Summer Vacation, Part 1 - Sunday

Enjoying a drink and a good read on the porch.
Relaxing on the living room floor. The TV is in the island; see the kitchen in the back?

Getting the ham ready for the oven.

The porch and lovely view.

On the sidewalk to Hospitality House.

On the sidewalk from our villa to Hospitality House. Can you see the rainbow on the left side?

A couple of pictures of a beautiful rainbow we saw on the way to Hospitality House. Thank you, Lord, for the reminder of your watchcare over us!

Wow! This storage bin really IS useful! We store this Owner's Locker in Orlando and have it delivered to us for our longer vacations. We keep air freshener, a crock pot, a first aid kit, ponchos, and lots of other little things that make our villa more like home. (Last summer we bought some clothes for the kids on clearance and stored them. Now, they have a complete summer wardrobe and most of it was new and waiting at Disney for them!)

Sunday:

(About the pictures - I am inept at formatting an entry and cannot figure out how to move the pictures around. So, they're stuck at the top.)

Ahhhhhh! We made it to vacation, finally! We are so grateful for this break away from work responsibilities and for the time to spend with our wonderful children. And Disney's Old Key West Resort is a perfect setting! While the resort is LARGE (You can see a great shot of it on Google Earth.), we are quite close to the lobby building with the restaurants and gift shop and the wonderful pool area. (More on the pool to come.)

After church with the Baileys, we enjoyed a lovely ham dinner (thanks, Mom!). We hit Walmart for our week's groceries (thanks, Mandy, for the $2.76 savings!), then hit the road for Disney. We encountered a few showers on the road, but hit really rough weather as we entered Disney property. The rain was coming down so hard and thick that we could hardly see the road signs. When Talani let me out of the car at Old Key West (to be termed OKW from here on out), I got soaked in spite of the umbrella. After check-in, which went super-fast because we used Disney's new online check-in last week, I raced back out to the car. The water in the parking lot covered my feet completely in spite of my heeled sandals. We practically boated to our villa and waded our belongings in. Our villa is wonderful. So spacious. We have a one-bedroom, with a nice living room and full (but small) kitchen. A gigantic bathroom (bigger than our two bathrooms at home put together) and full laundry room are such a blessing. The living/dining area and the bedroom each have doors to our private little porch with its table, chairs, and ceiling fan. Perfect for a quiet breakfast overlooking the golf course.

I put the ham (thanks for the idea, Mom!) in the oven and we set about settling in. Even though we're only here for a few days, it's nice to put our clothes and other belongings in the drawers and pretend we live here for a little while. Since the rain stopped by 8:00 pm, we decided we'd head over to the Hospitality House (main lobby area) and check out the pool and the Wii tournament that was scheduled for the Community Hall room. The pool was open and nobody was there at all, so we decided to go back to the villa, change, and try out that pool. (It's a good thing our villa is so close to the action!) The kids LOVED the pool. After the pool, we came back to the villa, warmed up, ate leftover pizza, and put the kids to bed - they were exhausted since it was close to 10:00 pm. Talani and I sliced up the ham and put almost all of it in the fridge. We made sandwiches with the rest and enjoyed them with chips before bed. We all slept very well, and no surprise, but were up early on Monday, ready for action.