Disney World Vacation

I'm not much of a moment's notice kind of girl anymore.  The older I get, the more of a planner I become.  My husband surprised us with a Disney vacation with only 9 days' notice.  We took our 8 year old out of school for a week, which is something I'm against and we packed up and took off to Orlando.  We drove two days down and two days back and spent the week in Orlando.  One day at Magic Kingdom, one day at Sea World and two days at the beach.  I didn't realize how bad I needed this vacation until we got back.  When we got back Sunday night, I immediately started on the laundry and took me two days to accomplish.  Monday, my life began just as quick and I didn't even get to blink before all the drama began.  Phone calls came rolling in, kids, school, bills, writing deadlines and it didn't stop all week.  I started to look at my life from an outside perspective and thought, "how in the world did I manage all this?"  That's when I realized it was time to simplify.

Writing, blogging, volunteering, household duties, family duties and an endless to-do list, some things had to give.  Not everything can be dropped obviously, but as much as it pains me the things I've chosen to drop for a while is volunteering and my writing obligations for Yahoo!  I make money off of Yahoo! and that was why this decision was so difficult to make.  However, it has become a big stresser for me because I've run out of topics to write about.  I've always learned that to be a good writer, you have to write what you know.  I get featured for parenting topics and crafts and hobbies.  I can always find topics to write about but I've written over 200 articles and have collected over 83,000 hits.  With that many articles, I've written about things I know and now the rest is up to research, homework and learning new things.  I'm all about learning new things but with a 4-year-old, a baby granddaughter and summer quickly approaching, there's not enough time in the day.  I commend parents with full-time jobs who also go to school.  I don't know how they do it!  I am unworthy of them and envy their motivation!  Right now, time is not on my side.  I pray that for me to type this out loud, I may jinx myself and come up with some new creative topics to keep my status at Yahoo! but I'm not going to let it bog me down and ruin my upcoming summer.

Perhaps our vacation served me better in more ways than one.  I was able to come back so refreshed that I was able to see the amount of craziness my life circles around me.  I am motivated to simplify and to have a simple life is better for my kids (and me) and I can enjoy them while they are still young.

With that being said, here are some pictures from our vacation.

One day at Magic Kingdom

of course it was all about the princesses...

3 hours later, 2 sets of princesses and expensive photos

this was just one side of all the strollers.  never have i seen so many!

my breakfast every morning

my little mermaid

my other little mermaid

this girls' breakfast - oh yea!

we taught the girls Austin Powers' power laugh when we got preferred parking at Sea World

with VIP passes, we fed the sea lions, sting rays and dolphins.  Personal tour guide, preferred show seating, free food, and quick queue for ride lines made Sea World the best ever!

this was under the dolphin exhibit.  the tour guide had to come get me cuz i parked my butt right on the floor and watched these beautiful creatures.  I could have stayed there all day.

The dolphins were waiting for bubbles to come out of the pipe.  it was too cute!

our feet on the beach.  We found 5 shark teeth and tons of huge seashells

 We found this mussel/clam/oyster on the beach.  It came in with the high tide and was just sitting there.  When we picked it up, it closed.

 Eventually, it opened back up again and we realized it was still alive!  So we threw it back in the ocean.
A minute later, it jumped out of the water, clamped itself shut and landed in the water and swam away.

one of the best things about our vacation is that we got to see our girls actually getting along and loving each other.  I really didn't want to come home because of that!

I can't wait to go back to the beach.  My husband wants to move to Florida when he retires.  Oh how I wish I had a genie!  At least we didn't come back to snow and ice and now we can blend right into our summer.  I wish it was hot all year round!