New Car

So we flew in from Florida Monday night, I got all the kids in the car Tuesday morning and barely made it 2 miles down the road and the car quit. Other than it needing new tires way too often, we have not had a single problem with it. And it's only a few years old. Coopers excited and laughing about us breaking down and Hank is mad because he is afraid he will miss specials at school. I called Zac and he left rounds to come get us. Of course it turned into an entire day of towing the car, finding out that it needed a brand new transmission, trying to get a rental car, etc. We knew we were going to trade it soon for something bigger. However now with the transmission dead, we didn't get hardly anything for it. I started praying and Zac started researching vans. I called on a list of vans that we wanted to see and all of them were in other states. So discouraging and stressful trying to pick and buy something within 4 days. Yesterday Zac called and told me the guy just kept trying to sell him a brand new car and Zac told him that's just not in the cards for us. Zac told him our cap amount and what we wanted and the guy said he would call him back. I sat outside praying specifically over that new car. I hadn't even seen the van, I just knew it would make things a lot easier if we didn't have to wait 2 weeks to have a used van shipped in from Florida or North Carolina. Within 2 hours, Zac had bought me the 2018 pacifica. That was an answered prayer and a fast one at that!! The guy sold us that brand new van with a dvd player for the amount we told him we could not go over. AMAZING! We went to pick it up tonight after the boys got home. That was the first time I had even seen it. I loved it though! Hank really wanted to see the old car one more time. He said he was sad and was really going to miss that car. So he and I walked to the back of the lot and took lots of pictures of him and the car. He wanted to be able to remember it and see pictures of it.

The day we bought the dodge. I think it was 2 weeks before Quinn was born. (That belly is insane, let me just point that out)

It has been a very long week and we still have not caught up on sleep. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 we have Hank's derby for cub scouts and then his first soccer game!!

Disney Springs

Sunday was our last full day. The weather forecast changed and it ended up being sunny and hot. I went down and had breakfast in the lobby and then laid by the pool all day. I read my book, slept (I always fall asleep in the sun) and enjoyed the quiet. I walked to walgreens to get some diet dr pepper and makeup and then walked back to get ready.  Zac came home a little earlier that night and we went to Disney Springs. We walked around for a bit before heading to The Edison for dinner. We had reservations that we made weeks ago after hearing about this new restaurant. Definitely a really neat atmosphere but food was better at other places we had eaten. The waitresses all wore the flapper style clothing. It was a neat place. After dinner we went in all the toy stores and we found t shirts for the boys and little toy cars. Lots of Disney Springs is under construction. Even the huge toy store is blocked off in half for renovations. So it was really crowded. We went in the Christmas store that we love so much and just walked around. This was a slower night for us. We were so exhausted from being up late each night. We went back to the hotel around 9:30. Zac did work and I ended up watching the Martian on tv until like midnight. So much for coming in early right?! I slept late the next morning though. Monday was rainy and dark, so I had breakfast and laid around in the room. I packed up our stuff and Zac got back around 12:30. We headed to the lobby with our luggage and checked out. As Zac was checking out I got an email saying our flight was delayed. It then got delayed further when we reached the airport. Needless to say we spent several hours in the airport.

 This brick restaurant is Enzos. Its an underground Italian restaurant. We walked through it because there is a little secret back door that leads from the bathrooms of The Edison to the back of Enzos.

At least we had plenty to keep us busy in the airport though. Zac worked and I read my book.

ACC Conference

We got to our hotel late Friday night and crashed. It was a big hotel room with a full sitting area in a separate room from the bedroom. It was nice. We had full complimentary breakfast each morning which was so nice. I set my alarm so I wouldn't sleep till noon and had some breakfast and then went out to the pool. It was a little chilly and cloudy. After I sat out for a while and read my book, I took the trolley to the outlets. I got on the trolley going in the wrong direction and had to get off and get back on the other one going the correct direction. I spent quite a bit of time on the trolley and decided not to anywhere the next day!! The outlet has a Disney parks warehouse where all the merchandise from the parks goes after each season. Most of it was adult stuff though so I didn't find anything for the kids. I took the long trolley ride back to the hotel (it literally stopped every 1/2 mile). Zac met me at the hotel around 5 and we took an Uber to The Wilderness Lodge for dinner. There is a new restaurant called Guyser Grill located on the water behind the hotel. It was really good, and really peaceful. I now see the difference in experiences when you are at a high end Disney Resort. There were no teenagers! Our other hotel was full of teenagers there for dance and band trips. After dinner we went inside and walked around the lodge. We sat by every fireplace they had and just took it all in. Such a pretty resort. After that we decided to take the boat ride to the Contemporary resort which is right next to the Wilderness. I really liked the contemporary resort. It had neat stores inside and it has chef mickeys inside too. We had watched a Tim Tracker video and he said how horribly difficult it is to get into the roof top restaurant at the contemporary. He said though, you can at least ask to go up to the bar area and on rare occasions they might let you go up. So Zac and I went up to the desk that is front of the elevators and asked them if we could go up. He told us it was full, but then ended up saying, "you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and let you guys in". So we had a cast member escort us up. You can't even get there on the elevator unless the cast member swipes a key card. We had already eaten dinner, we just wanted to go up and see all of Magic Kingdom from the roof top. It was really nice too!! It's a great place to watch the fireworks from too and that's one of the reasons it's so busy. We got a little table by the window and just watched the castle change colors. It was a really fun night. Once again though we made it back super late. But we got to do so much in that small amount of time.

My trolley route passed by the massive conference center where Zac was.

 Peter Pan was even there greeting people as they came in. Another luxury of high end resorts.

Some of the photos Zac took. We loved those fireplaces!!

 The Wilderness Lodge has nightly fires and s'mores. As soon as people started roasting marshmallows, it started to drizzle rain.

 Had to throw this one in since He did do a lot of work this week too!