Off to Florida- Sunday, Februay 16, 2025

    Julie really wanted to go back to Disney last summer, and we actually had a trip planned out.  We were going to take two weeks in August to drive down, explore along the way, and go to a few Disney parks while we were there.  Around May, though, we started to see how the heat affects Abby, and we had memories of cursing Florida's summer weather on previous trips.   That, plus the fact that Emma was in the Hudson Valley and we were planning a few shorter trips to see her and move her home before the year was over, and we decided to postpone Disney until February.

    We used the good people at "Be Our Guest Vacations" to make the arrangements for the August trip for the three of us, including Abby, and they were able to change the arrangements to February instead.  In fact, only a few weeks ago, Emma decided that she would be able to go to.  It's not really her Spring Break yet, but she is able to work it out that she was able to come to and with their help, we were able to add her on.

    The thing about going to Disney in February is that all of the New York schools are off for a week around President's Day.  That's good for us because we get the time to be able to go to Florida when the weather is nice there (and generally not nice here).  But it's also bad because all of New York seems to have the same idea.  Air fares go up a lot that week.  We decided we would save some money and drive to Cleveland and fly from there.

    We started the countdown about a hundred or so days ago.  Julie has a set of blocks with a Mickey-shaped chalkboard side on one of them that she got a number of years ago.  The last few days, Abby has been doing the honors and changing the number each day, usually in the morning.   She was all smiles as she changed it to "1" today.

    We took our time getting up and getting the last things packed.  We left about 10:00 this morning.  Driving today was, as Julie put it, "yucky."  The air was filled with big snowflakes and roads were slushy and slippery.  We passed lots of accidents and cars in the ditch, and saw a lot of people fishtailing as they were driving too fast.  We took it slow, oftentimes driving with the hazard lights on, and made it to our first scheduled stop in Erie, PA shortly after noon.  We spent about two hours at the Millcreek Mall where Emma wanted to pick up a few things and we could eat lunch at the food court.  They also have play area that Abby could use to expend some energy.  She loved running around and organized a hide and seek game among the kids that she met there.

     We left Erie at about 2:00 and made it to our hotel near the Cleveland airport around 4:00.  We had hoped to have dinner with Scott's cousin Laurie, but apparently she isn't feeling well today and had to cancel.  We ordered pizza for the hotel and will take it easy here now.  We'll have an early rise and a busy day tomorrow.