Suprise Vacation!

This past week we went to Florida on a last minute trip with my sister, her boyfriend, and his son, Peyton. We were asked to go on Thursday evening and left bright and early (5am) on Sunday. Friday and Saturday were spent getting last minute things for Florida. Ever try getting a new bathing suit in August? Ha! You'd have better luck buying Christmas wrapping paper.

So Sunday morning we packed up the car, got our thermoses of coffee ready, and headed out.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed. The grown ups, not so much.

 Shay was super excited that we would be going to Florida. We have driven through all the states south of us before- but always stopped at Georgia. The whole way down "I can't believe we're going to Florida!" was peppered in between her playing her leapster (thank goodness for headphones!) As we drove through each state, she asked if we were going to go through the capitals. She started naming the capitals, and I think she enjoyed when we either went through them (Richmond) or saw signs for them. We found out that Richmond is super stinky and that the Cay River in Georgia has this indescribable smell. Because the van doesn't have a CD player, or a ipod usb, we also learned the words to many of the songs on the radio because they played them over and over again through the different cities. While, Adele's "Rolling in the deep" is an awesome song, it started to lose it's awesomeness after hearing it on every station for 13 hours!

I made some observations on the drive about the different types of drivers in the states we drove through (please no one get offended if I mention your state!) Maryland drivers need to go fast. They will run you over and weave throughout all the lanes to get in the fast lane. Virginia drivers will just ride your bumper in the left lane. They don't care that you can't get over to allow them to pass. I guess they expect you to do 100MPH if you are in the left lane. North Carolina drivers seem to think they should make sure everyone does the speed limit. I followed many rolling road blocks with NC drivers leading the way. South Carolina drivers- I found they were ok. Doing their thing and staying clear of crazies! Georgia drivers were ok too- a little cautious, but Georgia was the ONLY state that I actually saw cops pulling people over the whole way down. Florida drivers only know one way to drive- FAST. I don't think there is a speed limit in Florida. Many times I found myself doing 90 and still not able to keep up with the pack. Along the way there were drivers from other states. Among the most obnoxious was New Jersey! There was this Jeep who seemed to be stuck with us for a while. He would speed up in the right lane (and try to push cars only doing 10 over the speed limit) and try to wedge himself in between packs of cars that were traveling at 85 MPH. Like getting one more car ahead would help. I think he was in and out of our pack for an hour and still only managed to get 5 cars ahead of me. We all enjoyed the high speed breaking. An hour later, he came up behind us again. I guess somewhere along the way, we stopped for a bathroom break, and so did he. Repeat for another hour. There were a few other NJ drivers that I encountered along the way that traveled the same. I really felt like I was the only driver out there that was aware of my surroundings. If people wanted to go faster, I was all for moving over, provided I could do so safely. Driving for me sadly proved that so many people are only looking out for themselves.  Maybe next time we will fly!

After 10 hours- here we are in Florida!

3 more hours to Orlando!

We arrived 13 hours after we left. Tired! But so happy to not be on the road. We ate dinner as a big family. At the restaurant there was a huge gift shop. Bathing suits galore- starting at $12! We'll have to keep that in mind for the next time.

The view from the condo was awesome. We could see Sea World from the balcony.

Screened in Balcony.

You can barely see Sea World beyond the pond.

Fireworks over Sea World!

We went down to the clubhouse and Shay watched Peyton play video games. It was funny- you needed a card to play the games and underneath the games there was a sign that said to "swipe here to play," meaning to swipe the card. Shay would go by them and run her finger across the pad, then say "I've swiped, why isn't it working!"

A little guitar hero.

The first night was a little hard to get to sleep. Monday's plan was to find tickets for Disney.

Tomorrow's blog-  what we learned our first full day in Orlando. Do you need to sell your soul for discount tickets to Disney?