The Daytona 500, A Giant Mouse and A Whole Lot of Sun

Oh, how I miss Florida already! The highs were in the 70s and 80s while we were there and then we came home to where the high was 1 degree yesterday. When I got to work yesterday morning, it was -10 and -33 with the wind chill- Yikes!! We are getting close to spring now so this miserable weather should be letting up soon. As for our trip, I think I will break it down by days so here we go...

Wednesday
We spent the day traveling- from Des Moines to St. Louis to Miami to Orlando. When you use your reward miles for free flights, you often get a less-than-desirable route but hey, it's free. It all went remarkably well until we got to Miami and there was no crew to fly the plane. They got there eventually and we were about an hour and a half late getting into Orlando. We got on board the Disney Magical Express bus and went straight to the Saratoga Springs Resort at Disney World. I would highly, highly recommend the Magical Express if anyone is planning a trip there- they pick up your luggage and deliver it to your room and it all went perfectly. And, best of all, it's totally free.

Thursday
Rob and I decided to spend 2 days visiting the Disney World parks and after much consideration, decided to spend the day at Epcot and the Magic Kingdom. I got in the mood with a Mickey waffle for breakfast while Rob colored and ate his breakfast.




I got a phone call from my very pregnant sister telling me that they were headed to the hospital right after lunch- Yay!! It was a little hard to focus on amusement park stuff after that but I managed. We rode pretty much all the rides I could go on- the ones without the expectant mommy warnings. I think we had the most fun on Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin where Rob totally kicked my butt with a score of 136,400 to 18,200.



Since it was Valentine's Day too, I made reservations for dinner at my favorite Disney World restaurant, 'Ohanas. We got a fantastic table that was right by the windows overlooking the lake and that was really nice. They serve a ton of wonderful food that is Hawaiian and served family style. We started with salad and Hawaiian bread, then had potstickers and chicken wings for appetizers. Next they brought out broccoli and scalloped potatoes (the best ever) for our side dishes. Then the servers come around with skewers of meat (pork, turkey, beef and shrimp) that they cut for you. It was all delicious and it was all-you-can-eat so we were stuffed but they time they bought around the bread pudding dessert. We managed to power through it somehow though, maybe because it was so delicious! Here's Rob, eating himself into a food-coma.



Friday
I got a phone call about 3:30 in the morning that my sister had the baby and all was going very well. Such wonderful news- and now I'm going back to sleep. We decided to go to the Disney Hollywood Studios (formerly known as the Disney-MGM Studios) and Animal Kingdom parks for the day. These two parks really didn't have much a pregnant lady could go on so it was kind of a short day. We had tickets to see La Nouba that night and it was outstanding. Rob is still talking about it and how the acrobats could do all the tricks they did. For those of you who saw me just about 2 weeks ago and thought I didn't look very pregnant, well, things are changing pretty rapidly there. Here we are out in front of the theater after the show.



Saturday
We picked up our rental car that morning and drove around a bit to pick up some food and stuff for the race on Sunday. Man is the traffic bad in Orlando! We also lounged at the pool of our resort and watched the Nationwide Series race on tv. We ventured over to a Chevy's for dinner and it was just nice to be out and about. This was our lazy day and that's about all I have to report for Saturday.

Sunday (Race Day)


We ate some cereal in our hotel room and headed out at 8:45 a.m. Daytona Beach was only about 65 miles from Orlando but I wanted to be sure we had plenty of time before the race started at 1:30. Oops- we started driving and Rob looked at the paper and said, "The race doesn't start until 3:30!!" Until then, we really didn't know because we couldn't find it on the tickets or anywhere else. We were just guessing that it started around 1:00 and we were totally off. They should put the start time on the tickets!! But we decided that we'd keep driving and it was a good thing we did. We got caught in stop and go traffic when we were still 30 miles away! We got to the parking lot we were aiming for around noon and, holy cow, there were a ton of people everywhere. We walked around, got some lunch, hung out and the pre-race program started around 2:30. When the race started, it was amazing. There is no way to explain what it's like to see a car going 190 miles an hour- you just have to experience it for yourself. On the first time around, no one is up to speed yet but by the time they come around for the next lap, it is really something to see. We had a great time though I was a little concerned Denny Hamlin (hate him) or Kyle Busch (really don't like him) was going to win. I was very happy to see Ryan Newman win it- good for him. We picked up a few souvenirs for people and one t-shirt for us since it was the 50th race and the first one with the Car of Tomorrow. It may be worth a few dollars someday. I think there's a little race fan growing inside me- the baby was extremely active throughout the race which was pretty fun too. We got home that night at about 11:00 and were exhausted.





Monday
The original plan was to drive over to the Kennedy Space Center but we were both just wiped out and the weather was rainy and not the best for going out and doing stuff. We decided to stick close to the hotel and we had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe and then saw National Treasures 2 at Downtown Disney. We picked up some dinner from the grocery store and returned our rental car after that. Another pretty slow day which was ideal after so much people and activity the day before.

Tuesday
Time to go home. The Magical Express picked us up in front of our hotel that morning at 8:00 and took us to the airport. You can even check your luggage at the hotel and get your boarding passes there so we got to skip straight through to security when we got to the airport. I made a critical miscalculation on the bus and helped Rob out with the crossword puzzle- reading on vehicles always makes me sick and it only takes about 2 minutes for that to happen. That haunted me the rest of the day as we flew from Orlando to Dallas to Des Moines and on the car ride home. I was so glad to see my house that night.

It was such a wonderful trip and I'm so glad we went. We needed one more vacation for just the two of us because things are going to start getting crazy from here, I think. I will try to get the rest of the photos on our Flickr account sometime this weekend. Time for me to go to sleep now though!