Shady Days

The first leg of our vacation was three nights at Shades of Green at the Walt Disney World Resort.  If you aren't familiar with SoG, it is an MWR facility, meaning it is open to military members and their dependents.  We love to stay at SoG.  The rooms are bigger than rooms at a Disney resort, the amenities are great, the food is ok, there is a Starbucks in the lobby, an Exchange for souvenirs, and since it is considered a military installation, you don't pay tax!  

On this visit, they were transforming the resort into the athletes village for the Invictus Games, which is like an Olympics for wounded warriors.  It was very cool to see the transformation and to see the athletes starting to arrive.   

For a change, we had no set agenda for these three nights, we weren't going to the parks and we had no dining reservations. Our only goal was to relax and be together as a family.

Step one, lots of pool time.

Step Two, ride the monorail and make some pressed pennies.

Step Three, nap!

Repeat steps 1-3 for 3 days. It may not sound like fun to everyone, but you can walk to the Polynesian from SoG. This allowed us to hop right on the monorail, which is Ryan's favorite thing in the world. It was a little hard to not hop off and go to the Magic Kingdom, but having no plans or agenda allowed us to find things like this awesome balcony at the Grand Floridian.

No wait, I did do one more thing. Laundry. A mother's work is never done. And while I was doing laundry, I found this, and it made my OCD alarm go off, big time!

Once the laundry was done and folded, I repacked and we were off to Port Canaveral to board the Disney Dream! But no stay at Shades of Green is complete without a picture of the Patriotic Mickey in the lobby!