought he might get upset but he was excited to see our pets, his big boy bed, and I gave him his final Disney prize – the pirate Mickey Mouse. I KNOW he had the time of his life at Disney, but he was glad to be home too!

I couldn’t be more happy with how everything went and I’m thankful that all my preparation and hard work paid off. I’m also SO thankful that Zach worked hard to provide this experience for us and supported my hardcorness about the whole thing 😉 I’m also thankful to Mom and Mrs Charlotte for coming with us and beyond grateful that Kye loved it as much as he did!!!

Emily Parker
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