Trip To Florida Day 3

Today was definitely a more mellow day, which was wonderful! Callie slept much better last night. We were actually able to put Callie in the peapod to sleep, after much feeding and rocking of course! She slept there for about 5 hours. Then she woke up crying. I'm sure she was like "What the hell am I doing in this tent? Get me out of here woman!" So I calmed her down and she slept a few more hours with us in the bed again. We woke up and got ready and met Dave and Britt at the Waffle House before heading over to Grandma and Grandpa Allen's house for my great grandfather's birthday celebration.
It was a really nice day. We took some family photos and just visited with family and friends celebrating Grandpa Allen.

From left to right: Dave, Grandpa Allen, Great Grandpa Allen, Me and Callie, Bill, Mom (Grandma Tere)

Playing with Great Aunt Patty

And with Grandma Tere

Our little musician
103. Can you imagine?? I am planning on doing another separate post on him, as it is too much to delve into here.
Callie did really well, she of course resisted napping like crazy but eventually she crashed on me.


Bill's new friend

Walking!

Hanging out with Britt

Why, yes, she is a great girl!

Dave and Britt

Order please.

To go.

Hangin out with Great Grandpa Allen

The balloon! Please get me the balloon!
After she woke up she was rarin to go and got serious about working on her walking skills!


After getting back to the hotel room we just hung out and let Callie burn off some energy.

Too cool for words

Trip To Florida Day 2

After our rough night. I went for a walk to clear my head and to not feel so pissed and tired. Well not much I can do about the tired bit. I had no idea what was around our hotel, except for an oyster house.

View from near our hotel. I didnt see any gators though...
As I was walking through the parking lot I witnessed what I"m pretty sure was a prostitute fighting with her boyfriend/pimp. She was slapping him and then a random pickup truck pulled up and they both got in. Classy! I kept walking and what did I spy? A Waffle house.

A waffle sounded like it would hit the spot! So I got to have a break and have some breakfast. It was hangover and screaming kid central, but it made for some good people watching. I got a text from Bill that he had just woken up. So I brought him back a waffle and some coffee. When they rang me up I thought it was a mistake. For 2 waffles and 2 coffees it was $5.75. I gave them a nice big tip:) Very nice place and very nice people. I think I got called "honey" and "sugar" at least 3 times.
I walked back to Bill and Callie. I retold my adventure, Bill was sad he missed the pimp n' ho fight. Then we started doing the whole "So..what do you want to do today? I don't know what do you want to do today?" Which of course always makes me think of this:

Finally I said that I wanted to go to universal. So we did! Even though we had said last night that we would only go if we could get an early start, since it was 2 hours away. Clearly that didn't happen! But it was either that or World of Beer and outlet shops. Even just driving there we kept saying "I'm so glad we're going!"
We got there and parked. From the second we got out of the car, some kind of bug started swarming. I thought it was mosquitoes so I put my repellent on earlier than I had planned and rubbed a little on callie too. We decided to try to find some more in the stores. We asked in the shop, since they had sunscreen, which we also bought (for a whopping $17 !!). The lady replied "Oh you mean the flies?" They certainly didn't look like any flies we had ever seen! But, Florida has some pretty impressive bugs, so we relaxed.
We decided to start in the Dr. Seuss themed land since we had read it was good for kids. It was pretty cool!

It really was like stepping into one of his books.
They had a carousel, so we took Callie on it.

It started off well...

Umm...I'm not so sure about this anymore.

What are we riding anyway??
She did well at first, but we noticed it was a little bit faster than the carousel she had been on previously, so she freaked a little bit and turned to hold on to me. But I didn't mind a bit, it was an awfully nice hug!
Then it was on to the main attraction!

Hogwarts and Hogsmeade! The Potter portion of the park was small but the amount of detail universal was able to cram into a small space was absolutely staggering.

It really was like falling into the pages of JK Rowling's books. When you walked past the dress/robe shop you could see Hermione's dress that moved occassionally. The quill shop you could hear the scribbling of quills on paper. In the women's bathroom you can hear moaning myrtle and of course there is the screeching mandrake root!
Our first stop was for butterbeer. Which is so freaking delicious!!! We had ordered our butterbeer when Bill overhead the woman behind us order a frozen butterbeer, which of course we had to try. Bill very politely told the guy working there that we also would like a frozen one. Bill was about to hand him the money, when the guy whispered "Just go ahead." We decided it was because Callie was being all cute and waving at him:)

I think she totally wants to steal my butterbeer....Reminescent of the paris wine thief

Hanging in Hogsmeade
We had been texting with my brother and Britt, since they were there too. Britt had told us that the food at the 3 Broomsticks was pretty decent so we stopped there for some food.

It was quite good! We got sheperds pie (which I didn't really care for) and cornish pastys (which were fantastic!) and some mac and cheese and applesauce for Callie, who of course demolished the entire plate in mere minutes.

And then she had mac n cheese face, which was totally adorable.

Next door is The Hog's Head, a nice little pub where they had one of my favorite beers on tap, Strongbow. And there in the middle is the talking er, grunting, hog head. Callie was totally amazed!

Hangin with dad at the bar

The hat game!
We had drinks with Dave and Britt and then went to go on the Hogwarts ride.







Mom, I'm ready! I'm totally big enough for this ride!! Let's go!


Welcome to Hogwarts!


There were two women at the 3 Broomsticks that had recommended this ride. I'm glad they did, otherwise we would've bypassed it altogether and it was SO worth it!! Again, the amount of detail was insane. While you wait in line you meet/watch Dumbledore, Hermione, Ron, Harry, the sorting hat, you name it! Hermione even makes it snow!



Talking Portrait Gallery


But Callie missed it all!


But that worked out perfectly, since it was the only time all day when we had to stand in line. The line took about 30 minutes.
Universal (and disney parks) have a deal called Child Swap where if there are two people in your party you can go on rides! One person stays with the bags and the baby while the other goes on the ride and then you switch without having to get out of line. We got so excited to be on a "real" ride that wasn't a carousel! And the ride was AWESOME!! Totally worth the trip. It is a pretty immersive ride that is mostly a motion simulator, a bit like the star tours ride at disney but way more intense. Got to be face to face with dementors! So cool. After the ride, Dave and Britt went to explore the Marvel part of the park and we kept exploring Potterland. We went into Honeydukes and Zonkos. I couldn't resist buying a chocolate frog, chocolate peppermint toads, a cauldron cake and a pumpkin tart. Bill found a cool, retro robot at zonkos.

We also did another potter ride, Dragon's Challenge which is pretty much exactly like Top Gun at Great America.
Aftewards we did a quick walk thru of Marvel. I was pretty impressed that they actually had a comic book shop. I would've liked to check out the spiderman ride but we were pretty much done. So we called it a day and met up with Dave and Britt at Steak n Shake. Callie definitely got a taste for bill's orange creamsicle milkshake! Once in the car I gave her some fruit and some puffs and off to dreamland she went, so the 2 hour ride back to the hotel was a quiet one.
We decided to take it easy with her at night. It just wasn't worth trying to get her on this time zone for a few days. So we let her crawl, walk and play to her heart's content. Especially since she had been so so good at the park all day being carried in the ergo and not being able to really be mobile.


Playing in the peapod.
So when it was all said and done, it was a great day!!

Trip To Florida Day 1

On Friday, we left for Florida. We were traveling to help my Great Grandfather celebrate his 103rd birthday. Don't worry, you read that right, 103! The man is amazing.
We were traveling with my mom, brother and his girlfriend. We all met at our house and drove to the airport to drop off cars and get going. Poor Callie was quite confused when we woke her up after she had only been sleeping for about 6 hours. Usually it is the other way around! We had her in pajamas, just to make it easy.
She did awesomely well on the plane, again! She is just a great flier. She slept for part of each flight. She made friends, of course, as she waved to everyone as we walked back to our seats. She even got invited to party with some college girls as they headed to Mardi Gras! Quite the party animal!

She loved looking out the window with Grandma Tere.

I had thought about not bringing the Boppy with us, but it ended up being the best thing to bring!

It gave Callie a nice spot to sit on my lap without worrying about her falling.

Time to eat! again....

Hanging out with daddy
We had a short layover in Houston where we got a bit to eat and then it was back to the plane. It was perfect! The first flight ended just as she was getting antsy. The hour in Houston was just enough for her to crawl around a little and then she was tired again. I must say, I was pretty much dreading the thought of traveling with a much more mobile Callie than we had in Paris, but it turned out alright!

Callie hanging out at the rental cars. She made everyone smile with her frankenstein walk!
We arrived in Tampa and got our rental cars and went to visit with my grandparents and relatives. It was my Aunt Patty's birthday so we all had a nice dinner and cake before heading back to the hotel.
Then the real fun began. Ugh. I don't even want to type it. But here it is, we've figured it out, Callie is a great flier, but a terribly sleeper in places other than her house! We bought a peapod tent for her, it looked to have a good cushion in the air mattress and it packs up really light, so light and small you can fit it in your luggage. We brought her back to the hotel and she was WIRED! So we thought we'd let her crawl around and do her thing.

Little miss crazy pants

Does it look like I want to go to bed??
That went on for about 2 hours. It became clear that she was finally getting tired because she was crawling/walking and then falling every couple of steps. We tried everything. Rocking, singing, eating. It got so bad around 1:30am that I just thought to myself "This is not a vacation. I do not want to travel with her anymore. I just want to pack my bags and go back home." It certainly didn't help that she had just headbutted me so badly that my face was swelling. At this point it was almost 2:30am. We were faced with two more options. Driving her around, but of course I knew that once we stopped the car and got her out of the world's crappiest carseat that we rented with the car she would be wide awake again. So we put her in the peapod and let her cry for 10 minutes. I felt bad for our hotel neighbors, but we didn't have much of a choice. After ten minutes, I took her out and held her in the bed and whaddayaknow? She passed out. After a few minutes, Bill asked "Do you want me to move her into the peapod?" God no. Nobody breathe, nobody move a god damned muscle. So there we slept. Luckily it was a big bed because baby girl was doing the mambo in her sleep. At one point I woke up with her knees in my throat. She slept about 7 hours before she woke up again. I fed her and I got in the shower. When I come back,this is what I see.

My hopes for getting to Orlando today to see the Harry Potter park are quickly fading. But who knows...Bill was never really on board with the whole idea. He seems much more excited to go visit Tampa's World of Beer attraction. Go figure.