Florida 2012

Man - I am really not feeling overly creative with the titles of my posts lately.  Sorry about that. 

2 weeks ago, we took our annual trip to Florida with Josh's parents.  I will say, this is the first plane ride where I felt as though we had truly made it.  Made it to what, you ask?  To the point where traveling is not overly stressful.  Both kids are at a great age to be on a plane.  They just kind of get it now (yes, even the Big Al) and it is just easier.  It also helps that we had a direct flight to Orlando from Providence, which was just over 2 hours.  Although, lesson learned - if you fly to Orlando with 2 young kids, EVERYONE will assume you are going to Disney and you will have to give them that evil "Stop now while you are ahead" look every time they start saying things like, "Oh - are you going to see Mickey??"  Of course, typical Avery - "Nope!  We're going to wait a few more years until we are older and can appreciate it."  That's my girl.

In the past, we had gone to West Palm Beach, but this time around, one of Josh's friends from law school who lives in FL had told us about a great, kid friendly place in Palm Coast, FL, which is about 1.5 hours north east of Orlando.  So, Palm Coast it was.

Anyway - we got there and hadn't eaten lunch yet, but figured it would be easy enough to get off of the highway and grab McDonald's on the way to the hotel.  Um...no.  Apparently, no one in Orlando eats McDonalds (or any other fast food chain for that matter).  No joke - there was not a single "food off of this exit" sign around.  So, we took our chances and got off of an exit only to drive around for literally 30 mins before finding Burger King.  As you can imagine, by this point, both kids were sleeping, which was great.  They ended up sleeping the entire 1.5 hours and woke up just as we pulled up to the hotel. 

So, I knew that this place was bigger than the one that we used to stay at in West Palm, but holy crap!  I'm pretty certain it was nicer than our house (well, besides the kitchen counter tops because, really, what could be nicer than ours? :)).  It was 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bath with a living room, a kitchen (with all Viking appliances), a laundry room and a huge patio.  I mean, look at this place...

The whole resort was great - it had about 5 pools - one of which had sand surrounding it, which was a great alternative to the beach (the Atlantic in April is none to warm) then the "kids pool" was almost like bath water, which allowed for us to stay in it for as long as the kids wanted to without getting cold AND it had a great water slide and then a few other random pools.  It even had a little play area outside the restaurants so that the parents could eat on the deck and the kids could run around and play. 

Mind you, this was also the root cause of us spending a ridiculous amount of money on balls (that were too big to bring back with us, mind you) for Alex.  The second he walked by and saw kids throwing balls around?  It was all over.  Although, I say that, but I think that we would have been suckered into buying them anyway, as the kid literally appeared lost without a ball to bounce around the house or to throw in the pool.  Obsessed people.  Obsessed. 

THEN, the real bonus?  There was a pool that was about 5 feet away from our room that NO ONE knew about.  I mean, I'm not kidding - it was actually kind of eery because it was so quiet.  But, needless to say, it was ideal for when the kids were napping. Josh and I worked out a great deal - I went by the pool for the first hour of the nap, then came back and Josh went to hit golf balls for the second half (there was an 18-hole course on the property). 

The entire trip was actually quite relaxing and was filled with...

eating most meals on the patio (which is one of mama's all time favorite activities)

But, also eating out (which comes in a close second of favorite activities)

Playing in Grammy and Grampy's jacuzzi bath tub

 Pouring really cold pool water on Mommy's feet

 And, just playing in the pools and in the sand

 All in all it was a great trip.  Thanks again, Grammy and Grampy!