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This past weekend we didn't have any big plans. We woke up Saturday morning and it was pouring rain as it had been for a while. Connor's soccer game was canceled and Andrea suggested we go down to Orlando. It was amazing how different the weather forecast was. In Jacksonville it was going to be raining all day and in Orlando there was no rain and sunshine. We left before noon and by the time we were near Daytona Beach the skies cleared up and it was a little cloudy but no rain.

Connor really had been lobbying for some mini-golf, so we ate some lunch at Uno's and then went to the Disney "Winter Summerland" mini-golf course.

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The course was Christmas themed and there was a summer course and a winter course. The summer course had sand and beach themed Christmas decorations and the winter course looked like the north pole. We opted for the summer course.

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Paige started off the day trying to hit a ball around, but she gave up pretty quick. I put her ball in my pocket after the first few holes and she eventually left her golf club somewhere.

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Connor was very competitive and surprisingly did pretty well. We were keeping actual score and although we gave him a couple "re-do's" on a few of the holes he mostly played by the rules. We had a maximum of 5 strokes per hole and played 18 holes. He ended up with a 60 on the par 54 course. He didn't win and it drove him absolutely crazy. He talked about the fact that he didn't win the entire weekend and whined about it incessantly. He wasn't a great sport about it, but he did have a good time playing and wanted to play again.

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After mini-golf, we went to the resort and checked in. The "Art of Animation" resort is the newest at Disney and has a Nemo, Lion King, Little Mermaid and Cars themed sections. We stayed in the Cars themed section. There were 3 pools, one at the Cars area, one at the Little Mermaid area, and the biggest pool at Disney in the Nemo section.

I took a video of our room before we unpacked everything and destroyed it.


After we unpacked and changed, we went to the Nemo pool for a bit. Although it was sunny, it was a little cool still for swimming. The idea of the biggest pool sounded appealing, but once you got in to the enormous pool with all the people it got old pretty quick. Lots of kids all over you and it was just so big and spread out.

After a while, Connor asked to play ping pong so we did that for a long time.

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We ate a quick dinner at the resort and then went to bed. In the morning, we got dressed for swimming, but it was too cold. We decided to play at the playground instead. Daddy was the "sea witch", Paige was the little mermaid and Connor was Sebastian. We played for a bit and Andrea took a picture of us on the playground.


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After we played for a while, we took some pictures as we walked through the resorts. The decorations were amazing, as you'd expect from Disney.

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After walking around a bit, we swam in the Cars pool.

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We didn't swim too long since it was a little cold, then we changed clothes and got packed up to leave. Right before leaving we took some pics with the Cars.

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We ended up with tons of pics at the resort. The kids really loved the decorations and wanted pictures with everything. I didn't even post everything we took. It was a little crazy after a while, but the kids enjoyed it and it was fun to have them cooperating.

We ate one more time at Uno's before we left.

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Connor ordered a hamburger and on the kids menu he wrote "WIF CETHUP" (With Ketchup). We thought it was cute so we got a picture of him holding it up.

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Paige didn't want to be left out, so we had to take a picture of her holding her menu. She didn't feel like smiling at that point, I guess she'd used them all up.

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We're happy we made the trip down. It turned what otherwise would have been a boring rainy weekend into something special and memorable. I'm glad Andrea talked me in to it.