Some Things About the Florida Trip

*  The family left in the dark. I was still so late they had to hold the gate for me.  It was terrifying.

*  Mate took the kids to San Francisco while I was flying to Florida. They had an amazing time.

*  Julianne, Jaime, Jennifer and I went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  All good things happened there…

… I saw a dragon.

… Julianne met her totem animal, and its name was Lucille Ball

… I drank butterbeer.

… Jennifer makes an excellent guide to all things Harry Potter and all things theme park and all things Florida.

…Julianne and Jaime are awesome fun companions.  I'll ride the Hogwarts express with them any time.

… I hauled around a giant bag full of nuts and snacks and water and wet wipes and chapstick and knitting and my shoulders hurt.  At the end of the trip, I asked myself, "Why, oh WHY did I bring this giant bag with all this stuff I didn't need! Why the sweater? Why the scarf?  Why the knitting?  And why do I hurt so bad?"

The answers?

A.  Because I'm used to dragging around stuff for myself AND the kids.
B.  The sweaters and the scarves were for the kids.
C.  The knitting was for when I was waiting for the kids.
D.  I hurt so badly because I was used to passing the bag around to the kids to help me carry it because it was their stuff too.

I shall make note of this on my next trip with an adult only to a theme park.  Less is more.  True story.

*  The hotel is terrifying and awesome…

… It has a four acre atrium.

… And a habitat with small alligators and many many turtles.

… Don't feed the alligators. They're busy trying and failing to eat the turtles.

*  My life has gone into a whirlwind tailspin since I got here, as expected.  Is why I haven't blogged sooner.

*  My DSP peeps are amazing.

*  Playing on the Twitter-wall is fun.  I think we got #dreamer to trend!

*  If you get zero sleep for three to four days and then go to your room to get one little thing done before you go back downstairs, it is very likely you will fall into a nap-coma so deep, you will come close to seeing God, and possibly say hi to grandma while you're there.

*  After that, getting ready for a formal dinner is just a little bit surreal.

*  While you are gone, the fact that the restaurant your family goes to every Saturday has burned down, and you were not there to comfort your melodramatic ten year old can be both sad and hilarious.  (Mostly hilarious because ZB posed for the picture.)

*  Family phone conversations are harder when nobody saves up any stories to tell you, and you are too tired to tell your own.

*  The damned dogs suck at phone convos.

*  You find out more about weather in the rest of the country when people's adventure stories are about flying through snow storms to get to you.

* Jessie Potts and her husband, Brock, are almost cuter than my dogs.

*  Rhys ford is forever awesome. And she wants me to buy Chicken a bike helmet.

*  I love this shirt beyond all reason-- Go Jennifer, and her amazing sister, Doloriane, who had it made for her.