As we had laid in our tents the night before, Suzy and I both awake but beginning to relax there was a lot of rooting about. Now, mind you, it was past midnight after a grueling 14+ mile, 17 hour nonstop, Disney-palooza. And I had taken a lot of drugs. But I laid there wondering what on earth Suzy and Milo had lost.
I am deaf in my left ear so I have no perception of where sound is coming from. So after a LONG time Suzy says from her tent, "You hear that?" And I said, "What did you lose?" To which her response was a ridiculous amount of giggling.
Because she and Milo were tucked neatly in bed.
And had never been up.
So after getting her breath back she said, "What on earth did you think Milo and I were doing digging in the leaves and dirt at 1 am? It's an animal, silly."
Well, now, this made a lot more sense. Because it was prolonged digging and rustling all about.
I mention this here, instead of the night before, as I had forgotten about it when I woke up.
But I shouldn't have.
At 8 am I woke up. I could breath! Yea! I lay there snug as a bug, reading on my iphone and listening to all the birds. I tried to isolate a single bird call I knew and I couldn't come up with one. What ARE those Florida birds? Were I to camp again I'd have to take a bird book. It bothered me a bit to not have a visual on the birds as I listened to them. But they were happy and that made me happy.
At 8:30 the Suzy clan began to stir and there was a LOT of shushing as they were trying to not wake up the 3 a.m.ers. But really, we were all living on a tiny square with no walls between us. Shushing and whispering doesn't really stop everyone else from hearing you. Plus, it's outside. A tent doesn't stop bright sunlight.
By 9 a.m. everyone was awake and Suzy and I, still in jammies, had gotten breakfast going. Pancakes and bacon. But we only had one griddle and we had 11 people so we made a big rule that NO CHILDREN were allowed in the food tent so no one burned themselves and then we fed everyone from youngest to eldest. Even though we stated the rule clearly, my most stressful thing this morning was stopping those kids from burning themselves. Why do you have to tell kids things a million times? Why?
Milo and Donald had work to do, and at one point the wind whipped and knocked the food tent over a bit! So they battened down the hatches and fussed. And their reward was to get food last. Poor guys.
While all of this was going on I dug for pancake syrup, etc. And discovered the bagels had been eaten by a creature!
Now going WAY back in Suzy's history when she and Milo were first married they lived in a trailer in a field. Which means field mice. And Suzy did NOT like those mice. That is an understatement. So she was not a happy camper about the nibbles and we knew the whole kitchen would need arranged.
By 10 am the kids were all in bathing suits and ready to go to the pool with their dads. Three negative things happened here, in addition to the mice bites. They didn't effect our entire trip but they did take a bit away from what was supposed to be a chill out morning.
First, I was spraying Boo and at some moment she opened her eyes and turned and sprayed sunblock DIRECTLY into her eye. Straight in. We rinsed it but she screamed like you can't believe because it HURT and it was brilliant red for a couple days causing me a bit of stress.
This led to number two: I was so traumatized by over sunblocking Boo that I did a terrible job on Ariel. So her poor little face burnt to a crisp. So Boo's eyeball was red for the next 4 days and Ariel's face was red for the next 4 days. Bad mother award right here.
Finally, at the very last minute McQueen wanted his sunblock put on in a specific way by a specific person at a specific time. I literally thought Milo was going to have a vein pop right out of his head. And McQueen should be VERY grateful we were in a public campground going to a very public pool at Disney World or let me tell you, there would have been a knock down, drag out fight.
And I'm not sure if you ever fought with your parents when you were a little kid, but I did. And if you had good parents, like I did, you don't generally win the fights you pick with your parents when you are 7. You lose. Big time.
But we were at Disney World. And Suzy and I had work to do so we needed McQueen to be at the pool and happy. Not being disciplined at the campground.
I was not involved with this, but Suzy and Milo did work it out with him without losing their parental authority and without him losing any privileges. But it was touch and go.
Once the sound of their voices faded away, Suzy and I got to work. First, we cleaned and re-organized our own tents. Then she braved Buzz and Charming's tent. While I rearranged the food tent and secured our food and trashed everything eaten by the animal(s).
By this point it was HOT in our tents and we were sweating big time. But we were pretty much done and headed over for some peaceful shower time.
What mom doesn't love a quiet shower all by herself with no interruptions? Sweet luxury!
Here are the pictures from the morning:
My reorganized food tent (taken on a different day) with the tables on the side and not the center and the coffee pot on a table and not a container. This worked a LOT better than the previous arrangement.
While Suzy and I finished up and took a tiny breather, everyone arrived. Milo had been texting Suzy as the kids would have stayed at the pool all day but we didn't want them getting too hungry because low blood sugar when you have 7 kids is a really big deal and the fastest way to have cranky, whiny, in trouble kids. When he and she felt it was time to pull the plug, they all came back.
The BBB gel in my girl's hair was mostly out. But they went into the showers and were able to get the rest out themselves.
I had wanted Boo to shower with the big girls but she WOULD NOT. Grrr. So I ended up letting her off the hook and got the big girls 100% ready, hair braided, and them eating snacks and reading books and then took Boo over to the wheelchair shower and was able to shower her and dress her while being dressed myself and not getting wet. Did I mention how much I loved that wheelchair shower?
I brought her back to the food tent and braided her hair while she ate some cheese and pepperoni and I had a Coke Zero.
I absolutely LOVED the way my girls looked this day. I loved these hair bows.
Boo, however, was immediately back in the dirt getting dirty. Oh well.
This picture was taken on AK day but I include here as this morning we got our campsite 100% the way we wanted it and it was a wonderful home. You can see just how great and what a great Disney home it was from this picture:
We opted to drive to Epcot. This was fast and gave us an opportunity to ride the new trams. It also gave Donald and I a chance to get briefly lost on the way getting out of the Fort.
Jack-Jack took the few extra moments they had to express his happiness at being at WDW:
Finally we are definitely going the right way:
Always take a picture of the sign at the end of the row you parked in!
We loved the new tram doors. It made it feel much more secure. And once you figured out how to open them, it was great.
We stopped to check out the Toy Story topiaries. And there was a Photopass photographer there to catch the moment:
And this is one of my favorite photos of the entire trip. The photographer told us to make silly faces. And for some reason this led Suzy and I to make our "check us into the mental hospital" faces.
I, especially, look bizarre.
The topiaries, on the other hand, looked gorgeous. I LOVED them. I LOVED the Epcot F&G show. LOVED LOVED LOVED.
I kept texting my mom photos of every flower I saw which led her to say to me around Thursday, "Are you only looking at flowers or are you doing other things at Disney World?"
The Mickey Mouse display, a Photopass photo:
That is where I leave you tonight. I hope I don't bore you to death with Flower pictures today. The first day I had a zillion BBB photos. This day I took a ridiculous amount of F&G pictures and felt very self-righteous about the restraint I showed as I wanted to take a picture every two seconds. Not to mention the Photopass came with bonus F&G photos of just the flowers and topiaries.
We were on our way to Mexico to begin our "drink around the world" plan.
Stay tuned for that!
Thanks!
That is definitely a drawback to camping. Any guesses on what it was? Your food tent does look better organized now, though.
Second, the dryer only took 1 cycle to dry my denim. Ive never been to a public laundry where that was true so good to know!
Thanks for the kind words, Perla. But how could you forget to mention my hat. 
all Disney characters. The more the better. But Duffy is a build a bear, not a beloved Disney favorite.
