Over a year ago, our senior pastor dreamed up the idea to take his leadership team on a special retreat, one that would include everyone's spouses. He wanted to thank his team (which includes Jason) for all of their hard work and dedication to the church. He also wanted to celebrate various achievements in the group-- the conclusion of Jason's SMP program, one member's doctorate, another's associate degree. Over the next few months, we continued to hear "teasers" about this trip and eventually learned that the retreat was to Florida. We felt so honored to take this amazing 5-day trip in February and loved the relaxing time away.
On our first full day in Florida, the guys spent time mini-golfing while the ladies had a spa day.
.jpeg)
For the next two days, we got to visit Disney World! Each couple was encouraged to choose the parks we most wanted to attend and enjoy time just as a couple. Jason and I visited Animal Kingdom first. We were excited to see the parts of this park that we had missed over the summer. With our family in June, we had left this park early due to a big rainstorm, so there was much remaining that Jason and I wanted to see. We started out by riding Avatar (our favorite ride from the summer!), attended the Lion King Show, and then saw a lot of the animals.
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
We were disappointed the the Everest ride was shut down due to maintenance, but we did try out the Dinosaur ride. We also saw a cool show called Feathered Friends in Flight that featured some pretty well-trained birds!
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
Our favorite was listening to two amazing birds singing full verses of various songs, including La Cucaracha, Old MacDonald, and You are My Sunshine. Wow!
After lunch, we journeyed over to Epcot, where we spent the majority of our time in the World Showcase section of the park. This summer, our kids were most interested in doing the rides at Epcot, so we didn't get to visit many of the country pavilions. This time, Jason and I loved taking a slower pace through the park as we looked at the countries.
.JPEG)
I loved seeing that many of the countries on showcase in Epcot were ones that Adley and I had learned about this year, particularly Canada, Germany, Morocco, France, Japan, Mexico, and Italy. I took quite a few photos for her, hoping she'd recognize some of the cultural pieces from these pavilions.
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
Jason and I decided to try out food samples from various countries and make it an eclectic dinner. It was delicious! We had desserts from France,
.JPEG)
pastries from Morocco,
.JPEG)
(not pictured--dumplings from China),
ravioli from Italy,
.JPEG)
and pretzels from Germany.
.JPEG)
To rest our feet after all the walking from the day, we stopped at this Disney on Broadway show. We were pleasantly suprised out how great it was! We listened to two real Broadway singers-- Ashley Brown who had starred in Mary Poppins and Josh Strickland who played Tarzan. Both singers were engaging and had powerful voices. They each performed signature songs from their own musicals and then sang some other hit Disney Broadway songs as well. It was so entertaining!
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
We ended the evening by meeting up with the other couples from church to watch Epcot's Harmonious, a evening show which combined lights, moving fountains, lasers, music, and fireworks. It was a pretty amazing production!
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
What a wonderful day!
.JPEG)
Jason and I started out our second day in Hollywood Studios, the park that our family hadn't seen at all this summer.
.JPEG)
We enjoyed trying several of the rides, like the Tower of Terror (which surprised me by being my favorite ride of the day!),
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
Rockin' Roller Coaster,
.JPEG)
and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. The lines at Hollywood Studios were absolutely crazy on this day, so we didn't get to experience as many rides as we were hoping.
.JPEG)
We did enjoy seeing a couple of shows-- the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular...
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
and Beauty and the Best Live on Stage.
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
In the evening, our group met up at Magic Kingdom for their fireworks show, Disney's Enchantment. When we visited over the summer, these firework displays had not yet re-started since Covid, so we enjoyed the special treat it was to see these shows!
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
.JPEG)
It felt like a very magical end to a fun vacation! We were so thankful to both sets of grandparents for watching our kids so we could get away and grateful to our pastor and his wife for planning this special retreat!
No comments:
Post a Comment