1. 103 temp. with chills causing sleep for 16-17 hours a day.
2. severe nausea, followed by a bunch of vomiting.
3. got my period. enough said.
4. massive amounts of diarrhea. oh, the horror!
5. sore throat with coughing fits galore.
6. large quantities of snot pouring from the nose, causing severe soreness.
keep in mind that this is a accumulation. they just kept piling up with none of them going away. i will state the obvious, i HATE MY BODY RIGHT NOW. we are in a fight (seems my body might be winning) and i don't know if i'll ever be able to forgive it. oh, and here's the real kicker, i've actually GAINED weight since being sick. HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK? i would like to hope that if i gained weight it would be with yummy food and lack of exercise not massive amounts of vomiting, diarrhea and living off yogurt, toast and crackers! i have no idea what i have or why no one else in my family has gotten it. my doctor didn't even know what it was. you know you're in trouble when your doctor stares at you blankly, says "it's a good thing no one else in your family has it" and then advises you to not go to disneyworld with your family. well, i still went and i guess i'm still trying to see if it was a good decision to go or not.
so on to the rest of the trip.....
THE DRIVE
since i'm beyond cheap, i made it so that the only way we would be able to go to disneyworld was if we drove all night long. yep, 14 and a half hours. in the middle of the night. there was no way we could afford to spend four days traveling with two extra hotel stays down and back let alone have my children be awake for more then 6 hours in the car whining about "are we there yet?" no, the only way we were going to do disney would be with them asleep in a one shot trip. it sounded good in theory but not when you are sick having to stop at nearly every rest stop for bathroom breaks. i certainly think i lost my mind on that one. the highlight of our drive down was being attacked by an owl. literally. it flew right into us and lodged itself into our bumper/grill. it took us nearly 45 minutes to get the body out. the head is still lodged in our grill. wonderful. rotting owl head.
this is the crazy owl, jammed into our front bumper
this is the decapitated owl.
this is the head, still in our van grill (the orange is the beak)THE HOTEL
once again, i'm cheap and man did i pick a real winner of a hotel room. oh, excuse me. motel room. at $53 a night though, i thought "who cares, right? we're going to be at disneyworld all the time anyway, not at the motel room." hmmm. the rooms were pretty ghetto, but they had beds and a bathroom so i was fine. the place itself wasn't too bad. it was really run down but they had game rooms, movie night every night (that we took advantage of) and the people were really friendly. i knew i'd gotten a real gem though when a cop car parked itself two rooms down and then police proceeded to bring out bags and put it into the trunk of their car. yep. i chose a winner.
THE MAGIC KINGDOM
we arrived from driving all night to the magic kingdom at 9:30am. i wanted to get there right when it opened but we got stuck in traffic. it didn't matter though. it was a thursday with the high of 45 degrees. it was freaking ass cold and i was freaking mad. i came to florida for some stinking good weather dang it. of course we were unprepared and ended up wearing almost every article of clothing we had to keep warm. the lines were 5 minutes if that and we were able to go on every ride we wanted (some two or more) except for the peter pan ride. that always had a 30 minute wait. all i can say is "that must be a really good ride." we went to the magic kingdom on friday as well, right at 9am like the lovely miss jenny told us to do. she was right, we had all our rides out of the way when the 20 minute waits started to hit. we ended up going back to the hotel so that i could get a nap and go to the harley davidson store before we headed back and braved the 30 degree night time weather to watch the fireworks. that was pretty awesome. especially seeing a real live tinker bell ride down a zip line from the top of the castle.
freezing our butts off. me, trying to look happy.don't i look happy?
these are my kids. i really wish wesley wouldn'tmake that face when i tell him to smile.
forever the photographer, my family minus mein front of the castle.
HARLEY WEEK!!!
my happiest place on earth
wesley on one of the 3D rides
wesley's new harley shirt. isn't it awesome?
wesley still making that dang face.STUPID TIME SHARE TOUR AND HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS
when we first got into the motel, a man who worked there told us that they had discounted tickets to some of the shows around orlando. he showed us one show called arabian nights (similar to medieval times) that we could purchase 5 tickets for $49.00. it would normally be $260.00. since the girls basically beg us every time we go to the mall if we can go to medieval times and see the show, we decided to go ahead and do the arabian nights being so cheap and all. when we agreed to do it, we then found out that the only way to get it at that price was to do a tour of the stupid holiday inn time shares. yeah, so stupid. even more stupid? agreeing to do it. we went saturday morning at 7:45am and didn't get out of there until 11am. dumb, dumb, dumb. that was the hardest $49 i've ever had to work at getting.
we went to hollywood studios in the afternoon. i was pretty bored, but the kids had fun watching all the shows. i even stood in a 30 minute line to do the tower of terror which ended up being the tower of stupid. we were only there for 4 hours but that was the longest 4 hours of my life!
later that night, we went to the arabian nights show. it was your typical watching horses and eating food at the same time kind of show. i was curious because they advertised having a unicorn, and if you all remember my rant about unicorns i'm sure you'd understand my interest. they had a genie come out saying she could conjure up a unicorn and after saying a spell, out came a goat. i looked at the mister who was laughing hysterically (at me of course) but it turns out that was just a joke and then the real "unicorn" came out. it was a beautiful white horse with a golden horn on it. now THAT is how it's supposed to be. (dumb circus.) after that, wesley had a massive meltdown and the mister and him spent the rest of the night in the car while the girls and i finished watching the show. i told my girls "don't EVER ask to go to medieval times ever again. okay?"
monster's inc. at hollywood studioEPCOT
on our last day we packed up the car, checked out of our motel and went to epcot. i didn't realize that the princess marathon was that day and that the race ended at epcot. luckily the traffic wasn't to bad. we got there at 8:45am and we were able to see quite a bit of stuff before the real reason we came there. for the sole purpose of getting pictures and autographs with the disney characters. we scored pics of mickey, pluto, goofy, minnie, donald duck, mulan, the aristocat, sleeping beauty, and belle. we never found cinderella, snow white, aladdin or jasmine. when we found mulan, she was just coming out and michelle ran up and gave her the biggest hug. mulan was so sweet with her and walked hand in hand with her down the street having a cute conversation with her. michelle was so happy after that. that was the highlight of the day for me.
doing the nemo ride
mulan walking with michelleTHE DRIVE HOME
the last day was a nice day. it was the first day i didn't wish for death and the weather was in the 70's. we left by 2pm to head home. the drive home was thankfully uneventful and the kids were exhausted enough that they slept most of the time. we made it home at 6:30am, just in time for the kids to help unpack the car, eat breakfast and go to school. now, life is back to school, appointments and work. sigh. i can't believe it's over already. see you disney, maybe in another 5 years. until then, thanks for the fun. (for my family anyway, i hate you body for keeping me sick. you suck.)
