We went back to our hotel to recuperate a bit (and change clothes) before heading back for the fireworks. Too tired to go out somewhere, I let Mandy take a nap in the hotel room and I took the kids out to dinner at some swanky fast food restaurant. I brought back Mandy’s and my own dinners to the hotel and set up the table for a “romantic” dinner while the kids watched some television quietly. Dad, I told you that it’s not tradition unless it happens at least twice in a row… Well, I guess you told me so. But at least I stepped it up a notch and had it at a nice hotel. Let’s ignore the fact that 4 children were with us.

After dinner, we got back on the bus & monorail for the park again so we could ride our favorites again and watch the 10pm fireworks. It was definitely one of the most spectacular displays I’ve ever seen. Afterward we got some cotton candy and one of the special birthday cake hats to use for future birthday parties. After watching the evening SpectroMagic parade, we set off for the monorail and bus back to the hotel… in bed by 12:30am.

We packed up and left our hotel at around 11am yesterday and we arrived back home this morning at 5am. It was a long and tiring drive but the trip back was mildly amusing. From the British guy who thought to give me the a-okay in lieu of the American bird to the guy in the pickup truck who drove with his foot out of the window with his dog walking about the bed of the truck. Georgia didn’t amuse us. We were counting down the miles to get out of that state. Tennessee & Kentucky were no problem, especially with a 20oz cappuccino. Anyway, we’re back in town now and the cats apparently missed me as I woke up covered in fur.

Part 4? This is becoming quite an epic! Yesterday was Ben’s 8th birthday. What a big guy he’s getting to be. He had a great time, well, because he got to spend it in the Magic Kingdom! The weather did us fairly well as it was overcast and a bit showery which was just dandy. The rain felt good in the midst of the 90 degree heat and crowds of people. We rode the ferryboat over and Abi just beamed excitement when she saw Cinderella’s castle across the lake. After getting onto Main Street USA, we tried on the various hats in the hat shoppe before going down the street for a photo op in front of the castle. We then pretty much went through the entire east side of the park which included Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, and Mickey’s Toontown Fair. We rode lots of rides like the Mad Tea Party (probably our favorite), Dumbo, Goofy’s Barnstormer (which was Nick’s first rollercoaster), and the Speedway.

Nicky got to meet his favorite morning idol, “Pal” (which he calls Mickey Mouse, i.e. “Hiya, pal!”). We watched the 3pm parade by the castle and it was quite the show to see with every one of the classic stars making an appearance. I took tons of pictures so check out the photo albums of the kids and my flickr account for them.

Today we had breakfast with a couple of characters, Disney characters that is! Our hotel has character breakfasts on certain days and we got to have ours with Pluto and Goofy. Abi and Nick played hard to get and the boys play high fives with Goofy. We went to Downtown Disney today to look for souvenirs. We saw some things we liked and noted them for later. We spent some of the afternoon at the hotel pool after lunch to cool off until a storm threatened. The kids enjoyed that while they could and then we went out to dinner followed by a return trip to Downtown Disney to purchase some things. I did manage to find another penguin. I got myself a Wheezy (from Toy Story) plush that squeaks. Haha. Okay, our legs are killing us now. Time to sleep.

We had a family breakfast with everyone and then got everything packed while the kids spent some more time with Steve, Holly, and Mary at the shop and paper. The drive up to the Orlando area was longer than expected. Crazy traffic, potty breaks, etc. We did arrive at our hotel around 10pm last night and we pretty much passed out for the night so we can get enough rest for our first day of the Magic Kingdom today. Time to head out…

We got into Gainesville late in the evening and stopped for the night at a Days Inn. After a [good] night’s sleep (it was as good as it was going to get, frankly), we headed back on the road onto the turnpike. There was some traffic congestion when we first got onto US-1 but we did get to Steve’s before sunset. We even had time to relax in the pool before bed.

On Sunday, we went out to Veteran’s Memorial Park on Little Duck Key for a swim. The beach there is a really nice one. The shallow ridge goes on to what seems like forever. Steve took the boys out pretty far, I could hardly see them from the shore. They also enjoyed searching for shells and coral pieces near the shore. It wasn’t too hard as the “sand” there is pretty much made of broken coral and shells. The water was also very warm and was much to my liking. Weird as it sounds, I really do prefer warmer water to wade in than the more frigid water that public pools like to use. It’s a good beach and we’ll probably head back tomorrow.

Yesterday, the rain kind of ruined any plans to go out anywhere as most things down here require the great outdoors and sunny weather. After lunch, we came back to the house and relaxed a bit; the kids played some games and tried their best to practice different ways to get themselves upside down and so forth with handstands and cartwheels.

Today we did make it out of the house for most of the day. We went down to Key West and parked the van in at private garage so we could walk on Duval Street for a few hours. We stopped at the Hard Rock Cafe for some ice cream and water. Both were very nice to have on this hot day as it got to 94 degrees while we were out. I took a few pictures of the memorabilia and it was pretty awesome to be in the same room as the instruments and garments of these familiar rock legends. After the Hard Rock, we continued up Duval and checked out some souvenir shops. After a couple of hours, we walked back to the garage to find the passenger side door was open! Luckily nothing was missing. I’m guessing that one of the kids forgot to close it. Yeah, lucky there. We went along Whitehead Street to see the Southern-most Point and back onto US-1 heading north back to Big Pine Key.

We did get held up in a traffic jam on US-1 though at about mile marker 20. When there’s an accident on this road, it’s just a catastrophe as US-1 is the only road in and out of the Keys to the mainland. It is, for the most part, two lanes and bridges. The accident apparently started at 1:30pm and involved a dump truck spilling its entire load on a bridge. We had left Key West at 4:20pm and didn’t get back to Big Pine until about 6:45pm. Yeaaaah, that was fun. All part of the great adventure, I suppose. ^_^

Well, time for bed. More details on our exploits later this week.

The plan is to completely pack and ready the van tonight. We will leave early tomorrow morning and meet Mandy’s mother for breakfast. We should be able to get through Kentucky & Tennessee and have lunch once we enter Georgia, probably at their welcome station. We’ll drive through Georgia into Florida and stop for the night at a motel just before the Florida Turnpike. The next morning, we’ll have breakfast and get onto the turnpike for about 8 hours of driving before we reach Big Pine Key.

Hopefully taking the drive in 2 days won’t exhaust us like it did in past years when we just drove it straight through. It’s about a 21-22 hour drive altogether so you can imagine just how draining it is.

I’m hoping the weather forecast is wrong and there won’t be too much rain. The storms are either isolated or scattered with like 30-60% chance of precipitation so… I’m just hoping for the best conditions. I really hope the skies behave and not rain on the days we’ll be at Disney World. I’ll have to wait until closer to that point to see a more accurate forecast.

Anyhow, I need to get back to emptying out my personal queue at work so I don’t leave anyone hanging for two weeks. Have a great Fourth of July! I’ll watch the fireworks from wherever we are when they go off.