amazingact21
Upendi
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2010
- Messages
- 6,321
If there were a record for most updates leading up to a Disney trip report, I'm pretty sure I would be the winner. So sorry, everyone, for taking so long to get to the good stuff. Next update, I promise!
July 7th and 8th, Part 1
When one finishes an international flight and travels through multiple time zones, the best course of action is to immediately rest and orient yourself into your new surroundings. Since that meant Alex, myself, and co. were arriving at my MIL’s house at 8:30 at night, we should have unpacked and gone right to sleep.
We should have….
Unfortunately, part of the reason we were in Florida in July was because Alex’s brother was turning 40, and everyone decided to throw a big party for him.
So inside the house our little jetlagged selves moved, where we were greeted my Mimi (the MIL), Alex’s brother, Alex’s sister, and Alex’s other sister. With them were his aunt and cousin. And his brother in-law. And a VERY excited 3 year old niece. And a 9 month old nephew we had not had the pleasure to meet yet.
There was a lot of swaying on our feet and yawning, but we managed to do it. We visited and chatted until 10 o’clock, in which someone (I think it was the aunt) had the good sense to say, “Let’s let them go to bed, they’re exhausted!”
Much to the 3 year old niece’s disappointment, Landon and Evie crashed immediately. They were all bunking together, and I’m pretty sure she had grand plans of staying up late and causing mischief.
Little did she know of Evie’s love of sleep.
Before her love of snack food comes her adoration of rest. My girl loves nothing more than a good night’s sleep in her own bed. On school mornings, I go into her room and wake her and leave the light on and sheets thrown off.
Still she slumbers on.
It’s not until Alex goes in 10-15 minutes later and physically picks her up and plops her unceremoniously on the floor does she awaken from her slumber.
She was our gift after Landon. The universe said, “Here, you have suffered through sleepless nights long enough. Have a good sleeper.”
And we have thanked the universe since.
Fortunately, our non-sleeper was so tired from his exciting excursion with the airline seats and the airport’s trashcan that even he did not stir until six the following morning.
For one of the first times ever since flying international, we all seemed to sleep well and adjust to our new time zone.
Hooray!!!
There’s a first time for everything.
This first day of vacation was a busy one, what with birthday cake and pool time and puppy cuddles.
There’s nothing more fun than enjoying a 10 month old Goldendoodle without any of the responsibility of ownership. I got to pet and walk this little gem and let her mom (Mimi) handle the drama when she snuck off with the paper from a birthday card envelope.
Ahh, that’s the life.
There were also puzzles and card games and a clay creation from Landon:
I present a Kion figurine. Toy for reference.
Now, I’m sure many of you readers are shocked I haven’t brought up THE INCIDENT yet.
You remember the one?
Involving a certain set of tickets and their lack of presence in our bags.
Don’t worry.
Amidst the sugar and the sunscreen and the salty doggie kisses, those tickets were on our minds.
Kind of hard to ignore a potentially disastrous mistake.
Early on in the day, on visit number 1 to the pool, Alex borrowed his sister’s phone and called Shades of Green. He basically begged them to give him some direction.
By this point, we had signed on to our MDE app and saw that we had the tickets linked. We just needed Shades to reassure us that we wouldn’t need to activate them, like we have had to do in the past.
The person on the other end of the line said the Disney tickets were fine. No issue.
It was the Universal ones that could be iffy.
Because the “tickets” were just a printed sheet of paper with a barcode attached, there wasn’t anything official about them. Unfortunately, the Shades representative said there was no way of knowing if Universal would accept the ticket numbers we had scanned into the app before our trip or not.
It was going to be a gamble.
Oh boy.
Personally, I wanted to let the fear and worry wash over me and have a full blown panic attack. But being around half a dozen family members, four of them little kids who wanted my attention, put a damper on my stress.
No time to freak out, you gotta go play Candyland. Get to it, Auntie Alicia.
Turn that frown upside down and hop in the pool for some Marco Polo.
Really, there was nothing to be done at that time.
We “should” have our Disney tickets squared away, and that was our first set of theme parks, anyway. Alex and I agreed that we would go do Disney and figure out Universal down the road.
Take one hurdle at a time.
What a crazy concept.
My husband is so wise.
I knew he was a keeper.
*****
Naturally, on the day we were to check in to our AirBnB and officially start our Disney portion of the trip, the four of us were excited and anxious to get going.
Naturally, that meant we left about two hours later than we planned.
Good grief.
That’s the joy of trying to break away from family, friends. First, we had to use water balloons that were bought and forgotten about the previous day. Then, we had to wait for individuals to return from a late lunch so we could say goodbye. And let’s not forget we promised to walk the puppy one more time and little feet insisted on tagging along.
Poor Alex’s eye was twitching by the time we got in the car and discovered we wouldn’t be arriving at our rental house until 5 o’clock.
Yikes.
But that’s no so bad. We can make that work.
Oh, foolish, foolish girl.
Someone – and by that I mean ME – didn’t look at where the AirBnB was located, nor take into consideration the time of day we would be traveling to said destination.
In case you all were wondering….driving on 192 during rush hour is a terrible idea.
There’s so many lights and places to merge and people cutting across lanes.
Who needs a relaxing start to a trip?
Alex and I prefer to take the hardest route possible.
Gets the ol’ ticker pumping. Makes sure we’re alive and alert.
Because our choices were working out so well up to this point, we decided to make a last minute decision and go to the Publix near our neighborhood along the way.
Ever since I moved overseas, I am a little fascinated about American grocery stores. There’s just SO MANY SELECTIONS.
I love that if I want goldfish crackers I can pick regular, extra cheddar, Mickey shaped, jumbo sized, etc.
(We picked princess, by the way.)
All this to say, I probably spent way too long in the grocery store. I had a list, but is a list really adequate when you get five selections per item written down?
Then again, I remember reaching the fresh produce aisle and the eggs and being sorely disappointed. When I’m feeling like Evie and need a snack-binge, sure American stores are the clear winner.
But nothing beats European fruits and veggies. And egg sizes.
There, I said it.
I’m ready for the backlash.
Since we dropped a ridiculous amount of money on food, it would be logical to assume we’d take the items straight home and cook ourselves a nice, healthy dinner.
But who wants to cook after spending an hour looking at and selecting groceries?!?
Not me, that’s for sure.
I made Alex pull into a Taco Bell drive through and grab us some quick, sodium-ladden food to go.
I love Taco Bell.
Yeah, I said it.
This update is just full of risky topics.
Besides serving me tortillas and cheese, two necessary food groups for me, Taco Bell is cheap. The four of us can walk away for under twenty bucks, and knowing we were about to be going to Disney….I needed the monetary win.
So with groceries in the trunk, kids buckled in the back, and piping hot tacos in my lap, I ussured Alex onwards to our AirBnB. It was time to see our home for the next ten days!
Up Next…We Were Due for Some Good Luck
July 7th and 8th, Part 1
When one finishes an international flight and travels through multiple time zones, the best course of action is to immediately rest and orient yourself into your new surroundings. Since that meant Alex, myself, and co. were arriving at my MIL’s house at 8:30 at night, we should have unpacked and gone right to sleep.
We should have….
Unfortunately, part of the reason we were in Florida in July was because Alex’s brother was turning 40, and everyone decided to throw a big party for him.
So inside the house our little jetlagged selves moved, where we were greeted my Mimi (the MIL), Alex’s brother, Alex’s sister, and Alex’s other sister. With them were his aunt and cousin. And his brother in-law. And a VERY excited 3 year old niece. And a 9 month old nephew we had not had the pleasure to meet yet.
There was a lot of swaying on our feet and yawning, but we managed to do it. We visited and chatted until 10 o’clock, in which someone (I think it was the aunt) had the good sense to say, “Let’s let them go to bed, they’re exhausted!”
Much to the 3 year old niece’s disappointment, Landon and Evie crashed immediately. They were all bunking together, and I’m pretty sure she had grand plans of staying up late and causing mischief.
Little did she know of Evie’s love of sleep.
Before her love of snack food comes her adoration of rest. My girl loves nothing more than a good night’s sleep in her own bed. On school mornings, I go into her room and wake her and leave the light on and sheets thrown off.
Still she slumbers on.
It’s not until Alex goes in 10-15 minutes later and physically picks her up and plops her unceremoniously on the floor does she awaken from her slumber.
She was our gift after Landon. The universe said, “Here, you have suffered through sleepless nights long enough. Have a good sleeper.”
And we have thanked the universe since.
Fortunately, our non-sleeper was so tired from his exciting excursion with the airline seats and the airport’s trashcan that even he did not stir until six the following morning.
For one of the first times ever since flying international, we all seemed to sleep well and adjust to our new time zone.
Hooray!!!
There’s a first time for everything.
This first day of vacation was a busy one, what with birthday cake and pool time and puppy cuddles.
There’s nothing more fun than enjoying a 10 month old Goldendoodle without any of the responsibility of ownership. I got to pet and walk this little gem and let her mom (Mimi) handle the drama when she snuck off with the paper from a birthday card envelope.
Ahh, that’s the life.
There were also puzzles and card games and a clay creation from Landon:
I present a Kion figurine. Toy for reference.
Now, I’m sure many of you readers are shocked I haven’t brought up THE INCIDENT yet.
You remember the one?
Involving a certain set of tickets and their lack of presence in our bags.
Don’t worry.
Amidst the sugar and the sunscreen and the salty doggie kisses, those tickets were on our minds.
Kind of hard to ignore a potentially disastrous mistake.
Early on in the day, on visit number 1 to the pool, Alex borrowed his sister’s phone and called Shades of Green. He basically begged them to give him some direction.
By this point, we had signed on to our MDE app and saw that we had the tickets linked. We just needed Shades to reassure us that we wouldn’t need to activate them, like we have had to do in the past.
The person on the other end of the line said the Disney tickets were fine. No issue.
It was the Universal ones that could be iffy.
Because the “tickets” were just a printed sheet of paper with a barcode attached, there wasn’t anything official about them. Unfortunately, the Shades representative said there was no way of knowing if Universal would accept the ticket numbers we had scanned into the app before our trip or not.
It was going to be a gamble.
Oh boy.
Personally, I wanted to let the fear and worry wash over me and have a full blown panic attack. But being around half a dozen family members, four of them little kids who wanted my attention, put a damper on my stress.
No time to freak out, you gotta go play Candyland. Get to it, Auntie Alicia.
Turn that frown upside down and hop in the pool for some Marco Polo.
Really, there was nothing to be done at that time.
We “should” have our Disney tickets squared away, and that was our first set of theme parks, anyway. Alex and I agreed that we would go do Disney and figure out Universal down the road.
Take one hurdle at a time.
What a crazy concept.
My husband is so wise.
I knew he was a keeper.
*****
Naturally, on the day we were to check in to our AirBnB and officially start our Disney portion of the trip, the four of us were excited and anxious to get going.
Naturally, that meant we left about two hours later than we planned.
Good grief.
That’s the joy of trying to break away from family, friends. First, we had to use water balloons that were bought and forgotten about the previous day. Then, we had to wait for individuals to return from a late lunch so we could say goodbye. And let’s not forget we promised to walk the puppy one more time and little feet insisted on tagging along.
Poor Alex’s eye was twitching by the time we got in the car and discovered we wouldn’t be arriving at our rental house until 5 o’clock.
Yikes.
But that’s no so bad. We can make that work.
Oh, foolish, foolish girl.
Someone – and by that I mean ME – didn’t look at where the AirBnB was located, nor take into consideration the time of day we would be traveling to said destination.
In case you all were wondering….driving on 192 during rush hour is a terrible idea.
There’s so many lights and places to merge and people cutting across lanes.
Who needs a relaxing start to a trip?
Alex and I prefer to take the hardest route possible.
Gets the ol’ ticker pumping. Makes sure we’re alive and alert.
Because our choices were working out so well up to this point, we decided to make a last minute decision and go to the Publix near our neighborhood along the way.
Ever since I moved overseas, I am a little fascinated about American grocery stores. There’s just SO MANY SELECTIONS.
I love that if I want goldfish crackers I can pick regular, extra cheddar, Mickey shaped, jumbo sized, etc.
(We picked princess, by the way.)
All this to say, I probably spent way too long in the grocery store. I had a list, but is a list really adequate when you get five selections per item written down?
Then again, I remember reaching the fresh produce aisle and the eggs and being sorely disappointed. When I’m feeling like Evie and need a snack-binge, sure American stores are the clear winner.
But nothing beats European fruits and veggies. And egg sizes.
There, I said it.
I’m ready for the backlash.
Since we dropped a ridiculous amount of money on food, it would be logical to assume we’d take the items straight home and cook ourselves a nice, healthy dinner.
But who wants to cook after spending an hour looking at and selecting groceries?!?
Not me, that’s for sure.
I made Alex pull into a Taco Bell drive through and grab us some quick, sodium-ladden food to go.
I love Taco Bell.
Yeah, I said it.
This update is just full of risky topics.
Besides serving me tortillas and cheese, two necessary food groups for me, Taco Bell is cheap. The four of us can walk away for under twenty bucks, and knowing we were about to be going to Disney….I needed the monetary win.
So with groceries in the trunk, kids buckled in the back, and piping hot tacos in my lap, I ussured Alex onwards to our AirBnB. It was time to see our home for the next ten days!
Up Next…We Were Due for Some Good Luck
) and Matty and I were amazed at the range of drugs you could buy without prescription plus they sold booze and chocolate too. I mean it was a real 1-stop-shop
