We spent five days traveling around the state of Florida … and my goodness, I absolutely understand why everyone thought we were absolutely nuts to go to Disney World in June!! I grew up in the desert so I’m used to heat … but I don’t think anything could of prepared me for Florida in June.

We spent Day 8 traveling from New Orleans to Pensacola. Can you believe I didn’t take ANY personal photos in Pensacola with my “big camera”? We got there pretty late in the afternoon, and I immediately had to go to Amanda’s family session at the beach so I didn’t even get the chance to take a single photo of the beach or the family with my D800, which bums me out. But! Luckily I snapped a few with my cell phone, so that works! 🙂 If we were to ever move to Florida, it would probably be to Pensacola. We *loved* it there!!!

Day 9 we made the short(ish) drive from Pensacola to Panama City. We got to meet and hang out with my awesome friend Kiersten Grant at the local state park beach (where I did her family pics and then she also did ours!) … Panama City definitely was beautiful. The water was shockingly warm (reminded me a bit of Okinawa beaches, actually) and she even let me play around with her fisheye lens (which, by the way, now I have to get!!).

On Day 10, we headed from Panama City to Disney World. On the way, we stopped in a small town in Florida called Lake City to visit Randy’s dad. This was my first time meeting him, and it was really great to finally see Randy with him. I can totally see some family resemblances now! The kids had a blast meeting their grandpa and their grandma Kitty, and Randy’s dad even gave the kids a couple of antique BB guns, which we are going to clean up and actually hang up in our new house once we get into one in California. We pulled into Fort Wilderness in Orlando late in the afternoon, and I can honestly tell you that we had some of the most intense lightning and thunder I’ve ever seen. It was literally cracking right over our heads, with this insane torrential downpour that looked like something out of one of those Armageddon type movies. But then as soon as it came, it left, and we were able to make our dinner reservation at the Swan Hotel for Noah’s birthday eve dinner with Pluto and Goofy! Now, let me premise by saying we didn’t have the best dining experience there (it was definitely NOT a kid friendly menu – I mean really, what kid wants thin crust wheat pizza with almost no cheese, and an infinite salad bar??) but regardless, Noah had a BLAST meeting Pluto (who is his favorite Disney character and the reason we made our reservations there).

Day 11 was spent at the Magic Kingdom. Now, I might get some flack for saying this … but let’s just call a spade a spade … DisneyLAND is a gazillion times better than DisneyWORLD. There, I said it. We only had the opportunity to go to Magic Kingdom because we couldn’t spend an entire week at Disney World, but I could honestly swear that the lines are longer and the rides are shorter at Disney World. But, we still had a blast seeing the characters and eating tons of ice cream. I didn’t take the Big Camera to the park (no way would I risk that craziness, my friend Karey once had hers stolen at a theme park so I’m ultra wary of doing it now; plus, it’s huge and heavy and I could never have decided on a single lens to bring in to the park #photographerproblems hahaha), but I did bring our little waterproof Ricoh WG-20 point and shoot with us and it totally served its purpose. Sure, I wish I had gotten some nicer shots but honestly, I didn’t want to mess around and work – I just wanted to have fun with my family. Nothing wrong with that, right? Plus, we purchased the Memory Maker from Disney, so they actually provided pictures of us with the few characters we were able to meet plus get photos of the two rides that had cameras! We were basically at Magic Kingdom from the time it opened until the time it closed, and on the way home we got lost in Fort Wilderness (not fun at 1am, let me tell you!). But all in all, we had a memorable day at Disney World!

Day 12 was spent pretty much hanging out in the RV at the Fort Wilderness campground. It just poured … and poured … and poured … pretty much the entire day. We watched movies, made microwave s’mores since we couldn’t have a campfire, and we pretty much recuperated from our day at Magic Kingdom.