We're Back

What a great week! Airplane tickets booked-check...Car rented-check...Hotel booked for the first night-check. Ok, doing good. Let's think ahead-print out some directions. Airport to hotel, got it. Hotel to SeaWorld, our first destination, good to go. SeaWorld to Gram's house, printed. Smooth flight, great behaved boys about 40 seats to spare on the flight. Seems things are going great.

Plane lands, all bags in tow. Let's look at my print outs. What car company did I rent from??? Good question. I forgot to print out that. 10:45 at night and all of the rental companies sound familiar, Budget, Alamo, National...oh man. Budget has like 20 people in it...Alamo sounds familiar. I'm going with Alamo...Bingo! But Jim can't drive...that will be an extra $10. a day. I'm fine with driving. I can spend the $50 another way and did I'm sure.

So we got to the hotel...but you know as the saying goes...if it sounds too good to be true there must be a problem. Me, Miss Cheapy, I was just excited to get a hotel for 5 in Orlando for $40. I mean we didn't need a pool, fancy restaurant or room service. We were only sleeping there and then heading out early for the theme park. BUT...sleeping accommodations for all would have been good. I figured on two double beds and a cot or trundle or somethings. I clearly said 5 people and it is printed on the reservation print out. Two double beds is it!!! Now for some reason, Jeffrey has always acted like Joshua has cooties when it comes to sleeping together...would rather sleep on a floor than with him. So long story short. I slept in the double bed with both of my boys...in the middle mind you because now Joshua has learned to treat Jacob like a leaper(sp?). Not my best nights sleep.

As soon as we got through the line at SeaWorld and were about to start our adventure my foot felt a little funny. I look down only to see my $30 flip flops (I treated myself to some blinged out flip flops) were broken. That extra $50 from Jim sitting co-pilot is not going to last long. There is something for everyone in these gift shops, including new flip flops for Mom.

I think the misfortunes end there...oh wait. I left my only pair of Jammies hanging on the hotel bathroom door. And we found out when we were about to return the rental car that the console has a secret double compartment which explains why we couldn't find the directions to Gram's house even though they were clearly just there a minute ago. Really it was a great week. All of these little pains didn't put a damper on our time. We needed the vacation and I wasn't going to let it.

The boys really enjoyed it. Jacob is at such a perfect age. You can see the excitement on his face and I just loved watching it. Joshua really wants to be like Jeffrey so he was game to go on the crazy rides. Pretty brave for a 7 year old. He went on this crazy rollercoaster. Jacob was too funny. He said, "Mom are you going on that?" I of course said "NO". To which he followed up with, "Good, you can hold this then (his hat)". Because he thought he was going.

In the age of digital cameras, it's good to take a picture of your kids...because I can never remember what they are wearing in case we get separated.

The boys wanted to sit in the Soak Zone. We sat back a few rows. More like the sprinkle zone.

Joshua and Jeffrey were right up in the front near the part where Shamu comes up. I didn't even notice when I took the picture of his splash about the drench the boys, that they were up on the screen above. Chris actually pointed it out to me. I'm pretty sure if you click on the pictures you can see them larger to see it better.

Gotta love Shamu!

I'll post more later...can't catch up a week in a day :)