Our Florida Adventure

A few weeks ago we planned a vacation to Florida. We knew that the kids had three days off of school this past week, so we decided to take advantage and head south. Lately Ava has really been into princesses and Disney movies, and with the warm sun and pool for Drew, also hearing that downtown Disney had a restaurant focused solely on dinosaurs for Amelia......the trip just fell into place - Disney, Dinos and Swimming.

Here's a recap...

Last Friday was a regular school day. I was pretty much packed and set to go - was just going to take it easy. By 10:30 am I received two calls from two different school health rooms. Drew and then Amelia. Amelia's call was due to her having a fever of 100.3 degrees - enough to be sent home. I picked Amelia up. She was in a daze and said she couldn't do her work, she was too cold. She had told me that morning at breakfast that her jaw had hurt, but she seemed fine then. Off we went to the clinic. At this point her tempature was 102 degrees and the doctor said she had strep throat. By dinner time with a dose of antibiotic on board Amelia was back to herself. I have said it before and I will say it again....Amelia has the best immune system that I have ever seen. Of course I was worried the rest of the kids would get sick, but as I am home now one week later and can safely say - NO ONE ELSE GOT SICK!!!! ( a first for us)

We left Saturday morning, after 12 hours of driving in "Big Red" stopped in Brunswick, GA for the night. Woke the next day - had lunch at a Daytona Beach BBQ restaurant where unknown to us an elderly couple sitting a few tables away from us paid our lunch tab as they left the restaurant. The waitress came over to us and said she had been waitressing for many, many years and had never had that happen, but..."that couple just paid your entire lunch tab with tip". Dave and I were pretty choked up about that. The couple was long gone before we could get a chance to thank them. We arrived at "VIP Villa" in Kissimmee Florida at about 2:30pm. The "Villa" was a four bedroom, one story home with a pool on a lake in a gated community. I figured for the same price as a hotel, we might as well have the extra space, and privacy of our own pool. This worked out great. The kids hopped right in the pool and spent a lot of our vacation swimming. Monday we decided to check out downtown Disney and the T REX restaurant. The girls were in awe to say the least and just a bit frightened. Amelia and Ava each built dinosaurs. Dinos Sara and Sophie are the new additions to our family - adopted January 15, 2010. We walked around the complex and ate lunch. Tuesday was the big day and we headed to Disney World. The girls had no idea what was in store for them, but it quickly became clear - ride after ride, visits with princess after princess. The favorites were the "Small World" ride and meeting the characters. Dave loved bringing the girls into the haunted mansion (which he had been talking about doing for years) where he managed to completely scare his 6 and 4 year old. They are still talking about the "ghosts that have followed them home". The girls were asking to go home by 3:00pm. We had hoped to go back to the park for the night, but no.... we were beat. Wednesday (in typical our family fashion) we decided to go the Animal Kingdom hotel and look around instead of actually going to the Animal Kingdom park. At the hotel, we did find flamingos, giraffes and a few other wild animals along with a cool playground. After this, we went back to downtown Disney and had lunch at Rainforest Cafe. We then shopped some more. Ava got to pick out her special Ariel sparkly necklace, Drew got a Mickey t-shirt, Jenna got Mickey ears, and Amelia got to pick out more dinosaurs. Thursday we found the clubhouse pool which was way warmer than our pool and also had a cool little water park attached to it. We spent Thursday just hanging out by our different pools in the warm 70 degree weather. Yesterday we headed home, intending to stop in Lumberton, NC but drove all the way through arriving home at midnight.

A few highlights..... Drew with all his happy swim time, Jenna just going with the flow where ever we dragged her, Ava telling Cinderella a secret, "She had all her movies." and Amelia asking Belle, "Who are you?" and Amelia sleeping the last 5 hours of the trip only to wake up as we got off our exit seriously disappointed because we were back in Maryland.

Now, happy to be back home in our own home, but missing the fun, the pool and the warm weather.