Vacation Recap

Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had fun over the holidays and had a very Happy New Year! I can't believe we are already three days into 2011! As you can tell from the lack of activity on this blog, I extended my "bloggy vacation" just a couple days longer than my actual vacation. I needed a little break after all of that. :-)

Our trip to Alabama was fun. It would have been a little better if my little princess hadn't been under the weather, but all in all we had a good time. I didn't even take my camera out until the last night we were there (shocker, I know!) so the picture overload in this post won't be near as bad as it could have been.

The ride up wasn't bad. It just took FOREVER! Between potty breaks, diaper changes and snacks, each stop we made took at least a half hour. What should have been less than a 7 hour drive took 9 hours. We made the mistake of stopping at Cracker Barrel to eat lunch, when we should have just stopped at McDonald's or something. That definitely took longer than I thought it would. By the time dinner rolled around, I was not about to stop again, so we pulled through Sonic and got corn dogs and bananas for the kids to eat (I know, I'm up for another not-mom-of-the-year award) and they ate in the car. Rylie said "oooooh mommy, we never ate in the car before." Trust me, she loved it! The kids watched movies and took a short nap and were pretty well behaved, considering they were stuck in the car all that time. By the time we got there, though, everyone was ready to get out. Of course both of the kids ended up staying up way too late, but hey, we were on vacation.

My aunt sure did have a full house while we were there! She has four kids ranging in age from 10-27 (geez I hope I got those ages right) and three of them are still there. Plus, my oldest cousin's 6 year old was there too, along with my other cousin's boyfriend. My aunt and I left my mom with all the kids Wednesday while we went to lunch, got pedicures and did some shopping. (Thanks again, mom!) That was a nice day to just relax. We were gone most of the day because when we head out to shop, that's just how long it takes.

On Thursday, my mom took the younger girls to the movies...she had 4 in tow. They saw Yogi Bear and had a good time. Bryce enjoyed the attention he got from my aunt and me with no one else around to steal it from him. Thursday night we went to the "Holiday Spectacular". I mentioned in my Vacation post a little bit about it, but basically it is a gazillion lights and some holiday displays. They also have campfires set up so you can roast marshmallows, and there is a really fun hayride. I mentioned that Rylie wasn't feeling good the whole trip, but I think her "funk" really hit her while we were out that night. We ended up not staying very long because I didn't want her out in the cold. She perked up a few times and had some fun, but I could tell she definitely wasn't feeling good.

This is when I had my camera, so here goes...

Here are the little ones playing up on one of the holiday displays while we were waiting for the hayride. My cousin's daughter Abbey smiled for a ton of pictures, but I finally managed to get one of all three smiling. We already know that Rylie doesn't like her picture taken, so add to that the fact that she didn't feel good and smiles were very rare from her.

Here we are on the hayride. Bryce was snuggled up with Mama until he decided he wanted to get down and walk around and introduce himself to everyone else on the ride with us. I was sitting with Rylie and my cousin Alaina.

My aunt somehow convinced one of the girls that was working there to dress up as Rudolph for the kids. Rylie had absolutely nothing to do with her, even after she took her head off and let Rylie see who she was. Bryce didn't want to get too close, but I did manage to get a picture of us with her.

Bryce had a great time! He was running around all over the place and climbing on everything he could.

I'm not sure what it is with kids and rocking chairs, but if my kids see an empty one, they want to sit in it.

And here is my cousin Allison, doing what (almost) teenagers do best...

Our attempt at a family picture at Santa's house...

And our attempt at an even bigger family picture. Ha! Yeah, like it is even possible to get everyone looking in the same direction, let alone smiling too.

Did you notice that Bryce was the only boy in that picture? Yeah, my family is all girls. Bryce is the first boy since my brother 34 years ago! My uncle was there somewhere, but I guess he didn't make it into that picture.

We finished up that trip with our "second Christmas" before we left Friday morning.

The drive back was decent, but I learned my lesson and we didn't stop for any sit down meals. We ended up leaving a lot later than we wanted to, and didn't get home until around 9:00. Travel days are long days!

It is a good thing that I had two days to re-integrate my kids into "real life", because one certainly wasn't enough. They were pretty cranky Saturday so we decided to get out of the house and go to Light Up UCF. They rode a few rides and had fun running around. They had a ferris wheel that Rylie LOVED, but Bryce didn't want to sit still and kept trying to get up, so he only got to ride that once. He really liked the little train, though.

Both kids had fun just running around too!

Rylie really liked the Merry Go Round, so we went on that several times. It was pretty fast, so she had a blast!

Look Dad...one hand!

My vacation is officially over, and we're all back to work and school today. It was sure fun while it lasted! Rylie is feeling better, so that is definitely a plus. Hopefully we can stay away from the sickies for a while...especially since her third birthday is in 11 days!

I hope to start getting caught up with all of my bloggy friends this week. Taking a "bloggy break" was definitely needed, but I feel so out of touch! I hope you all have a great week!