Unschooling Disney Day #3-- Chef Mickey, Typhoon Lagoon, and Saratoga Springs

We had a nice relaxing morning at our hotel since we didn't have any plans until our 11 o'clock Chef Mickey breakfast (or brunch if you prefer) reservation.

I got to spend the morning relaxing in the whirlpool tub with a good book while my husband and mother in law took care of the kids. They watched TV, played with Lego's and went for a walk.

It's nice to have a few moments of down time every few days to rejuvenate.

We finally got ready and headed out to wait for the bus and Evan went on a lizard hunt. We have tiny lizards everywhere around the hotel and the boys are obsessed with trying to catch one. While looking around for lizards the boys found some unusual leaves. Some were really huge, some were really shiny and leathery, it was a really neat impromptu science lesson.

We headed to the Magic Kingdom and took the monorail over to the Contemporary hotel for Chef Mickey.

We were an hour early for our reservation and so the boys went to the arcade.

Chef Mickey is the boys favorite meal of the week. It is the one dining/ character meal that they insist on going to, though now that it's over I think they enjoy it more for the food than anything else.
I practically had to threaten Alec and Evan to get up and take photos with the characters!

But in all we had a good time. The boys ate lots of great food and had fun fooling around with the characters a bit.

While waiting for our check we noticed a sky writer right outside the window. The boys had fun watching the letters form and reading what the sky writer was writing out.

Only Ian would meet Minnie!

After breakfast we headed to one of the waterparks. We all decided we'd like to go to Typhoon Lagoon and we spent the whole day there.

We enjoyed our time in the lazy river, rode tons of waterslides, went into the wave pool with 6 foot waves, and snorkeled with sharks. I can't say the day was idyllic as we did loose Alec at one point during one of our trips into the lazy river.

He didn't know he was lost nor did he seem upset by the time we "found" him. I kept fairly calm, knowing he was a strong swimmer, knowing there were life guards EVERYWHERE and being fairly certain that he wouldn't get out of the river alone. I figured we were just missing him somewhere along the way so my husband stayed by one set of stairs while I walked alongside the river looking for him. By the time I made it around Alec was standing with my husband.

We also had a slight problem when we tried to snorkel with the sharks. The water is very COLD and Alec was complaining that the chemicals they used to clean the mask were burning his nose, he couldn't get the snorkel tight enough and he eventually decided to just go up onto the deck and watch all of us snorkel.

I felt bad he missed out on seeing all the rays, fish and sharks. It was really neat to swim across the top of the pool and see them underneath you.

Ian tried out all the water slides in the whole park and we even found some for Alec and Evan to go on. It was a fun day in the sun, but we were all pretty wiped out by the time we left.

We had a wonderful surprise waiting for us when we got back to our room. It turns out our travel agent sent us a care package. It came in this great mickey mouse bag and was filled with all sorts of yummy treats. The boys were thrilled and excited. They kept telling me we had the best travel agent ever. I had to agree. What an amazing trip we're having this time around!

We had the boys take showers and then we headed to the main building at our hotel for dinner. This is pretty much the first time we have all walked around at our resort.

Having the pool, bus and dining options steps from our door we haven't felt the need to walk around our resort, but we decided to head to another dining area since we had to pick up Evan's Indiana Jones toy set from the store next door anyway.

There is a bridge that spans a huge lake and we saw turtles, fish and birds.

We stopped to watch the Herons, cranes and ducks.

I was marveling at all the nature we had enjoyed today between the shark reef, the lizards, the leaves, the turtles, birds and fish.

We had a nice dinner but were dismayed to find that Evan's new toy was broken. The whip came out of the box destroyed. He was so bummed. He has been waiting forever to play with it! I kept thinking if we had just taken the box with us at Hollywood Studios that day we would have known right away that it was broken and exchanged it for a new one. Our hotel shop offered to send a runner back to Hollywood Studios to exchange the package for us, but it will mean waiting at least another day, if not two.

I was so proud of Evan and how he behaved upon hearing the upsetting news. He was understandably sad but he didn't cry, throw a tantrum, or anything like that. He was content to know he'd have his new toy by the time we headed home and again we were amazed at how well Disney handles any situation.

We finished our dinner at our leisure and the boys occupied themselves with the table easel and crayons that are found around the resort dining room.

Ian drew the ship we saw at Typhoon Lagoon while Alec started on making the EPCOT ball. Ian finished his drawing and there's a place they can hang them up on display for others to enjoy.

Alec wasn't finished so he asked if he could use the black crayon back at our room and bring it back later.

On our way home we fed the turtles and fish some lettuce and enjoyed watching the sunset over the lake and buildings.