Where to even start? I guess we can go back to April, just after tax season. Ryan and I started talking about how next April 6th (that's right, April of 2013) will be Liz's 60th birthday, and we wanted to do something really special and fun for her. Pretty quickly it came to us that a trip to Disney was in order. Unfortunately, Liz's birthday falls about a week before the end of tax season which means we can't do anything right then. So we started talking about when we could go instead. We originally thought we could surprise her with the trip on her birthday and go in May. Then we realized that's the end of school which isn't a good time to miss out on activities. So then we were looking at the summer time. I do not like Disney in the summer...too many people and too hot. So we started talking about backing it up a little bit. Really, it couldn't be anytime between January and mid-April, so we started looking to the end of this year. With the timing of lots of things, we realized that the beginning of November would be perfect. So, just before Mother's Day, we gave Liz the news about her very early 60th birthday present! To say she was excited is an understatement! Then came the hard part...not telling the girls and waiting on the trip to arrive.
Finally, just after we returned from the beach in October, we told the girls the good news. They were super excited too! The best part was they had no idea what was in store. They expected to go to the Magic Kingdom and have fun; they had no idea all the cool things we had planned. To build on the excitement, we made this countdown calendar (which I couldn't get turned here). Each day, we took off a Mickey and the girls received a little surprise such as a Pez dispenser, finger puppets or coloring book.
Halloween came and went, and on November 1, we started the drive in the early afternoon. Lily thought it was cool that she got to leave school a couple of hours early. We made it to Gainesville, FL that Thursday evening. We made a quick stop at a Subway for dinner and then headed over to the Residence Inn. The girls thought this was such a cool hotel; they loved that there was a little living room and kitchenette in the room. While I gave the girls a bath, Ryan and Liz headed out to tour the UF campus which is where Liz graduated from. I think she had a lot of fun bringing back lots of great memories. Here's a picture of Liz in front of the ADPi sorority house.
They also made a stop at The Swamp, Florida's football stadium. Liz was a cheerleader at UF so she knows this stadium well.
They came back and we all headed to bed. Our vacation was officially on!
No comments:
Post a Comment