Orlando!

Every June Don has a show to work in Orlando, and for the past 3 years, the kids and I have joined him for that and a little fun at Magic Kingdom.  Each year we discuss whether we want to make it an annual thing, mostly because we don't want to over-indulge our kids. Prior to his yearly visit, we could count on one hand how many times we had each visited Disney, and we would really like to make it a very special thing for our kids as well - not to mention that it is ridiculously expensive to go, even for a day.  But each year, we're so ready to get out of town for a few days, that we do it any way.  For the second year in a row, I drove down with the kids (alone). For the second year in a row, I swore I would never do it again. To quote Mason - "why didn't we fly in an airplane, Mommy." Good question, kid.  Never the less, it was fun.

Here we are dining at Waffle House on the way down.  Maybe Mason wasn't the happiest camper at this point.

We slept at a Hampton Inn in nowheresville GA. The kids were adamant that we had stayed there before. I tried to explain that all Hampton Inns looked alike. To no avail.

And finally we arrived at the Gaylord Palms (aka Paradise). 

I lost Mason at the pool within the first 3 minutes of being there. Some nice lady with a walkie-talkie returned him to me. He was so distraught that I couldn't even get onto him for not staying with me. Needless to say, he stuck close the rest of the trip.

The pool was amazing! There was even an onsite water park.  True to form, Mason went down all 4 water slides and Kate stuck to the short ones. 

We take a very laid back approach to Disney, unlike probably 98% of the people there. We only do one park on one day, and we didn't even walk into Frontier land or Adventure land this year. Yeah, maybe that's not getting your money's worth, but my sanity was in tact at the end of the day.

Of course M enjoyed the roller coaster, but he also had to ride this. Driving these cars is probably my least favorite thing to do at Disney. They're hot and slow, but he loved it. He also doesn't follow the "no bumping the car in front of you" rule. Wait... that's Don.

I think we may have found a replacement for the navy Crocs. He hasn't asked to wear them since we got home. Yay!!

On day 2 we went to Sea World!! They loved it. Espeically Kate, who says that given the choice, she'd rather go to Sea World than Disney.  What?! Yep. Maybe we're getting past the princess stage. I mean, she did wear her Cinderella dress, but took it off before we even entered Magic Kingdom.

Sea World was rainy - here we are before the deluge.

And then we headed home!