I both love and hate this time of year. It is so exciting and so frustrating at the same time. It starts with Halloween where candy is pushed in our faces for six weeks before the little holiday occurs. Talk about nerve-wracking. Then it moves to Thanksgiving where the entire point of most people's holidays consist of not just overeating but binging to the point of near illness. Add the gloomy and increasingly colder weather and it makes this battle with food much more difficult. We had a fantastic vacation and I did good with my food while we were gone but now that I am home I just want to eat. I hate this. 63 pounds gone and I all I want to do is feed my face. UGH!!!! Sooooo, I have decided to go on maintenance for the next two months. I just want to maintain and not focus on losing. As long as I manage to get through this season without gaining a single pound I will consider it a success.
Our Disney Adventure
Forgive any typos and/or ramblings, we haven't been up terribly long and it was a short nights' sleep.
On Monday morning we loaded up and headed to the airport. The kids were fantastic and did a wonderful job through check in and security. We flew Southwest and the flight attendants were super helpful. My mom was able to board first because of her handicapped status due to her knee and back so my parents were able to save us seats all together. I managed to leave my phone on the plane when we disembarked and ended up without a way to keep in contact with my sponsor.
Chance didn’t like being trapped in his car seat so he fussed some but nothing too drastic until we started making our decent into Orlando when he started wailing and pounding on his ears. We tried to get him to drink, to eat, to chew gum but he wanted nothing to do with any of it. He was totally distraught. We were very grateful to have filled an antibiotic prescription for him on Sunday. He was a pretty miserable little man on Monday and Tuesday but perked up by Wednesday.
Christian was amazing! Every fear we have had about his behaviors over the years was blown out of the water this week. He enjoyed every new experience. He loved flying, he loved the hotel, and the parks and meeting other kids. He loved meeting the characters (except the princesses who he completely snubbed).
Patience was little miss high anxiety all week and was easily moved to tears but she was in heaven meeting the characters.
On Monday we headed to the hotel and spent the evening relaxing. The kids and I went swimming in the hotel pool.
Because of my sprained ankle last week I spent my time on a motorized cart. My mom had one too. The big kids were able to spend some time on our laps so they didn’t end up too worn out. Let me tell you that spraining my ankle just before our trip turned out to be a good thing in some ways. We were able to get fast pass handicapped access to almost all of the rides we wanted to go on.
We went to Epcot on Tuesday. It is really beautiful there. The big kids and Mike and I rode Spaceship Earth together. It was very cool. We had a character lunch with the princesses while we were there and got to eat traditional Norwegian food. Patience was so excited through it all. We also went to the character spot that day so the kids got to meet Mickey and the gang there. Chance was napping but got kisses from Minnie while he was asleep and woke to her nose in his face. Amazingly he wasn’t afraid.
Sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday $150 of ours went missing, it was our Christmas money and we planned to buy goodies for the holidays with it, I was also going to use part of it to pay for internet access for a couple of days while we were there so I could track on SP.
Wednesday we went to Magic Kingdom. We had character lunch reservations that day so we just kind of roamed for a bit before our lunch with Pooh and friends. Patience and I stood in line to meeting Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen because they weren’t at the princess lunch. , Then we went to the buffet. It was great to just sit there and have the characters come to us. I have never seen anything as precious and Chance’s reaction to meeting Tigger. He was soooooo excited. My dad has most of those pictures though. The big kids had a blast meeting Pooh, Piglet and Eeyore as well. The buffet was fantastic.
We had planned to go to the beach on Thursday but we woke up and it was quite chilly so we ended up back and Magic Kingdom upon the request of the kids. Between the two days we saw the big parade once and two smaller parades. We saw one castle show all the way through and bits of it several times. We rode at least 10 rides. Patience rode Space Mountain with my dad and I and thought it was incredible. We went through the Haunted Mansion which the kids all liked. We road Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin with all of the kids who had a blast. Chance had a meltdown when he had to get off of it. We went through Minnie’s Country house, road the teacups which Chance loved too, went on the It’s a Small world ride which was just beautiful, drove on the tomorrow land speedway, and more. It was a blast.
We went to see the “Hoop Dee Doo” dinner theatre which was sooooo much fun. The kids were clapping and singing and everyone was laughing. The food was truly wonderful and served family style. Our last day was planned as a beach back up but because of computer issues it took 2+ hours to check out of the hotel. Since that was our travel time to and from the beach we scratched those plans and ended up going to the World’s Largest McDonald’s Play Place instead. We also stopped at Target to get souvenirs which would have cost us almost 2-3 times as much at the parks.
Our flight home was full of Chance and Patience melt-downs but we survived it. Chance fell asleep as soon as we landed and we were able to carry him off of the plane in his car seat and using the stroller not only get him to the car but get the seat appropriately secured in the car. He woke up for about a minute as I slid the belt through the back of the seat. We made it home safely.
It was very nice staying at a Disney resort. The food plan was worth it just for the character lunches. We would have gotten better use out of it if we had really understood it. If you go and decide to purchase a meal plan use your snacks for breakfast (or even stop and pick up some yogurt and fruit) at the hotel or snacks at the parks, then use your fast service meals for lunch or dinner at the parks and your full service for character meals. We blew our fast service meals on breakfast which was pretty much worthless and we could have paid 1/3 for at McD’s.
It was a wonderful vacation but if I had to do it all over again I would have waited a couple of more years. First, Chance didn’t really get what was going on and was out of sorts most of the week. He was sick so it is hard to know for sure but I think he just wanted to be home and was mostly confused by it all. Christian and Patience had lots of fun but were still easily worn out and Patience hasn’t outgrown the little emotional outbursts that will hopefully become fewer with time.
All in all it was a fantastic vacation. I did great with my food. I was up one pound yesterday but I figure that I am retaining at least a couple of pounds from eating salty foods on the run and not drinking as much water as usual.
We came home to the cats having knocked my laptop off of the table and they broke the cord so I am computing from the ancient beast of our 7 year old computer. Trying to figure out where Christmas money is coming from now. Again I am going to work hard at letting go and letting God lead me to where I need to be.
