Okay, so if it seems like the blog this year has been a series of vacation post after vacation post, I get it. And if it seems like we've taken A LOT of vacations this year, well we have (though most have involved road trips to visit family & friends). And we thought the year of vacations had come to and end, but then Dan received his yearly hours report and learned that he billed over 2700 hours last year (without travel time or pro bono). Most corporate lawyers average around 2200 hours, which means that Dan billed more than 500 hours over the median. Think about 500 hours - that's over 20 days of one's life. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is Dan worked all the time and we didn't see him a lot. On the upside, we're lucky he has a job he enjoys (or really, that he has any job at all given the current economy). But we missed him. A lot.
So when Dan called from Michigan after being away from home throughout Hurricane Sandy (he missed the great basement flood) and Halloween, P said "Daddy, I never ever see you. I think you should take me to Disney World so we can be together." Then an incredibly crabby me grabbed the phone and said "um, I think you have a really smart daughter."
We originally planned on going after Xmas, but turns out that Disney traffic peaks during the holidays (as in "full capacity", two words that really scare me), whereas the first weeks of December are some of the park's emptiest times. So we took the kids out of school for three days and found incredibly cheap flights to Orlando. This is also the first time we've ever flown all together as a family, which means one sad random person had to deal with being the only non-family member in row 16.
Last Disney trip (you can read about it here), we stayed on property in a villa at the Wilderness Lodge, which was awesome. But this time we wanted a more budget-friendly vacation. So after considering the options (5 people in one hotel room just seems crowded), we decided to rent a car (actually, the car was free - one of the perks of a husband who travels for work) and stay at a townhouse in Windsor Hills Resort (about 10 minutes away from the parks). Three bedrooms for only $99 a night seemed like a good deal to me.
The kids' first ride in Disney World was a grocery cart. So it goes. Originally we planned on going straight from the airport to the parks, but the flight and vacation anticipation exhausted everyone. So we stopped for food on the way to the townhouse. One of my favorite things about Disney is that they let you bring your own food into the parks.
The townhouse was nice enough, but the big hit was Windsor Hills' huge pool, complete with a small splash area, a HUGE waterslide, and a secluded hot tub. They even have a game room and ping pong. Swimming in December just feels so wonderful.
The townhouse came with its own private pool, but I didn't pay to have it heated since the resort pool only resided about a two minute walk from the property. I thought the lawn area looked so odd with the its seemingly infinite line up of pool filters.
SO MORE ON DISNEY TOMORROW!! HAPPY ALMOST XMAS!!!
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