If you come by here often, you know that our family is from Indiana but are living in Florida while my husband is in pharmacy school. Every year, we head back to Indiana during his summer break. This year however, he is in his LAST and FINAL year which requires him to go out and work in the real world of pharmacy for one year...for free. So, like the real world, there are no summer breaks :( Since we felt shorted a summer vacation this year, we decided to get away locally for a few days to just have some fun time together as a family of four. We looked into camping, hotels, parks, etc and a lot of things were full because of short notice or more than we wanted to pay...that is when I checked Livingsocial.com.
I have been subscribed to this website for a while, but never purchased any of the deals. I ran down the list of discounted getaways and was super pumped when I found one in our price range and fairly close to home. Wyndham Resorts Downtown Disney in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. We got a double room, for up to 4 people, for 2 nights for 179 dollars!! This was less than the normal one night cost of a room. Needless to say, we jumped on it!!
It was raining and pouring the whole 2 1/2 hours it took us to drive there so we were feeling a little down...
We are here, but so is the rain
We unloaded the car and got ourselves checked in. Isabelle and I quickly unpacked our luggage and then we decided to try to chance the weather and head over to Downtown Disney Marketplace.
Super excited
Mother nature gave us a pass and we were able to check things out for an hour or so before we needed to get back for bedtime.
My family {minus Jude and I} and the Lego family
We walked back to the hotel, got some food and settled in for the night. We woke up the next morning to more rain, so we spent some quality time hanging out in our jammies.
The loves of my life
Jude, on his first vacation
The coffee in the room was not so great {and this momma needs her caffeine fix}so Isabelle and I left the boys in the room and headed to the hotel lobby to explore. I got myself a tasty Latte and Isabelle set her sights on the gift shop. She left with a very cute hat.
Jude as Minnie
After coffee, the rain stopped so we suited up for some pool time. The hotel had an AWESOME pool area.
Isabelle and I had a blast hiding under the rock waterfalls and leaping off the rocks into the pool
Loving life
Sleepy boy
This was the hotel
Cafe and Bar where I had a mean Chicken Caesar wrap for lunch {my fav}
Hubby
Big boy
He loved splashing in the water
We headed back to the room to shower while Jude took a nap. We then loaded the stroller up and headed back over to the Downtown Disney Marketplace.
That is Isabelle's diva pose
There were tons of gift shops, {I'm pretty sure we went into every one} restaurants, and lots of art installations. We really enjoyed all the Lego exhibits.
Everything is made of Legos
Isabelle was very excited to look through all the shops for her one perfect toy.
Oops
Isabelle and her baby Lady
We were going to get some dinner while we were there, but by the time we made it to our chosen restaurant it was going to be a 1 hour and 45 minute wait!!! It was already 8:30 {passed both kids normal bedtime} so sitting down to eat that late was NOT a good idea. We nabbed some pretzels instead and sat by the lake listening to the DJ.
Loving watching all the people
Teaching the kids all kinds of dances
Making friends
We were all super tired by this point and hurried back to the room in time to see the Disney fireworks from our window.
Since dinner the previous night was a bust, we thought we would go back over one last time for lunch before we got on the road home. We let Isabelle choose where to go and there was no surprise when she picked the T-Rex Restaurant!
The tentacles moved up and down
Isabelle was very excited in line
Coloring patiently while waiting on lunch
We got to sit across from this guy!
And next to the fish tank!
Someone is getting very sleepy in the big boy high chair
And hes out
We had so, so much fun and this was the perfect warm up for when we get to go to Disney World for real :)
