A wonderful trip

Okay I'm sure this will be long...

Tuesday morning was almost surreal. I woke up and took and shower and did my hair and got dressed. Everyone was still sleeping so I then woke up Ashley and Alex and they got ready for school and we got their breakfast made. They made some cards for Rich while eating breakfast and I gave them hugs and kisses goodbye and they got on the bus. Then I loaded up my suitcase and carryon and went in and kissed Alyssa while she was sleeping, gave Angela a great big hug and kiss and handed her over to Sarah and I was off.

The ride to the airport was short. I was feeling a little bit of a runny nose and sinus pressure that morning and had thought to grab my sinus medicine, but thought it was probably the lack of sleep the night before and I'd be better after a good night sleep. I parked and the shuttle picked me up and we were headed to the terminal before I realized that I didn't even make note of where I had parked. The shuttle driver had given me a little paper though so I figured I was safe and would be able to find the car. I checked in and realized I hadn't eaten breakfast so I got a sonic breakfast burrito. After eating about half and drinking some OJ, I felt like I shouldn't eat more so I tossed the rest and it was time to board the plane anyway... I didn't want eggs and bacon smell going through the plane so I thought that would be for the best. During the first flight the sinus pressure increased and by the time we landed I had a full blown sinus headache. So... I hunted through the airport during my layover and found some sinus headache medicine and took that. I was nausious from the headache so I just ate a chex pretzle mix because I knew I needed something that would settle the tummy. The second flight was much better and I was able to relax and enjoy the flight. I read an entire book and had fun watching the boy and father that sat next to me on the plane. The boy was about 9-10 years old and they were going to WDW too.

So I got to Orlando, went down to the baggage claim and meet Rich and picked up my suitcase. We drove to our hotel and it was so pretty! It was the Wilderness Lodge and it's modeled after the lodge at Yellowstone National Park. Beautiful inside with all the woodwork and large grand lobby that was open to all the levels. After we dropped off our suitcases in our rooms and checked out the brochures and pamphlets that were in the room we headed out to dinner at the Disney boardwalk- like an outdoor mall full of disney stores. lol! We had sandwiches at the "Earl of Sandwich"- they were really good... I must have been really hungry because I polished off my sandwich before Rich did. Then we went and looked for some souveniers to take back for the kids. We got some christmas ornaments for each of them- Patriotic Mickey ears one for Alex (he's big into flag stuff right now); Cinderella and the Prince for Ashley; Tinkerbell for Alyssa (because she just reminds us of tinkerbell the way she is so petite); and Dumbo for Angela because she had so much fun riding the Dumbo ride this summer at Disneyland. Then we also got tinkerbell flip flops for Alyssa and princess flip flops for Ashley. At the hotel before we headed up to the room we stopped and got some cold medicine in the hotel store (Rich had come down with a cold too and had it before I got there). There wasn't much to choose from so we got benadryl for night time and sudafed for daytime.

Wednesday morning we got up and picked up fruit parfait's from the hotel cafe type thing and headed to MGM. It was fun and we had a great time- I loved the tower of terror ride, and the rockin rollercoaster was great. The stunt shows were lots of fun but as the day went on our colds got progressively worse. We had seen everything at MGM by about 3pm so we went back to the hotel and took a nap before going to dinner that night at the Polynesian Resort. It was so cool... we had a table right at the window and could see out to the lake and watch the halloween fireworks parade that they had going on. Our seats were so great that when we were being seated the server had to ask some people to move that had moved over from a table in the middle of the restaurant to watch. The food was good too and it was a fun restaurant- all the servers call you "cousin" and they bring you so much food- course after course after course. After dinner I asked a concierge where a drugstore was that we could go purchase some cold medicine at (because the sudafed and benadryl was not helping at all) and they gave me directions. Well we went and couldn't find it so it's 10:30 pm and we are driving around on the roads bordering WDW and trying to find a drugstore. Finally after driving for about 45 minutes we found one and got some medicine that we hoped would work better and some pocket pack tissues to carry around with us. We then went back to the hotel and fell fast asleep.

Thursday we got up and felt like we had slept a little better. We headed out to Epcot. We went on test track and that was lots of fun. There was no line so when we got back to the load/unload dock they let us go around a second time. Then we went on Mission space and both of us just about lost our breakfast. It is very very very very intense. We tried to walk it off and made our way through a couple of less intense rides and were finally ready to go on Soaring... but I still felt like I would upchuck if we went on it so we got some pretzels and went on the Finding Nemo ride. The ride got stuck because some kid decided to jump out of the ride car and that shut the entire operation down until they could verify the kid got back in the ride car and wasn't wondering through the ride. So.. I got to sit in the ride car for a good 30 minutes and that along with the pretzels allowed my stomach to calm down. Then we went on soaring... that was fun, but a little full of flip flops for my stomach. See I'm afraid of heights and the ride is as if you are in a hang glider gliding over California. So it's entirely the high heights feeling the entire time... it's a good thing we waited for my tummy to calm down before we went on it. lol! Then we got some lunch and spent the afternoon seeing some of the other shows and walking around through the "countries" in the world showcase. It was really interesting and they had some neat shows telling about all the different countries. By the end of the day though we were exhausted. We had a nice dinner at a mexican restaurant in the Mexico portion of the world showcase and then headed back to the hotel. We had originally planned to go to the Animal Kingdom park the next day, and then possibly go over to Universal studios on Saturday, but realized there was absolutely no way we could keep up with that fast pace. So we decided to take Friday off and just sleep in at the hotel and take it easy.

Friday we slept in till almost noon!!! Then we got up and went and got some lunch and went shopping. I've been needing to buy new shoes to exercise in for months and keep putting it off and the previous two days realized how badly my other shoes were for walking around in- so I wore my sandles the second day and realized they were better, but still gave me very sore feet by the end of the day. Rich made me go and get some good running shoes since I want to start running at the Y. I've never in my life bought shoes for that much, but they are really good and I think will be a good investment for me. They wound up being on sale so we got them for 30% less than they price said, but it was still a bit of sticker shock for me. Then we shopped a little bit. I found a t-shirt on clearance at Old Navy and coat for Alex since he needed one. We stopped at WalMart and picked up more medicine since we had gone through almost the entire box of meds we had bought wed night. Then we went back to the hotel and relaxed for an hour. I sat out on our balcony and read my book and Rich watched some baseball or football or something... lol! Dinner that night was at Bono- it was at the Animal Kingdom lodge. When we went in they just ask if your celebrating anything and Rich mentioned that we were celebrating our Anniversary. By the time they seated us (about five minutes later) THey had a card that was signed by five servers in different languages wishing us Happy Anniversary and we got the wDW anniversary pins. We had a wonderful dinner- it's buffet style all you can eat and who knew I liked African food so much? It was delicious. At the end when we were already bursting and felt like we couldn't eat anymore our server brought out a board that he had decorated with cookies and written Happy Anniversary on it in chocolate sauce. It was beautiful and such a special little touch- I wish I had brought by camera with me to dinner that night. After dinner we went to a miniature golf place and had a great time. We played one course and then decided to play the second course we were feeling so much better and having so much fun. Then we went back to the hotel and swam in the pool and sat in the hot tub for a while before we headed to our room for the night.

The next day we went to the Animal Kingdom and had a good time. The rides were fun and the shows were fantastic. I wore my new shoes and my feet didn't hurt at all... and we both had much more energy than the previous days. It was like going to the zoo, and going to an amusement park all at one time and was really neat. The park closed at 5pm and our dinner reservations weren't till 7pm so we had time to relax at the hotel again and I got to just sit on the balcony and read some more... that was really nice. Then we went to the fancy restaurant at our hotel... it was good, but lets just say that I am just not a fancy girl... I was much more comfortable in the atmosphere of the Ohana and Bono restaurants that are much more family style places. lol! It was really good though and a neat experience. We probably seemed a little funny to others though because we didn't talk much. Our colds had both gone into our ears and our ears were clogged so talking at the restaurant was difficult because we couldn't hear each other. lol! After dinner we packed up our stuff and got ready to head out the next morning to go home.

We got back to OKC and went to go to the car and I couldn't figure out what the shuttle driver had written on the card he gave me when he picked me up, so Rich and I spent about 15 minutes wandering around the long term parking lot pushing the button on the car automatic key thing to try and hear the car honking... finally we found it.

All in all we had a wonderful time and I'm so glad we went. It was so nice to just spend time with Rich and be able to do simple things like sit next to each other during a show, hold hands when we were walking around the parks, eat dinner and only cut the food on our own plates- and not have to remind people to use their napkin/fork/spoon etc. I actually got up and did my hair and put on makeup every single day... something I rarely do at home and even when I go to the Y I don't have enough time to do my hair and makeup, so it's one or the other. We also can't wait till the kids are big enough for us to take them to Walt Disney World. It was such a fun place and everyone everywhere was so nice and helpful and it truly was so much fun. We would go on rides and figure out which of our kids would love it and which would be a little hesitant... we'll have to see how Angela is when she gets a little bigger, but we hope she is like Ashley and eager to go on rides so we can go sooner rather than later. :)