Vacation Day 5-turkeys and Typhoon Lagoon

Outside the back door of our hotel, there was a little pond with some ducks. The kids really wanted to pet them, but they could never get close enough (smart ducks!).

This guy also liked to hang out at the pond. I'm not exactly sure what it's called though.

And, in the mornings, we usually had a couple of these visitors outside our door.

Living in the country, our kids have seen turkeys before, but I don't think they'd ever seen them this close up. They had so much fun feeding them!

The ducks got their fair share too. And some kids from another room came out and joined the fun.

Once the turkeys and ducks had their breakfast, it was time for us to have ours. Then, we loaded up on the bus for Typhoon Lagoon!

I didn't want my camera to get wet, so I don't have any pictures to share. We had a blast though!

The first thing we went to after we got our stuff settled on the "beach" was the shark reef. I must say, I was expecting something much different after reading about it on the website. For one thing, the water is really deep and COLD! Most of the fish and sharks are close to the bottom, so you're not really swimming with them, more like swimming over them. And they ask you to keep swimming all the way across. You don't get to stop and really see things. But, it was a cool experience and the kids liked it (all except poor Landon and his sensitive skin. The cleaner they use on the equipment combined with the sunscreen on his face made his skin burn. He didn't even make it to get into the water. Poor kid!). Dakota and Cheyenne even went back and did it again later.

We played in the giant wave pool for a while. Let me tell you, those waves are STRONG! Then, we split up for the water slides. Dakota and Cheyenne were able to ride everything, but Landon and Sierra were just barely too short for the biggest slides. So, Grandma Debbie went with the big kids and we took the little kids. I'm not for sure about Sierra, but I know it was Landon's first time to ride a big water slide. I was a little worried about how he would handle it, but he did great! Daniel was the official water slide chaperon (I hate water slides) but they did talk me into doing the big family raft ride with them one time. I will admit that it was fun(ish) but I don't really care to do it again.
We stayed almost until the park closed then caught the bus back to the hotel for some rest. That night, we went back to Epcot and caught the fireworks/light show there. If you want to be able to see the show well, I recommend that you get your spot early (at least an hour before showtime). It gets pretty crowded around the lake.
During the fireworks show, I started getting facebook updates on my phone about all the tornadoes that were going on in Oklahoma that night. The one that got to me was news of a mother who was searching for her 3 year-old boy who was missing after being pulled away from her during the tornado. I was overwhelmed with how blessed I was at that moment. I was at the "happiest place on Earth" enjoying a wonderful vacation with my kids while other people in my home-state were out searching for theirs. Wow! I can tell you that I saw the rest of our trip in a whole different light.

After a little more of a relaxed day on Day 5, we were ready for another crazy busy day on Day 6. We were going to hit Animal Kingdom bright and early in the morning. If only we had known that everyone else in Florida had the same plan...