*Disclaimer: I'm just not good at truncating stories I lived, so get comfy if you plan on sticking around for all 9 days worth of travel!*
Jeff, the girlies and I were lucky enough to be able to take a trip to Florida this year. (We make sure to take one major-ish vacation every year with our timeshare points, and my 10 year high school reunion was really just a good excuse to spend this year's points in CFla! [that means Central Florida for you outsiders.])
Anyway, I watched airfare like a hawk for months, and it turned out that flying in late one day early and flying out one day later was much cheaper, so we ended up doing that. (And, it just so happens that we scored the cheapest documented tickets except ONE sweet deal that I never saw-it must have only been up a few hours.) We were fairly nervous about flying with the girls. We ended up with nonstops both ways, and while 4.5 hrs is a dang long time, I think it was better than 2 blocks of 3 hrs each. It had us choose our seats online when we booked, and while we scored 3 seats in a row for our return trip, there were ONLY middle seats available for our flight out. Major bummer - our poor 2 year old! I called the airline, but they said only the airport could switch it, so we decided to get there nice and early to make arrangements. When we checked in, they got Lisie and I next to Amelie, with daddy riding footloose and fancy free. At the gate, we tried again, and thank goodness, they got us together! (Phew, that wouldn't have been fun for anyone on the plane.)
I have to say it, with the two of us, our two little toddlers and our 6, yes I said SIX, bags, we were a little bit of a circus going through the airport, and especially security. We had spent enough on our 3 airline tickets and were not taking away from our eating budget just to check bags! So... we took 3 carry ons, plus 3 personal items, which literally meant dad and I each carried 3 bags on our person with a girl in arms all through the airport. Awesome. How did we do it, you ask? Well, actually, we had no problem getting all the stuff we needed into our 6 carry-on-sized bags - including clothes, snacks, baby toiletries, swim floaties, laptop with movies, toys, toiletries, chargers, GPS... it was pretty impressive. (Stroller and car seat checked free.) We even had room for all our temple clothes! Our big secrets? 1) we packed our razor in the stroller (haha!) and, 2) we knew we'd have a washer and dryer everywhere we stayed, so we went light on the clothes. The great thing, though was that we were able to check 2 bags free at the gate cause everyone had tons of carry on. Bonus! It was awesome not to have to do the 3-bag-baby juggle down those tiny airplane aisles.
We landed around 11:15pm and hopped a shuttle to our rental car reservation. I've never been so dissatisfied with a car rental! The guy started with me, and stopped to help other customers THREE times before I was done. My 2 sleepy babies and I did not appreciate this at midnight. They also gave me the quote without some things that were required, so it also ended up costing almost $100 more than budgeted. Ouch! Joke's on them, though. It took so long to get our car through the other customers and the constant upselling attempts that Amie had an accident right there on their floor! I felt bad at first, and wiped up what I could, but the guy was so rude, I left figuring it served him right! We whipped out the GPS (thanks, Melissa and Jason!) and made our way to our condo, where we had a great unit, with a high chair and pack and play already inside and waiting for us. That was lovely!
Final Note: Stepping off of the plane was like jumping into a swimming pool! The humidity difference between UT and FL is already about as drastic as they come, but come to find out, there was also a tropical storm moving through, and whoa! I felt my hair insta-frizz!
Stay tuned for the good stuff!
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