Making a Deposit

Our Florida vacation is no longer theoretical.  It is real.  As in, we put a deposit on a rental home. Well, a rental palace.  I can not believe that people have such gorgeous houses and RENT them!  I went to a site appropriately named Orlando Villas and found this amazing house.  It has enough bedrooms for all of us and allows us to bring my mom and my SIL along as well.  My mom has never been to Florida and while I know she has no interest in Disney, I can totally see her lounging on the lanai reading or walking along the gorgeous paths that the promo assures me exist.  The owners are British so we had to send our deposit last wk actually and it has made its way across the pond and into her hands.  My kids are going to be so spoiled.  There are TVs in the rooms.  This is something we don't have here at home.  One must be over 18 to earn that which means only Chet has a TV in his room.  There is a pool and a hot tub, the pool has a safety fence (as a former lifeguard my water safety vigilence has not decreased over the years!) There are orange trees where we can pick our own oranges and the fully applianced kitchen has a juicer!!!  C'mon, seriously?? So while i ooh and ah over the fresh OJ the kids are stoked about the game room   and the pool etc.

Chet will be able to organize his space in a way that will hopefully allow him to remain relatively calm during the trip, and the house is spacious enough that we don't need to be on top of each other all the time.  I can cook our meals which is a huge plus. Eating out is hard for Chet and this is really lame, but Florida a/c in the public blgs freezes me half to death.  I like warm but I remember the time we went for 3 days in July many years ago, I was very uncomfortable when we went out to breakfast each day.

We are only spending 2 days doing Disney.  I know we won't see everything.  I don't really care.  I know that my kids can't handle more theme park than that, and my wife can only handle one day. So day two is on me but I have a year to figure out the logistics of that.  LOL

I am trying to balance low key interesting things into the week to off set the hype of the park. There is a state park with hiking trails not far from where we will stay that I want to go to. There is a kids science museum in Orlando that looks amazing.  My SIL remembers a place with glass bottomed boats that they visited when she was little and would like to do that again.  There is a place called Forever Florida that has some neat "safari" tours (and also a zipline that i would adore doing!!) There is a mini golf place not far from us and a lovely botanical garden with walking paths.  I have not even mapped out a way to the beach yet and I don't know if we will do that or not. We have the pool so I am not sure we need to.

My SIL just got a cash award at work so the amazing thing for her was that when I invited her, she all ready had her money coming in for air fare and parks passes!  My mom all ready has a plan for how to save up her air fare and everytime any of us buy something here, KC says "Remember we are going to FLORIDA!"  When K paid the property taxes at City Hall he informed her the check was too big and what was she doing because we needed to save for Florida!  LOL