Monday Rambles

- I’m home! Our train brought us back yesterday morning, after beating us all the way home from Florida. I hope I never travel anywhere by train again, at least not overnight! This girl cannot sleep on a train. I’m still recovering.

Aside from the train rides, our trip was marvelous. If you follow my personal Instagram feed, many apologies, I hope I didn’t drive you crazy with my pictures. I have family following that one, so I was taking pictures as much for them as me! It should be much calmer now.

Interesting things learned on trip:

8 year old girl is a big chicken. She wouldn’t ride anything! She was scared of every ride and we had to practically beg her to get on the ones she did ride. Incidentally, she loved the rides we begging her on. *sigh*

4 year old boy has come a LONG way since we went to Carowinds (an NC theme park) last year. HE wouldn’t ride anything last year. This year, he wanted to ride ALL THE THINGS and was extremely upset he couldn’t ride Space Mountain. He was too short. I can’t wait to take him back in a few years.

The parks have grown a LOT in the last 14 years. I still didn’t get to do everything I wanted to do and we had 7 day park hoppers. Favorite rides were Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh, Pirates of the Caribbean, Expedition Everest, the Safari in Animal Kingdom, Soarin’ in Epcot, and Space Mountain. We all loved the Finding Nemo show in Animal Kingdom. It’s fantastic. The Little Mermaid show in Hollywood Studios was great as well and we all (except the girl) loved It’s Tough to be a Bug in Animal Kingdom. Poor child; it made her cry! Fake scary bugs can be soooo terrifying.

A few highlights (for those who don’t follow me on Instagram, apologies for those that too, this should be the last time you see anything Disney from me):

- On the reading front, I was able to finish one book while we were gone (on that never-ending train-ride home…) and that was Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks. I started this book by listening to the audio, but the audio was not working for me. It was a LOT better once I switched to text. But more on that closer to the pub date.

- I also read about 10% of The Stand by Stephen King for The Standalong. I just have to say, it is NOT fun reading when you have a cold! And I have a cold! I started catching it on Tuesday (of course, since I was on vacation and haven’t been sick all year!) and reading about what I’ve been reading about (don’t want to spoil it if you EVER plan to read it but I guess saying I have a cold is a bit of a clue) made the reading much more… icky? Plus, I was freaking out every time I coughed in public. And being at Disney World; I was in public A LOT.

- After I finished Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, since it was like 2 am and I have no desire to read The Stand in the middle of the night, I decided to give Railsea by China Mieville one. last. try. I don’t know if it was the hour, the extreme boredom I was in, or my sick frame of mind, but I totally got into it this time! I was beginning to think Mr. Mieville and I were never going to get along! In fact, since I’m home, on my last day of vacation sick, I think I’ll go do a load of laundry and read some more. Happy Monday!