Reuben arrives today

Our Maryland rabbi's son, Reuben, is arriving today at 10 a.m. for six whirlwind Disney days.  He is "one of us," that is a Disney Geek!  As a young boy, he was interested in Disney and eventually talked his parents into a summer vacation at Disney when he was 10 years old.  That trip was enough for his parents but only whet Reuben's appetite for more.  Over the next 7 years, we spent a lot of time talking Disney to him and sending him the D23 magazines when we finished with them.  Once we moved down here, we made the offer to host him for a vacation.  It was scheduled originally for last summer, but about two weeks before he was to fly down, he was hit by a pick up truck and broke his leg.  OUCH!  Everyone was VERY grateful that it wasn't something worse, but it did put that Disney trip off by an entire year.  Now he is finally on his way to that magical Disney vacation.

Mark and I are just hoping that at 61 years old we still have the strength to do six straight days with a 17 year old!!  LOL!!  We shall see!!

I'm going to post our schedule here so you will know where we are each day, but I'm very sure I will not have the time or energy to sit and write any blogs for the next six days.  Don't panic!  I will be back on Monday.

Our Agenda is...


Tuesday, June 19:   Pick Reuben up at airport at 10 a.m. and head straight to Magic Kingdom to do as much as possible before taking the boat over to the Polynesian for dinner at the Kona Cafe. Our reservation is for 7:25 p.m.  After dinner, we will explore the resort a bit and then watch the Magic Kingdom castle fireworks show, "Wishes," from the Polynesian's beach.  We did this for our anniversary last winter and it was a lot of fun.

Wednesday, June 20:  All day at Epcot with dinner in the Chinese pavilion at Nine Dragons at 6:45 p.m.


Thursday, June 21:  Start out at Magic Kingdom and then go to Epcot for a very special dinner in the Canadian pavilion at Le Cellier. This is a dinner that the rabbi and his wife are buying for us as a thank you for hosting Reuben.  Thanks, Jonathan and Mona!


Friday, June 22: Animal Kingdom all day with dinner at Yak and Yeti at 6:15 p.m.

Saturday, June 23:  Hollywood Studios all day with a special bonus for Mark and Reuben.  The Disney fan club, D23, is doing a special thing called a Fanniversary for D23 members and one guest.  Mark is the member, and he's taking Reuben as his guest.  All we know is that it is in the air-conditioned theater where we saw the Star Wars shows and starts at 11 a.m.  Other than that it's been very hush hush.  I'm going to sit in the shade and read a book while they are in there!  We will leave the Studios in time to go to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for dinner at Boma's at 8:15 p.m.


Sunday, June 24:  This is the last day.  Sniff.  We will hit Magic Kingdom when it opens and then take the monorail over to the Contemporary for lunch at The Wave at 12:20 p.m.  His flight leaves at 6:30 p.m., so that means leaving the area around 3:30 or 4 to get over to the airport.  If we still have the energy and time, we will probably go back to the Magic Kingdom after lunch just for a final farewell.

Whew!  I'm tired now just thinking about it, but I'm also very, very excited.  Mark and I haven't done such a complete Disney vacation ourselves in years and years.  We will feel very much like tourists!  The weather is going to be perfect today but much more typical of summer for the rest of the days with highs in the low 90s, chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, and plenty of humidity.  We will carry our backpack with rain ponchos in it, wear hats, drink water, and use sunscreen.  It's just the way it used to be for us when we came down with our kids in the summer.  Good times!

Also on Friday, Lowell and Emily are flying out to San Jose, CA to start their week's vacation.  They will spend a few days with Evey and Eric, have a trip to Monterey, visit San Francisco, tour Alcatraz, and then go to Sonoma for a few days with our friend Kelly (sadly Laverne will be out of town) in order to tour wineries.  We hope they send lots of pictures of all these adventures.

One last thing:  I wasn't as good yesterday as I had hoped.  I didn't do any exercise at all. I was just so tired that I took a nap when I should have been going to the gym.  I didn't stay under 1200 calories either, but I did stay at 1500.  I'm sure that was SO much less than I had been eating that I dropped three and a half pounds yesterday.  My dinner Monday night at Cohen's was deli meat, full of sodium.  I'm pretty sure some of the weight loss was just the result of retaining fluid. This morning I was 249.4.  I also won four games of Mah Jongg, which is HUGE for me!  It was a good day yesterday, so we feel ready to start our big adventure with Reuben today.

In order to save calories and money, for this trip Mark and I are making a pact not to order any appetizers, desserts, or alcoholic drinks on this trip.  With Lowell and Emily, we frequently indulged in all three, but Reuben is underage, so there's no need to worry about having wine and cocktails with him.  Also we just need to be a little more frugal for these six days, saving it up for our road trip up north that starts next Thursday.

OK, that's it for now.  I'll get back to you with lots of pictures after Reuben's vacation is over. We are heading out in five minutes to go get him.  Whoee!!  I'm very excited.