Disney 2012 - Day 3

Saturday, February 4th was our "lazy" day.  

While everyone back home was getting snow dumped on them, 

we spent the morning swimming ...

 relaxing in hammocks on the beach (Adam's favorite part of the vacation, I think) ...

enjoying the view and sunshine ...

and playing in the in-ground sprinklers at Downtown Disney!

We spent the morning bumming around the Caribbean Beach resort, then headed to Downtown Disney for some lunch and shopping (and unexpected water play, which led to more shopping - souvenir t-shirts for the kids because I didn't want them to ride back to the resort in soaking wet clothes).  I love Downtown Disney.  Its one of my favorite parts of our Disney trips, so I was really glad that we got to spend some extra time there on this trip.  We'd already checked out several places on our first night in Orlando, but we went back to hit up 365 days of Christmas and Goofy's Candy Company.

I love all things Christmas, so the Christmas store at Downtown Disney is one of my favorite stops.  The two times we've been there I've gotten each of the kids an ornament for the tree and bought a picture frame ornament with the year on it for my souvenir.  Kind of a fun keepsake/tradition.  We spent a lot of time this trip at "Once Upon a Toy", which is a kids dream.  Alyssa loved the Potato Head station where you can design your own Mr/Mrs. Potato head with every accessory you could imagine.  There was also a design your own lightsaber station, which had Joel been a LITTLE bit older, I'm sure we probably would have come home with our very own lightsaber.

Alyssa and Joel had SO much fun running through the water at Downtown Disney.  They probably would have been happy to have done that all day, but it we had dinner reservations with "Chef Mickey" to get ready for, so back "home" we went!

We continued Joel's birthday celebration with dinner at "Chef Mickey" at the Contemporary Resort.  Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald Duck all stopped by to visit while we were dining.  Joel got a special souvenir placemat to help his remember his "big day" and we also pre-ordered a special Disney-style birthday cake complete with Mickey shaped sprinkles for our special birthday boy.  (And our server created a special "birthday pirate hat" just for Joel out of a napkin ... they've got pretty creative people all around!)