Florida Trip! Day 8 - St. Augustine and a Choir hook-up

This morning (I think. It's all blurring...) Jeff got up mighty early with the girls til we were all ready to get up and at 'em. We had to pack everything up for our return to Orlando (see, we had to turn in our rental car, then be at the airport by 5:15ish a.m. the next day... We didn't really want to do that from Jacksonville, 2 hours away.) We headed out (Omar had to work again) to St. Augustine to see America's oldest city, and to tour a chocolate factory. We got there a bit early for our tour, so we went on the carousel and played for a minute at a park, which the girls loved. Alisa didn't even cry on the carousel! (even though I know they don't really look happy... remember, they are just getting over being sick.)

I love how Kate poses for all her pictures!


We found our way back around town and made it in time for the chocolate tour. Kate so graciously treated us, since she had bought a groupon. The girls were pretty good til the end, when it got near Lisie's nap time - yikes! It was fun and interesting, and they gave us lots of samples - that's the important part, of course! Plus, a discount on things we bought then. Delicioso!! You can't beat real chocolate!
The very first thing Jeff said when we got in the car afterward: "Differences?" (In case you didn't know, I used to work in a chocolate shop/factory, so this question was quite appropriate and immediately understood.) The biggest difference, was that Whetstone (the choc co. we toured) actually MAKES their chocolate, like straight from the bean. They also have a lot more machines, apparently the original Whetstone invented a lot of them. At Farris and Foster's (my beloved alma mater of chocolate) we bought the actual big blocks of chocolate, but we did a lot more hand crafting, which I like.

A familiar sight:
A favorite sight:
Lookin' good!

We went to Steak n Shake for lunch (yum!) and had planned on touring the city a bit after that, but A) Alisa was ready for sleeping, and B) we saw a lot of it trying to navigate our way around before, (aka, we got lost, haha!) So, we decided to say goodbye to my great buddy Kate right there and head back to O-town. There was definitely some napping on the way back... lots and lots of it!
We got back into town early in the afternoon and JUST in time for me to be able to run in and do a session at the Orlando Temple. Bless Jeff, he stayed with the cranky kids and just watched them in the car/in the grass while I got to FINALLY go inside one of my favorite temples. (Can't wait for the day when our kids are old enough that we can go together on trips!)
After a diaper-search, we made our way to Bubbalou's Bodacious Barbeque, where I was meeting up with my old choir friends (mostly from other years.) It was relatively a small crowd, but I really had a blast with JP, Holly, Justin, Stephanie and her son, Will. After not too long, my girls were being VERY unhappy, so Jeff (so graciously, again) just took them home and let me catch up with my friends. Since it was a Tues night, Bubbalou's closed up pretty early, so we relocated to the Cheesecake Factory for some dessert, and ended up staying for awhile. We were originally going to stay at my friend, Sarah's place that night, but turns out she's pretty far from the airport anyway, plus she would be at work on the graveyard shift the whole time we would have been there. So, our condo opened up again, last minute, so we were able to book only 10 or 20 miles from the airport, which was nice. I ended up getting back somewhere abouts midnight or so, then had to do the major pack-up for our early morning flight. Yuck! I let Jeff go to bed, though, and stayed up to clean the rental car and condense all our goods down by one bag, so I wouldn't have to get up any earlier than required. Got to sleep about 1:30. :(

Florida Trip! Day 7 - Beach and Alligators!

Today, we woke up later than any other day, thank goodness! Kate and I were still up long before the rest of my crew. We decided to head to the beach that day (Omar had to work,) and contrary to Kate's wishes, we convinced her to go back to a beach with a splash pad, cause I wasn't sure how the girls would take the sand. We packed a lunch and headed out with lots of gear, but less than she usually takes, she says. It was a beautiful morning to be at the beach, though it was smoky from all the fires they'd been having (right near Kate's!)

The girls played around in the splash pad for a little bit, then we headed down to the ocean. It was so great - I could have stayed there for hours, it's so relaxing and I miss it! Unfortunately, we ended up only staying a bit over an hour. Jeff took Amelie out into the big waves, where she got a mouthful, and that ruined it for her. She was just crying and miserable after that. We took her shallower, then out of the water completely, but no cigar. Kate finally broke into her shell with drawing in the sand. About this time, I noticed she was feverish. We tried to prolong hanging out with the waves, but she just wasn't having it. Alisa, on the other hand, was in heaven! She was an adventuring wanderer. She walked and played anywhere we'd let her go, and seemed to have a grand old time. She really worked up confidence after day 1 or 2 of the trip, and we have to really keep the reins on her adventuring for the rest of the time! We ate lunch, there, then were talking about going home or the store to get medicine for Amie, but luckily I found ours at the last minute. So, we gave her some infant tylenol and then headed to the Alligator Farm (do you think I'm a terrible mother?)

This is another place Kate had recently been with visitors, but so graciously tour guided us there! Jeff had wanted to see some good gator action, but but we didn't have time to stop in at Gatorland while in Kissimmee (or we THOUGHT we wouldn't. We could have, seeing as we didn't get to the temple.) It was a fun place, where we definitely got plenty of views of gators and crocs, and I really liked it, though I wish we could have seen some of the jumping and wrestling they do at Gatorland. Omar had previously found one of the gator food machines that gives you food for free, so we parked there for a minute and fed the little guys for awhile.

After a tour of the place and standing outside for awhile, no joke, I had sweat streaming down my back. And it wasn't even July or August! Utah's thickened my blood. We took a break to let the kiddies play on a little kid playplace (where Alisa adventured her way into the employees only section) until it was almost time for a feeding show.



We stopped on our way out to watch a trainer feed the gator's right from his hand, up close and personal. He gave them dead rats (nasty) and it was fun to watch, a little crazy. He kept mentioning you could get your own extreme photos done in there with the gators!
We went "home" after that, and took much-needed showers and naps. I'm not exaggerating, the girls and Jeff slept for almost 3 hours when we got home! Kate and I ended up just curling up on the couch, too, cause it was so quiet. After that, we went to a Chinese buffet for dinner, Omar's favorite, where they had all the usuals, plus Mongolian BBQ/Hibachi, sushi, crab legs, and of course an ice cream cone on the way out! This was yet another time that I was so glad they don't charge for kids - sick little girls eat even less than not sick little girls! We headed home and wanted to play some games after the girls went to sleep, but as you can guess, they stayed up for quite some time after the late morning and long naps. Kate and I got in Battleship while we waited for the guys to come back from picking up our free redboxes... then we just went to bed without watching movies or playing games! Awesome. We're getting old!

Florida Trip! Day 6 - Church and Kate's

This day was our checkout day, so we decided to go to 9 a.m. church so we could get back and get things together before checkout at noon. 9 am in my old building happened to be Kissimmee Ward, which I was in for years (then split to Pleasant Hill.) Last time we were there, we visited PH Ward, so I was glad to go see all the homies in Kissimmee. I got to chat with lots of old friends. Well, mostly friends of my parents' or parents of my friends', but you know what I mean. It was fast Sunday, so it was really funny to see all the same peope that still get up every Sunday, as well as lots of new people. I was also very surprised at how many people didn't recognize me right away, since EVERYone said I look exactly the same. After sacrament mtg, we had a little gathering session for said chatting, then we headed back to pack up.
We got out just in time, and our original plan was to take our subs to the beach and play there a bit on our way up to my friend Kate's house. (We stayed with her and her husband Omar for a few days, she lives North of Orl, near Jacksonville.) But, if you recall, our girlies had been getting sick and were no better that day. Because of that, we decided to forgo the beach that day, but an hour into the car ride, both girls were screaming and NOT happy! So, we ended up finding a beach park/pavilion where we could eat, thinking they wanted a break from the car... but they were only screaming out in the heat, too! We cut our lunch short and just muscled through the last hour of the drive. We got to Kate's, where she had a lovely Sunday dinner just waiting for us! (It was really great we didn't have to do any restaurants or other purchases on Sunday.) We pretty much just movied and talked out the rest of that night. They had made up two rooms for us and it was really a great stay (at least I thought so! Don't know about them. ;) ) They have a beautiful house, and we had the great balance of going/doing, and staying in and letting us rest from our exhausting vacation. I felt so bad, too, weeks ago, we were talking on the phone and she said "just don't bring your kids sick! We've had so many sick people at our house!" Sure enough, they were both ill! But, they were really laid back about our kids, which is nice. We're still in that awkward place where some of our friends/colleagues don't have spouses or kids yet, and you just never know how they'll act or be received! Thanks again, Kate and Omar, we really enjoyed being at your house!

Florida Trip! Day 5 - Swimming and Reunion

Needless to say, by this day, we were well prepared to sleep as long as we needed to. It didn't last too long - they adjusted just in time - but we still took it nice and easy that morning. I was originally planning to go with a friend to the temple that morning, but she backed out, so I kept with the lazy theme and took Amie to the store for a milk run, and grabbed some Publix subs for our Sunday lunch (yum!) Then, we finally got around to getting in the swimming pool. We had a great time swimming, and there were hardly any people in the pools! They had 2 pools, hot tubs and a fun little kiddie pool with a shower/fountain. The girls had a blast!
We were mighty hungry, so we went to one of our favorite places, Cafe Tu Tu Tango. We got some ribs, cheese dip, bacon wrapped shrimp and empanadas. It was delicioso! The girls were starting to show signs of being sick, though, and Lisie slept most of the time there.
We headed back to our "Trip House" and I got ready for the temple while the crew watched a movie. I drove all the way there (at about 430) only to find out the last session starts at 3. So lame! I was big time bummed. The last time we were there, the temple was closed so we had never been. Boo!
That night was my 10 year high school reunion. It was held at BB King's, a jazz club/restaurant, which happened to be down the street from our condo. We knew that there wouldn't be many kids there (open bar, and didn't start til 8pm) but didn't have a babysitter, so we brought the kiddies along. (You can see from the pictures, they were pretty subdued. Whatever cold they picked up was hitting full swing.) It was really fun to see old friends, and with the exception of only about 3 or 4 people, everyone was very friendly and congenial. There were, however, only about 30 or 40 there, and my class was near 400 people! I would have loved to see a lot of my other high school friends, but if they don't care, then c'est la vie! I think most of them didn't make the effort, because they all still just live in the general area. Here are a few goodies I stole from friends.

Enjoying the endless wings and mac and cheese bar.

Sleeeepy girl.

The whole fam.

Some of my closer lady friends, Angela, Valerie, Danielle and Julie.


Most of the ladayz.

I got my chat on, and would have liked to stay just a little bit longer, but the girls were well past their limit by 10:30 anyway, so that's when we left. We put the girls to bed when we got back and did some packing up, as we were checking out the next day. (Couldn't believe 5 nights had already gone by!)

Florida Trip! Day 4 - Animal Kingdom & EPCOT

I know this is going to sound redundant by now, but still so true that 8 am (6am UT time) came oh-so-early this morning. This would be our last day in the parks, and again, my friend was meeting us to get us in (I know, right?) Travis was walking in to Animal Park just ahead of us, and we got to have a pleasant, quick chat before going our separate ways. In addition to getting us in, Travis scored us 3 Fastpasses for use for our whole party, any ride we wanted. (I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!) The chocolate-covered pretzel I brought as thanks, though delicious, now seemed quite inadequate. He always was a giver, though.
Animal Kingdom proved pretty fun for the girls, they must have been getting the hang of it by then, plus what kids don't like animals? We headed straight for the Safari, where we used a FP, but they didn't keep it. Awesome! We got some really good views of all the animals, and Amie totally loved it, Lisie just chillaxed lazily on daddy's lap. We also went on Rafiki's conservation train because it had a petting zoo stop. They both really liked the petting zoo, but it was unimpressive to these adults. We did get to see a turtle up close and personal though, which was awesome because for some reason, Amelie had been talking about turtles the whole morning. After that, we walked some animal-seeing trails, namely reptiles, birds and fish.


We split from there - I did single rider line on Everest, a rollercoaster, while dad took the girls to the Boneyard, a giant playplace, then switched. Jeff called me when he got off, and it was hard to tear the girls away - they were absolutely loving the running around! we went from there to It's Tough to Be a Bug, where Jeff was a bit of a sissy about the bee stings, and Alisa was outright screaming the whole time! She wasn't having the 4D effects and giant spiders hanging from the ceiling. We debated heavily, then left that park. The girls couldn't go on most all of the other rides there, and I don't know why we thought it ok to skip the Lion King show... sad. We took our cue from the day before and left for lunch, but went to our place for leftover pizza so the girls could get in a nice long nap before we headed to EPCOT.
We tried a few rides at the front (We loved the new Spaceship Earth, and emailed ourselves a video. Nemo in The Living Seas was a hit, as well as all the aquariums there. Mission: Space was whoa! I really almost barfed. Then I did Soarin, Jeff opted not to.) We headed back to the world showcase, stopping in twice for some free soda samples first, of course. Right away, we stopped in France for a dinner of ham and cheese croissants and creme brulee. Heavenly, seriously!
That's me in front of the EPCOT Eiffel Tower.

Then, we walked through the rest of the showcase but did absolutely nothing else besides look! Three days of walking and not sleeping and crazy heat were really wearing us down, and we left once we completed the circuit. It was a bittersweet thing to be done with the parks. We'd had some great memories, and there were things we didn't get around to doing, but our bodies were done, done, done!

Florida Trip! Day 3 - Hollywood Studios & Magic Kingdom

This was another early morning, but we were meeting a friend, so we had to get our bums up. My friend from high school, Nan, was getting us in free (I know, right?) and met us at Disney's Hollywood Studios (it will always be MGM to this former Great Movie Ride employee!) We started heading over toward the re-done Star Tours ride, where the line was longer than we wanted, but we toughed it out. (Complaint-Disney doesn't have an actual baby swap, they just give you a fast pass for the second person to go, so you still wait twice.) We were pretty unimpressed with the ride, and we got away from there as quickly as we could because it was... Star Wars Weekend! Augh! We didn't want to be caught up in that mess. I watched the kids have a blast at the Honey I Shrunk the Kids play area while Jeff went on Rocking Roller Coaster, then all went to Muppets 3D. We waited in line to see Buzz and Woody, and that was really the end of our time there! We wanted to try the Toy Story ride they had there, but the line was an hour and the girls were tired, plus we were hungry. The line to see them took you through all these scenes from the movies that you could pose in for pictures (in a toy package, under the crate, strapped to the rocket.) Amie was pretty enchanted with Buzz and Woody - the Toy Story series makes the top of her list!

Lisie could not stop staring at the giant Woody!!

We headed out of Studios and opted for the car. We left Disney property to drive through for lunch at Checker's. This is some awesomely greasy fast food we don't have in Utah. It didn't disappoint! (We had to drive through a McDonald's, too, though to get milk for Lisie. Milk's not exactly Checker's fare.) This was a good move, as the girls got a nap while we were driving all around.
After our lunch foray, we headed to Magic Kingdom (of course with Amie wearing her Sleeping beauty dress.) I should note that the moderate temperatures and torrential rain of the day before were long long gone! That storm passed, leaving a blazing 97 degree sun in it's wake! Amie was pretty enchanted with the castle and kept asking if she could "go on it."

We got there right as the afternoon show in front of the castle was finishing up, and awhile before the parade. We walked kinda leisurely down Main Street, while we formed our plan of attack, which was to start in Fantasyland. On our way, we saw the meet and greet for Rapunzel, and hopped in line. We came to discover that this line is usually up to 2 hours, and our wait was just under 30 minutes!! I'm pretty sure that's because it was almost parade time. The line happened to be on black top with no shading, and we waited from 2:30-3 in the afternoon. I absolutely CAN NOT stress how awful this was! I was genuinely starting to worry about my little babes and heat exhaustion. One of the cast members even came over to us on her own and started telling us about their first aid and baby care. It may or may not be true, but I don't recall ever feeling so hot in my life! Thank goodness it was only a half hour! Anyway, they bring in a certain number each hour, and do a bit of a show. Each child gets a coloring page and crayons, then they put on the Rapunzel music and do a dance with them, A La town-square-dancing scene from the movie. It was super cute! Rapunzel and Flynn then come out and while you wait, you get your picture with a stuffed Pascal, which our girls loved. From the SECOND Rapunzel came out, Amelie was totally in love! When she is overload-excited, instead of her usual, loud jumping around, she just gets really quiet. She was silent for our entire wait, and just stared with her hint of a smile. I never thought I'd say it, but it was absolutely magical, and I'd gladly wait that wait again! When it was our turn, Amie just walked straight to Rapunzel and stood right in front of her, didn't really say much. Rapunzel said how beautiful Amie's pink dress was, and that she had a pink one, too, back at her castle:

Amelie STILL talks about that dress conversation! You can see Flynn in the back signing her color page.
Lisie and I caught up while Jeff manned the camera. Flynn gave some remarks about needing to get Alisa a frying pan after one of her great stern faces.

Amie is in pure heaven!
One last hug. I felt bad taking her away from them!
So, the little socket where we plug the charger into our camera has been broken for awhile now, and we were saving up the last juice in our good camera for this one particular meet up. I'm so glad we did! (We brought our ghetto camera for a few other shots.)
When we finished there, we did some major hydrating and shady resting before Jeff and I took turns with the girls while we fastpassed space mountain (he'd picked up one while we were in line for Rapunzel, then got a baby swap FP for the other.) We also went on the Buzz Lightyear ride, and Amie also still talks about shooting all the bad guys-she loved it!
We also headed over to the teacups. We didn't spin a bit, but Alisa was still a little unhappy with it. Amie had fun. We then waited in our longest Disney line, Dumbo, but the girls enjoyed that. Lisie even seemed to be loosening up by then. In Fantasyland, near Dumbo, they are doing a huge expansion, and had construction-blocking fences up everywhere, with life-size pics of characters all over. Amie kept wanting me to stop and take a picture of her with all of her favorites! (Belle, Dopey, the Beast:)
I have no idea where she got that finger crossing thing from, and she does it at the funniest times! Mickey's Toontown is also closed, I think for good, because of this. Bummer! I knew the girls would have liked it. Last thing we did in that area was Mickey's Philharmagic. We'd gotten many recommendations to go on it, plus it was very air-conditioned, so we did it, but I was unimpressed. Plus, the girls have a hard time with the whole 3D thing. After that, we knew we needed grub and ate at Pecos Bill's, then headed to Haunted Mansion, which we all enjoyed, then walked around by some other rides we were planning on going on, but by this time, the girls were falling asleep, and once they were out, we decided to just go. I was the only one sad about missing the parade and fireworks, but I decided a shower and going to sleep were plenty to console me! They totally did the trick.

Florida Trip! Day 2 - Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure

Right about 8am when my alarm went off, I was really regretting planning our park days first. We got up and at 'em as quickly as we could, and got to Universal Studios (Islands of Adventure Park,) where my friend's dad had left some complimentary tickets for us. (I know, right?) We had a little drama when we lost Alisa's bottle RIGHT OFF THE BAT, our first morning! These headless photos are playing around on the rocks while Jeff tried to find it for us.




Actually, as you will find out, climbing on these rocks was probably their Universal highlight... Sad!

We started off in Seuss Landing with Cat in the Hat, and my, did Alisa hate it! Amie was a little freaked at the spinning, but liked the visuals. We moved on to the Carouseussel for an easier ride, but Lisie wasn't having that either. So, we moved on, skipping the lame island, and headed right for the big winner, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! By this time, it was sprinkling on and off, but we weren't deterred - we brought ponchos! We took our time meandering through Hogsmeade and taking pictures on our phones to send to our families so they'd be jealous. We did baby swap for Dueling Dragons, or now the Tri-Wizard something or other. It went nice and quick, but Amie still refers to that as the "scary castle." Great ride, we love it, glad we didn't miss it. We skipped the Flight of the Hippogriff because the girls were too small, and stopped to enjoy a butterbeer. We also bought a pumpkin juice, and let me tell you, that was the second worst mistake of the trip! It wasn't awesome, it tasted cidery, like I should have it warm with a slice of pie and a santa hat. Worst part, though, they didn't have prices posted, and found out the (DELICIOUS) butterbeer was $3.50, and the pumpkin juice was over $6! Lame. We also spent a great deal of time at Ollivander's. There is a queue, a LONG one, just to get into this place! We knew we had to make it a priority, because we had planned on getting my sis Jaimie a wand from there for her birthday. It was a bonafide mad house. SO BUSY! I gotta say, we had a really hard time picking out just the right wand for her. They had all the characters' wands, as well as a huge selection of other wands. I opened dozens and dozens of wand boxes, Jeff and I debated back and forth and back and forth about what design she'd like (without ever agreeing!) Finally, we knew we had to go with the 12-inch wand made of Reed. If you know her well, you will know why we came to this conclusion.

The rain picked up, so we headed to the new Harry Potter ride. They had a sweet baby swap with benches and Harry Potter movies playing while we took turns. That was by far the longest line we waited in there, but still only about 30 min. Or was it 60? It was cool, though, cause it took us through Hogwarts with talking portraits, the greenhouse with Mandrakes and the Pheonix at the entrance to Dumbledore's office, among a thousand other things. This ride was OFF THE CHAIN! (I don't even know where that expression comes from, but it felt right.) It's part simulator, part moving, part animatronic, part superawesome! It scared us a little, for real. When we got out, it was pouring!! I told Jeff it's gonna stop, so we should just keep going. It was raining so hard, however, that many of the rides were totally shut down. We kept going around the circle, but we ended up just taking the very long way out and leaving anyway. We missed some of the best rides, but fulfilled our biggest priorities. We waited a minute before going to the parking garage, but it only seemed to get worse. We had a poncho over the stroller, but Jeff and I were literally as wet as if we'd gone in a lake with our clothes on. I'm mostly sad we didn't get to do the kids stuff at the Studios side, cause I had told Amie we were going to see Spongebob and Dora today and she was totally pumped. Luckily, she has a short memory. We VERY reluctantly left, and while we were driving home, it slowed to a sprinkle and then stopped. I knew it! Oh well. The girls were not loving it. So we just went grocery shopping (bought bottles!) We also visited Farris and Foster's, my old Chocolatier employment and bought some good good goodies!! Bummer that no one I knew was working that day. We went to a yummy deep-dish pizza place for dinner, then settled sleepily in to our condo.

Sidenote: It occurred to me on our way there that hurricane season starts June 1, and we flew in at 11:30pm May 31st. But usually, there's nothing to worry about so early in the season... well, except that tropical storm torrentially drenching us out of our Universal day!

Florida Trip! Day 1 - The plane!

*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!

A call for followers!

I only title this post thusly because "A call for..." or "Calling all..." makes something sound official.
I just wrote this post because I want you (Yes, YOU, any "you" that reads this blog) to go to the top and click my "follow" button/link.
I only want you to push the follow button/link because it will make me feel popular and loved. No, really.

Nothing wrong with communicating your needs, right?

C'est la vie... C'est MA vie! ...hopefully.

Oh to dream, right? This super-great blogger is giving away a trip to Paris... HELLO?! Awesome! Here's the link to the giveaway... except you probably shouldn't enter... unless you want to take me with you, that is!

http://ohhappyday.com/2011/06/goes-to-paris

All I can say is Ooh La La. Check it out!