Florida - Thursday April 28th

I was up at 4:20 am so I got up and got ready to go quickly. Jamie went to go get the dolly cart and drove the car over to put the car seats by the front door while I got the kids up and put all the stuff we were using away. Man the stuff we had was a mountain full. Young kids are hard to travel with but we knew that already from last years trip to Boston.

We got into the lobby with all the stuff and took the 5 am hotel bus over to the Buffalo airport, all 8 of us and our stuff plus two other people that were leaving for Jamaica with their lowly two bags. The driver was very nice loading up all our stuff but a little bit too perky for 5 o clock in the morning (sarcasm doesn’t go over well with lack of sleep).

The driver let us off at the outside service so we didn’t have to line up with everyone else. Jamie and Chris got all the stuff sorted out while Patti and I went inside with the kids since it was very windy and chilly in Buffalo.

We got though the security really fast since we had strollers and such they let us go in a special line. We all had to remove our shoes (started with someone that had a bomb in a shoe at an airport once) too. They had to check out the portable DVD player that Jamie got from work (very handy to have with small kids) and we were off to find the gate. In the travels one of the employees from the airport offered (we found out later that they wanted to be tipped) to give us rides with all our stuff (lots of carry on stuff plus the car seats and pushing strollers is a lot).

We got pre-boarded on the plane right on time and we got to choose the front seats since it was open seating. The flight was great we had to do a quick stop in Baltimore before getting to Tampa but we got their early since the winds were in our favour. Micah and Brianna got to sit in the cockpit for a little while just before the passengers got on the plane (had to get a picture of that of course).

Kendra was very wiggly but thankfully the extra space in front of the seats helped her to move around a little bit with my feet as a baby gate. She kept playing peekaboo with the passengers behind us too. She did get cranky near the end of the flight and just fell asleep as we were landing. Micah just watched stuff out the window and watched movies off of the DVD player.

We got off the plane last since we had so much stuff to lug with us. In Tampa you had a people mover and elevators to finally get to the luggage but it they were quite fast with getting everything there. The rental cars were right there too but that took a while to get set up (apparently the lady was very chatty and tried to talk you into getting bigger cars and insurance before she would let you go). We finally got into the Dodge Stratus at around 11 am and got all the car seats and stuff packed in.

The hotel we were going to was only about a 15 minute drive but we were up early so both the kids fell asleep. We found the hotel and check in time wasn’t until 2 pm so we decided to go to Quizno’s Subs for lunch. We meet the Miller’s at the hotel after lunch and take it for a woman to take charge. Patti just told them that Ian needed a place to be changed and she set her room up right away. They got us set up too but they set us in totally different buildings even though I called a month ago to get the rooms side by side. Oh well, the walkie talkies that Chris and Patti have are proving to be very useful. We use them to communicate in the morning, when driving in the car to tourist spots, making plans for what time to meet or just making jokes about the funny signs we see.

We settled in our rooms and then decided to head off to the Tampa Aquarium. We had fun getting there as there is a waterway that you can only get access to the other side on a few streets. The map they had was in larger scale too so a lot of the streets weren’t listed. We did eventually get there and had about 2 hours at the aquarium. There were lot of different fish, sharks, sting rays, etc to see. We got to see a sting ray feeding demonstration and there was a touch tank for the kids to fell the sea animals. Brianna didn’t mind touching them but Micah just wanted to look at them for some reason. After we had seen everything there was a splash pad and sand box for the kids to play in. We spent about 49 minutes here. Kendra had a blast playing with the sand even though she was really tired and Micah wanted to squirt everyone with the water guns. We wished we had brought their swim suits. Micah was only a little bit wet though.

As we were leaving we asked one of the employees at the aquarium where to go for dinner. She had suggested a place called Benningers that was in a courtyard right by the water. The dinner was great although Micah was a bit cold in the air conditioning. We just kept taking him outside on the patio where it was warmer.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and I put Kendra to bed while Jamie and Micah went swimming for a little bit. Then everyone was in bed by 9 pm.