Vacation Day One - Sunday (Part II - Story Land Pictures)

Time spent at the Story Land: Entered a bit after 3:00, exited a bit before 6:00.

When you first enter the park, you will see Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall to your right. I think most people start their Story Land adventure here and continue on to the right.



Anna and Em liked Humpty Dumpty. Allie did not and would only sit on the wall if Rich held her. When I questioned her later regarding her fear, she responded with, "I was afraid he was gonna bite me." Notice the emphasis on the word bite.

To the left of where you enter is a gift shop and far left of that is a train stop. After our visit with Humpty Dumpty, we headed over that way and decided to ride the train through the park. There are only two other stops and it really isn't a very long ride at all. Long enough to be entertaining for little ones though.

After the train ride, Rich and Allie checked out the gift shop to see if they sold rain ponchos. If yes, how much do they cost and is there any chance the girls would wear them. Yes, they have ponchos. $3 for a garbage bag with a plastic hood. No, the girls won't wear them. As you can see from some of the photos, they at times refused to wear a sweater and I thought it was chilly out.

While Rich assessed the poncho situation, I took this pictures of Em and Anna. I love how Em's sweater is buttoned. Oooops, I did that.



Now, I have to throw some photography mumbo jumbo in here. Because it was kind of dark and gloomy out, I had to shoot with my 35mm lens. I would have preferred using my wide angle/zoom but it isn't as fast and the pictures were coming out underexposed. My camera does not handle a higher ISO very well so I didn't want to be bumping that up over 400. Without the wide angle, some things are cut out of the pictures and if you see a blurry three year old, we can blame that on a slow shutter speed.

After the train ride and poncho assessment, we headed back over to Humpty Dumpty and decided to continue down that path as it led to Cinderella's castle. Allie had been very excited at the prospect of seeing Cinderella in her castle.

We made a stop at Mary's (quite contrary) house. Check out this boy in the doorway. It looks like he's saying, "Hey, come check out my pad."



The girls were afraid of him and his mother eventually went over and dragged him out.



Then there was the old woman who lived in a shoe.



Who came out of character and said to us, "I've worked here for more than 15 years and every single day, I see a set of twins or triplets." I wanted to reply, "They can understand what you are saying. You are supposed to be the Old Woman living in this shoe not working here." She was nice so I cut her some slack.



We did brave one "big" ride - the Tea Cups! All six of us were able to fit into one tea cup and I could not believe how well the girls did. It was fast and spinning and definitely not a baby ride and they loved it!

Here are the girls watching the three little pigs (real pigs, by the way) complete with houses of hay, straw and bricks.

And hanging out with the big, bad wolf.



Then we finally arrived at the castle.



Tip (I forget what number I was on) - The park is not crowded at all when the weather is rainy. If the rain is tolerable, consider heading to Story Land as you will not have to deal with crowds or lines. As you can see from my pictures, there were not many people around us.

Em on the carousel.



Finally, the big moment arrived. We rode the pumpkin coach up the hill to Cinderella's castle. I am way too tired to try to describe what the pumpkin coach is but just imagine a motorized car in the shape of a pumpkin with fake horses on the front.

I loved the girls' reaction to Cinderella.



Em, in the blue sweater, was very brave. We finally managed to convince (and physically move) Allie and Anna up to Cinderella's throne for photos.





Later that night when I asked Allie why she had been afraid of Cinderella, she said, "I thought she was gonna bite me too."

Interestingly enough, Cinderella told us that it was a special day for her as she doesn't often have triplets visit her.



After the excitement of Cinderella's castle, we decided to make our way out of the park as it was getting close to the 6:00 closing time.



We grabbed some pizzas from a local place down the street and brought that back to the house for dinner. I figured that the girls were too tired and wired to deal with a sit down restaurant.

The house has a DVD player and we brought some toys for the girls to play with as well. The girls did really well with keeping themselves entertained. The big thrill for them was going up and down the stairs to check on their beds, which was hysterical because we knew that there as no way that they would sleep in beds by themselves.

For sleeping arrangements, each adult took a toddler to sleep in a separate bedroom. I offered to sleep in the bedroom with two twin beds pushed together. We read the girls their bedtime stories and then sat with them until they fell asleep. In my case, I could have gone to sleep at that time too. I think all three were asleep by 8:15. All the adults were in bed around 9:30.

Coming up - Day 2 at Story Land.