Father's Day

I know Father's Day was a few days ago, but I have been thinking about some of the fun times we have had with my dad. My family was able to take quite a few trips when we were growing up and I was remembering one trip that was especially fun and memorable so I thought I would share it.



It was winter 1996, I was in 4th grade and Bean was in 2nd grade. My parents had secretly planned a family trip to Disney World in Florida. The night before we were to leave on our trip was the beginning of the Spokane ice storm. Things had started to melt in previous days but temperatures dramatically fell and everything froze. Snow fell on top of the ice and tree branches and power lines were down everywhere. Our power went out the night before we were to leave.



The day of our trip, which would have been a school day, but all the schools were closed because of the ice storm, my parents woke us up early. They asked us if we wanted to go to Disney World that day. I thought they were just saying that to try and get us out of bed. But no, they were telling the truth. We packed our suitcases and left for the airport that morning. Our plane made it out of Spokane even though the airport was running on a generator and the runway was all icy.

Once we made it to our hotel in Florida, a guy trying to sell my parents a time share approached us. My dad wanted to get rid of him and so he agreed to get a free breakfast the next morning and listen to his presentation. When the guy asked for our room number so they could give us a wake-up call my dad gave him the wrong room number on purpose. I feel bad for whoever was in that room because they had an early wake-up call!

The first night in our hotel room my mom woke up during the night to go to the bathroom and stepped into a couple inches of water. Our condo was flooded. We had to pack up everything really quickly and go to the front desk to get a new room. This all took place at about 4 am.

While we were driving around looking for dinner, which is always stressful because we all can't decide on one place to eat, my dad suggested that we go through the Taco Bell drive thru naked! How gross would that be! (My family has a fascination with suggesting we go places naked.) But sometime after that trip, we came across an article about some guy who really did go through the Taco Bell drive thru naked and I think the workers called the police on him or refused him service. My family had a good laugh about that!

The whole time while we were in Florida enjoying ourselves, the power to our house had been off. I think it came back on a day or two before we arrived back. We didn't miss much school either because it had been canceled for a while because of the ice storm. And our plane landed safely on the runway and they barely got the door gate out to our plane, but we made it safely home. It was the perfect time for a trip!