Orlando

Ok. I lied. I told you that I would be taking you to my family reunion in the deep south. Well, as I was preparing that post I realized that I’m not all that happy with the pictures I took that weekend so I’m going to postpone writing that until I get the pictures that others took of the reunion. I hope to have it to you soon. . . if the Good Lord’s a willin’ and the creek don’t rise and Aunt Linda sends pictures. Amen.

So, on to the final leg of our journey: Orlando. We flew into Orlando on Sunday afternoon, got settled into our hotel and headed to Downtown Disney. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know that we’ve been to Disney a couple of times, including an extended family trip last summer. Call me what you will, but if I’m completely honest, I get a little Disney-ed out. I mean I love it because the girls love it, but the crowds, the heat, the lines, the expense, it just gets to be too much for this mama.

But Downtown Disney is different. I love it because a) There’s no admission fee, b) It has great restaurants and c) There’s a Ghirardelli Chocolate shop and they hand out free samples.

So Sunday night we hung out downtown. The problem was that it was July 4th and approximately half all of the southeastern U.S. had the same idea. Oh the crowds. I would enjoy Disney so much more if we could be there all by ourselves. We headed back to our hotel without seeing even a single firework (or is it single fireworks? I’m struggling with that grammar, I really am).

Monday morning we woke up to pouring rain and the weatherman said that this was not a typical Florida thunderstorm that passes quickly. He predicted that it would rain at a steady drizzle all day. We were really disappointed about that because we had planned to go to Sea World that day.

So to make a long story a little shorter, we decided to scrap Sea World and just hang out at Downtown Disney. There are plenty of indoor things to see and do, and we were determined to not let the rain ruin a perfectly good day.

The first thing we did was buy tickets to see Shrek 4. The movie didn’t start until 1:30 and it was only 12:00 so we decided to grab some lunch before the movie. We wandered from restaurant to restaurant trying to find something that sounded good and was within our budget (very tricky, Disney is not so budget friendly!). Finally we settled on a pizza place and I wish you could have seen us pouring over that menu. Nobody gets salad. Everybody drinks water. We were trying to trim costs everywhere. Finally we settled on our order. I hate to admit to you, but despite our trimmed down order, our bill was still about $50. For pizza! It was good pizza, but still, it’s pizza.

So at the end of the meal, we were waiting for our check and it seemed to be taking forever and I kept looking at my watch knowing that we had to get back to the theater in time for the movie. Finally, our waiter came to our table and said, “You guys must have a guardian angel looking out for you. . .your meal has been paid for.”

I’ll just wait here for a sec while you soak that in.

We both looked at our waiter and said, “Huh?”

He explained to us that someone had covered our meal for us, including tip. How awesome is that???

We have absolutely no idea who did that for us but it made us happy! and giddy! What a fun surprise!

The crazy thing is I started to get a little paranoid about being watched. Who was watching us in the restaurant? Were they still watching us to see our reaction? If I would have known I was being watched I would have been nicer to my kids. Ha! I distinctly remember nearly snapping B’s head off when she dropped her place mat for the 42nd time in about two minutes. I would have handled that with the patience of a saint if I’d have known someone was watching.

I was going to try and wrap these posts up today, but this one is getting long and we haven’t even talked about Sea World yet. So I’ll end here and bring you Sea World tomorrow. Over and out!