We were so excited when we walked into Animal Kingdom and saw the 14 story Tree of Life for the first time!  Wow!  What an adventure we were on, and it was just getting started!

Noelle’s cheer friend, Kinsley, and her brother, Crew, were at Disney the same time we were!  Their mom, Amy, and I were talking about having to miss the Halloween pep rally for cheerleading a few weeks prior, and I said, we’ll be at Disney, and she said they would be too!  As it turns out, we had planned to be at Animal Kingdom the same day, so we met up to do the Kilimanjaro Safaris together!  It was an awesome “play date” as the girls kept calling it!  Best play date ever!

Noelle and Kinsley having fun with African instruments.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta ROAR!  We look tough, huh?  Lol!

We loaded up in our decked out, really cute tourist bus and headed out on our adventure into the safari!

Yikes!

Rose was 100% focused on the animals!

This seems so much better than a zoo because they have so much space to move around, and it really does feel like they’re in their natural habitat.  While I was on that bus, I felt like we were driving through Africa.  They even had African music playing on the bus, like the beautiful kind with djembe drum beats from the Lion King.  Cool!

Flamingos!

Rose leaned over Rara and said, “Bye Mingos!” and waved goodbye to them.  She loves flamingos!

These guys were a little too close for comfort!  You can see how cute the little bus up ahead is and how they decked it out to look like it’s going on a safari adventure through Africa (we were on one just like it)!  There were many times during our tour the bus would go through water and over dips to give the ride the feel like we were on a road in Africa.  I mean, it really did feel like we were on a different continent! We all loved it!  This is a must-do if you go to Disney World.  We were so excited for the days to come but enjoyed every minute of our day at Animal Kingdom!

 

After some more instrument playing and posing in front of the Tree of Life, we got snacks and headed to our afternoon of shows!

It was so wonderful sharing all of these experiences with my mom!  With my health situation, when she comes to town back home, she is always watching the girls so that I can go to doctors.  It was so nice to have this time to just play with her!  Those of you that know my mom, know that she never sits still, so Disney was the perfect place for her to stay busy but not get into any productive projects like she’s good at doing!

 

Noelle posing with a cane the African woodcarver behind her carved and painted himself, and Rose kissing the lion carving from the Tree of Life Garden entrance.  I wish I lived in Rose’s head sometimes; No telling what she was thinking about this guy!

Isn’t this tree so cool!  You can see the life cycle of these gourd looking things that are hanging form the tree’s branches.  To the right bottom corner there are blooms, then a tiny gourd (don’t know what it’s called), and then mature ones all over the tree attached by these strings!  We got distracted by all of the cool detail in nature at this park.  We were touching everything to see if it was real and just admiring it all!  And this tree was no big deal, just tucked away behind the wood carver you saw above.  Amazing!  There’s no way you can ever see everything!  If you stand in one spot all day, you still can’t see everything they’ve put into that one spot.  It’s unbelievable!

 

Although everyone was getting sleepy, we made the most of it humoring ourselves, lol!

Sweet girl pulled me aside and asked for a picture right here in this spot because the letters behind her match her purple dress.  Precious!

Thankfully, my friend Keri took this picture during their show of The Lion King!  I’m so glad she did because I was so into the show, it didn’t even dawn on me to take a picture (weird, I know).  This is a must-see at Animal Kingdom as well!  The Safari and The Lion King and even Tusker House were all a huge hit!  Lots of people skip Animal Kingdom while they are at Disney World, but I would say, go for it!  It was a relaxing, super fun day!

This is what all the walking trails look like throughout Animal Kingdom.  It’s a tiny bit humid and cool because of the tall trees that cascade over one another to canopy the walkways.  This wasn’t in my mind at all what Disney World would look like before we got here.  I imagined a lot less foliage.  It seriously felt like a rain forest here too!  It is awesome these types of plants and trees will grow in Florida.

We met up with the Boyd family for a quick wardrobe change (haha) before our Hawaiian dinner at the Polynesian resort!  Here’s Noelle and Caroline talking and drawing about their day!

I love it when little girl friends hold hands!  It’s just the sweetest thing!  They don’t have a care in the world and are just enjoying their day together!  I wouldn’t be able to tell if this was Caroline or Carlee from behind, except that they had different colored bows and shoes on today, lol.  They are slow twins and look so much alike!  Anna Kate kept getting them confused at first.  It was so cute!  We were so excited to get to spend time with our Arkansas buddies!

 

Carlee was resting with her Daddy, while Anna Kate, Caroline, and Noelle posed for a quick picture before getting ready for dinner!  Rose got a good little nap in Sassy’s arms (Caroline and Carlee’s grandmother) on the bus ride over, but she’s about to have to wake up, because it’s luau time!