Florida Trip!

This is very overdue, but hopefully I will get caught up soon! At the end of May, Bubba had to go to Florida to visit offices in Tampa and Orlando and since we had some frequent flyer miles that were about to expire, we decided to go with him for the week and spend a couple of extra days there for a mini-vacation! We got tickets for Sea World and Disney World and the girls were so excited for our trip.

The entire 7 days we were there, it was pouring rain for all but a few hours....not exactly what we had in mind, but we still had a good time for the most part although it will probably be many years before we are brave enough for Disney World again! The day we went to Sea World, the weather was actually pretty nice and it wasn't very crowded so that worked out well and the kids loved the dolphin and whale shows. I had never been there before and thought it was a great place for the kids-they had some little rides there too that didn't have lines so we went on some of them multiple times in a row without even having to get off!

A couple days later we decided to try Disney since the Weather Channel was predicting a slim chance of rain compared with the other days so we set out that morning and we were about 5 minutes away when Savannah started throwing up all over! She is now 4 years old and this was the first time in her entire life she has ever thrown up-we couldn't believe it but luckily we had a change of clothes in the car so we cleaned her up and she seemed to be fine so we kept going. We got on the bus to the monorail, got on the monorail and we were about 1 minute away from the park when it started to rain. We headed into the park and it started to lighten up a little so we got in line for the first ride we saw...The Teacups! Not the smartest choice for a kid who just threw up but she really wanted to ride on them so we got in the 30 minute line and rode the teacups. Then it started pouring rain, so we rain to the Small World ride since it was indoors. We didn't have to wait too long for that and the kids loved the ride, but when it was over it was still dumping rain outside so we decided to eat lunch and spent about 30 minutes walking around in a restaurant waiting for a table to open up since everyone was trying to get out of the rain. Then, we finally found some ponchos to purchase (prior to this, we were the only ones there without ponchos and we were completely soaked), so we headed out again and waited in line for another ride....and of course now that we had the ponchos, it stopped raining. We waited for about 30 minutes and were in the next group to go on the ride when they shut it down because of lightning...nice! We were just leaving the ride when it started really dumping...like 10 times harder than any rain I've ever seen before so we ran into the nearest shop and waited for about 20 minutes to see if it would stop. When it was apparent that it wouldn't, we decided to go find the princesses, since that was the thing that Savannah had been most excited about. It wasn't very close to where we were but we finally got there and only had to wait about 30 minutes to see Aurora, Belle and Cinderella. Savannah loved seeing them but of course was too shy to get in pictures with them by herself so we all got in the pictures, dripping wet with our ponchos...lovely! By this point, it was still raining and we were done so we left the park and went back to our nice dry hotel. Bubba and I keep joking that our kids probably will never want to go back there, seeing as how it was such a wonderful experience for them!

The rest of the week Bubba was working while the girls and I hung out in the hotel, hitting the swimming pool anytime there was a break in the rain (only happened twice), and drove around trying to find things to do. Too bad there really aren't very many indoor activities in Florida! We did go to the aquarium in Tampa which was pretty neat, but other than that we just hung out. The kids loved being in a hotel and actually slept well which was great. The flights weren't even too bad thanks to coloring books and a Dora DVD! Even though the trip wasn't quite what we had anticipated, we still had fun and it was nice to see Bubba a little more than we would have if we had stayed home.

SEA WORLD





While we were eating our ice cream, this squirrel came right up next to us to have a bite so we kept giving him pieces of our waffle cone...he was eating it right out of our hands. We had to put a stop to it when we saw Paris letting him eat off of her spoon...one that she stuck right back in her own mouth for the rest of the bite!












FLORIDA AQUARIUM IN TAMPA

DISNEY WORLD