Vacation!

I'm back! We took a long vacation to Orlando. It's a long drive-- about eleven hours-- so we broke both drives into two days. The older kids were great. The toddler was mostly good, although after about five hours in the car he tended to get annoyed. We had a nice condo in Florida, with plenty of room. The kids had their own room, we had our own room, and the toddler slept in the living room. It took him a couple of nights to quit freaking out for an hour and demanding his own crib and his own room, unfortunately. I'm sure the neighbors hated us:-).

Here's what we did:

Friday/Saturday: Drove to Florida, with a stopover in Brunswick, Georgia. Vulcan Husband took me out for our wedding anniversary, figuring we wouldn't get to do it on our actual anniversary. We had some awesome scallops. The kids had chicken nuggets and spaghetti.

Sunday: We went to Animal Kingdom. Lots of cool animals. A new roller coaster (Expedition to Everest), which I greatly enjoyed.

Monday: The Magic Kingdom. Obviously a lot of fun. Oldest Kid decided to brave her first roller coaster, Space Mountain. She was terrified in line, and I assured her that she didn't have to do this, but she insisted she could do it. As we got into the cars I actually heard her sobbing behind me. But by the time we got off the ride, she had become the Queen of Thrill Rides. She loved it and couldn't wait to ride more roller coasters. We were up late to see the new Electric Light parade (totally redone and now called Spectromagic) and the fireworks.

Tuesday: It rained, and since we'd been up late, we took the day off. The condo had cable (something we don't have at home) and the kids watched a marathon of "Fairly Oddparents."

Wednesday: It rained. We thought about taking another day just to relax, but the kids were beginning to fight and yell, so we went to a kids' science museum called Wonderworks instead. It had a lot of cool exhibits, including a virtual design-your-own roller coaster (OK rode it four times). It also had laser tag and a dinner show involving magic and comedy, which was fun.

Thursday: MGM Studios. OK and I went on the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, one of my favorite coasters ever. OK also went on the Tower of Terror (twice), a ride VH and I won't go on, thus proving herself to now be the bravest member of the family. This was our actual fifteenth wedding anniversary, but little notice was taken of it-- we were too busy.

Friday: SeaWorld. OK went on Kraken, the big roller coaster there, three times-- and it's a serious coaster, like all the Busch coasters. I only got to go on it once *sniff*. The toddler continues to have a pretty limited vocabulary, and anything swimming in a tank is a "fishy." He loved the penguins ("fishy!"), beluga ("fishy!"), puffins ("fishy!"), dolphins ("fishy!"), and the killer whales ("FISHY!!!!"). We didn't like the revamped Shamu show much, but the revamped dolphin show was way cool.

Saturday/Sunday: The drive home, with a stopover in Florence, SC.