Beach Vaca

Every fall is crazy around the office at work. The students are back on campus, events start back in full swing and Homecoming is right around the corner. This year for Homecoming, I was in charge of Tent City, which is a large tailgate area (only on Homecoming weekend) where all the colleges, some departments on campus and mostly greeks have tents for alumni gathering. This year we had 61 organizations put in tents and my job was to organize all the chaos. I was so happy to have a get-away planned, less than a week after Homecoming I headed to Florida for a girls trip!

Me - Abbe - Jaylan - Bernice at Cirque du Soleil La NouBa

My good friend +Bernice invited me to head to Florida to celebrate her daughter Abbe's birthday, which happened to fall over her Fall Break. Many of you might remember Abbe as the little girl I picked up from school throughout my college days at ISU. Well, she's a teenager now! That's right, she turned 13 in October! Abbe's friend Jaylan also went with us.

First stop on the trip was a night at Disney's Polynesian Resort. I've been to Disney once, that was two years ago, but we didn't stay on "property" as they say. So needless to say, I might have been more excited than the girls!

Everything about Disney fascinates me. From the people welcoming you with a lei to the immaculate vegetation. The picture to the right shows the beautiful scene that we were welcomed to upon entrance into the main building for check-in.

The other thing that amazes me is the technology. We were each given a "Magic Band", properly branded with the Incredibles, that served as our room key. The magic band was also used to purchase food at any of the Disney properties and if we were going to any of the parks, it would also hold our park tickets. It's really quite remarkable how they worked. When you leave, you get too keep your band, as it has your name engraved on the underside. Of course they have all sorts of colors, designs and bedazzle things you can purchase to make your band unique to you.

Pool and Magic Kingdom

After getting settled in our room, we went out to the the pool to soak up the sun! The Polynesian has a great pool area. They have a volcano slide and zero entry pool. They also have an adult pool. My favorite part though is how they have a beach area that looks over the lake and you can see the top of Magic Kingdom.  From where we sat at the pool, we had the best of both, a view of Magic Kingdom and the pool. Magic Kingdom was probably my favorite park and it gave me the itch to want to go! Especially since they added on to Fantasyland with Belle's Castle! However, we talked sense into ourselves and realized we didn't want to fight the crowds at the park on a Friday.

Later that evening, we went to Downtown Disney to see the Cirque de Soleil show La NouBa. The picture from the show is above. If you have never been to see a Cirque de Soleil show, you should really try to get to one. This was my second show, the first being the Beatles Love show in Las Vegas, which I coincidentally went to with Bernice as well!

Downtown Disney is really cool and the best part, it's free to go to! They have a toy store that has figurines from the Toy Story movies. I couldn't resist getting my picture with Mr. Potato head on the Play-Dough container! There are tons of fun stores and restaurants and lots of photo ops everywhere.  Near the Lego store were various scenes made out of Legos. I couldn't resist taking pictures! They had Buzz and Woody, the dwarfs from Snow White and a monster coming out of the lake.

After our eventful day and a half at Disney, he headed for the Coast to spend the next few days at the beach. It was wonderful to relax, unwind, read a book and catch up! But all good things must come to an end. It was a wonderful trip! Thanks Bernice and Abbe for taking me with you and having me apart of your birthday trip! I think this marked our third girls trip together!  Can't wait for the next one! You know my bags are always packed :)

Sunset at Cocoa Beach