Olsen Family: March 2011

It's supposed to be spring here. Instead it's cold and dreary, which makes me tired and grouchy. So I thought I'd post some pictures of warmer days. In Florida, specifically. We took a few days to explore some of the Disney resorts, or as my mom puts, we got to see how the rich vacation. It was fun. I highly recommend it. It's a part of Disney property that people normally don't see, I think partly because they don't know about it. Here's a glimpse at some of the fun stuff we saw:

Kylee on the boat from Downtown Disney to the Port Orleans resort. It was such a pretty evening.

Got sidetracked here. The girls getting buried at the beach. Makayla doesn't look as happy about it as Kylee was.

Ok, this picture is blurry because it was nighttime in the Wilderness Lodge. This resort was totally amazing. We only saw it at night because we wanted to take the boat from there to the Magic Kingdom one night to watch the fireworks. The resort is apparently built as a much larger replica as the Yellowstone Lodge. They even have man-made geisers outside that go off. So cool. Of course, every resort had it's own original, ginormous Christmas tree.

This is inside the Grand Floridian resort, which I think is the most expensive one. Talk about breathtaking. The inside feels like you just stepped into the greatest luxury hotel of the 1910's. It totally reminded me of "Somewhere in Time."

And this is the life-size gingerbread house inside the Grand Floridian. There was even a small shop inside of it selling hot chocolate and treats!

The pool outside the Polynesian Resort. Definitely one of my favorite resorts. It was a little chilly for swimming, but I really think we could have if we'd wanted to.

Our group inside the Polynesian Resort. I think I could live there.

Our little family.

The girls standing outside the Polynesian Resort next to an angry, wooden man.

The pictures from here on down are at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We had lunch at one of the restaurants there, Sanaa. They had such good food, and we could watch the animals walking around outside through the windows.

Here's the view from our table watching the giraffes outside walking past the window.

Inside the main Lodge area. So awesome.

Brian doing some crafts with the girls in the lodge. Bless you, Disney.

In front of one of the Christmas trees. The decorations were African-inspired and so amazing.

Our family with my mom and dad, and aunt Carol.

Watching the animals from the viewing deck outside. There's this huge area outside where all these animals like giraffes, zebras, pelicans, wildebeasts and stuff roam around. The whole resort area sort of wraps around it, so people in their rooms can go out on their balcony and watch the animals. I could move in. Totally.

Sitting in front of the huge fire pit area, where the African workers do story-telling at night with the animals in the background. I'm going for the story-telling next time, just watch me.