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Wednesday, December 2, 2015

First Full Day in Florida

The first few days were the hottest of our trip.  On Sunday, Nov. 8, it was 31 Celsius outside (88 Fahrenheit).  The kids walked outside in the morning, when it was about +25 and Haley immediately said, “It’s too hot.”  We had just come from 0 degree weather, so it took some adjusting.  Besides a very hot morning at Disney, I don’t think they complained about that for the rest of the trip.

We stayed at a Day’s Inn our first night (Saturday) as our resort stay only started on Sunday.  This was the view from our hotel room.

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The pool area, which we didn’t use, as we had to check out by lunch time.

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We had a car rental booked, with free cancellation.  A few days before we left, Jared checked the prices and for only $30 more, we were able to get a mid-sized SUV!  Jared was able to pick from a wide variety and ended up picking a Dodge Journey, which has an optional 3rd row.  For most of our trip, we stuck Blake in the back row so that he couldn’t bug his sisters, which made travelling more peaceful.

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I had done some research online since I knew ahead of time that we had to check out of our hotel by 12:00 and couldn’t check into our resort until about 4:00 and I found out that there was going to be a Fall festival at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando, so we hit that up.

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I loved the huge trees!  You can see the kids off to the left.

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Lake Eola in the middle of downtown Orlando.  There were vendors set up all around the lake selling food and things to buy.

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I thought it was so cool how the roots were sticking out of the water!

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The kids were quite fascinated by this!

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We found an area where the kids could play.

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There were swans on the lake, which added to its charm.

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Apparently there is a nightly light show involving the fountain, but we didn’t stay that long.

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Kiera’s first purchase with her birthday money was a garland headband thing.

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This building is the Four Points by Sheraton

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The Orlando Eye

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We booked our resorts with the certificates that Jared can buy through resortcerts.com that go on sale periodically for $209 US, which includes a 1-week stay at any of their resorts around the world.  Jared can buy for anyone, in case there’s someone who is interested!  Last year, we went to Iowa and this year we picked Florida.  We got a beautiful, spacious 2-bedroom condo which we greatly enjoyed!

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The kitchen even had granite counter tops!

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The kids’ bedroom

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The master bedroom (the only thing we didn’t enjoy was our super hard mattress)

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The spacious ensuite with a separate toilet room

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We had our own door to the balcony

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All of the towels and even the Kleenex was folded all fancy

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Our view from the balcony…I didn’t get tired of it.

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The front of our condo building.  We were on the 2nd floor and thankfully there was an elevator, as dragging all of our luggage up and down the stairs would not have been fun, as we discovered when we stayed at the Days Inn!

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I loved all of the different plants!

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The view of the back of our condo (our balcony is hidden behind the red and green tree) from the the pool area.

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We enjoyed the pool before supper, then hit up Denny’s.  I had a chicken vegetable skillet which was delicious and then we picked up some groceries at
Walmart before calling it a night. 

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