Quick Turn Around

I returned home from my half-marathon trip down at Disney on Sunday night. I had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to unpack me, unpack the kids from their visit with Craig's parents and repack everyone for our surprise trip (for the kids). Thankfully, my kids can sometimes be oblivious to some big things, so they still had no idea that we were planning something big. In preparation for our trip, we played a number of Disney-related games and watched many classic Disney movies. Craig and I were getting very, very excited as we pre-bought Disney souvenirs, ordered the kids trading pins and planned out our trip.

Thursday morning, we sent Trinity and Kalyn off to school with the hint that we would be picking each one up early from school. When I picked Kalyn up, she told her music teacher that we were heading out to "run errands". As she headed out to Craig and the car, I clarified that we were actually heading to Disney and Kalyn just didn't know yet. I thought Miss Brandy was going to jump in the car with us.

We then picked up Trinity, grabbed some lunch and headed out on the road. We had the movies prepared and were ready for a long trip. We warned them that we were going to be on the road all day and we weren't going to ask "Are we there yet?" or "Where are we going?" the whole way. Yes, we were on the way and the kids still had NO idea where we would end up. They were excited, though.

Naps on car rides are always a good thing (what am I saying - naps period are always a good thing)

Crossing into Florida (a small celebration was held in the front seat, so as to not arouse curiosity from the back seat)

Our trip went very well. We hit very little traffic and kept touching base with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law (Ashley and Jeff) as they were flying down. Unfortunately, there was really bad weather in Orlando, so Jeff and Ashley's flight was delayed. Just north of Ocala, we hit a stand still in traffic, which postponed our arrival time until around 8:30. Just in time for bed.

As we closed in on Orlando, we tried to keep the movies going so the kids wouldn't notice all the Disney signs. By this time, we had decided to wait until Thursday morning before they found out our destination. We feared that if they found out this late, there would be no sleep for anyone due to the excitement. However, we had a bit of a scare that our secret would be found out. As we turned onto the street of our hotel, Craig and I saw this huge welcoming wall ~

Craig was smooth - he pulled onto the inside turn lane, positioning next to a big truck that we thought would block the kids from seeing it. The light turned green and our lane stayed still. We ended up passing right by it, in full view of the kids' windows. Thankfully, they were still glued to the movie and our secret was still safe!! We arrived at the hotel, telling the kids that we were stopping here for the night. It was their first time in a real hotel and they were excited about it. We put them all to bed. Shortly afterwards, the rest of the family arrived at the hotel as we all looked forward to the joy of the next day!!!