How do you unwind?

After the solo Disney trip and sans-Hubs camping trip. It would have been nice to unwind, right? Oh if only! The kids went to Camp PaPa and Ma's and I got busy on a project at work. I'm part time, so normally bill about 48 hours per pay period. Between the added project and the added part-time summer job, I billed a little over 100 hours over my normal.

Yes you read that correctly.

Hubs was out of town, so we were ready to get the fam of four back together, celebrate our great work weeks and relax. I had penciled in "Run away from home" on my calendar and was ready to go out of town.

If you were in my shoes, how good does the above picture look?!?

But that's Tahiti. And we are in FL. And that's a long drive. I was thinking beach, but Hubs suggested....

The mouse.

I booked a last minute hotel and we packed up the car and kids. I was SO SO SO tired and out of it, half-way down, I thought, "Wait. What day is it? How long are we staying? Did I pack enough clothes for us?!"

Luckily, I can Disney pack in my sleep, so we were ok, but "Disney Vacation" in this house is an oxymoron.

We got down there Friday after lunch. I was thinking we'd hit DT Disney or just hang out, but Hubs? "Who has late hours? Let's go to a park!"

Yikes. I twisted his arm and convinced him to at least go into the room, drop off our stuff and make sure everything was ok before we hit the parks. And Magic Kingdom? Ghost town. We walked on to every ride with no wait. It was creepy. I kept flashing back to when we went in 2008 over the 4th of July and vowed we'd never do it again. I knew the crowds were coming.

The kids and I only had one day left on our non-expiration tickets, so on Saturday, we headed to DT Disney. We got there just before lunch service, so hit the T-Rex restaurant. How anyone can finish an entire entree there on their own is beyond me! We got our tickets, wandered around and headed to Hollywood Studios (the park formally known as MGM) and hit some of the favorites. We then went over to Epcot to wander around the world. We were waiting on friends of ours to come over and watch the fireworks with us, anticipating an early night. They texted us later in the evening, and the boys (Hubs and Friend Hubs) decided it was better if they just went over to Magic Kingdom and we met them over there.

So for those of you counting, as we hopped on the monorail, we'd conquered DT Disney, MGM, Epcot and were about to take on Magic Kindom all in one day. Now how good is that Tahiti picture looking??

And to add to that, we were delayed on the monorail because they were doing the special 4th of July fireworks a day early. We made it into the gates just as they were finishing. Friends texted us that they just got fast passes for Buzz Lightyear at 10:35. I looked at the clock, then at the crowd, and said we MIGHT make it to Tomorrowland by that time.

Cue Disney 4th of July Crowd:

Awesome!

Here's our texting conversation for the hour:

Yeah. It was awesome. Nugget fell asleep and Hubs and I befriended the only other non-angry family in all of Main Street who also happened to have a double stroller. We played a mean game of red rover and won. SO many angry people! The guy in front of us was SCREAMING at the poor girl attempting to direct traffic. How can you scream at an 18 year-old with a lightsaber and a giant Mickey-hand glove?! It took us about an hour, but we finally made it from Main Street to Tomorrowland. We rode some rides with our buddies then called it a night. Or morning? not sure at this point!

The next day was the 4th, and after seeing that crowd, Hubs embraced my idea of hitting a water park (something we'd never done with the kids at Disney before). We loaded up a cooler with lunch and drinks and headed to Blizzard Beach. We had a BLAST! The park is so big that even the rides (slides?) with lines weren't that long. My biggest angst was wandering around in a bikini all day, but after walking in the gates I immediately felt good about myself. WOW! So much skin and so little material. I'm 100% sure the first girl we saw at a pool was wearing a lacy bra and shorts and when we were in the Ski School pool with the kids, there was a woman just wearing a regular cotton tank top. Crazyness.

They do have delicious ice cream. Something about swimming all day just makes ice cream taste so much better! We all got a Pail (literally a sand pail full of ice cream and every topping they have in the shack), but Nugget was concerned that he wouldn't get any chocolate.

So this was his:

He finished it in about 3 minutes.

We showered off after a day at the "beach" and went to the Transportation Center to watch the fireworks (and saw an angry father almost get arrested because he "wanted to sit on the grass, damnit!") then went to hang out at Friends' house for the evening.

We hit DT Disney again the next day and took the kids to Disney Quest. I wasn't all that impressed, but they had fun! The biggest highlight was learning to draw Disney characters. I thought it was just going to be a coloring station type thing, but they have classes ever half-hour or so and everyone draws on computers. Hubs and Nugget got to draw Donald while Strip and I were writing and recording a song in the sound booth, so after paddling down a Dino-infested river and winning all the pirates gold we could capture, all four of us sat down to draw Pluto.

Nugget working hard at the animation desk.

The finished product: Donald, holding hands with Mickey (who is holding a balloon).

Strip's Pluto (with added sunshine) :-)

We headed home, and I was happy to have a couple of days off of work! I don't think I recovered from work on our vacation, but we had a blast! Now, who has a vacation hut in Tahiti we could use....