More Vacation

Well, hopefully this will just about finish up my vacation posts! I have been distracted by trying to buy a house and move, Big Sis' dance recital, and, you know, feeding and raising my children.  For some reason, life doesn't want to pause so I can sit down and blog about it!   Lol

Since the tickets to the parks were SO expensive, I tried to find free-ish things we could do on the other days.  One afternoon, we visited an orange orchard just 10 minutes from where we were staying.

We were THE only people there for a while.  It was the off season though.  The only things in season when we went were grapefruit and Valencia oranges.  The Dad and kids walked around trying to find the oranges.  I think the ones they ended up finding were way high up in the trees, so they headed over to the more easily found grapefruit.  A sign was posted that invited people to taste the grapefruit as it is really sweet this time of year.  They were not kidding.  We got a bag full and I had a coupon (from our resort) for a free bag of oranges!     They were all very sweet and made great juice as well!

The orchard was located by this lake and had this huge eye-catching-fake shark.  At least, I'm pretty sure it was fake.  I was like, "Let's get a picture in front of the shark!"   But, Middle Sis. decided it was more fun to get under it's mouth and pretty soon, Baby Sis followed her lead. 

On Friday night, The Dad and I went on a date to Downtown Disney.  We wanted to check it out before we brought the kids on Saturday.  I loved it!   Just the feel and energy was contagious.   There were musical performers around every corner and lots of great stuff to see!

My favorite thing about it was that it was so family friendly!  Many times we would see children dancing in front of a musician.  In front of an Irish restaurant, some Irish dancers were not only performing, but they also brought children up from the crowd and showed the children how to dance with them.

This picture was at a place, I think called the Candy Cauldron or something.  They had these awesome looking chocolate/caramel apples shaped like Mickey's head.  They had a big window in front where you could watch the workers dip the apples and other stuff in chocolate.  

They dipped the apples in caramel, then put two jumbo marshmallows on for ears, then dipped it all in chocolate.   They had many variations of these apples...and they cost $9.95 each.   I SO wanted one, but was saving my money for the Ghirardelli ice cream shop!

Another fun place was the Lego store.  We loved looking a the huge Lego statues.  They also had a couple of places where kids could stand around and.....play with Legos.  

 Lego statue in the water!  One whole side of Downtown Disney overlooked this lake.  I didn't know if I wanted to go look at the shops or go sit and observe the nice view!

We also visited the biggest Disney store I've ever seen.   They also had a Disney Christmas store, Disney Pin store, Disney Candy store, a Disney store of stuff for the kitchen, a Disney Sport store, a couple of different Disney clothing stores, and a Disney toy store.  There were probably more, but that's all I can think of at this point.

Well, that's all for now, but I still have more pics to share!   Talk to you soon!