Thursday night we packed up all the infinite amounts of things we had (and posted on here, some of this will be a little duplicate) into the van. Ready to go!!!!
Friday morning finally dawned. Well, kinda. Pre-dawn. I know a lot of people who drive to Disney get up before dawn and get going. That's great. I could do that.
But we were not doing that. We weren't leaving until early afternoon. But I was awake pre-dawn.
I was happily sleeping, no problems there. And Donald is awake. First, tossing and turning in bed. Then getting up and "quietly moving about." Finally at 5 am I said, "What are you doing?" And he said, "Today's the day. Time to rise and shine."
Sigh. I was awake and today WAS the day so how could I go back to sleep?
Not until 6:50 (that, right 2 HOURS later) did the girl's alarm go off. Donald, who yes was still at home because he didn't really have anything to do at 5 am either, says, "We've decided you don't have to go to school today."
Both girls start jumping up and down THRILLED! Till I said, "That is a lie. You DO have to go to school." Donald was laughing hysterically and I said, "You are evil." He says, "Why am I evil? You're the one making them go to school." Grrr...
So girls on bus, both Donald and I headed to work. I had deliberately left this till last as I knew it would be a definite timed thing that would take 2 hours. It did. But as I left, of course, there are the usual goodbye conversations, last minute conversation, etc. By the time I headed out, I was in full panic! I h3ad gotten up at 5 am and was still gonna have to kick my booty into gear to be ready on time!
The moment I got home I was nauseous (typical for me when excited and nervous) and went into full out rush around like a maniac mode. I cleaned up the remaining things in the house. Realized the front toilet was broken and backed up. Urgh! Spent 10 minutes I didn't have fixing that and cursing the thing.
And then did the one thing I REALLY wanted to skip. Frost & decorate the cupcakes. I looked at that bag of cupcakes and thought, "I'm gonna throw these in the trash."
I had myself all talked into trashing them when Boo asked me what I was doing. Sigh. She LOVED doing this so much and this was the thing that made her even more over the top excited. So it was worth it. We then made Mickey shaped Krispie treats.
Donald came home at this point and proclaimed them a success. He then worked to get the electronics and a few other things wrapped up. And I turned on the oven and quickly wrapped all the frozen empanadas & calzones in foil.
While the oven was coming to temp I swept and mopped the kitchen and Donald vacuumed up the living room.
I know, I know. This is EXCITING stuff. But don't you all do this before you go? It's just important, ya know? Even though we had a house sitter we still wanted to make sure everything was clean before we left.
At this point it was time to get the girls. So Donald ran to get them, running into Suzy, of course, getting her boys. I was busy baking off all the empanadas and laying on a neck roll as my neck was badly out of place and I wanted to help it a bit before the long ride.
He came home and by 1:40 we were at the end of our road awaiting the Suzy clan. Who never came. We were perfectly timed and knew they should be there so I texted her.
And here is the story of what they were doing: We had both bought window markers, which is a great tip for a cheap way to get your vehicle in on the party from the very beginning. We had put them in the kid's travel bags. Suzy and her group pulled them out to do a quick decorate before we left. While the adults were using the facilities, McQueen decided to do a bit of decorating on his own. He is 7, by the way. And quite creative.
So when Charming and Milo came out to hop in and leave they were confronted with a "Mickey" but NOT a Mickey Mouse. No, it was an obscene mickey. There is no photo of this as this is a family board and McQueen cried so hard at Charming and Milo laughing their heads off at him that Suzy was forced to Windex it off before we had a chance to see it. But she did draw me a secondary version and if you imagine the bottom part of Mickey's head stretched out very far and the ears of Mickey smaller and up further, you will have the gist.
In the midst of McQueen's sobbing Suzy said, "Well, it didn't really look like Mickey Mouse." To which McQueen answered, "Anyone can draw a Mickey, I was trying to be creative."
Once I got this text and read it aloud to the family everyone was a LOT more patient as we, too, were laughing like crazy.
Soon they were beside us, we saw the drawing and handed off their bags of treats. Since all of the adults had been way to busy to eat lunch and Charming had also missed lunch, we went ahead and ate them all right then as a 2 o'clock lunch. Because they were smallish, the ears were rather a waste. But other than that they were awesome and a great idea. I was on the look out for a bigger cookie cutter.
Here is Boo devouring her second one (yes, she ate the ears. They were pretty much straight pie crust so it was her speed.) The headphones were AWESOME! I've never bought little kid ones before and we are all tortured by listening to whatever she is watching. But this time she wore headphones, the big girls watched a different movie, and Donald and I listened to tunes. Win-win-win. LOVE the headphones. $5.00 at Big Lots. And they folded too!
The first craft was bead stringing. Boo LOVEs this and is very good with her hands. I was happy enough to have total silence and peace for a good long time, though I was wearing a tremendous amount of beads by the end of this evening and if I took off any of Boo's lovely creations she immediately hollered at me. I could have done without the gigantic bracelet that I was forced to wear.
While this was going on inside, outside it was POURING! We were all a bit worried about Suzy's car top carrier that was fabric and I remembered I had forgotten the tarp. Curses.
The next craft was pipe cleaners and google eyes. Kids LOVE this. I just print instructions for pipe cleaner animals off the net with photos and they go to town.
We also were playing the license plate game. I asked Suzy if they were playing and she said her van was so packed the kids couldn't see out the windows.
We found 43 states on this trip! Fun. At least for me.
Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE 70 mph???
We stopped whenever anyone needed to. That's how we like to do it. We do make people go, but not obsessively. As a matter of fact when we stopped at 6:30 at a McDonald's in NC Boo said, "Are you gonna make me pee?"
Maybe a LITTLE obsessive.
After dinner I had my first cupcake. OMG@!@!!!! It was soooo good. So happy I hadn't trashed them. The brownie cupcake wrapped around the cookie dough center with fudgy frosting and mini oreos on top: rockin'!
We played Disney Who Am I? after dinner, then watched Mulan. After that our Mulan laid down across the floor and fell deep asleep. Boo finally fell asleep at her normal bed time. Ariel didn't sleep on the entire 10 hour drive.
At 11:45 we entered out hotel room. Sigh. I'll say only this and you can fill in all the blanks. I checked for bedbugs thoroughly and for other kinds of bugs. No bedbugs but the other? Also, our toilet was broken and ran all the time, and yes, onto the floor. Shuddering while pondering it.
The bed was comfortable and I had been awake since 5, so I slept fine. Which I guess was the point. But still. We won't be sleeping there again!
It had been a great day, for a day that started with work and ended in a 10 hour drive and a hotel dive.
What would our sleeping quarters be like the next night???
Hooray! It's almost time to leave!
I'm going to go ahead and say have a fun and safe trip!!!! now because I'll be in class tomorrow night and won't get the chance again. I'm working on my masters and taking weekend classes. (yuck) But I'll be done in May!
I am so excited, I could hardly get to sleep last night just thinking about it. We will be in the World June 5-9th.
Laundry piled high. ugh. My spring break plans include reorganizing and cleaning out that mess. I like your green signs that you made, very nice.
I'll keep working on all of them. My kids are early birds anyway so they won't be the problem. It is just their parents who like to sleep late!
You don't think of pillows taking a lot of room but they are very poofy.
It is official, we can not fit in a double/double room. I was awake by 4:45am and no way could fall back asleep and looked over at poor Buzz in the other bed. I have no idea how he was not falling out of that bed. His head and feet were hanging off the side. Fortunately, they're kids and didn't seem worse for the wear the next day. But needless to say, we like Perla and her family, left and didn't look behind, never planning on staying there again.
