This morning Mia slept untill 7 am and "only" woke up twice during the night (at home she slept the whole night almost all the time, but here she wakes up at least twice per night).There is a big difference between waking up at 5:30 or 7:00 am, at least for my well being :). So, today, despite the gray skies again I am in a better mood. Another bad weather tomorrow, but then we should get between 27-30 C for at least 4-5 days. Wonderful! Hoping that the 12 days we have left here will be good! No big plans today because of the weather, but Mia will get to play at an indoor playground (the only free indoor playgrounds at the International Drive are at a junk food restaurants like McDonalds) might meet friends for dinner and we will just take it easy. There will be plenty of stress when we come back home to Sweden...

Our room

Today, for the first time during this vacation I felt homesick and bored. Weird. The weather here has been a dissapointment and there is only so much one can shop ( my suitcase is full!). There has been wonderful sunny days too, but I am getting tired of this bipolar weather now. I want sun and warmth all the time please!!! I will not come here in February again, thats for sure. Our new hotel is nice, the room is not as big as we are use to, but we got everything we need and it looks pretty modern. Today we will just get to know the new hotel and see what it has to offer. Looking forward to some fun activities too FOR GROWNUPS because As I said before I am getting kind of bored and tired of all the kids stuff. Alright, the whining is done. I will stop now and remind myself to be greatful that I get to spend one month in Florida :)

Another gray day at Orlando :P. We live on the 12th floor and have a nice view.

Today is our last full day at the Vacation Village Resort at Parkway. A nice resort close to Disney World and a little town called Celebration which is built and devoloped by the Walt Disney company ( so you can imagine how beautiful that town is). Tomorrow morning we will be checking out from the resort and going to a new place at the International Drive - a four star hotel called Rosen Plaza. So far we have lived at the apartment hotels and done our own cooking and cleaning, but from tomorrow that will change and we have to eat out a lot. We will have a fridge so at least we can eat breakfast at home. It has been fun at the resort, specially for Mia. She has gotten so much attention from the other guests and staff. She works as an ice-breaker and every day we have had several short conversations with other resort guests, mostly about her age and how cute she is #proudmommy. She has also been able to meet other kids, swimmed in the pool with me ( that she absolutely loved), run around like crazy, sightseeing, go to activity center to paint and play, enjoyed the big nice playground... Yeah, what more could we ask for ( besides some more free time for mommy and daddy). It has been great, but at the same time I don't mind going to explore a new area :). I will miss all the friendly people around here, the wonderful Celebration SDA church we got to visit, the huge and warm pool where I could actually swim in and our lovely apartment.

I couldn't resist these Nike sneakers for 25 dollars! Perfect shoes for work and what a great splash of colour for my otherwise boring white uniform.

One of the houses at Celebration town

One of the huge pools at the resort

Den här resorten har många pooler utspridda över hela området. I dag är det fullt med folk överallt för att alla vet att övermorgon börjar regnandet och vem vet när det fina vädret kommer tillbaka. Älskar att bada bland amerikaner då jag känner mig inte alls tjock bland dom ha ha. Det finns slanka människor också här vid poolen, men dom är en klar minoritet. Åh vad jag har saknat det här underbara vädret. Mia har nu också premiärbadat i stora poolen och tjöt av glädje och förtjusning. Nu ska jag hoppa in i vattnet och väntar för resten av familjen att anlända till poolområdet

I dag skriver jag på svenska, bara för att jag kan ;). Jag har precis sövt Mia och snart är det dags att slappa vid poolen. Vi har varit i Orlando i ca 2 veckor nu och det är min tredje gång vid poolen, så ni kanske förstår att februari är inte så bra månad för en solsemester i Florida. Det ska jag komma ihåg nästa gång. Jag försöker tänka positivt och se det så: a) vi slipper snö, b) trots att det är inte varmt varje dag, skiner solen nästan varje dag och redan det gör en mycket glad c) vi kan vara tillsammans och ta det lugnt d) går det inte att bada i poolen tar vi jacuzzin i sovrummet då ;). I går var i den lokala adventkyrkan här i Celebration, Orlando. Kyrkan var 30 min promenad borta från resorten. Mia fick träffa andra barn i sabbatskolan och jag fick lyssna på en mycket bra och inspirerande predikan. Kyrkan log i samma område där adventisterna driver ett stort sjukhus/hälsocenter. Jag har nog aldrig sett ett så vackert sjukhus. Skulle lätt kunna tänka mig att jobba där! Tyvärr då blev det den enda gången vi kan gå till kyrkan här i Orlando för att nästa fredag flyttar vi igen och där har vi återigen ingen kyrka nära oss. Inte så mycket att tillägga just nu. Vi har det bra och hoppas att du som läser ha det bra med :).

Vi har morgonsol på balkongen :)

We have left Extended Stay America for Vacation Village Resorts at Parkway! I am so delighted to be here. Partly because it is my first resort experience and partly because we got such a nice 2 room flat that I am sure we will enjoy. We have a nice kitchen area, a big bathroom with a shower and to my suprise we have a large bathub in our bedroom! There is a quite larg living area witj plenty of space for Mia to run around and she will also have her own bed in the livingroom which means that the whole family doesn't have to wake up at 05.00 anymore. We can finally take turns with sleeping as long as we want to in the mornings because there is a door we can close if one of us wants to keep sleeping. Wohooo! I have really missed that! Anyways, this resort is huge. It has 21 buildings, 7 floors each, and there are people from all over the World. There is a warmed up pool, playground, gym, childrens activities, a food store close by, long sideways for walks, restaurants, etc. We live on the sixth floor and we can see some water, a convention center and a motorway he he. I would have wanted to have maybe another kind of view, but the Swedish lady, who has a timeshare in this resort and thanks to whom we can stay here wanted to have a view towards Disney World thats behind the motorway to see fireworks in the evening. She is not staying in the same flat with us, but her flat is like a double flat next to ours. It's kind of hard to explain how timeshare works, as I understand it you buy a right to stay at the certain resort couple of times a year. You get a different flat every time (and some flats are double ones) and you will be quaranteed a flat every time you want to have your vacation here. After Mia wakes up from her nap we will go and explore the neighbourhood more and grab something to eat. We will aldo do some food shopping because breakfast is not included here. Tomorrow we will also get warm weather and I can't wait to soak up the sun again and maybe finally swim!

The kitchen area

Not so good picture of the living area

Living area

Yes, there is a bathtub in our bedroom. Never seen that before!

Two TV's!

1/3 of the bathroom

My husband and Mia just went out for a walk. I decided to stay indoors cause even tough it's sunny outside, the wind is crazy and so is the temperature : +4 C! So it is officially warmer in Sweden right now than it is in Orlando, Florida ha ha. Today I will only go out if I have to! Right now it's pretty cozy in our room after I turned the fan from "cool" to "heat" instead :). BUT yhe next 4 days ahead of us will be +23-28 C. Wohooo! Talking about wohooo, yesterday, I couldn't help myself and did some shopping at Ross ( it is sort of an outlet store). When it was time to pay, the lady at the tegister asked me if I wanted to make a donation to somekind of an organisation that helps underprivileged boys and girls stay in school, by helping them with homework and such, something like that. Anyways, I decided to give five dollars and I had to write down my name and the amount on a piece of paper. So after a minute or so they shouted out over the whole huge Ross store (in to a speakerphone) that "Kaie from Sweden just donated 5 dollars for bla bla bla, WOHOOOO".And all the staff shouted Wohoooo back and so did I. Only in America ha ha. So everybody who donated got the same treatment. Another thing I have noticed here that lot of the tourists are from Brazil. I hear Portuguese more than I hear English. Yesterday I even heard Swedish and few days ago Estonian, but Portuguese dominates to a point that the staff at the store 75% of the time greets you in Portuguese. If it wouldn't be for all the Brazilians, Orlandos tourist bussiness would ptobably collaps. Now that I sm home alone I will try to do dome packing ( we are leaving for s new holiday redort tomorrow) and it's time to make some Invites for Mias upcoming birthday in April. Have a great day/evening everyone!

Why is it so hard to get my name right...

Sorry darling, you have to wait another 16 years to getin there

Today has been a lazy day. I took a two hour walk to get milk from a store (didn't walk to the closest store cause I really wanted to walk). I came home with everything else but the milk :P, because it was sold out! Anyways, while walking I enjoyed the warmth and occasional sunrays. The wind was playing with my hair and I just felt fantastic. From about 3 pm it has been raining and raining. The weather tomorrow and on Thursday will be quite chilly. This winter weather is very moody... One day generous with sun and warmth, another day cold and windy...I guess I will be as pale as I was when we came to Florida when it's time to leave since I have hardly been able to work on my tan. Well, I have never been the type that tans well anyways. On Friday we will be moving to a new place where we will be staying for a week. Hope we will like it there and that we will meet more kids in Mias age than we have met in our current place. We get comments all the time on "what a cute and happy daughter we have" and thats lovely, but I see that Mia misses playing with other kiddos. Poor thing is stuck with her boring parents :P. Today when me and my husband were giving each other hugs Mia decided that enough is enough and shoutet loud and clear " Stop it"...She is the sweetest thing snd cracks us up several times per day :)