Florida with Kaden and Sadie

I saw that tickets to Florida were super cheap in the Fall and I really wanted to go.  Of course, Kylee and Dylan can't miss school and soccer very easily. Plus, bringing the whole family means we have to rent a car and that makes it more complicated.  So I decided to just take the two elementary age kids.

The kids had a lot of fun just swimming, and especially enjoyed swimming in the rain for some reason.  The rain rolled in a few of the days we were there but never lasted very long.  

We went to the beach a couple times, but I didn't very many pictures because we were all swimming!  We've been to Florida quite a few times in cooler months.  I kind of expected milder temperatures in October because it cools off back home, but it was NOT cool.  It was soooo hot.  Which makes a lot of things harder, but the beach is sure a lot more fun.  I taught Sadie how to swim in the waves and go deeper (always close to me or my mom though) and we held onto Kaden while we swam in the waves.  We had so much fun.  We tried to teach them to body surf but they didn't get too into it.  And there was one time where the current was strong and Sadie was trying to swim back to shore because we were getting too deep for her comfort.  I helped her swim sideways a little, or diagonal at least.  I was not really nervous because I could still touch but she was swimming hard and going nowhere so she got nervous.  The ocean is really fun but definitely dangerous. 

Ice cream is essential in that kind of heat.

Sugar the dog is what they were most looking forward to.

It's hard to go to Florida and not hit up a park.  Plus, Kaden and Sadie were pretty young when we did Disney World before.  I asked around and decided to do Hollywood Studios this time.  The big appeal there is the new Star Wars world they have created, and it's really cool!  Too bad we are not big Star Wars fans.  But it was still cool.  We had to wait in line for 2 hours for the first ride, which was lame but probably better than waiting in that long line when we were already super tired.

Kaden's favorite was the Toy Story shooting game.  We rode it twice in a row, and he came back later with Grandma when Sadie and I were doing a roller coaster too.

The frozen singalong was really cute and a great way to escape the heat for a little bit.  Did I mention it was soooo hot!

Nobody would go on the Tower of Terror with me!  Sadie said she would if she wasn't eating her frozen lemonade... and obviously Grandma couldn't go with me and leave the kids unattended.  It was fun though!

The Aerosmith roller coaster was good, but hurt my head.  It's like Space Mountain like how it's dark and you can't see the track, so you don't know where you will be jerked next and have no way to brace yourself.  I'm probably just too old for stuff like that.

The little Cars show was cute and the cars were super realistic.  

We left before dark because the kids were soooo tired.  

We went on an airboat ride in Lake Washington, just down the road from the house where we run to all the time.  It was so pretty and so fun.  We saw a couple big gators that scurried away before we got close enough to for a picture.  And we saw a handful of tiny little gators, but we were moving and they are fast so I didn't try to take any pics.  The captain tried to capture one of the little yearlings so we could get a closer look but didn't quite get it.

We went to the zoo, which is a really cool place.  But it was SOOOOO hot.  At least at Disney we were in and out of buildings with air conditioning.  This heat was relentless.  Sadie was whining and saying her bra was getting sweaty so I told her to take it off.  She had to do some maneuvering but she got it and we put it in our backpack and she felt much better.  If only I had the option to strip some layers, lol.  We fed giraffes and birds, saw kangaroos, leopards, snakes, etc.  Then went for some ice cream after browsing the gift shop for awhile. 

Being at the zoo reminded Grandma of the pets at Incredible Pets so Sadie asked if we could go there.  They probably had more fun there.  They had some cool pets!  The sloth was $9000.  There was a toucan for $6500.  They had ferrets, bunnies, tiny adorable big-eared foxes, along with all the lizards and turtles, etc.  Sadie was dying to get something.  

There's a race basically every weekend, this time there were two so we decided to do the trail one.  It was fun!  The trail was really pretty and flat (unlike my home trails).  We all got medals but I can't remember where we placed.

Brunch after the race.  I got some fish tacos, yum!  Kaden was apparently starving because he wanted a huge crepe breakfast and he ate the whole thing.

In the airport, getting food before getting on the plane was a little complicated.  Burger King's line was super long but the pizza place wasn't open yet.  I decided to wait for the pizza and we were pushing it close to our loading time.  But it was worth it because Sadie and I got stromboli and they were really yummy.  And I decided they would be really easy to make so I made them when we were home and they were yummy!

We picked out a necklace for Kylee (matching Sadie's) and the only thing we could find that Dylan would like was this gummy kabob.  It's cute, huh?