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| We've made it to Orlando! |
I do believe that everyone slept well last night. I never stirred during the night and I do not think that Robby did either. Since we just had the boys in our room this morning we didn’t have to hurry around too much (they are so much easier than the girls).
Pops had to wake the girls up since they were all sleeping so soundly and they still beat us to breakfast. The breakfast this morning wasn’t as great as the day before but they had cinnamon rolls which I could eat every single day for breakfast. Though I do love a bagel and cream cheese but am saving that breakfast treat for a hotel that doesn’t have cinnamon rolls.
It didn’t take too long for us to load up and head towards Disney. I can tell that Robby and I are getting older: we used to drive from Little Rock to Orlando overnight but now it takes us 3 days! It has been a fun 3 day trip down here though.
The boys rode with Nonna and Pops for the first leg of the trip and the girls and Whitman stayed with us. We turned on Annie and everyone was happy, happy.
After passing out snacks for the girls, I then worked on getting them drinks out of the ice chest. Of course what I was grabbing was at the bottom and after I tried unsuccessfully, Robby tried but also could not stand the cold ice for long enough to find kids’ drinks. Finally, we were able to pull them out as Robby talked about how he never wants to die of hypothermia. And that reminded me of yesterday…
I guess that I somehow forgot to include this on yesterday’s blog but as I was driving, Robby was getting something out of an ice chest or rearranging up front. He asked for me to hold something and I didn’t look but just put my hand on what he had propped up beside me. After just a few seconds, I could feel icy cold water gushing in my lap. I squealed and then started cackling. Robby looked around and had no idea what was happening and had no clue that the ice chest he had asked me to hold was pouring icy cold water into my lap.
Finally, he grabbed the now empty ice chest from me and also had himself a good laugh. (Our ice chest that holds a few bottles of water is a soft sided one and the water will leak out of the zipper if it is turned on its side.)
Robby eventually found a towel to hand me to dry up my now soaked bottom. Thankfully I had on navy shorts so no one at the next rest stop could see my wet hiney.
So back to today: As we were getting back into the car after a rest stop, a man stopped me and asked me if I had been to Bove’s in Vermont. I was wearing the shirt and I said that I had. He was from Vermont and said that Bove’s was going to close next month. That made me very sad since it was already listed as one of the stops for our trip next year but at least I saw their pasta sauce at Kroger the other day.
Robby let me drive after the potty stop and of course that leg of the journey had a zillion and a half cars on it. When we made it very near Downtown Disney (now named Disney Springs) the girls decided that they needed to potty so between looking for a potty and changing exits, we missed our turn and ended up in lots of traffic. After turning a few u-eys and no losing my tail (Pops and his car) we finally found a McDonalds to potty at and then we were back on the road.
It wasn’t long until we were parking at Disney Springs. My first observation was man, it is hot! Where is the fall weather? I am just a tiny bit disappointed and praying for constant cloud cover. Seriously though, we have never ever been to Disney with comfortable weather-it has always been hot or cold and no matter when my Dennies come here it is one of those two extremes.
I guess that I will still take the hot weather since we are at the most magical place on earth. We left the parking garage and found lots of construction happening but that was fine. We walked right to the first place we thought we can find food: Ghirardelli. Unfortunately they only served desserts so we pressed on to another stop.
We ate at Earl of Sandwich. It must have been the lunch rush because Robby and Pops had to wait in line for quite a while. That was fine though because we lucked out on a spot inside. I ran Campbell and Keaton to the bathroom which was through a store which I loved…
I do believe that I could really have a shopping problem if I wasn’t so dang frugal. Seriously, I saw at least 8 things I wanted in that first shop that we walked through. I love Disney stuff as much as I love the new Pioneer Woman dishes at Walmart. Anyway, by the time the restroom trip was over, Robby and Pops arrived at the table with our food.
Our sandwiches were excellent and everyone (except Whitman who was napping) ate until they were full. After we finished, we walked through a few Disney stores-really, though isn’t every Disney store the same.
Robby took all of the kids but Reagan to the Lego store and Reagan was looking at some shirts. She saw one that she liked and looked at the price tag. My child said “this one is 25 dollars and the one that I am wearing only cost 10 bucks!” Oh, I love my sweet little girl! I do wonder where she gets her frugalness.
My boys could have stayed forever in the Lego store. They would have put every single Lego on their Christmas list if I would have let them. Legos are one thing that you probably can never have too many of since they are so easy to store. After our walk back to the car, we loaded back up again and headed to the house.
The kids were beyond excited to see this place and since it wasn’t too far away, we didn’t have to wait too long. Unfortunately, Robby wasn’t able to open the front door so we had to call the help man. He was right nearby and ran over and quickly opened the door-we did have the wrong code.
As soon as that man opened the door, my kids ran inside and bounded up the stairs. They quickly found the Mickey Mouse themed room with bunk beds and a trundle bed along with the Frozen room with the same beds. This was great because none of the girls have to sleep on the floor. The master bedroom is also upstairs and it is huge. And winner, winner-there is a huge closet for Whitman to sleep in.
Downstairs there is a living room, a kitchen with a another sitting area in it. Nonna and Pops have a bedroom downstairs. And can you imagine the squeals of delight when the kids saw the pool. The only real difference in this house and the one last year is that this one has another living space and last years house had turned the garage into a playroom. It will be a pretty perfect base of this Disney trip.
We unloaded the cars and unloading in a hotel takes just a few minutes but completely unloading in a house is just like taking everything home and unpacking. We pretty much had unpacked most things by the time the kids finally got to do what they had been waiting to do for at least an hour: go swimming!
Robby and Nonna were on kid duty and the kid swam for over an hour. Robby said that Keaton swam without her floatees and Whitman worked on putting his head under the water-he will be a fish next year. By the end of the swim time, they were putting water in Robby’s ice chest trying to sink them. This caused quite the commotion and lasted until everyone had gone inside to take their showers.
Reagan did have a bit of excitement. While she was swimming, an ant crawled on her little face and stung right under her eye. So it was red and a bit swollen tonight. Hopefully it doesn’t swell anymore tonight-or years from now we will look back at our Disney pictures from this trip and say “wonder why she has a red, swollen eye?”
Pops and I were on grocery duty. We passed 2 Publix stores and 1 Super Target on the way to a Super Walmart. We could have stopped at the Target but opted for Walmart and we passed the Publix because I needed to buy some shoes for Whitman and Keaton. Robby usually loses his sunglasses and has to buy a pair on each trip (I have found at least 2 spares that he has stowed away just in case on this trip) but what we usually always have to buy on a trip too is shoes for one of the kids. The velcro on Keaton’s shoes are coming off and the velcro on Whitman’s shoes does not stay closed.
So shoes were our first purchase at the store. On the way to the shoes section, you could tell that this Walmart is one that gets many, many tourist. There were aisles and aisles of Disney themed merchandise, ice chests, ponchos and souvenirs. I guess I should bring Reagan there to pick our her Disney souvenir.
Then we made a few loops-bread, lunch meat, lasagna, cinnamon rolls, fruit, ice cream (poop, I forgot to eat my ice cream tonight), popsicles, cookies-you name it, we bought it. Pops was throwing stuff in the buggy as fast as he could. We fought the crowds and finally finished in a pretty decent time-so I thought.
It wasn’t too much after we had checked out that Robby called to check on us and see when we were coming home. It was right after we hung up that I saw a helicopter tour and told Pops that we should have stopped there to take our picture. But since the kiddos back home were hungry we pressed on.
But pressed on to where. I asked him if he knew how to get back to the house and he said “no.” Now, Pops’ sense of direction is a bit better than mine but his gps wasn’t on and my phone was about to die but that didn’t matter since we didn’t even know the name of the street that we were heading too. Our only option was to start going in and out of neighborhoods looking for my big white van. Thankfully, I found the address on my phone and we were able to make it back to the house!
Once back the kids helped unload the groceries and I started making supper for my crew. They all just had sandwiches, crackers and chips-the meal of champions. We did top off their meal with some ice cream-it must be Sunday night somewhere. Whitman was happy because he could watch his blessed Thomas and the boys were happy watching Pops’ tv shows.
After plenty of down time, we put the kiddos to bed. I think that they were all probably pretty tired and no one seemed to complain about going to bed. Well, Whitman was a bit upset at first but he calmed down after Robby held him for awhile. He just needed a few minutes to get used to this new place.
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