Family Vacation

i know hearing about a family vacation is not always high on the list of interesting thing to discuss. And i totally forgive you if you don't read this post...or if you just scroll through it to look at the pictures. But i wanted to write down some of the highlights of our most recent family vacation, because i want to keep up with life and it's my blog...so there.

J & i returned earlier this week from an 8 day trip with my family to Walt Disney World.

It was a long week. 8 days of amusement parks in the hot, humid Florida weather can be draining. But it was one of the best trips of my life, and a trove of sweet memories of my family.


i got to spend time with my parents...which i should do more often since they only live an hour away.



i got to have valuable sister time.



i got to hang out with my brother, who i haven't seen in a while.



And i got to spend time with my sweet nephew, who is growing up too fast.



In fact, just spending time with the whole family every day was really fun. Though i totally expected to have some short tempers or frustrations after spending 8 consecutive days with family for every moment of the day, it was actually really great. There were a few arguments or frustrations (it would be impossible for there to be none, after all, you're only truly yourself when with family) but all in all, it was a great time of hanging out and bonding. It's been really fun to see our relationships develop as we all get older, and i think this trip helped those bonds to continue to solidify.



Even though this is the closest i got to Mickey Mouse pretty much the whole week...



...i did get my picture taken with Snow White, the very first Disney Princess.



We rode all the traditional Disney rides...like the teacups, It's a Small World, the Tikki Room, Peter Pan's Flight, Space Tours, Indian Jones show, the Hall of Presidents and the Great Movie ride.



But we also rode the more thrilling rides...like Hollywood Tower of Terror, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Expedition Everest and Aerosmith's Rockin' Roller Coaster.



We got to watch some amazing shows at each park, from fireworks at Magic Kingdom and Epcot, to a theatrical show called Fantasmic which includes all the major Disney characters and villains.



We ate at some great restaurants in the park, and at one, they celebrated all of our celebrations (graduation, birthdays, anniversaries and first time visits) and got us each corresponding hats and a ton of Mickey balloons.



It was so fun to get all our ears...and we didn't even have to buy them ourselves!



And it was really great to get to go on a trip with J. We haven't done an extended trip like this since our honeymoon almost 2 years ago. And even though this trip was a little different, since my whole family was there too, it was fun to just get away together for a week and escape to "the most magical place on earth."



It was the best trip. And a vacation that was totally needed after a stressful semester of classes and spending almost every waking moment doing homework and papers.

Spending time with my family and getting to visit Disney was a blast...and i can't wait to do it again!





Post-edit: These pictures were taken with our small digital camera, hence, they aren't of the best quality. J took more pictures with his nice Canon, but he hasn't transfered them over into internet-ready format yet so they aren't appearing in this post.  Maybe they'll make appearances in future FOTO FRIDAYS.