and it came from the sea...

greetings! we're back from our little vacation and it is just lovely to be home. our hotel was truly awesome but anytime you go overnight with 3 kids, it's ALWAYS good to come home. when we got back last night, the kids played for hours with the toys they hadn't seen for a day and a half. they introduced their new toys to their old toys. and they stayed up until 10pm since they all had a 3 hour nap on the way home. *yawn*

sunday afternoon was spent at the mall of florida.

i bought myself some new oakley sunglasses. they look better in action ;)


we visited m&m world...and bought $9 of m&m's, priced conservatively at 10.99 a lb. why did we need such expensive m&m's? i have no clue. they tasted EXACTLY like the ones in a bag that you can get for 60 cents at walmart. i told the kids we weren't going to buy very many, then rob comes over with a big bagfull. he told me he got all the colors you can't get in the store. okaaaaay. whatever. then last night i gave them to him as we were unpacking and he says, "what should i do with these?" EAT THEM, dude. you spent $8 on them, eat them.

luckily the pictures out front were free.
another interesting tidbit...on sunday we were all wearing green. i don't know how that happened. cade picked out his own shirt, rob bought himself a new green t-shirt that he had to promptly change into (and no, he didn't turn green like my mother always told me would happen if you didn't wash your new clothes before wearing them), and then i changed into a green tank top later.

since it was reese's birthday we stopped by the build-a-bear workshop and reese made herself a new friend. she picked a husky and named it 'rosie.' awwww. she really wanted to buy clothes for it but i drew the line there. instead we chose a happy birthday hat and noisemaker instead, since rosie & reese now share a birthday.

after the mall we found our hotel and it was just wonderful. i had picked it on travelocity, based on the pool pictures. and ironically enough after we arrived it sprinkled and thundered and turned too cool to swim. the pool was still pretty from the lobby though. i was very impressed with it in general, it truly made our weekend feel like a vacation. if we had chosen a super 8 or the like, i would have been stressing about how clean or how dirty the floor or the bathtub was, but instead i just relaxed. the room was spotless and wasn't damp at all (as most hotel rooms in florida seem to be). if you're looking for a hotel in orlando, choose this one.

we had hoped to find a japanese restaurant for dinner, but the one that advertised a kid's menu was impossible to find. and once i teased rob about chicken fried steak, he had to have some. so we had supper at denny's. the kids had pancakes and rob had his steak. then we went and played mini-putt. we hadn't played since before we had kids, and we had a fabulous time. it had been a while since i had laughed so hard.

and this is afterward, walking back to the car. rob was happy that he beat me by 5 strokes.



we spent all of monday at seaworld, well until we all got tired of each other so we left at 3:30. 6 hours in an amusement park in orlando heat is probably the best we could have hoped for. we skipped all the shows. even though those are the biggest attraction, we skipped them because they were the biggest attraction. 45 minutes of standing in line with all 3 kids? i don't think so. just standing in line with rob alone would have been enough to make me go crazy, let alone with the kids who are hot and have been told there's roller coasters in the park somewhere.

this was cade's favorite part of the day:
he could have stayed in the arcade for at least another hour, and that's with no quarters or tokens in his pocket to spend.

they both went on the kids' roller coaster, the shamu express. rob and i took turns going with them. cade only went once but reese went 3 times, she loved it. then cade lost himself for about 7 minutes. he took off to the upper levels of their huge playscape without telling me where he was headed. after searching for 3 minutes, i went right to guest services for help. i was so surprised he turned up all the way on the top level of that thing. i really thought he would stay on the lowest level. he didn't seem that excited about the playscape when we first got to that area of the park.

i didn't bother bringing swimsuits into the park, thinking all the water play was across the street in a new waterpark. however, there was a big splash area for kids to play in. i think we could have stayed another hour if the kids had gotten cooled off. let me rephrase...if ROB had gotten cooled off. he was getting tired of the crowds and the heat and the whiny kids, so we started making our way toward the exit. we were steps away from leaving the park when it started raining. i had brought 4 umbrellas with us but we took cover under a storefront. it poured for at least 10 minutes, then lightened up enough so we could make a run to the car.

it rained and stormed all the way through orlando and actually we had rain almost all the way til daytona beach. so maybe rob's attitude is related to the weather? like the lower the barometer, the more unpleasant he makes life so you'd rather just head for cover in the car? i don't know. might be something to study during future road trips.

speaking of, we have another one coming up! we're heading to the DC area to go house hunting next week! should be loads of fun. (notice the sarcasm there???)