...without a visit to urgent care. But I'll get to that a little later.
The economy is falling apart, so what better place to escape reality than Disney World? While the sky was falling on Wall Street last week, we headed down to Orlando with Matt's brother and his family. I'm not sure what Ella liked more, the rides...
Matt and Ella ride the teacups (see purple cup).
...the characters...
Ella meets her favorite princess, Cinderella.
...or spending an entire week with four of her cousins ("I want my cousins!" was one of Ella's mantras on the trip).
Ella and her cousins meet Eeyore during breakfast at The Crystal Palace.
Singing with the Main Street Quartet.
Claire was a dream the entire trip. Despite being forced to take cat naps in the stroller for six days straight, spending all day in the heat and humidity, and never making it into her bed before 9 pm, I can't remember hearing her cry or complain even once. In fact, I think she even managed to enjoy herself.
Piglet making Claire laugh.
Claire was also one of the main attractions for her cousins. They all fought to take turns pushing her in the stroller and holding her. Maybe all the extra attention is part of the reason why she was so well behaved?
Lauren keeps Claire entertained at Epcot.
It was just great to be together and run ourselves ragged having fun for a week.
The whole family at the Magic Kingdom.
Ella wasn't ready to go home. On the bus ride back to the airport she kept looking out the window and saying, "But I want to go back to Disney!" And the day after we got home, Ella heard Claire crying at one point during the day and said, "Oh, does she want to go back to Disney too?"
I love how every time we arrive home after a trip, New York always gives us a nice slap in the face to remind us that it's time to get back to reality. This time, the "slap" was the cockroach that we found climbing up Ella's stroller in the baggage claim area at JFK. I wish I was kidding. We're definitely not in Disney anymore, but it's still always nice to come home.
Now about that trip to urgent care. You may remember on our last trip to Disney that Ella came down with a hideous stomach virus. In addition to forcing us to hole up in our hotel room for two days while I listened to my almost two-year old pathetically ask for "wa-wer" (water) as she laid lifeless in the bed, this bug also required a trip to urgent care, if for nothing else than to just assure us that Ella wasn't dying. During this trip, on our first full day as we were exiting the movie theater in the France Pavilion at Epcot, Ella managed to run into a metal hand railing at full speed, creating a big, bloody gash above her left eye. As Ella was bawling and trying to catch her breath, park employees surrounded us right away in true Disney fashion, one passing out stickers and a Tinkerbell pin to Ella, another taking an accident report, and the first aid team looking at her wound and telling us that we would probably need to have it glued together. While they couldn't do it at the park they told us they would be happy to provide transportation to the nearest urgent care center...the same one we had the pleasure of visiting a year and a half ago. On our next Disney trip, I think I'll just pencil Centra Care into our itinerary. Thankfully, our little detour only took a few hours and we were able to enjoy the rest of our trip without incident. Ella's eye puffed up quite a bit for the next two days, but it is healing nicely now, although she will probably always have a little scar there as a souvenir of our trip. Her injury didn't slow her down one bit though. Right after the accident, as she was still trying to control the sobbing and I was still trying to control the bleeding, Ella saw Belle pass by. In the midst of all the chaos, she cried out, "I just want to see Belle!" And while we waited for the van to arrive to take us to urgent care, she did. Bloody eye and all.
I think we've created a Disney junkie.
