My Kind of Week!

Guess what?!? Bruce and I are in FLORIDA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep.....the home of Mickey Mouse! I didn't post anything about this prior to now because I didn't want a couple people to find out and I wasn't sure whether or not they would be reading my blog.

Anyway, about a month ago, we got an e-mail from Bruce's best friend's wife, inviting us (along with many other people) to a surprise 40th birthday party for him on July 15. We were included in the e-mail, even though we 4 states away, only because she sent it out to a whole lot of people all at once (I'm thinking everyone in her address book). So I casually mentioned it to Bruce......and then he came up with the idea that if we chose to try to go to the party, we could probably squeeze in a day at Disney. Gee, hmmmmm, you think that perked my ears up a little? Duh!

We left on Monday, flew down, and rented a car at Orlando Internaltional Airport. We checked into the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel and promptly headed to Animal Kingdom Lodge for dinner at Jiko. Then we went to the boardwalk and spent the rest of the evening walking around, watching the All-Star home run derby, and eating ice cream. I have definitely found the place where I want to stay next time we are at Disney: the Yacht and Beach Club! That place looks amazing! The pool there is to die for!

On Tuesday, we spent the entire day in Disney parks (except for the 45 minutes we took to come back, shower, and change). We visited Disney's Hollywood Studios, The Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. I won't go into details about all of that. The highlight of the day was surprising one of my best friends at Epcot. She is on her first Disney trip ever with some other members of her family and we showed up at the place where they were having dinner. She was shocked! I snuck up on her, put my hands over her eyes, and said "it's someone from home." She recognized my voice and said "you're kidding me!" We spent the remainder of the night with her and at one point, she said "I can't believe we are 17 hours from home and we are riding this ride together!" It was cool.

Today, we slept in (after staying at Epcot until midnight last night), went to Downtown Disney to shop (and we did pretty well with that!), ate lunch at Earl of Sandwich (my Caprese sandwich was superb!), and then headed towards Tampa. We managed to find a casino in which to spend a couple of hours, then shopped for a little while at a mall, and then went to Patrick's party. We walked into the restaurant and he looked towards us and then did a double-take. His wife jumped out of her chair and ran towards us screaming "no way!" It was cool!

Now we are at their house getting ready for bed. We will fly back home tomorrow. It's been nice to get away alone for a few days. The good news is that our girls' ball games got rained out tonight so we didn't miss anything there. We will be back home by game time tomorrow!