Florida Trip

We got back a couple of days ago after spending a week in Florida. Pat had a conference down there so we decided to make it a family vacation. Pat's mom came with us which worked great since Pat had to spend a few days in meetings and I probably wouldn't have ventured out much on my own with Owen. Pat's uncle has a condo near Daytona Beach that we stayed in which was great. It's in a fly-in community so Owen got to see lots of airplanes which he loved. We didn't have a pack n play down there so we zoned off part of a closet and figured out Owen prefers tighter boundaries. One of us had to lay down with him every night until he fell asleep otherwise he would freak out. The first night or 2 were extremely difficult for me just because I'm used to laying him in his bed and walking out and that's it. Once I readjusted my expectations I was actually able to enjoy watching him fall asleep. The other fun part was that when he woke up in the morning he would appear at the side of my bed looking so adorable :) We also let Owen forward face in the car seat (I'm planning on keeping him rear facing as long as possible) while we were down there and he still hates being in the car seat so he went back to rear facing as soon as we got home.

We got down there Friday afternoon then had dinner at a nice little restaurant near the condo. They had a nice little play area outside that Owen loved. We spent most of Saturday on Disney property. We didn't get tickets for any of the parks since tickets and expensive and Owen wouldn't remember it anyway. Instead we rode the monorail around and a couple of boats. We saw The Boardwalk on Saturday and Downtown Disney on Sunday. We were glad we didn't get tickets for the parks because our days were full enough without them.
We spent a few hours at the beach on Monday and Owen LOVED it. He made me so nervous though because he would just take off into the water not realizing they could knock him over and pull him out. That was the only day I got sunburn and it was pretty minor which was great. I've had some pretty nasty sunburns in my life so I'm trying to be smarter in my old age and use sunscreen more regularly. I'd kind of forgotten about reapplying it but it wasn't bad.

Tuesday we went to look for manatees and alligators and say neither. Well, we saw 1/3 of a manatee but that was it. We drove down this little gravel road near Cape Canaveral and had fun searching for alligators but unfortunately all we saw were a lot of birds. I guess it was too hot for anything to surface.

Pat's mom flew out early Wednesday morning so we just laid low the rest of the day. It was the only day Owen had a real nap for the whole trip. All of his naps were either in the car or on my lap on the airplane and he'll only sleep for 30-45 minutes in the situations. The poor kid was exhausted but did really well. Fortunately he slept great at night. We went back to the beach that night since Pat hadn't been able to come with the first time and it was so fun. It was cooler and raining a little so there was hardly anybody there and Pat and Owen had a blast. We hadn't brought our suits so we just planned on wading and walking in the sand but there was no way we were able to keep Owen out of the water and he was soaked when we left. He had a blast running into the waves and Daddy loved catching him. I was put in charge of keeping the phones and wallet dry so Daddy did the chasing while Mommy attempted to stay dry.

We flew back to Cedar Rapids late Thursday morning and Owen fell asleep on my lap about 5 minutes after takeoff and slept about 45 minutes. On the way down there we had an extra seat in our row for him to climb around in but not on the way home. It went pretty well though.

We got back to our house around 2:00 and then left for Kansas City around 6:00. Pat was going to a Chief's game Friday night and we figured Owen would sleep better down there since that is what is familiar to him at this point. He also slept the first 3 hours which was great and the last hour and a half he was in a good mood so it made for a relatively easy trip. Pat was pretty tired though!

We had a great time even though it was so hot. (This MN girl does not like heat!)

We stayed at a hotel in Orlando one night so Owen got his boundaries once!