Day 3 - Florida trip, Clearwater beach

As I am sitting here typing this post I am reminded of how darn loud washing machines can be! We got back to our condo room and I decided to throw in a load of wash since our towels were all full of sand & wet from our beach excursion today. The washer / dryer combo is right next to the kids bed and I started it right when they went to bed. What was I thinking?? We have a high efficiency washer at home and it is very quiet. I often have to check to see if it's running (from a distance) by looking for the lights turned on. Oh, not this one. It is over there chunking away!! However that apparently isn't bothering the kids because they have not got up once yet. The day at the beach must have wiped them out.

Which is where I begin - today we went to Clearwater Beach. It was a slow start, but a nice lazy vacation day. Apparently we had set the entertainment bar too high with our visit to Typhoon Lagoon, because when we told the kids we were going to the beach they said "what's a beach?
(it's at the ocean...) "do they have water slides at the beach??"

When got to the beach we had our lunch out on the beach. We were all shocked when a seagull swooped down and tried to steal the peanut butter & jelly sandwich right out of Sydney's hand - while she was eating it!! We all got a big laugh out of it - except Sydney at the time, who was a bit shaken up. After a few minutes though she thought it was pretty funny too.

This picture must have been taken just minutes before the bird swooped in!!

Shortly after lunch, a big storm cloud rolled in and it rained for about 30 minutes. Hardly anyone went home, and we all just hung out in the ocean - which was a toasty 88 degrees! Soon the black clouds rolled away and the hot sun was out again.

We did a pretty good job of putting our sunscreen on and only got a little bit of pink today. We had to veto buying ice cream for everyone, because it was $4 a cone. yikes. So we shared a frozen pink lemonade cup instead, and it was delicious. It was a good thing we splurged on that huge ice cream treat at Typhoon Lagoon, because the bucket and shovels were perfect for the kids to play with today.

After our great day at the beach we went over to Five Guys Burgers and Fries for dinner. That was really good - and the "large" fries could easily serve a family of 6. We ended up throwing some of them away.

We got back to the condo just in time for showers and then watched the Epcot fireworks from the hall of the condo. Pretty!

Day 2 - Typhoon Lagoon!

Typhoon Lagoon was the destination on our first full day of our vacation. I have never been a fan of water parks - well, I was before I got my bathing suit almost ripped off and feared I was going to drown going down a tube slide at Wet and Wild on my high school senior trip, but I digress...

Typhoon Lagoon was really beautiful - but of course, it's a Disney park. And in true Disney fashion, everything was perfect :) We got there early to grab some beach chairs in the shade.

The kids favorite area was the wave pool. It periodically created waves - huge ones, and sometimes a bunch of smaller ones. Disney boasts that this is one of the largest created waves in the world! It's true, those waves really cranked out of there. A pretty amazing technology to witness.

The lazy river was nice. It took us all around the park.

Even though we took a cooler into the park for lunch, we had to have some ice cream for a treat. And what a treat it was! This is called the "garbage pail" because it had every kind of topping availalble in there - cookies, sprinkles, hot fudge, caramel, whipped topping, cherries... and more. Even after all four of us shared it, I thought it was too much. Yes me, I said it was "too much ice cream"!

Soooo yummy!

We took another trip around on the lazy river while the boys played in the waves.

We went on several tube slides and even tried going snorkling in the shark tank - but the water was too cold and kids couldn't figure out how to use snorkels, so that was a bust. But the slides were a lot of fun. Around 4pm a storm rolled in and the park closed. Just in time really, we were getting pretty tired from hauling those tubes around.

For dinner we went to T-Rex, a dinosaur themed restaurant from the owners of the Rainforest Cafe. As expected, the interior (and even exterior) was pretty elaborate.

One of the dining areas was the "ice room" and the "ice" walls changed colors occassionally. It was pretty weird inside there, I'm glad we didn't get seated in there!

Florida - Day 1

(3:30am - buzz, buzz, buzz) and so our trip begins. A bright and early start to our day. Grabbed our bags and headed to the airport. Luckily we got up early enough and everything went well. The flight was good, and we landed in Florida around 10:30 am. After picking up our rental car, we cruised over to our condo.

Since the room wasn't ready we had some lunch, and walked around Downtown Disney. Both of the kids had some spending money, and they were ready to spend it the minute we got off the plane. We had to break the news to them that we were going to wait until Thursday to purchase anything, to make sure they had time to select the right items. Zack wanted to buy everything at the huge Lego store!

The kids made some cars to race... Zack won! (but he was still mad that he couldn't buy his Legos...)

After a trip to the grocery store for some food, we were finally settled in. Our condo was very clean, with granite countertops. One king size bed, and bunkbeds for the kids. A nice size for our family.

Our condo was on the 9th floor. The building had a workout room, and a large pool with several small pools and a hot tub.

The view of Lake Bryan was really nice.

By 7pm I was ready for bed... too bad no one else really was! Alan was finishing up his 20 mile (!!) run. The kids really liked the bunk beds - and Zack only fell out once, thankfully when he was on the bottom bunk.

I was glad the day was over, I was exhausted!!

Freeze Daddy's

I think it is so awesome that we have an ice cream stand right near our house!  well, it's not TOO close - we need to ride our bikes for a mile to get there, but close enough that the kids can actually ride there.  It's been a long time since we could actually ride over there because they have been working on the bridge.  For the longest time there was no road, and no bridge, so we just couldn't get there easily.  But now, our passage is open again and the new bridge is even better for the kids to ride over. 

Take me out to the Mud Hens...

One thing I definitely miss about working in the corporate world are the nice perks I used to get.  Granted, I get some nice free stuff at Centaur, but we certainly don't get event tickets like sporting events and parties.  But, all is not lost.  I am very honored to be the recipient of tickets from my generous customer Payak Dubbs Insurance.  Tonight we got tickets to the Mud Hens.  They were great seats!

 We didn't stay for the whole game, but we did last a pretty long time and the kids really liked it. 

Dinner at El Camino Real

We met Grandma and Grandpa for dinner over at El Camino Real.  The kids were definately more interested in the water fountain out on the patio than they were with the actual dinner :)

Maumee Bay camping trip with the Bachli's

It was a hot weekend when we went to Maumee Bay.  This trip was special because it was the first trip we had taken with my family - my parents and brother's family.  Sydney had a birthday party to go to on Saturday, so Zack and I went down to the beach together.

Along came Brandon and sure enough he found a snake in the grass!  I'm not sure how those boys do it, but no matter where the animals are, they will find them.

The campground was also having their Christmas in July events that weekend - which explains Santa Claus.  What about the pink face?  Well, at the b-day party they did face painting of course :)



At night we all gathered around the campfire and looked for stars.  When it got late, the kids all went on a "midnight walk" looking for creatures.  Unfortunately they didn't find any, but the kids had a great time wandering around in the dark with their flashlights and their cousins for nature guides.

Yum!!  We had a great dinner over at Grandma & Grandpa's camper.



Sydney just loved taking Bindi around and being her "owner" for a little while. 



We also enjoyed a riding bikes and taking walks on the nature trail.  It was a great trip.  I hope we do it every year!

The day Thomas wasn't cool anymore

Of course we knew this day would come. But we just weren't sure when. The signs were there - the Thomas the Train toys remained in their backpack for months. No trains took trips around the house or even saw the light of day. Zack would rather play with his toys than watch Thomas and Friends on the weekend. And then there was today... They had a "picnic" day at daycare today and I packed a lunch for Zack. He was so excited all morning about being able to take a snack bag of Dorito's. Well that was until I looked for a lunch bag for him to take the food in. The only insulated one we had for him was a Thomas the Train one. It was large enough to fit all of his lunch, but when I offered it to him, he choose to take a smaller plain black insulated bag instead (oddly enough, it was an old baby bottle insulated bag!) - even though it meant not having the coveted bag of Doritos. Wow, I never thought he would choose "looking cool" over a bag of Doritos!!

Swimming playdate

The kids has some friends over today for a playdate (Morgan and Mitchell).  Both kids went to school with Sydney and Zack, but stay home during the summer because their mom is a teacher.  So they were a bit bored and I got a call to get together.  I gladly invited them over to go swimming and have some fun at our house.

 Of course the boys grabbed the water guns and ambushed the girls!  :)

Dinner with the Puls

 That's right kids, jump right in!!

 I really need to toot my own horn here - I have kept the pool clean *past* the 4th of July!  This is quite an accomplishment for me - the pool is usually yucky at least once a season.

 Tonight we had our dear friends the Puls over for dinner.  It was a pool party, cookout party and it was a lot of fun.

 Mark tossed the ball around for the kids and they dove in like dogs trying to catch a frisbee :)

The kids even ate a little bit of food.  But not much :)