orlando

after our time at my parent's, we packed up our rental mini van and headed over to orlando. we were able to use our timeshare points to book the resort for our little getaway to ormond beach and this one in orlando. this one was newly renovated and it was huge. immediately, once we walked in ted and i were so excited. this place was nicer than our house! everything was brand new AND there were 2 bedrooms and bathrooms! we started our time at "the fountains" with the girls emptying a bottle of bubbles on the balcony. there was music playing on the pool deck next door and they were dancing and slipping in it. we found that there was a pirate/princess party going on that night in the "kids zone" area so we signed them up. there ended up being ella, corinne and another little boy, so they got lots of attention. i was a little apprehensive about leaving the girls so we went over to the restaurant next door for dinner. it was pretty nice, there was live music and the food was pretty good.

i had ted take some pictures of our "room" with his phone before we all messed it up. the one below is the girls room. as beautiful as that bed is, they ended up sleeping on the pull-out couch right next to it. the bed was too high for corinne and ella didn't want to sleep up there all by herself.

this was our room. it opened out onto it's own balcony with a view of the lake behind the resort. on the other side of the bed was the master bath.

here's the master bath:

ted has this panoramic-morph app on his phone so this is the kitchen/ great room/entry room:

ok, so back to my timeline. the next day we headed off to disneyworld. corinne was totally into meeting all the characters, especially rapunzel and jessie. ella was pretty shy and didn't want to take pictures with any of them until we were having lunch and i explained to her that we just wanted her to have fun. then she warmed up to the idea (once all expectations were off.)

we had lunch in cinderella's castle. being a florida girl myself, i visited disneyworld growing up. i would always wonder what was in the castle. well, they finally opened up a restaurant in there and my curiosity was satisfied. the meal was pretty tasty, the kids were entertained and it was air conditioned-huge!

we ended the day by the tea cups (which ella rode about a dozen times!) i think the next picture says it all. we were all tired and hot and it had started to rain. it was nice to see tigger and pooh right before the exit. we grabbed a chicken dinner from the grocery store and called it a night.

the rest of our time in florida was spent here:

we would wake up, eat breakfast, head to the pool, eat lunch on the pool deck-then swim some more. the resort had two pools, both with a kiddie section. this was the pool right next to our "room", so we spent most of the time at this one. it was really cool. you could go on the deck behind it and sit on the lake or you could go under the structure for the indoor pool:

a typical florida sunset:

this was the evening we found the pavillion and grilled our dinner.

there was a tennis court right next to it and the girls literally just ran laps around it. i don't know how they had the energy because we had just spent the day in the pool, but well, they are kids!

that's it, our summer vacation. this was, so far, one of the best we've taken. i feel like we got to fit everything in: family visits, time with ted, and family time. after we got home i felt well-rested and ready to start in on the fall. thanks for bearing with me through all the pictures. i just want to remember this time, it was so precious!