Thanks in advance, (plug alert) to Groupon Getaways. I found a fabulous deal online, one of those 50% off coupons, and we parked ourselves for three nights in a "hotel room" that was, no lie, the size of a 2-bedroom apartment. Not kidding. For less than a regular hotel room.
Jim and I, along with the newest addition, went down the first night while the older 2 kiddos stayed the night at Bamah & Papa's. This week we will be celebrating our 10th anniversary, so the first night was for just the parents.
Remarkably, our sleeping place was within 15 minutes of a Columbia restaurant, so guess where we went to eat? Our favorite eatery, of course! We've been there a couple of times :)
It was a relaxing and restful evening. Thank goodness we got all rested up because the next day we had to dig DEEP for the energy.
Jim left Friday AM to meet Bamah & Papa half way to pick up the kids, while I stayed back in the room and took care of Brandon (translation: blogged and played with my new laptop). When they got back the kids were ecstatic about the room. Hotels are always fun for them, so they managed to peek in every nook and cranny they could find within minutes.
We did the best we could to force feed them naps in preparation for our trip to SeaWorld that afternoon and evening. They reluctantly went down and at 2:15 we were waking them up to get going.
Almost there...
A little confused about where we're going.
Katherine loved the dolphin nursery.
Nathan loved the sharks.
We couldn't go to SeaWorld without seeing the killer whale show.
Here we are waiting for the lightning storm to clear so we can see the show. Did I happen to mention the heat index for that day was 105? Oh I didn't? Here are some basics we learned for dealing with that kind of weather.
- Don't even try to put on makeup, prepare for au naturale all day. Rather yet, embrace splotchy skin as your new picture-friendly friend.
- If you want any nice family pictures, you better take it as soon as you walk in the park next to the nearest SeaWorld-related structure.
- Better go ahead and rent the strollers when you're near the entrance, because they're not at the opposite end of the park when you need them the most and kids don't last very long in that heat.
Jim and I did notice that the whale trainers don't get in the water anymore. Sad. Guess it's because of the tragedy of losing one of the trainers last year. Remembering how it used to be will be one of those stories we'll be able to share with our kids about how we remember the neat tricks they would do with the whales. Like standing on the nose of the killer whale and diving deep to the bottom of the pool then being thrust into the air. You know, one of those 'back in my day' stories.
We opted to do the 'after 3pm' tickets, so our trip lasted from then till almost 10 that night. What a full day. Jim likes to tease me by saying, "I don't go on vacation to rest." That was a phrase I said many times when we were on our honeymoon. :) So that's exactly what we did or didn't do. We filled our first day of vacation chock full and had 3 very tired kiddos.
The next day we made a trip to Alligator Land. It was another hot day, but fun.
We drug ourselves back to the hotel after spending a couple of hours there, and did what? We rested! Ok, well I can fully justify resting on vacation with little ones.
Then we headed to our favorite Downtown Disney restaurant, T-Rex Cafe.
After a bit of a wait, we were finally seated in what looked like the ice age room and witnessed many 'meteorite showers'.
This place has a special love/hate relationship in Nathan's heart. He absolutely loves the dinosaurs, but they can be a bit intimidating with their life-size growling and movements.
We had to cut our walking around Downtown Disney short because of a storm approaching which meant we headed back to the hotel a little earlier than expected. Never fear though, our kids are still little enough to really, truly enjoy just being in a hotel. So that's what we did and on top of that, promised them baths in the jacuzzi tub. Whoo hoo!
Side note: One thing I forgot to mention above in the SeaWorld verbage was that Nathan had a little bit of a 'loose condition' within minutes of us arriving. That should have sent us racing for the double stroller, but we didn't. We were tough and could handle carrying at least one child pretty much the entire trip. Mama & Dada were past tired when we finally laid down that night, for that exact reason. So on the way home we got some medicine for the little feller. Poor guy. It started working immediately and thankfully there were no incidents at Alligator Land.
So back to the jacuzzi story. The medicine was working beautifully. But remember, eventually whatever goes in must come out. So soon after daddy drew the bath water and both kids were enjoying it filling up, we heard Nathan start exclaiming, "Oh no! Oh no, that's not good!" Then Katherine started saying, "No, Nathan, that's not good! No Nathan No. Don't do that. It's not good!"
Jim walked in to witness "The Exit." Something about warm baths relaxes the intestines for that boy and boy was he proud of it. He must have felt better. Her, not so much. She made a bee-line for the shower and Daddy had fun laughing with the 'lighter one'.
What a fabulous trip for our family. We celebrated 10 years of wedded bliss and the beautiful family we've created all in the same weekend. Thank you, Jim, for your selfless love of this family and me, even when I'm no fun to be around. I love you dearly and look forward to another 50 years of living and vacationing with you.
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