Disneyland Paris

I know this might seem a little weird, but for me one of the most anticipated parts of our journey in Paris was going to be the trip out of the city to Disneyland Paris. When planning our trip I didn't know if we were gonna be able to make it to Disneyland. However, I made a deal with Jennifer that if we went and did the Harry Potter Experience for her then we had to go to Disneyland for me, since I enjoy it more than she does. She agreed and I started looking into tickets and trying to figure out how to explore as much of the parks as possible. We waited until the last day of our vacation to go to Disneyland. Our morning started off early with about an hour train ride out to the parks. It was really easy to find the right train because we just kept following the Mickey ears!

We made it! I was like a little kid walking into the park. They couldn't have opened the gates early enough for us either. I had devised a plan for us to try and get to see as much as possible in both of the parks. We started in the main park, Disneyland before moving over to Walt Disney Studios.

When I was initially trying to plan our day at Disneyland I had thought that we wouldn't ride any of the rides that they have at Disney World. However, after doing some research I discovered that some of the same named rides were in fact different than the ones in Florida. That meant that we needed to try and ride all of the new rides as well as the classic ones. 

It's A Small World is one that we actually rode twice just so that we could see everything that was going on inside. We liked the different iconic monuments that we spotted from around the world. We saw Big Ben and the Tower Bridge, as well as the Colosseum and leaning Tower of Pisa. The American area showed the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty as well as a little football and baseball player.

We enjoyed the different roller coasters, Buzz Lightyear shooting game and Jennifer even agreed to ride the Green Army men Parachute Drop - which she didn't like.

My favorite ride was Hyperspace Mountain. We thought it was going to be like Space Mountain, but it was so much better. It had a Star Wars theme and it went upside down a couple of times. The ride was like you were in a space ship and you were dodging the shooting laser beams of enemies throughout the galaxy. I was inspired so much that I had to eat a Jedi burger for lunch. Later in the day I rode this again while Jennifer took a little break.

We enjoyed seeing all of the decorations around the park. They had a big Buzz statue. They also had a Wall-E and Eve  as well as few guys from the movie Cars. Jennifer and I even posed at the tea party and I sat in the Mad Hatter's spot and she took Alice's chair. We wanted to see as much of the park so we didn't wait in line to meet any characters. However, while walking around we spotted Goofy and Pinocchio.

A trip to Disney wouldn't be complete without some treats and a ride on the famous Dumbo the Flying Elephant. We decided on getting a candy apple and another nutella crepe. Apparently we discovered when we got there that they were actually celebrating their 25th anniversary, hence the 25 on our candy apple. 

The middle of the day called for a little break and we decided to watch the stage show. This proved to be very interesting because they spoke in French part of the time and we had no idea what in the world they were saying. There were lots of well known characters in the show and then there was Max, which is Goofy's son. We enjoyed the show and afterwards the characters all walked by the crowd and gave kids high fives. 

We also enjoyed a ride on the carousel and some ice cream to help with the heat of the day. We were just like a couple of kids running around having fun. The castle was designed like Sleeping Beauty's, which is just like the one in California.

Our best picture of the castle.

My beautiful wife with the castle inscription in the background says "Blanche Neige et les Sept Nains" which is French for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Me trying my hand at trying to pull the sword from the stone. Unfortunately, I was not able to remove the stone. This picture took about 15 minutes to get because little kids kept running up in front of me. I would patiently wait my turn and then another kid would run in front of me. Thankfully one of the parents finally made their kids wait for me to take my picture which took about 15 seconds. 

We were like a couple of little kids running around Disneyland and even took a ride on Lancelot's Carousel.

We even got some celebratory pins that the guest relations cast member wrote 10 year anniversary on them.

Our best picture with the two of us and the castle in the background. We both wore our marathon shirts for the day. Maybe one day we will make a return trip and complete the Disneyland Paris half marathon.

I wouldn't have wanted to discover Disneyland Paris with anyone other that my love, Jennifer. The top left corner was a picture of us trying to reenact the picture that was on the window behind us of Sleeping Beauty and her prince. The inside of the castle told the story of Sleeping Beauty which was pretty neat.

The next few pictures were taken during the daytime parade. It was actually a good parade with all kinds of characters. The only thing that was really frustrating was that right before the parade started they made every single person stand up including the children in the front row. I thought this was completely unnecessary and it made us then have to see the parade in between a couple rows of people. I didn't have much of a problem seeing it, but Jennifer couldn't see as well over everyone's heads.

This was unique because at Disney World Belle is always accompanied with the beast and here he is back in human form.

Olaf riding Sven near the end the parade.

They had a pretty awesome light show and fireworks display to end the night. Here are some pictures from both of those.

We stayed for the fireworks show and then took our time taking pictures and looking for a souvenir. I was trying to squeeze every last second out of the experience that I could. Talking Mickey even stood at the exit and said goodbye to everyone as they left, which was really awesome. He also said goodbye in a couple of different languages.

One last picture of us with the castle before we left the park.

We had no idea when we spent all the extra time just taking our time looking around that it was really going to come back and bite us in the tail. We finally found our way back to the train and it was completely packed! That meant that we were going to be standing for about the next hour train ride, which was not ideal since we were both tired and would have liked to sit down. After finally making it back to the city we got off and headed towards our connection train. We arrived just a train was arriving at the station. How lucky right? Then a security guard came over to tell us that the trains were closed and that no more would be running. Seriously? Apparently the trains stop at 1 am and don't open again until around 5 in the morning. We headed up to the street to try and figure out exactly where we were and how far away from our hotel we were. On the map it didn't seem like that far and we were too worried about trying to figure out how to speak well enough to a cab to get us back to the hotel. So, we decided to make the walk back to the hotel. I was on hyper alert and making sure to keep an eye on all of our surroundings and any suspicious activity. About halfway on our walk back it started to storm! Thankfully Jennifer had a couple of small umbrellas in her bag so only the lower half of our bodies were getting saturated. About 30 minutes later I finally navigated us back to our hotel. It was a short 4 hour nap before we had to get up and pack all of our stuff up so that we could get out to the airport in time for our flight back home.

Disneyland Paris, although not quite what I thought it was going to be, was a lot of fun. We got to ride a few new rides and a couple of the classics too. I knew that I needed to finish this blog because my mind is about to be changed with new Disney memories. Jennifer and I are headed out west to Disneyland California for a race next week. This will be our 3rd Disney set of parks that we will have been to in 2017. We are excited for our adventure and will tell you all about it once we return back home! Thanks for reading and God bless!

UK Football Game vs. Eastern Michigan

Over the summer I heard about a program called the Jr. Wildcat Club. This is a program that tries to get kids more involved with the different UK sports programs. After you join you get a t-shirt, towel, tickets to a football game, the blue-white basketball game, and free admission to all UK sporting events (excluding football and men's basketball). This seemed like a great way to get the kids to go and experience different sports. Our first event of the year happened to be the football game vs. Eastern Michigan. We also found out about a little play area that they had for kids before the game so we got down to the stadium about 2 hours before kickoff. 

The kids dressed in all their Kentucky gear for the game. They really had no idea what they were about to get into since they had never really seen a football game except for when they have randomly looked at the TV while I was watching at home.

Their passes for the Jr. Wildcat club. If we go to 20 events this year then we earn automatic entry into next years club. This was our first event.

The kids loved playing on all the inflatables. The play area was located in Nutter Field house.

Since the kids were having too much fun inside I went to see the Cat Walk by myself. Next time I think I will take the kids so that they can see all the band, cheerleaders, Wildcats and also high five the whole team.

Brinley ready for coach to send her in. Not sure many football players ever have worn pigtails before.

Maybe one day this little guy will actually strap on a helmet and play football. 

Coming out of the inflatable obstacle course.

This little girl was having so much fun. She didn't want to stop running and going through this obstacle course. Thankfully they deflate everything before the game starts or else I would have been stuck in the field house for the whole game.

They also had the men's and women's swim and dive teams at the field house to meet the kids and sign autographs. One of the girls asked Brinley what her favorite swim stroke was and she looked at them like they were speaking a different language. She still talks a lot about swimming so I think we are about to sign back up for more lessons at the Y.

Footballs don't look that big until you ask a little kid to hold one. We will definitely need to work on how to hold the ball because it isn't very secure with just that one finger holding onto it. 

After we got in the stadium Brinley noticed this huge picture of the wildcat and wanted to get her picture made with it.

Looking out at the field for the first time watching the players warm up.

After getting a few snacks we headed up to our seats. We started out with nachos, sprite, and the largest bag of kettle corn that we could find. As we were walking up the steps, Landon tripped and started to fall down but caught himself with his hands. Problem was that he scraped his finger up a little. After I couldn't calm him down for about 5 minutes we finally decided that a bandaid would fix it. We didn't have any with us so I went out to search for the first aid area. Thankfully they gave us some bandaids so that we I could enjoy the game. Let's be real, the kids were mostly just there for the food.

View from close to where our seats were located. These kids crack me up sometimes with their smiles.

Our seats were facing the sun and it was beginning to get extremely hot for all of us. It didn't take long for us to all take off the long sleeve shirts. We had seen that the forecast showed for low 70's so we all wore long sleeves to the game. I looked across the stadium to the other side and saw that it was in the shade. The upper level was only about half full, so I told Jennifer that after the first quarter we were going to move over there.

We moved over to the other side and the kids got their next treat of snow cones. They had seen someone selling them while on the other side of the stadium. Problem was that in the shade the temperature dropped about 30 degrees! The kids were shivering while eating their snow cones. 

Such a happy little guy! If you ever ask him what color he wants it is always gonna be blue!

My girls!

Family photo in the shade. Everyone put their long sleeved shirts back on. The kids were complaining so bad that they wanted to go home because they were so cold. I made a compromise that we could move back to the sun for the second half. Everyone agreed and we then made our way across the stadium to find our third set of seats for the day.

View from our 3rd set of seats.

Me and my little man at his 1st UK football game.

No idea what this little guy was watching or thinking about, but I would like to think he was dreaming about one day playing on that field. He was probably seeing what all everyone was eating.

About halfway through the third quarter we had to leave the game. I had to go to work and Jennifer didn't feel like wrangling the kids for the rest of the game. Maybe someday we will have season football tickets and the kids will truly enjoy coming out to the games each Saturday.

We spotted this nice little photo opportunity on the way out of the stadium. We had to get a picture with all of us in our UK gear.

We are so thankful to have had such a great experience for the kids first time at Commonwealth Stadium Kroger Field! 

Wildcat football is on the rise and I am glad that we were able to catch a game with the kids this year. So far when the Heflin kids are in attendance the Wildcats are undefeated. Maybe I should have taken them with me to the Florida game! Like I said earlier, maybe one day we will get some season tickets so that we can catch all the action every Saturday. Go Big Blue! Thanks for reading and God bless!