I’m baaack! Although it’s wonderful to be home and I missed our youngest two like crazy,  it was so hard to leave our vacation behind and come back to reality.  This trip we took was one that I had been dreaming about since before we became parents (over 10 years ago).  As most of you know, life for us has been anything but ordinary for the last year – it’s been filled with lots of stress and many difficult situations.  It felt so good to leave it all behind, even if only for a little while.  The “magic of Disney” really touched me and our family – yes it was crazy busy and yes we were totally exhausted at the end of each day – but through it all we enjoyed every moment of every day.  I feel mentally and emotionally relaxed and rejuvenated. I do have some pictures to share with you (I took about 1300 *lol*!)  but will share them a few at a time over the next few weeks.  First though I thought I’d share with you a card I created for my husband for Father’s Day.  This card is quite a different style for me - I was trying to achieve a vintage feel for my card and was trying to combine elements in a way that I’ve never tried before. Here’s how I made the card:

1. Cut a 3 1/4″ x 4 1/2″ piece of Kraft CS.  Ink up the  ”To Do List” side of the It’s a Plan background stamp in Creamy Caramel in and stamp it onto your piece of Kraft CS.  Ink up the largest stamp from the Sense of Time stamp set (from the Occasions Mini Catalogue) in Creamy Caramel ink and stamp it in the top left corner of your Kraft CS piece.
2. Ink up the small gears stamp in Chocolate Chip Classic ink, stamp it off on a scrap of paper (I use my grid paper) and then stamp it onto the Kraft CS.  Repeat one or two more times.  Ink up the “perfect” stamp from the Define your Life stamp set in Chocolate Chip ink, stamp it off once and then stamp it onto the Kraft CS in the top left corner, just inside the large clock stamp.
3. Sponge around the edges of the Kraft CS with Creamy Caramel Classic ink and then use Stampin’ Up!’s cutter kit to distress around the edges of the Kraft CS. Mount the Kraft CS onto a 3 3/8″ x 4 5/8″ piece of Very Vanilla CS and then mount this onto a 3 5/8″ x 4 7/8″ piece of Chocolate Chp CS.
4. Take the letter D from the On Board Lots of Letters chipboard collection and ink it up in Chocolate Chip craft ink.  Set aside to dry.  In the meantime, punch a label out of Creamy Caramel CS using the Curly Label punch.  Sponge the edges with Chocolate Chip Classic ink.  Take a 1/2″ Chocolate Chip library clip and clip it onto the top of the label you punched.  Tie an 8″ piece of hemp twine in a bow around the top of the clip.  Mount your chipboard letter onto the label with a couple of mini glue dots.  Set aside for a moment.
5. Punch out an oval from a scrap piece of Manchester DP using the Wide Oval Punch.  Sponge the edges of the Oval with Creamy Caramel Classic ink, and then brush the edges onto a Chocolate Chip ink pad.   Ink up the small gears stamp from the Sense of Time Stamp set in Chocolate Chip Classic ink.  Stamp off once and then stamp it onto the wide oval.  Repeat if desired.
6. Die cut a letter ”a” and a letter “d” out of Chocolate Chip CS using your Big Shot and the Naturally Serif Sizzlit Decorative Strip die.  Stick them to the wide oval using a 2-way glue pen.  
7. Die cut a swirl from Chocolate Chip CS using the Swirls Scribbles die and your Big Shot. Arrange and then stick to the back of the wide oval using 2-way glue.  Now stick the wide oval to the bottom right of your Kraft CS piece.  Stick the label with the letter “d” onto your card – to stick it I placed a mini glue dot on the underside of the clip and then two Stampin’ Dimensionals (one on top of the other) at the bottom (on the back) of the label.  
8. Now stick your matted Kraft CS piece to your Baja Breeze card front (a 4 1/4″ x 11″ piece of CS folded in half).  You’re done! Below I have a close up of the label portion of the card:

Okay, and now for a few pictures of our trip.  Our trip started with a drive to Ottawa (about a 6 hour drive) to pick up my niece Naomie (Soph’s daughter).  Since Soph and her family live in Petawawa - which has no major airport – we arranged to pick up Naomie at my parent’s house in Ottawa, and then leave the next day from the Ottawa International airport.  We arrived at my parent’s place at about 1 am and were so wired that we weren’t able to fall asleep until about 2 am.  Since our flight left at 7 am and we had to be at the airport 2 hours before, that meant we had to get up at 4 am and then leave my parent’s house by 4:30 am. As I’m sure you can imagine, we were pretty beat! The picture below is one of the first pictures I took when we arrived at the Orlando airport.  You can see our three oldest plus my niece Naomie (she’s the one on the far right).  The kids were so excited about being in Florida that they were fighting over who got to pull the luggage.  At various points each one of them took a turn.

This next picture is a quick one I took of the Disney Magical Express.  The nice thing about staying on a Disney resort is that they arrange all the transportation for you. Also, it kind of sets the “tone” and gets you all excited about the adventure to come. It was about a half hour bus ride from the airport to the resort.

For our trip I booked rooms at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge.  You can sort of get an idea of what the lodge looks like from the picture below.  It was absolutely spectacular.  The decor was kind of rustic with a real African feel to it.

The picture below gives you a bit of an idea of what the inside looks like. 

We booked two adjoining rooms – one of them had two Queen beds in it and the kid’s room had a set of bunk beds and a Queen bed.  As I’m sure you can guess the top bunk was in high demand so the kids worked out a system whereby they rotated beds each night and each one took a turn in the top bunk.

The best part of that hotel and THE reason we booked it was because of the Savannah view.  Each room had a balcony, and when we walked out onto the balcony, the first thing we saw about 15-20 feet away from our balcony was this:

In addition to giraffs there were zebras, ostriches and a few other animals (their names escape me at the moment). By the time we finished unpacking and eating it was already 7 pm and we were pretty tired, but didn’t want to go to bed quite yet, so we hoped on one of the Disney buses and went to Downtown Disney.  Of course the first thing we saw when we got to downtown Disney was a little splash pad – which of course the kids made a beeline for:

After that, we headed over to an incredibly large Toy Store, but on our way, the kids said hi to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum:

Of course the kids HAD to give us their best poses *lol*! One of the things that seems to be really big at Disney is Mr. Potato Head.  There was every type of Mr. Potato Head imaginable and of course named according to the character they represented.  At pretty much every park, at least one of the stores would have a Potato Head play area – where you could make up your Potato Heads. They also have something really neat which is that you pay a flat fee for a box and then you fill it with whichever Potato Head pieces you want – as many as the box can hold.  The only stipulation is that the box has to close. 

Although you would think the kids were way beyond Mr. Potato Head – they had a Potato Head Clone Trooper an Potato Head Darth Vader which by the end of the trip we ended up getting for each of the boys. You can see a picture of the Clone Troopers in the picture below – I took this picture on our last night at Disney.

We left Downtown Disney at about 9:30 pm and headed back to the hotel.  That was the end of Day 1.  I’ll share a few pictures from Day 2 of our trip on Wednesday.  Don’t worry though – there won’t be as many *lol*!

Because this post is already long enough, I’ll keep you in suspense one more day and draw the names of the Soft Summer Class Planner winners tomorrow.