Sister's Retreat 2014

This year we met up on the first weekend in May. Who knew that after all our careful planning this would be right in the middle of everything else I needed to do! I missed Jenn Jack's wedding although I did her cake (separate post) and a trip to Washington DC with Mendis and Dane's Birthday all in one whack. Ah well it was worth it all.

A few shenanigans at the grocery on the way.

 I was the first one to arrive but within an hour or two we were all there at the airport. It was pouring rain and I just didn't see that coming. My umbrella was packed away so oops. We had dinner at the Olive Garden on the way to the beach. It was a great meal except for the sulphur soda you get in Florida!! Our waiter was super strange. Ya that's all I am going to say about that. Then it was off to the grocery store to load up on supplies. So while we were unloading Nadine's car and headed up to the condo in fact a horn started honking nonstop. It took us a minute to figure out it was indeed Nadine's car. She couldn't make it stop so she jumped in and drove it away until it stopped. Weird.

Saturday dawned early that weekend. At about 2 am or so in fact. We were woken up then by the car horn yet again. Talk about an adrenaline rush at that hour. We tore out there in our jammies to get it to stop. Nadine and Beth were already driving it away since it wouldn't stop so Carolyn and I ran down the deserted road to meet them in a vacant parking lot. Yup that was a sight. We are both a little outta shape can I just say. So it eventually stopped by itself again so we drove back and tried to get back to sleep. Needless to just say we slept in a bit to recover and no one slept well waiting to hear the horn again.
Saturday we had massages booked so got started on that while Nadine found out how to disengage the darn horn. What a relief. The massages were great and we loved every minute of it. We sure needed it after the stressful night. Dinner was fabulous:

The fondue where we eat until we burst

 Carolyn pretty much battered everything in sight and fondued it that night. We had so much fun we decided this has to be a tradition. Sucks for Nadine because she has to haul all the stuff but I'm down with it. We got so full that night we went for a walk in the drizzle. Lovely though.

 

 Sunday was a lazy, relaxing day. 

 

That afternoon we hit the beach.

 

  In fact we had lunch on the beach. We decided we wanted gelato for lunch so that's what we did. It was fabulous. We even had leftovers and didn't care. This time no one left any one else sitting there for hours either lol. And more importantly this time we slathered on the sunscreen like nobodies business. Not going through the sunburn trauma again thanks.

I was excited to see the part of the beach that they drive on!

That night we went out to dinner and thought we would try a new restaurant.

 Dinner was great and we made sure to use the Disney Princess straws Emily had given Carolyn for her birthday at dinner. She wanted picture proof! 

 We attempted to watch The Great Gatsby two times that weekend and I am the only one who actually stayed awake through both showings. Odd since I am the only one who had already seen it. We had such fun doing lots of nothing in particular, except maybe eating lots of chocolate. We had tons of that!

We were sad to say goodbye to the condo when we packed up Monday. All was not lost though because that meant it was Disney World Day!! Yeah:

Nadine posing for the camera

 

 We headed for Epcot because Beth had never been there. Besides we figured we could eat our way around the world! We shopped in Canada and headed over to England for fish n Chips for lunch. Man they are so good there.

 After lunch we shopped through Paris where I found and outrageously expensive perfume I just had to have. Call it pier pressure I guess. But I still have no regrets about that and wear it lots. Then we made a beeline over to the French Pastries. We had worked up an appetite by then.

The classic group photo. We are a classy bunch eh.

Seriously we just took this pic so everyone could see the guy in background! Sweatband and all!!

 

 Since we had park hoppers we ran over to the Magic Kingdom after we shopped the rest of Epcot. We were hoping to get into Be My Guest on standby for dinner but no go. Also no luck at Cinderellas castle but we made the best of it.

Sistas

This is as close as we got to dinner here this time :(

All was not lost since we had reservations at the Crystal Palace for dinner with Winnie the Pooh and his pals. Quite entertaining. Gotta say though what's up with Disney not using filtered water for their sodas?? I was dying for a coke and a shot of caffeine by this time but again with the sulphur water, yuck! We had a ball that day and just ran around Disney until we were ready to die. In fact we closed the place. Well worth every minute and a huge thanks to Nadine for scoring us free passes for the day!
So Nadine dropped us off at the hotel and one at a time we all headed for the airport the next morning. It was sad to see everyone go and here's crossing our fingers that we will be lucky enough to do it again next year.