The Clanton's Family Vacation...

I know what you're saying, "it's about time!!!" Well, what can I say, we had such a blast in Florida it took us a week later to finally get back to a "normal" schedule. So, I'm sure you're wondering what our vacation was like and let me just say one word...AWESOME! I was so depressed when we came back. I literally cried the next morning when Eric had to go to work and I had to continue back to my daily life of cooking and cleaning and caring for the kids. Oh well, I came through, I'm pretty sure I'm gunna make it, and I have managed to find joy again staring at the 864 pictures Eric and I managed to take. So, back to the vacation details...we'll start with "Airplane Day"! It was so fun to watch the girls get excited about check in, security, and the plane's arrival. They got to hand them their tickets, pick their seat, and look out the window while we took off. The hardest part was landing when their ears popped, but they were more than ready to get on another one. After our two airplane rides, having a layover in Atlanta, we went on to our hotel. This is where the family vacation gets interesting. We landed in Orlando at 12:18am, so as you can probably guess, we were tired. We had 7 checked bags we had to get in baggage claim plus 5 carry ons including the stroller. We called the hotel for a shuttle ride and had to convince the guy to come pick us up...let me remind you they had a complimentary 24 hours shuttle service to that hotel. As we get to baggage claim, one of the bag boys (?) came to help us and Eric realized we have no small bills to tip him. So, as he runs around (there's a different side of this story if you ask Eric) to break a $20, I take the kids outside to meet this shuttle driver. After waiting on him for about 15 minutes, they load up our bags, and I put the kids in their seats in the car while I'm calling Eric to figure out where he is. He says quickly, I'm on my way and hangs up on me. In the meantime, the shuttle driver is rushing me onto the bus trying to leave without my husband and I am refusing to move until Eric is with me. So, Eric finally shows up and we head to the hotel. It's quite obvious to me that Eric is a little annoyed. After about a 10-15 minute ride, we pull up to what appears to be a beautiful resort style hotel. As Eric gets the bags, I go to check us in. The lobby is beautiful and there is tons of limos outside and we think why didn't we stay here the entire week. Well, as we turned the corner to head to our room, you can tell where they stopped spending the money and we realized why we decided on one night there. We open the door to our room and the bed is still not made, the bathroom toilet is clogged with paper, and their are dirty towels on the floor. I freak and tell Eric to get us another room. He comes back with a key to another room and the room number is hand written in sharpie on the door. I started to think, "oh my, we're going to open this door walk into a murder scene." Thank the Lord it was a clean room. We go in and Eric turns on the AC because the room was boiling, and the AC unit makes a cluncking sound all night long, on top of the smoke alarms beeping because the battery was dying or dead. So, my wonderful husband gives in and goes back to the front desk and gets a battery. Unfortunatly, the batteries broke and he had to go back up for more and we didn't get to bed until around 2-2:30 that morning. Well, all night, Eric didn't sleep and I had dreams about the stupid room we were in, terrified I was going to wake up with cockroaches crawling all over me. So, day 2 comes quickly and we were up at 6:30am. Eric leaves to go get our rental so we can move onto Islands of Adventure. I take a shower, get fully dressed, and realize he still isn't back. He finally calls me and says, they don't have the actual car we reserved so we can either have this or this. We ended up with an Escalade for a pretty decent deal. I was pretty happy and thought okay this day is going to be better, and it was. We had a great time at the park. Day 2 comes and we go to Universal Studios. That was also a blast. We were having a great time until about the middle of the day when Eric starts a conversation with someone in line about going to SeaWorld the following day and finds out there is no water park in SeaWorld Orlando like there is in San Antonio. Knowing that the water park is Jade's favorite part, we decided to cancel our SeaWorld tickets to go to Aquatica the SeaWorld water park. It was pretty cool. It was packed, but worth the visit. That pretty much sums up Day 3 too. Day 4 was kind of a disaster. We decided to go to the beach for the day to get a little R&R between theme parks. We started out late because it was the only day we didn't have to be standing at the front gates at 8:30am. Once we were dressed and ready to go we head to the rental car place because the Escalade didn't have an IPOD jack and it was a 1.5 hour drive to Cocoa Beach. After being picky for over and hour, we found a car suitable for what we paid for and it had an IPOD jack. It ended up working out, the lady accidentally erased our additional charges and we got an upgraded car for nothing out of pocket. SWEET! We finally got back on the highway to head to the beach and decided we needed to go to Walmart. Well, navigation told us there was one 6 miles behind us or 45 miles ahead of us. Nothing on the way. So, we decided to continue forward since it was already noon and we were no where near the beach yet. Finally we got to Walmart and managed to forget to buy something 4 different times. 4 times one of us had to go back inside the store...a 20 minute walmart stop took us 1.5 hours. Seriously. So finally at almost 2 we get to the beach. The beach was great. It was sunny, warm, great. We did some shopping, we had a nice day after the few problems we started out with. So, what day am I on? Day 5. Okay Day 5 we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios where Emma rode the Tower of Terror twice. Go Emma. It was fun, no need to go back again, but fun. Day 6 took us to Disney's Animal Kingdom. Again, it was fun, no need to go back, but fun. That evening we went to hang out with Scott & Sarah's family. That was nice to see/meet everyone and to see them since I'm pretty sure we were going through Berkey withdrawl. Ha! The last day the Berkey's braved a day in Disney's Magic Kingdom with the crazy Clantons. We did the Magic Kingdom in fast forward. We literally ran clear across the park I'm pretty sure twice. We did almost all the rides in about 7 hours. Most people spend several days there, but not if you're with Eric the Map Reader...he gets a plan and he gets it done. Thanks honey...it worked out perfectly. Thanks Berkeys for joining us...can't believe you're willing to try it again in June!!! Finally it was time to come home. On the way to the airport we realized we needed to put gas in the car before we took it back. Well, we were smart enough to wait until we were right next to the car returns to get gas and ended up paying $4.85 a gallon. Let's not go there, still al ittle bitter about that. We put $9.00 in and got nothing out of it. No joke. So, knowing we were cutting it close on time, we decided to take whatever fees they were going to hit us with. Now, on the way back, we had 8 check in bags and 5 carry ons. We were the coolest people on the shuttle. We had to take up two shelves in the bus. That was awesome and people laughed at us. Then at the airport we did curbside check in which took us about 20 minutes because we had to keep rearranging things. Both kids were sleeping so Eric and I were lugging around all these bags and two sleeping kids. When we finally got inside the airport, we had to wait for security for another 20 minutes and then we got to look cool again with our 5 plastic tubs full of stuff and then they made me take Emma out of the stroller so I had to go back to Xray and cut someone off so I could get through. Then it took us 10 more minutes to get everyones stuff together and shoes back on. Finally we got to the gate. Eric and Jade went to go get food and it took them about another 20 minutes. When they got back with food, guess what time it was...bording time. Great, we had to eat as fast as we could so it wouldn't get cold. The plane borded fast and we were 15 minutes ahead of schedule and we were clear to go and an indicator light came on and we sat on the tarmack (?) for another 20 minutes. Finally we took off and after we were cleared to get up, Eric and I decided that everything we were going to ready and prepare for on the plane was not important enough and went to sleep. It was a long week. Loved every part of it, and won't change anything, but it was definitely a long week.