July is our anniversary month, and this year we celebrated 16 years!! Doesn't seem possible but it's true! July also marks a new milestone for me as well. It marks my 1st "Re-birthday." In fact, tomorrow, July 28th I will celebrate! One year ago tomorrow I had my stem-cell transplant. After six days and 14 chemo treatments, they unfroze my cells and gave them back to me. So, in Cancer-land this is known as a Re-birth day. We won't be celebrating with cake and ice cream though. Not because that wouldn't be great, but because yesterday we returned from a nine day celebration!! We sort of out did ourselves with this celebration vacation. Six nights and five days at Disney World followed by three days at Cocoa Beach. It was wonderful. We had the best time. It had been twenty years since Jeremy or I had been to Disney World so we were just as excited as the kids! Oh, speaking of kids, we didn't tell them we were going. They thought we were just going to the beach. I can't believe we pulled off the surprise!!
To watch the surprise click here!
To watch the surprise click here!
We stayed at Disney's Wilderness Lodge. What a beautiful resort!!! We loved everything about it, from the lobby, to the on-site sit down and quick service restaurants, to the rooms, to the pool, to the boat service directly to Magic Kingdom, we loved it all!!
Let me just say that planning this vacation I was questioning our sanity, as I did my research and learned that you needed to make dining reservations 180 days in advance, and schedule fast passes for the rides 60 days in advance. WHAT??? That is not a vacation!! That is stress and worry!! I panicked just a little at first, then decided to just pick parks and days and rides. As far as food we decided to basically wing it as we didn't want to plan a vacation around eating. So, that's what we did. I did snag a few dining reservations in the evenings for the next day when I could, but mostly we ate quick service. Let me add that food at Disney isn't cheap AT ALL. Absurd the prices they charge. ABSURD.
The first day we went to Magic Kingdom and we were able to jump on six rides in under two hours. We couldn't believe it! I guess we scheduled that one well! Day two was Animal Kingdom which we learned you can do in a half day. Day three was Epcot and we didn't spend an entire day here either. Day four was Hollywood Studios and again, a half day was enough. Day five was spent entirely at Magic Kingdom again. The only day we didn't go to Magic Kingdom was day three, and that day we went back to Animal Kingdom after we left Epcot. Did I mention we had SO MUCH FUN!!!
And then there was the beach! We had a gorgeous condo right on the beach. While we were there we were fortunate enough to see the rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center and that was really cool. It was a great way to wind down from the hustle and bustle of Disney.
I am so blessed to have been able to go on this vacation. So much has happened in the last year and a half that I really didn't know if we would ever get to do a trip like this, let alone so soon. Was it expensive? Yes. Was it worth it? A million times YES!! Cancer has taught me that you aren't guaranteed tomorrow so you must GET OUT AND LIVE YOUR LIFE!!!!
Oh, I almost forgot. It took us 21 hours to get home. Twenty one hours. We were literally stranded in traffic for close to seven hours. Some crazy dude decided to shoot at a State Trooper then run into the woods, causing the police to set up a perimeter and close the interstate completely. So there was that. We finally made it home at 5:30am yesterday. What a way to make an already unforgettable trip even more unforgettable!!!
