Florida 2014 - Wrap Up

Loved having these usable grills on the resort deck. Grilling overlooking the ocean? We could get used to this! 

Ice cream from the ice cream truck on the beach! 

My girl. These moments take my breath away with how quickly she's growing.

Probably my most favorite photo from the trip. This little girl LOVED the ocean. 

No fear! 

And this one was born for the beach. 

The Things and I sitting wear their Papa's ashes are spread at Daytona International Speedway. 

Bless the creators of carriers. This girl wouldn't have survived the two hour tour without it. 

And this one. Poor thing gets so overheated so quickly. It was mid 90's inland, humid, and NO breeze whatsoever.

We love our Jr! 

These two. <3 

The curls! We couldn't get enough of these humidity-induced ringlets.

And before we knew it our week of fun was over and we started the long journey home. None of us were ready to leave. A week of no responsibilities, freedom, and fun in the sun was so amazing and needed. It was hard to leave but we knew we'd be making the trek back again someday soon.

As hard as it was to leave, it's always SO great to be HOME!

Florida 2014 - Wedding Day

The entire reason for our trip to Florida was for Grandma's (my mom's) wedding. We were so excited and happy to be a part of her day. I was set on finding something with lace for all three girls to wear. The problem with having two older girls and a baby is it's really hard to find something that matches in all three sizes. Insert Zulily. I scoured that site Every. Single. Day. for a month straight hoping something would pop up. And it DID. It did big time. I fell in love with their dresses the minute I saw them. And I did an internal happy dance (because I was at work at the time) when I saw they had them in all three sizes. 

I then had matching lace headbands made by a local bow maker. They turned out even better than I had pictured. Last stop was shoes. Given this was Florida in the middle of July and the wedding was mid-afternoon, we knew going barefoot wasn't going to be an option. At least not for the younger set. I just couldn't wrap my mind around spending $30-40 on a pair of sandals for each girl, that would likely only be worn this one time, and that wouldn't even match because of shoe size differences. Then a friend suggested I go to the dollar store and just get plain flip flops. I resigned myself to something simple and plain and then, thankfully, our local dollar store had these amazing gold-rimmed bamboo flip flops for, you guessed it, $1 each. I did have to go buy a small pair of $9 sandals for Thing 3 but it was better than the overpriced pairs I was finding online!

It was a beautiful day with our beautiful family. We topped off the day with an amazing dinner at a local restaurant on the ocean. Our dearest Thing 3, the most adventurous, fearless baby I know, helped herself to a smorgasbord of crab cakes, salmon, veggies, bruschetta, and a whole heap of other things I can't remember. The older two? Chicken strips, of course. *Sigh*

Florida 2014 - Animal Kingdom Day

We took the Things to Magic Kingdom a couple of years ago. When this trip presented itself we knew we couldn't leave without doing at least one of the parks. After much conversation, we decided to hit Animal Kingdom while we were down. The girls knew this time around that we were going. What they DIDN'T know was that we booked a character breakfast. They were SO excited, the food was AMAZING, and the atmosphere, in typical Disney fashion, was incredible. It was an awesome way to start our day (and bonus, kept us full until mid-afternoon). 

Waffles taste better when they're Mickey-shaped. 

We even got to meet up with our favorite people - Unka Chad and his family. We had lunch (or rather, we sat while they had lunch since we were still full from breakfast), rode some rides, and saw a couple of shows with them before they decided to head back to their hotel for the day. 

One more visit with Daisy before leaving.