A special birthday treat

For a special birthday treat this year, we took a little trip - to Florida. With my budget, financial brain screaming "NO! NO! NO!", my fun, gotta make memories brain won out. See it was hardly a trip we could pass up. My mom got the condo for $69 total - 3 nights, 4 days - $69 total. We have a friend, who has a friend, that got us into Disney for FREE. So all we really had to pay for was airfare, car rental and food. How could we pass up this trip?! So broken bones and all, we loaded up and flew to Florida so we could experience Disney World and the beach. It was different, for me especially. I am usually the one directing everyone and everything. On this trip, I had to just stand back and let everyone else take care of things. That was hard, but something I have been getting quite used to. After a rocky start, leaving at 7am is never a good way to start the day for us, we made it to Tampa. The car rental was another not so fun part, but moving on - to Orlando. When we arrived at the "Royal Palms" resort or Katelyn's translation, the "Wrinkled Palms". She was so serious as she kept correcting everyone that my dad couldn't stop cracking up. We spent Day 2 at Disney, again starting at 7am with a character breakfast. We met Mickey and all his friends. We even got him to autograph Brett's cast, which we had kept blank for just such an occasion.



Watching their eyes light up as the characters came around to the table was wonderful. They were just in awe!



By the time we actually got to Magic Kingdom, Brett was exhausted and took a 2-3 hour nap just an hour into the Magic fun. We did another character meal for lunch with Winnie the Pooh and friends. Then spent the rest of the afternoon on rides. We finished off our Magic Kingdom experience with the electric light parade. A must for any Disney visit! Friday was our day to sleep in and relax. We did a little pooling and naps and finally a little mini golf. Katelyn had never played and really wanted to, so we went Friday night and she got our only hole-in-one. She was so excited!



Saturday we headed out early to go to Clearwater Beach. I had forgotten that it was President's weekend and a Saturday and the traffic to get to the beach was awful. When we finally got there, it was worth it. This was the first time either of the kids had ever been in the water "at the beach". It was freezing and they weren't really in for too long, but they loved playing in the sand and digging for shells. We headed home on Saturday evening and even found our "lost" bag. We'd left one on the bus when we first arrived to KCI. I think the kids will remember their trip with fond memories. Brett keeps asking me when we are going back to Florida. Although my financial brain keeps mentioning that we shouldn't have gone, I'm glad I listened to the fun, memory maker this time around. What a great birthday memory?!