The Poprik's Go to Disney - Part1

Well, we finally did it. After 5 years of promising and 3 years of saving, we loaded up the minivan and drove the kids halfway across the country to hang out in the land of Mickey Mouse. We took 2 days and tried to space it out so that the kids got lots of breaks and we had time to play a bit once we got to our hotel.
The first day we stopped in Houston and dropped off our big Kodi dog with some friends. The big guy lots of hugs and love before we headed off to Lake Charles for lunch. My friend Leslea is from the area and had told me about a beach area right off of I-10 with an alligator pond and picnic tables. This was the perfect place for us to have lunch. We got there, looked at some alligators, had our picnic lunch and played in the sand. The girls were working on a sandcastle when we heard the music. You know, the music that makes all kids ears perk and mouth's salivate. It was an ICE CREAM TRUCK.   How cool is that? 

 Sorry for the grainy cell phone pic.

The kids were really excited to eat their ice cream and then ready to get back in the van to continue our adventure.  We made a couple wrong turns and had a horrible dinner at Shoney's in Slidell, Louisiana, but we ended up making it to Defuniak Springs, Florida for bedtime. I was really happy that we had made it so far and that  the next day was going to be much shorter. We headed out around 8 and ended up getting to our hotel around 3. They wouldn't let us check in until 4 so we headed over to a local WalMart that had discount tickets and lots of fun souvenir stuff. We loaded up on fruits and sandwich stuff for the next few days and went back to check in to the hotel.

After scoping out our room, we headed over to Downtown Disney for dinner and a taste of the Disney World excitement. We were not let down.   It was time for dinner so we decided to try out T-Rex. It is a dinosaur themed version of the Rainforest Cafe. The food is very similar and basically you can just switch out an elephant for a Triceratops and that's the restaurant.





The kids thought the jellyfish room was pretty cool.


After dinner we decided to walk around and check out the shops. The first place that we went in was the Lego Imagination Center. The had the coolest design area with computer models of Lego's and big bins of various shapes and colors. The kids loved it!



There were also really impressed with the cool Lego statues everywhere. I have to admit that I was impressed too!








Afterwards we went in some shops and goofed around and posed with hats and the decorations outside. It was a ton of fun and honestly it was just great to be out of the car.











We ended the night with a ride on the carousel and headed back to the hotel to try to get some rest before heading out for our first day at the parks and Epcot