Vacation

We just got back from our first family vacation! Road trip down to Indian Shores, Florida. Grammie and Papa C drove and met us down there. We also got to meet up with Aunt Terrie and Uncle Dick since they live down there during the winter and got to meet up with Uncle Dave, Aunt Carla and Keelie at Disney for a little while. We had such an awesome trip - the boys did awesome in the car for such a long drive. Thank goodness for DVD players though! Sammy and Ben's new favorite DVD - "Baby Animals"; I swear we watched it 20 times! And Dad was a trooper - drove through the night both ways and wouldn't let me help since he was jacked up on coffee, Mt Dew and Monsters! We stayed in a beautiful condo on the beach - the weather was great - warm enough for shorts and getting in the pool/ocean.

We spent a lot of time at the beach - Sam going back and forth between wanting to be in the water and wanting to build sand castles. He was a little scared at first, but then just loved it. Ben Ben was our little sea turtle - we would set him down and he would crawl as fast as he could into the water without any fear. He and Sammy had races. We went to the Tampa Zoo which was amazing - they had a manatee tank with "patients" they were caring for - all  had been wounded. There were over a dozen and they are one of Sammy's favorite animals so he got a kick out of them. We also went to the Clearwater Aquarium, played miniature golf and Sammy got to go to the driving range to hit balls one day which he seems to really like doing.

We drove up to Orlando to the Magic Kingdom one day - it was such a fun day. Got there at 9am and left at 8pm - we were all whooped! Sammy (and probably Ben's) favorite ride was the Dumbo Flying Elephants. He got a little scared on the Pooh and Peter Pan rides - kept saying "it's really really dark in here, let's find a way out". He at first was really scared of the characters, but after seeing the parade he really started liking them. Even got him to agree to getting pics with Goofy and Donald! Joe and I were really sad when we were leaving the park because we didn't want the fun to end and Sammy kept saying "let's do that again". We definitely look forward to taking them back when they get a little older and will appreciate it even more. To close, we had an amazing first family vacation  and can't wait for the next one! The best part of it all was just spending 9 non-stop days with our Sammers and Big Snuggie Bear! It's so fun to just be with them and watch them start to interact more; make each other laugh.