As a single parent of 3 teenagers it's sometimes difficult, working two jobs, to find the time to take them on vacation. With all the hustle and bustle of work and school, and making sure all homework is done and all housework is maintained, sometimes I forget to take time out to spend time with my family that's not stressful or rushed. Quality time. After losing my wife 4 years ago, things have definitely been rough, for all of us. I realized after my 15 year old daughter had a meltdown when I wouldn't let her go to a party because there was not going to be any adults present to supervise, that it was time to go Now.

That night I took a look at our finances. It wasn't pretty, but I had been squirreling money away, any extra I could. We currently live in Georgia, so while we could have headed north and vacationed to Hilton Head, but the last time we went there was as a family, before my wife passed, and the last thing I wanted to do was remind them of their mom. There would be time for that, but this was going to be a fun vacation. I decided to bite the bullet and head south and take the kids to Disney. They hadn't done that before, ever. We had talked about, my wife and I, but we never had the chance.

I waited until Saturday morning when we were all sitting down to breakfast. My daughter had been giving me the cold shoulder for the past couple of days, but I thought that my announcement would pull her out of her sulky mood. All 3 of them went crazy when they heard the news. I explained it was going to be a little weekend getaway, nothing crazy, but that we would spend a day at Disney. After triple checking my packing list for Florida vacation, we left late Thursday and arrived in Orlando around 9 in the morning Friday. I just drove straight through and it was an easy trip. We checked into the hotel and I told the kids they could hang out at the pool for a few hours while I rested up. They were more than willing to oblige.
 

 

After my nap I head down to the pool, it was about noon and I figured they'd be hungry. I wrangled them up and had them go up and get changed. Our first day in Orlando was fun. I took the kids to the new ICON park and we ate at a restaurant there and checked out the wax museum. I spent about $150, which was under what I was planning, so that was welcomed. After we were finished there we went back to the hotel and rested up the remainder of the night watchng TV and lounging. The kids were super excited about going to Disney tomorrow so I made sure they went to sleep early so they would be wide awake all day.

Disney the following day was Crazy, with a capital C. The kids had never been to such an extensive theme park. Closest to it was the county fair. I had the kids sit down with the park map as soon as we got there and circle the rides they had to go on and formulated a plan of attact, so to speak, to make sure we got everything done that we wanted to do. I only had enough money for 1 park and we'd all decided on the MGM one since it had more thrilling rides. We were not disappointed. We were there from opening to closing and to say we were exhausted when we finally made it back to the hotel would be an understatement.

The last day of our short weekend vacation was bittersweet. We all ate the free breakfast provided by the hotel in semi silence. The kids weren't sad, per se, but tired. They hadn't had this much activity in a long time. And the same goes for me. We loaded up the car and made our way back onto the interstate. I had one more surprise in store for them, though. We didn't spend as much as I had figured, so before we completely gave up our vacation I took the kids to Dave and Busters, an arcade/restaurant, and gave each one $10 for one last hoorah. They ran about playing the various games while I ordered us burgers and sodas.

This was exactly what we all needed and now it feels like things will be back on track.