Day 1 - Travel Day! On the road to Mickey's House

Our day started at 4am. Showering, packing and hitting the road. Oakley was hilarious in the van on the way to the airport. She was giggling ecstatically all the way there talking about going to "Mickey's House." It was so cute.

Today was quite an adventure. It all started at the Regina International Airport when we discovered that Oakley required a "paper ticket" for travel. Ummm... she's under 2. She doesn't need a seat and is 'free'... right? This was the first we have ever heard of this and our Travel Agent apparently didn't know this either. We were a bit panicked for a while, but Air Canada came through for us with only 30 minutes of wondering if we were actually going to make it. We had already paid some taxes for her through our agent, apparently not enough, and $12.03 Canadian later, we were on our way.

Oakley was doing fine considering we had to wake her up at 4:30 am... she did ok until she had a bit of a rough experience when Airport Security put her stroller though the x-ray machine. Oakley lost her mind. I believe Homeland Security raised their terrorist threat level to "Orange" due to this incident.

After working at the jail for 15 years and patting down countless inmates, Jason had his first experience being patted down. When he went through the scanner the lights and bells flashed for a "random pat down". Jason believes that his political views were somehow recognized by the scanner and it was anything but "random".

Once we got on the plane, Oakley was awesome. Cute, quiet, funny and taking it all in. Everyone around us stared at her and smiled. She was a lot of fun. Jason and Oakley sat together on one side of the aisle and Des & Oakley together in one seat across the aisle. We were warned about some severe turbulance upon arriving in Denver but we just told Oakley it was a ride... so she went 'weeeeee' and made everyone laugh.

Arrival in Denver:

Not so much fun. The Airline Steward did not allow us to leave until we filled out two cards for Homeland Security. Then it turned out that they didn't have one of the cards and had to get more while we waited on the plane. For the next 20 minutes we waited then filled out these cards. And we didn't have a pen, so had to wait even longer to borrow one from the ladies in front of us. Ug.

We then had to "recheck" our luggage and go through security again. There was a huge lineup and this took another 15 minutes. Our gate was B-55 and we had to take a train there, then walk across the whole terminal to the very end. It turns out B-55 is one of the last gates. We arrived to find that although the plane had not left yet, the "doors were closed" to the plane. The United employee radioed and was told that they wouldn't be opening them. Oy. This was about 10:15 our time - would have had us arriving in Orlando at 1:50 our time (3:50 Orlando time). It was just not to be.

We went to United Customer Service and waited for another 30 minutes to find another flight. We were very lucky to find one departing in two hours. WHEW! We had lunch and made our flight.

Again Oakley was a dream to fly with. She slept on mommy for 2 1/2 hours and was awesome. Abbey and Jason snoozed a bit too, Des and Abbey read magazines and Des watched the in-flight movie (Did You Hear About the Morgans - I'd highly recommend it!)

We arrived in Orlando at 5:30 Regina time. Everything from here went perfectly. Our luggage was already picked up and taken to the resort and the directions we received to take the "Magical Express" bus were right on. 30 minutes later we were at our Resort.

We found our hotel room, and although it's a standard room it's about as close to the pool as you can get. We got settled into our hotel room with the crib we reserved and the carry on luggage we had. Our checked bags didn't make it yet when we got here.

We went down to the main lobby area of the hotel and cruised the gift shop and the little cafeteria they have there. We had supper, bought a jug of milk for Oakley (which we have to keep in buckets of ice - renting a fridge is $10/day!) and refillable travel mugs ($13 each but you get free refills of pop and other drinks including coffee (yay for Des!) at the hotel for our entire stay. I'm sure we'll get $13 worth of drinks for each of us while we're here.

By the time we got to our hotel our bags were here, so we got into our suits and hit the pools. It's a beautiful night but it's still pretty cool when you're soaked to the skin! So we only lasted about a half hour before we headed back to our room, bathed Oakley and put her to bed. Which we're still listening to... she's having a hard time calming down. It's only 8 pm for us but it's 10 pm here... and she's just having a hard go of it . Doesn't help that we're all in the room with the lights out ignoring her. And poor Abbey is coughing up a storm - good thing we have antibiotics from her doc for her mouth... hopefully they'll clear up her lungs a bit too. So she's in bed too, tired little monkeys. They're both pretty excited to be here!

Tomorrow is a big day for us too. It's both Jason and Abbey's birthdays (39 and 12 respectively) and we have lots planned. They have birthday buttons to wear, and we're spending the day at Epcot. It will be a blast. Hopefully Oakley has a good sleep cuz she's gonna need it!

Jason (draft 1) & Des (draft 2 and edits)