The kids and I spent three nights in Florida over the weekend.
I told them it was a “getaway,” and not a vacation due to its quick turn around.
They were not buying it and requested at least two months at Disney World in the immediate future.
Spoiler alert: not happening. Nope.
We left on Wednesday morning, which I thought was a generous bonus of letting them play hooky from school for three days.
Our flight to Florida was uneventful and we were able to smoothly pick up our rental car.
My mom has a house about an hour from Orlando and we headed there to spend two nights.
I hadn’t been to my mom’s place in about two years, and I forgot how nice it was.
My mom and her husband spend the winters in a 55+ community where the primary mode of transportation is via golf cart.
She immediately took Trixie and me for a spin, where we toured some of the holiday light displays in the neighborhood:
Some of these were quite elaborate. One even had a feature that was activated with the push of a button. Trixie gave it a whirl.
We went for a swim. The pool felt like bath water. I mean that in a good way. Temps were in the high 70s.
The community has two lending libraries and we checked out a puzzle. Everyone worked on it. In the end we were missing a few pieces but you get the gist:
End product
On Thursday we went to Legoland.
This theme park is only about 10 minutes away from my mom’s place, which was awesome. It was totally un-crowded on a weekday. They had their “Christmas Bricktacular” up and running.
I liked the area where they had miniature cities represented. Most of them had Christmas overlays, too. It was fun to spot the hidden Santas.
NYC
San Francisco
D.C. with Vegas in the background
MGM (9) being forced into a shot
Santa’s sleigh is flying between the buildings!
The First Family in Santa hats
Lady Liberty and her Lego torch
Trixie and her slushy torch
The rides were extremely tame.
We spent about four hours at Legoland, which was more than sufficient.
For the rest of the day, I went running, swimming, took another spin in the golf cart and worked on that darn puzzle. I was determined to get it finished before we left the next day.
When we woke up on Friday morning, we decided to head to a flea market that was about 20 minutes away.
All I did was ask them to smile nicely for the camera
I was not prepared for this.
There were live wolves and alligators:
Trixie came home with a lot of swag. I think the total tab was $6.00.
My kind stepfather finished the puzzle while we were gone, so we got to see that to the end.
After lunch the kids and I packed up the rental car and headed back to Orlando, where we were set to spend the night at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.
