It looks like I'll be finishing this just in time, before I head out for my next trip
On our last day we loaded up the car, checked out of my Disney home away from home (POFQ) and headed over to the Poly for breakfast. When we had to change the dates of the trip, we decieded to add a sit down breakfast to our plans. Tonga toast was a big hit with everyone. Yumm! I'm so sad I'm going to have to miss it this trip. Boo!
On our way into the Poly I noticed this guy, and had to stop and have my picture taken with him.
Who knew my totem had a twin?
My parents still had one day left on their tickets so we decided to hop on the monorail and head over to the MK for a little while. We only had one request from my father on the to-do list, and that was here.
I'm just channeling my inner LL with that shot. It's from the train. We had it nearly to ourselves, and had a nice leisurely ride around the park.
Honestly I don't even remember what we did that morning. I know we rode the train, and rode Pirates, but other than that I'm at a loss. The morning flew by quickly and before we knew it, it was time to get on the road to avoid evening rush hour. As we were leaving they were just pulling the trolley onto Main Street.
I felt like I had seen the cowboy scene at MGM. It does exist! I can't remember the last time I'd seen any of the vehicles out on Main Street. I was only disappointed I wasn't going to get a chance to take a ride on it.
After our morning at Disney we were off to the real purpose of my mini winter vacation. We were off to visit my grandmother. She's been living in Florida for about 6/7 years now, and still hasn't fully come to love it. She's 94 years old and suffers from dementia. At this point in her life she really couldn't live back up North again. From her years in flat Florida, she's lost all ability to go up and down any type of steps. She'd never be able to make it in Connecticut any longer even to visit. That only means that we have to go to her.
My grandparent's engagement picture.
The older I get, the more I'm finding that I look like my grandmother. I've never looked like anyone in my family before, but on this trip I realized that I'm looking more and more like her. We have the same high forehead, the same round nose, and the same mouth. It's kind of nice to look like someone in the family for once.
Spending time with my family in Florida was wonderful. My family down there all use to live up North, and when we were kids we saw my aunt and cousins constantly. It was really your traditional Italian family. Lots of Sundays spent at Grandmas house for pasta and gravy, kids running around all over the place, and the adults sitting around the kitchen table gossiping for hours on end. It's perhaps the most vivid memory of my childhood. Constant food and sitting around the table talking. The few times we all get together now we all fall right back into that routine, and it's like no time at all has passed by. The only change is that now I'm one of the adults sitting around the kitchen table gossiping and my cousins kids are the ones running around the house. I realize more and more how precious these moments are, and how absolutely lucky I am to have these people in my lives, especially my grandmother.
Before leaving I had made my grandmother a photobook of the family from the time she married my grandfather until now. Not only she adored it, but the whole family was having a great time laughing over old memories. Luckily my grandmother's dementia doesn't effect her memories from long ago. She knew who everyone in the photos was, and was able to tell us all kinds of stories about the pictures.
I would have liked to have taken a picture of the entire family, but my two of my cousins weren't speaking to each other while I was there so I had to see them separately. We were able to get a partial picture of 4 generations of our family. My grandmother, my mom and her sister, my cousin and I and her two kids.
My cousin and I grew up like sisters. We are less than a year apart, and always took all kinds of dancing and swimming lessons together. Honestly I always thought it was better than having a sister. She went home at the end of the night. Sisters with no real competition. Nowadays our lives are very different, but she's still my sister.
With her older brother. He was a couple years older than us, and was always the ringleader of all questionable activity. If we were doing something we weren't supposed to be doing, he was the reason why. I'm just sad I didn't get any shots of me and my younger cousin. He's about my brother's age, but the two of us always got along great together when we were kids.
And one last shot of the three generations of my little branch of the family. My mom, my gram and me. This picture was taken one afternoon when my feet were painfully swollen. I was nearly moved to tears when my grandmother spent the afternoon fussing over me like I was a little girl, making me put my feet up on the couch and not letting me get up for anything.
My stay at my grandmother's house was way too short. I enjoyed all my days at Disney, but I was a bit sad that I lost one day with my family. Before I knew it I was on a plane heading back home again. My parents were staying on for another week, so I was flying back alone. I had good weather, but it was one of the worst flights I've ever been on. They kept the fasten seatbelts on nearly the entire flight, and it you could feel the plane just dropping a bit every so often. A few times I felt like I was on Tower of Terror. I kept trying to focus on watching my ipod, and ignore the fact that my stomach was getting more and more upset. I was having flashbacks to when my grandmother was still able to fly alone, and she would always insist on someone flying with her because if the plane went down she didn't want to go down alone.
That's what I was thinking of. Luckily the plane finally smoothed out, but I was never so happy as when we landed. Bad as my flight was, my parents return flight a week later was much, much worse. They kept trying to land their plane during the middle of a storm with gale force winds. Finally they rerouted them to another airport where they had to pay for limo service to get home. Meanwhile I was stuck in White Plains trying to find a way home in which a tree wasn't down blocking the road. It was a mess. When I got home, the sun was out, and every flake of that blizzard was gone. Ahhh!
All in all it was a wonderful trip. The Disney part of the trip really helped bring a bit of magic back to me, and I was no longer dreading my fall trip as I had been before I left. Never underestimate the healing powers of an unplanned, fly by the seat of your pants trip to Disney. Getting to see my family was icing on the cake. I was very happy that I had made the trip, and that the Disney magic wasn't lost to me. I had just misplaced it for a few months.
Thanks for joining in for both my trip reports! I'm hoping that my next one will be a much more positive one than this last one!
