Florida and back

Well, I'm finally posting pics from Florida!

Chris and I and Mia had such a great time with Ashlee, Jon, Gavin, Johnathan, Stephanie, Wes, and Caleb. (Jon, Ashlee's husband, is missing in all these pics!)
Ashlee and Stephanie are 2 of Chris's nieces and Johnathan is his nephew, his oldest brother Parrish's kids. Ashlee, the oldest, is only 7 years younger than Chris, and since they grew up around each other a lot, they were kinda like brother and sister. Its fun watching Chris tease his little "sister."

It was also fun to see Ashlee with her little 9 month old baby, Gavin! She is such a cute mommy! She has always been the mommy, taking care of 4 younger brothers and sisters, but seeing her with her little Gavin is so cute. :) He was such a friendly little baby, too, I was glad Ashlee had him around since we had to bring Mia, too!

So we left Phoenix early Wednesday morning, took a 4 1/2 hour flight to Orlando, and Mia was great! She slept a good part of the time. Ashlee picked us up and brought us to our hotel, and we got some dinner at Downtown Disney, and just chilled the rest of the night. The next day we went to Disneyworld... where there are 4 different parks... Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Epcot. We went to the first 2 on Thursday, and wore ourselves out! We took turns with the kids and did the rider swap, which worked nicely so we didn't have to all wait in line together. On a few of the rides, we got the rider swap pass and didn't even wait in line, just used the pass! 

Daddy and Mia at Animal Kingdom

kids waitin patiently

I really liked the Expedition Everest ride at the Animal Kingdom and the Rock n Rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios. I liked the Dinosaur ride too, but it kinda scared me!! I felt bad for the 4 year old behind me, those dinosaurs looked so real!

We had planned on going to the other 2 parks the next day, but we were just too tired, so we went to Cocoa Beach instead. I didn't mention that meantime, Mia and Gavin had both gotten sick. With different things, too. Mia was throwing up and had diarrhea, and Gavin had like 104 fever! So after having some lunch, we dropped Ashlee and Gavin off at the Urgent Care and headed to the beach. He ended up having a respitory infection, which got better with antibiotics. At the beach, before even setting our stuff out, Mia was freaking out, not wanting me to put her down or go near the water.

uuuhh... I don't think so Daddy!

 After several attempts at taking her in the water, I gave up and she fell asleep on me! Which was nice, I was able to go swimming in the surprisingly warm ocean water... Chris and I had a lot of fun finding shells to make necklaces for the girls and looking at all the jellyfish that had washed up on the shore!

finally asleep!

Chris boogie boardin

Chris's nephew Johnathan and his nephew Gavin

Saturday morning we got up early and went to Busch Gardnens, in Tampa, about 1 1/2 away from Orlando. Chris has always told me about how he and his friend, Jared, would ditch school, and sneak into Busch Gardens. :o) I can see why, it sure was fun!! My favorite roller coaster was Sheikra... I loved the straight drop!! We went on it like 4 times! I also really liked the sky ride, which was the only ride Mia could go on with us, and she loved it. It was great to see Stephanie again, and meet her husband, Wes, and her little boy Caleb... he was such a little firecracker! All 3 kids did great, even though they couldn't ride much, and Mia was such a good sport even though she still wasn't feeling very good.

view from the skyride

there were lots of animals... Mia's favorite were the flamingoes :)

Wes, Caleb, Stephanie

cheese ball!

Sunday we took it easy, slept in and went to Clearwater beach, right by where Chris lived in high school... Dunedin. I was so happy that Mia actually LOVED the beach this day... it probably helped that she was feeling better! Plus she loved the soft white sand, and the calm warm water that she could splash and run around in!

fun with Dad

happy baby!! :)

Mia helping me build a sand castle

Enjoying the white sands

I also really enjoyed driving around Dunedin, seeing Chris's old house, where he worked at Checker's (hamburgers, not auto), and the Pizza Hut where he had his 15th birthday. :)

Dunedin!!

After packing up Monday, we went to Old Town to take a ride on the country's highest Sky Coaster... 300 ft! And I was only scared for the first, oh about 10 seconds. ;) To see what its all about click here 

the best shot we have of us being lifted up to the top!

We also got to go to a sort of behind the scenes Disney discount store to get the kids souveniers, it was great, we got so much stuff for not to much $$!

I was so sad to leave and go back to reality... but mostly to sit on the plane for 5 hours straight, again. And little Miss Mia was horrible, the whole time! She was so tired, but fought it the whole way, wouldn't sit still, which made for a whole lotta fun for me and Chris. And then we were in for a whole lot more fun when Chris realized the clicker to his car had fallen off in Ashlee's car on the way to the airport. Lets just say we got to the airport at 7:30, but didn't leave till like 10:30 pm... which is 1:30 am Florida time! Mia FINALLY stopped fighting at about 10 pm and zonked out in the stroller. I can't remember a time I was more happy to crawl into my bed that night... oh, my soft wonderful bed with all the feather pillows...

Mia did lots of this on the trip...