Running with the Relatives TR - February 19-25, 2015 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Running with the Relatives TR - February 19-25, 2015
If your interested, check out my PTR called "Running with the Relatives" to find the back story behind this trip!
We're back from our trip, and I survived not only the half marathon, but taking a trip with 15 relatives including 2 babies! I've never written a TR before, so bear with me as I'm new to all of this, responding to everyone's comments, and trying to include some pictures! Here goes nothing!
Thursday, February 19
School was cancelled today because of the low temperatures. My husband Kenny and I are both teachers. I had scheduled to take the afternoon off so that we were ready to go on time, and he was already off because he had recently got a new job as a principal! His current teaching job is over an hour away (ironically, in the town that I grew up in and where my parents live). He started his new job as a principal at a district only about 20 minutes away, when we came back from Florida. So he was already off school this day because he was using up his remaining personal days at his teaching job. I took Charlotte (our 7 month old daughter) to daycare and went into work for about an hour to fix my sub plans, since I was anticipating that we weren’t going to have school on Friday either. (Those of you that are teachers can feel my pain - I had 18 pages typed of lesson plans for my sub for 3.5 school days... of course with the cancellations I had to change everything!) I went home to finish packing and did a few chores around the house. I also threw together a skirt for the race... I had had the fabric for a few weeks, but just never got the change to put it together. I am pretty crafty but I do not have a sewing machine, so needless to say this took a while! I showered and got ready, and then Kenny and I went to Panera for lunch before picking up Charlotte at daycare around 1:30 pm. She fell asleep in the car on the way home, and kept sleeping until 3:45! We finished packing and loaded the car. When Charlotte woke up, we changed her into her pajamas and then packed her back up. (Since our flight was at 7:35 pm and that is her usual bedtime, we figured it would be easiest if we just put her in her pjs before we headed out!)
We only live about half an hour from the airport, so we weren’t going to leave until about 4:45, but since we were picking other people up and since we had been home today, we figured we might as well head out early. We left home at 4:05 and gave Charlotte a bottle in the car. We picked Crowley’s up (Kenny's parents) a few minutes later and then were at Bethany’s (Kenny's sister) by 4:25. We were glad that all our luggage fit - we have a Honda Pilot but it was jammed with 5 adults, a baby in a car seat, a stroller, and everyone's checked bags and carry-ons. Kenny wasn't too happy having to pick his sister up too - she doesn't live too far away, but where she lives we would have to go a totally different way to the airport and Kenny was afraid that it was going to be a pain and take longer. I hate to say, it but he was right! We hit a lot of traffic on the way to the airport, but we made it to the extended parking lot of the Pittsburgh airport by 5:15 pm. We were parked pretty close to the door, but we literally ran to the door because it was so cold. Kenny wrapped Charlotte inside his coat and ran, and we trailed behind with all the luggage. We were maybe outside only for a minute or two, and my hands were complete numb by the time we got inside! It was six degrees with a wind chill of negative 17.
When we got to the Southwest counter, there was no one in line except the Rothermel’s (Kenny's cousin's family). I was glad, because I always get a little anxious here trying to have everything I need out and ready to hand to the worker, trying to weight my luggage, etc. We checked in and showed Charlotte’s birth certificate to confirm her age since she was traveling as a lap infant. Our big suitcase was three pounds over, so we had to take a pair of shoes out and put it in our carry on instead. Again, thankfully no one was behind us in line so we didn't have to feel rushed as we tried to reconfigure our luggage! There were only a few people in line at security so we got through that pretty quickly as well. We regrouped all our belongings and put our shoes back on and walked right on the shuttle from the main part of the airport out to the gates. When we got out to the gates, we stopped at McDonald’s to eat. Crowley’s went to the gate first, then came back and ate with us. Then, we fed Charlotte. We went to our gate, A3, where we still had plenty of time left to wait.
We got the text from Disney saying that our room was ready and told us what our room number was. Of course, I quickly looked the room up online and realized that it was not a king bed room as we had requested. We called to double check and they said that there were no king bed rooms available (we learned they were first come, first serve, so the fact we weren’t checking in until late at night didn’t help!). They did say that they would have the Pack ‘N Play already set up in our room when we arrived. About 6:50 we went to the restroom and changed Charlotte. We ran into Rothermel’s there, who had eaten at TGI Friday’s in the airport. [/B][/B]
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Lindsay
Last edited by CheerDisney; 03-05-2015 at 02:20 PM..
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Great start! Sorry about the king room. I didn't know it was based on check-in time, good to know!
I had never worried about a king room before at a value resort so I didn't really know this either. We have had a king room at POR before, but in the moderate category you can actually book a king bed room (it is its own separate category). I guess I didn't really realize the difference until we didn't get one and I thought more about it! It all worked out well though, and we still had room for the pack 'n play (which was our main concern about having a king in the first place).
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And your picture is showing up the right size for me. 
We did that once and it was very,um, interesting! 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
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I didn't know it was based on check-in time, good to know!
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