Three times the fun, our trip to Florida

Based on how much fun we had on our FL trip in 2012 I was ready to head back for Spring Break this year.

We spent the first 4 days with Jenny & Scott, hanging out in their new home and sharing in their excitement about the upcoming arrival of Baby Landon in May.  There is LOTS to do in St. Pete and the kids just ate up all of the outdoor activities.  Their favorite by far was playing in the Banyon trees although Jenny& Scott's backyard came complete with catchable geckos, definitely a close second.  We look forward to getting back there soon to meet Landon!

From St. Pete we headed to Cape Coral to visit my grandparents, Uncle Sam, Aunt Beth and their children.  It was great to see everyone again and it was so great to observe Samantha and Henry truly enjoying their time with Grandma and Grandpa.  Their new dog Mandy may be a few pounds heavier, the kids had the best time hand feeding her her meals.  A highlight of our visit to Cape Coral was going to Brandon's baseball practice.  Lucky kid had 13 of his very own spectators at practice!  S&H and Sam & Beth's kids had a blast playing hide and seek and then running the bases after the practice ended.  The kids were certain they would see an alligator in G&G's "lake" and poor Henry had a nightmare one night after Poppy told him the story about how an alligator charged Gammy at Fripp Island years ago.  Oh Poppy!

After Cape Coral we drove eastward to Orlando where we started round #3 of our vacation…Disney World!  The kids had no idea where we were going so it was a fun surprise.  Poppy took one for the team and headed back to Raleigh to work for us while I enjoyed 3 days in Disney with the kids, Gammy, Marty, Wendy and some of the cousins.  The trip was a treat from Gammy for the younger lot of her grandchildren (soon there will be a dozen cousins!).  Our group of 10 was comprised of 4 adults (2 pregnant women!) two 6 year olds, two 4 year olds and two 3 year olds.  The age group worked out well as we were able to stay together for the majority of the day and the same rides appealed to all kids. It was Spring Break and busy but Gammy scored us some Fast Passes for quick access to rides which was such a treat.  Henry's favorite was Peter Pan and all of the kids wanted to ride the carousel, go figure!  Samantha & Julia had a special dinner with Cinderella and her entourage.  William and Tommy participated in a Jedi training course and fought Darth Vader!  We even caught a great Nemo musical which was SO cool.  Such a fun trip!  Thank you Gammy for the special treat.  It was an adventure we will remember for a lifetime.







Disclosure: I can no longer use Picasa web albums (THANKS Google!).  I am learning how to put captions on the picts still with iPhoto and I somehow lost LOTS of great video from our camera.  Hopefully it will be found at some point and I will add it to the post.  On the bright side...I can very easily add music now and the slideshows in iPhoto are so much more creative.  A new phase!


I found them!!!!  I was transferring files to our hard drive and saw the mov docs pop up.  Why they weren't displayed as video in iPhoto I will never understand.  But, hey, I have them!!!

This is a sweet video that Pays took right after Jenny asked me if I would be Landon's godmother...of course!  What an honor!


This is a silly...just wandering through a cute little garden that was supposed to be for eyes only, oops!


Payson was inspired by the Banyan trees to get in touch with his inner Tarzan


This is a sweet moment that I will remember for a lifetime...


Claire and Landon saying goodbye...


Samantha and Patricia were fast friends


We had been trying to get Samantha's skipping on video for months.


Such a cute video of my girl.  I miss that underwater camera!


I love how Henry's teeth are chattering and hands are shaking but he is still managing to eat his lunch