Final Post: Vacation, I Mean Trip!!

Well, we are back here in rainy Cleveland and apparently we missed an entire week of rain while in Florida, too! Our grass is almost florescent green, and my flowers are still alive, so that's good!

The last pictures I have are of our day at Epcot, and then Thursday and Friday. We decided to go Wednesday, and then play it by ear as to whether to go anywhere on Friday -- Magic Kingdom, or Sea World. Well, after a full day at Epcot (which I felt great the whole day, just stopping to rest or rehydrate) the following day my back went into "what did you just do to me?" mode. So, by Friday I was feeling better, but definitely not up to a full day of walking around an amusement park. So Thursday and Friday were really just relaxing days, which were great, and we headed home Saturday.

For some reason he was afraid of Minnie, so I had to go with him! She's really scary.

I wanted Jeff to get in the picture with him for Goofy, and we thought he was acting all weird because he was afraid...

Turns out he just didn't want Jeff in his picture with Goofy!

The Finding Nemo ride was one of our favorites. They had a big play area after the ride where we took the picture in the shark's mouth.

During one of of my 50 trips to the bathroom, I came back to find Jeff and Brendan catching water at a jumping fountain.

Waiting for the fireworks to start. And eating. Of course.

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We spent a lot of afternoons swimming at the hotel pool. Love my hot maternity bathing suit. I thought black was supposed to be slimming...

Does he look like he's going under? Not with the 20 floatation devices he's wearing!!

One of the "nicer" dinners Jeff and I decided to have... I had to leave the restaurant, walk down to the candy store and purchase a chocolate covered Micky Mouse rice crispy treat to make it through that one.... that's when we decided we would only be going to loud restaurants for the remainder of our trip :-)

One of our last nights we went over to Universal Studios Citywalk to walk around and have dinner (at a loud restaurant).

Outside of Margaritaville they were taking pics with parrots. See that girl? She's yelling at me for taking a picture! We were supposed to buy the $12 ones inside! Oh, well, I guess I'm just too quick!

B got a balloon sword inside of Margaritaville. For whatever reason that was his best behaved night out to dinner. Or maybe it was so loud we just didn't hear him!

If you're good at dinner we'll go ride the Merry Go Round afterward...

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I have some other side notes and pictures from this trip that I just want to document so I don't forget! I do hope to put this blog into a book someday for memories, so sometimes I know I add unnecessary details, but they are mostly for me :-)

* Brendan's sleeping arrangement was quite interesting... I got this air mattress Diego bed on sale for $15 thinking I might use it someday, somewhere. So we brought it to Florida, since we had a one bedroom unit, with a King size bed... and while sleeping with my sweet little boy all nestled in between Jeff and I sounds nice, the reality is that he's a flip-flopper, and I would get kicked and punched all night long, and that just doesn't sounds so sweet!

The first night we blew up his Diego bed, and put it at the bottom of our bed. Every 2 hours (I get up EVERY 2 HOURS to pee... on a good night...) I would see Brendan somehow manage to escape from the little sleeping bag top of the air mattress and he would either be on the hotel floor, or halfway under the hotel bed ~ GROSS!! GROSS!! and GROSS!! Although the floor looked clean, I'm sure it's no place for sleeping, and totally creeped me out. All hotels creep me out. So I would wake up Jeff to put him back in every 2 hours. The next night, we switched him to the side of the bed, and surrounded him with cushions from the couches. That kept him in pretty well, and worked for the rest of the time. Oh, also, each time he moved in that Diego bed, which was like every 10 minutes because he's a wiggle worm, there would be that noise... you know, like when you move on a rubber raft. A low pitched, squeaky noise. Yea, that was fun for sleeping too... but I guess I still slept better than if he was WITH me in the bed!

* We mostly wore Pull-Ups while on this vacation since we were out and about and didn't have time for accidents! On the airplane ride, I took him into the airport bathroom for one last potty break, put a diaper on him while he was standing in the stall, and told him "there are no bathrooms on the airplane, so you have to wear a diaper and go potty in there..." I was not about to try and squeeze two of us into an airplane bathroom barely ONE person can fit it! So, as we were boarding the plane, he announced extremely loud to Jeff, "Mommy said I can pee my pants on the airpwane today!!" -- the look we got from the lady taking our boarding passes wasn't a smile...

* Just as we were about to gather our bags and board the plane, I sort of tripped over my flip-flop and it totally broke!! Jeff flips out on me! "WHY would you wear flip flops?!" Well, my feet will swell... "I know a guy from work whose flip flop broke and he had to run and buy duct tape and duct tape his feet because they wouldn't let him on the plane without shoes! We don't have time to find duct tape!!" -- Thankfully, Jeff used our car key to somehow poke the toe thing back thru the flip flop and I was good to go and we didn't miss our flight!

* Jeff dropped us off and went to park the car at a cheaper lot and take a shuttle back. We go in, check our bags, go through security, arrive at our gate, when I realize that Jeff was the one who got Brendan out of his carseat, and of course, not being the "thoughtful, think of everything" parent that I am :-) he didn't "think" to see if Brendan's "buddies" (aka "the blankets you cannot lose, EVER EVER EVER! I have even written my cell phone number on them with a Sharpie Laundry marker!) were there in the backseat, where they usually are. Thank God I realized this before we took off... so Jeff had to run back out, take the shuttle to the car, come back, and go through security with the "buddies" and then meet us at the gate. Phew. He made it. Thankfully, Jeff is an "Elite" Continental member because he travels a decent amount throughout the year for work, so he actually has one of those cards that let's him in the short line for security, which is usually 5 people long at the most. If he didn't have that, I'm not sure he would've made it back in time!

* The most capture-able instances of Brendan being Brendan were most noticeable in pictures. Without saying it, he is really saying, "You can't MAKE me take a good picture. No I won't smile. No I won't look at the camera, if I really don't want to. You guys are SO annoying."

You have to turn your head, but his arms are even folded as he's pouting... this is THE spot at Epcot to get a picture in front of the famous "sphere" -- could've been a Kodak moment, but... he's 3 :-)