Spring Break 2008

Okay, I know I'm over a month late posting Spring Break pictures... but they're here at last. We went with Nana and Poppa to Gatlinburg and stayed at the Westgate Smokey Mountain Resort. The boys loved it. As we entered the National Park, Rob and I kept saying, "Okay, boys were now in The Great Smoky Mountains." Connor immediately piped up and said, "It's not good to smoke. Why are the mountains smoking?" We had a lot of fun with that one! I'm not really sure that Connor understands our explanation of the name for the mountains still.

The resort was awesome. They had an indoor water park that was perfect for the kids. Of course they wanted to spend every free moment there. Even Nicholas loved it and got into going down the little kid slides.

We also went into Pigeon Forge and saw some shows. The boys loved going to see the magic show and were thrilled when we left with magic wands for them. They kept saying crazy things like, "Hocus Pocus now your a dragon!" Finally Mommy took the wands and made all the boys disappear!

We also spent two days at Dollywood, because of course the Bramhalls love an amusement park! We rode lots of great rides, although most of them involved us getting soaked. Luckily the weather wasn't too cold. We rode the bumper cars as well. Jake and rode together and Connor rode with Rob. While we were all getting buckled in, Connor looks right at me and says, "Your going down Mommy!" Of course I died laughing and Rob was thrilled that Connor had said what he told him to at just the right moment. So of course the theme for the rest of the trip at the park was, "Your going down!"

Nicholas' first amusement park ride! He was terrified and kept looking for Mommy to get him off. But in the end Jake and Connor calmed him down and he ended up really liking it!

Rob had to fly out to Boston for work for two of the days, but that didn't slow us down. We went hiking in the Park and saw a dinner show. Of course we swam so much at the water park that I couldn't get the smell of chlorine off of us!

Disney 2007 - Bigger and Better

So we traveled to Disney over Labor day weekend and stayed 5 nights at the Caribbean Beach Resort. It was a great deal, as we got the Disney dining plan for free with our trip! We took Grandma and Poppa from the beach along with us and had a busy 5 days. We went to MGM, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, and Magic Kingdom twice!

Jake was thrilled to be back at the parks and ride bigger and better attractions than last year. He loved TestTrac and especially Mission to Mars, which made me queasy and decline to go on the second time around. Connor was tall enough to ride most of the rides but was scared of many of them... except Big Thunder Railroad, which we convinced him was a train roller coaster. So long as the word train is involved, Connor's on board! Nicholas was a champ and hung out in his stroller day after day! He cut 4 teeth the day after we got home and was cranky for a week! Good timing Nicholas.

Since character meals were included in the free dining plan we did lunch with Cinderella, dinner with Goofy, Chip & Dale, Minnie and Pluto, and lunch with the princess' at EPCOT! Jake's favorite was Ariel. When we saw her at lunch he said, "Oh Mommy, there's Ariel. Isn't she pretty?" Seriously, isn't he a little young to have the hots for a Disney princess? Apparently it runs in the family as Rob felt it absolutely necessary to get his picture taken with Jasmine.






The boys were troopers and would last from dawn up to well past the fireworks. Jake, Connor, Rob and I stayed late at Magic Kingdom one night to see the fireworks and it was unbelievable. We got on the Dumbo ride just as they were starting and they were exploding all around us as we circled around and around. It was like being up in the sky with them. After that we stayed until midnight riding rides. When we got back to the hotel Rob was kidding with the boys that they had so much energy that we should go to the pool! Well as we tried to get Jake's pj's on, he cried the whole time that he wanted his swimsuit on and he was ready to go to the pool like Daddy said!