Fort Wilderness & Disney World Adventure

August 6-7, 2011

Thanks to a wonderful friend of ours in the Oviedo Ward, Liz Cullen, we were able to stay at the Fort Wilderness Resort at Disney World for a reduced price. We also got into the theme parks for free!

This is a picture of the bus that we rode between the theme parks and the resort.

This building was where we checked in/out. Other services were provided there, but we didn't need them.

Here's our cabin! We had just 1 bedroom in the cabin, but there was a double bed, bunk beds, plus a pull-down bed in the living room, so there was enough room for all 6 of us.

The bunk beds:

Living/dining area:

Pull-down bed in living room:

We spent a short time at Magic Kingdom. The children wanted to ride the tea cups.

Anuhea & Nalani in their teacup:

Hokulani & Leiohu in their teacup:

Hokulani & Anuhea on the Disney Transport bus:

We spent most of our time at Animal Kingdom since it's one that can't be found in California (whenever we can get to Disneyland).

Jason holding Leiohu at the entrance to Animal Kingdom:

Carmel, Anuhea holding Leiohu, Hokulani & Nalani at the entrance to Animal Kingdom:

Having lunch at the Animal Kingdom...

Jason, Nalani & Carmel:

Hokulani eating her lunch:

Carmel & Leiohu eating lunch:

One of the best places at Animal Kingdom is the river ride, especially since it's so hot & humid in Florida.

Jason & I had to take turns riding the raft, because Leiohu couldn't ride, but the girls could ride with both of us. Anuhea & Hokulani chose to ride both times.

This is the ride with Jason, Hokulani & Anuhea:

I can't remember what this was called. Sorry.

Tiger

Bats

Komodo Dragon

The 4D show "It's Tough to be a Bug!" was fun. We saw it before when the children were younger so they didn't remember it.

Anuhea in the 3D glasses:


The Tree of Life:


We spent a brief time at Epcot to get our passes into the theme parks, then we returned in the evening for the fireworks display.

After a whirlwind overnight trip, Leiohu just couldn't take it any longer. She fell asleep on the way back to the Howards' home.

Movin' Out

August 1, 2011

We moved out of our home on August 1, 2011. It was so strange to see the home where we'd lived for 4 years empty.

We were lucky to have movers (Allied Van Lines through Sorensen Moving & Storage), but we experienced some glitches that made the move somewhat frustrating. If any of you are planning to move from Florida, then I don't recommend using Allied if you have to go through Sorensen. We planned for the movers to come a week ahead of when we'd fly out, because the moving consultant told us it would take that long for the moving truck to get across the country. Also, all of our household goods plus our vehicles would be transported at the same time so we would get them at the same time. Then, a car transporting company called us and arranged to pick up our vehicles, because (according to the representatives at Sorensen) there were too many people moving at the same time and they couldn't fit our vehicles on the truck. That made our vehicle arrival time one week LATER than our belongings (and us). When the movers came the day after our things were boxed, the driver said he was told to have our things in California by a certain date, which was almost a week later than we'd be there and than we had arranged. We were NOT happy. We were fortunate to have help from the members in our new Ward from church, but we still did not have our contract met. We got reimbursements for the "mistakes", but they weren't full reimbursements. Ugh!

Because we still had another week before leaving Florida, we needed somewhere to stay. The Howard family was kind enough to allow our entire family to stay with them. We love that family!