Disney!

We had a wonderful time at Disney last weekend! Our trip had two purposes: first, to celebrate Mary Grace's 5th birthday and second, for me to run the Princess Half Marathon.

Nana and Momo drove down to St. Marys on Thursday in time to see soccer practice. We headed down to Orlando on Friday morning, stopping in Jacksonville to pick up Chatham at the airport and in St. Augustine to do a little outlet shopping. Dr. Danks flew into Orlando (Elsie wanted to know why he was flying "into a rainbow") on Friday night and Stephen drove down after work on Friday night.

Stephen, the girls, and I stayed at the All Star Sports resort on Disney property so that we could take the bus to the Magic Kingdom and to the race on Sunday morning. Nana, Dr. Danks, Chatham, and Momo stayed at a timeshare off property.

We met back up at 9 am on Saturday morning to spend the day at Magic Kingdom. We treated Mary Grace to a make-over at the Bippity Bobbity Boutique in Cinderella's Castle first thing that morning. She chose a Belle dress and shoes and picked out long hair for her hair style. I think she was overwhelmed and felt like a true princess! She was so precious!

After that, we spent the entire day at Magic Kingdom, enjoying all the usual rides: Teacups for Elsie (where, as you can see from the photos, she was overjoyed to get a "lellow" teacup), Space Mountain for Stephen, Small World for the kids, Peter Pan's flight (my personal favorite), Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride, and others. Of course, we also visited Mickey and Minnie's houses and met with them at the judge's tent and met Bell, Cinderella, and Princess Aurora.

I was up well before daylight on Sunday morning for the race. Race instructions told us to be on the bus by 4 a.m. for the race. When I got to the lobby of our hotel at 3:45, there were hundreds of other runners waiting, as well. I finally got on a bus at 4:40 and was in my start corral by 5:30. I was in the first corral, so I started the race at 6 a.m. I finished in 2:04, which was a little slower than my goal time but I'm blaming that on being on my feet all day on Saturday and getting only 4 hours of sleep Saturday night!

After the race, we enjoyed a yummy lunch at Downtown Disney and then headed back home. We dropped Chatham off at the airport just in time for her 7:45 flight to Raleigh and then had dinner at Cracker Barrell in Kingsland. Nana and Momo stayed one more night and were able to drop Mary Grace off at school and Elsie off at Ms. Julie's on their way back to Raleigh on Monday morning.

It was a wonderful, fun weekend!