Family vacation

Hello again everyone! My goodness, the worst part about vacation is coming back to reality... between the laundry and finding homes for all of the new things we bought on our trip I feel as though I may need a vacation to get caught back up!

Our trip was awesome though, we headed down to Orlando and had 4 blissful days of family time with my mom and dad and the 4 of us. We played mini golf (which Sam thought was MINNIE golf and was FURIOUS to find out there was no disney characters in sight when we arrived), did some pool time, ate at some wonderful restaurants (including Salt Rock Grill in Redington Beach which is by far Rob's favorite restaurant on Earth), and got to just spend time reconnecting as a family. After those 4 days, my sister, her boyfriend, and his daughter came down and joined us... along with 200 of our closest friends from the dance studio :)

We as a studio were invited to perform in Disney World... how awesome is that? So we opened it up to all of our competitive dancers and 54 agreed to go, along with family and friends. It really was amazing to see our girls work hard enough to perform in front of people from literally all over the world.

It wasn't all work though, we had tons of time in the parks, and it was really great to see the kids enjoying their time in the most magical place on Earth. Although the magic was a bit hazy due to the heat index of 115... oh well, that's what water is for (although it cost $3 per bottle).

My kids got the chance to meet tons of characters, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Donald, Handy Manny, JoJo and Goliath, Buzz and Woody, and Sam's personal favorites, Lightning McQueen (which sounds more like Li-ning Mtween when Sam says it) and TowMater. Maicey was a bit nervous around them... I can't say I blame her :)

To round the trip out we headed over to Palm Coast to spend the last 3 days of our vacation hanging with some family in the beach and pool. One of my favorites moments happened in our time their...

My cousin, who we refer to as just that, Cousin, has a 9 month old little girl, Violet... so we come up with this brilliant plan to take some super cute pictures of the 3 kids together. So she buys them all matching outfits (that were ADORABLE), and we truck them down to the beach. Sam is apparently deathly affraid of the ocean (which we didn't know until that moment) he thought that a dolphin was going to jump out of the ocean and on to the beach, Maicey was being naughty (I know you're probably surprised at that one), and Violet ate literally a mouth full of sand... and that was after one picture. By the time we were done with the pictures, Cousin and I were so tired we just gave up and spent the rest of the day by the pool... oh well, better luck next time! The pictures really are cute, I'll post them as soon as I get them.

Then came the flight home... I can honestly tell you I would have rather been thrown in a pool of sharks then encounter this flight again. To start it all off, we were in the gate waiting to board and sam very calmly says, I don't feel- BARF! All over everything. Not to give you too many details, but nacho doritos don't lose their color on the way back up... so we finally get you all changed and then we board the plane. Maicey apparently wanted to stay in Florida, because she screamed the ENTIRE way home... not kidding, the whole way... Gotta love children!

Well, the purpose of family vacation is to grow closer to your family. I think we succeeded :)