Before I continue on, first I thought I would share just one of the decorated bands. I had three after all...
The night at Comfort Suites was a hard one for me. I woke constantly thinking it HAD to be time to get up. With so many people in the room, I was nervous about us all getting up on time.
At 3am, I heard Alex was up. He showered ahead of all of us and so by 3:30 I figured it was time for me to get up and get ready.
Honestly, I was quite surprised when we were all ready by 4:30am. I figured this might bode well for the trip, even if I was EXTREMELY tired since I didn't sleep much that night.
A few early morning bad pictures since I forgot to take them of the room when we first checked in.
Excuse the unmade bed... this was the king in the separate room.
The hotel staff new we were leaving early so had breakfast packaged up for us. We grabbed our bagged breakfast (consisting of granola bars, peanut butter crackers, banana, mint and a water bottle) and headed to the shuttle to go to the airport.
We totally lucked out in going through security. We did not have to go through inspection.
Once through the security, I had to go to Starbucks. Now, there was some debate for me back in November. You see there was a special mug that was on sale for the day after Thanksgiving. This mug offered free espresso beverages in the month of January. I wasn't sure if I would get the best use of it given how long our trip would be. I chose to get it and so getting a coffee at Starbucks that morning was IMPORTANT to me.
Even though we had those nicely bagged snacks, we all felt we needed a bit more. I picked up a cinnamon twist with my coffee. Steve and Kira got breakfast burritos and Qdoba and shared with Zoe and Alex. Josh got a salad. (for breakfast
)
Then we waited.
I did not choose to get preboarding for Zoe. So we boarded in the A and B group. We were able to sit all in one row and it worked nicely.
The flight to Milwaukee was uneventful (even getting to see snow and a frozen lake) and we landed on time.
The plan had been to get lunch there. However there was no dinning options. Well, there was an Auntie Annes Pretzels so we did get some of those. Mainly though, there was a "everything store" like Hudson News that had Wisconsin cheese... so we bought some of that an nibbled on pretzels and cheese as we tried to fill our three hour layover. There was some "shoe football" that took place until Kira and I put the kibosh on it. I insist that the zombie apocalypse will begin due to shenanigans like this.
Our flight to MCO was delayed by 15 minutes and we were happy it was not longer.
We boarded again in A/B groups and sat in the same row. We were all situated when the last passengers filtered onto the plane. When there was no room for their carry on, Kira was asked to take hers down and store it under her seat. Now - really, her bag is way to big for that. However she did what was asked (even though we all found it a tad irritating that someone who had slightly oversized bag coming on later pushed her out like that)
We slept off and on until we arrived and managed to take a bio break at some point. Even though again I didn't get Zoe preboarding status - our seats were near enough to the restroom that dragging supplies to it was not too conspicuous.
Finally we arrived MCO!
And we of course made our way to the first monorail of the trip.
Zoe had to have her traditional photo taken
Once we made it to magical express, we parted ways. Kira and Josh were headed to Pop and we were headed to POR. I was very excited to see we were on new DME buses!
Turns out Kira was on one too. The new video was a nice improvement.
Once we arrived to POR I went to check in while the rest went for bio breaks and to see how long Boatwrights was open. The line for check in was rather long, but it moved quickly.
Our room was in a great location. Room 9084 in Oak Manor. But before we even went to the room, we knew we had to get dinner. Boatwrights was closing just as we got there and Riverside mill would not be open too much longer.
We decided to use 2 dp quick service credits to get a pizza, cookies and some cheesecake. We also picked up our mugs that we got for being on the dinning plan.
It was then time to get to the room. We were surprising Zoe with the room category we had. She didn't even know where exactly we were staying. We had a pool view royal room.
We got settled in a bit and were in bed by midnight. It had been quite the long day.
Next Up:
1/9 - Kids Race/Expo, DTD and MK (kinda) Part 1
.
How very exciting that you are going down for PHM weekend! Don't say "just the 10k" You should be proud to be able to do 6.2 miles. So many people can't even go a half mile. And as for nerves... I get nervous before each race...even my 5ks. Plus... the princess weekend is so very fun. Don't get me wrong, the Donald was great. But the fact that it was a weekend devoted to a wide array of races and had a lot of men... it just was a different sort of feel.
So glad you are gonna read along! I hope to really get going on this report today so maybe you will have something to read over the weekend. 
we have to take care of that way.
