Florida or bust...

December 9th I decided to pack up the car and drive down to Florida to visit the parents. We are staying home for Christmas and I thought it would be a nice Idea to surprise the grandparents. I had a great plan to get lot's of pictures of the kids at the beach. I have the pictures blown up in my dining room and I will share them in a later post. Last minute trips are always great. With four kids it only took me four hours to pack up the car and clean the house. I am pretty picky about everything being in order before I leave so this put me on the road at 5:45pm. The kids passed out at 9:00pm watching Finding Nemo and I drove without stopping until we reached Gainsville and needed gas. All three of the kids were pretty silent the entire trip. All but my fire craker. Nele made sure to ask me the same question over and over again for about an hour straight. "Mommy what are you doing up there"? I replied 210 times "Mommy is driving Nele". Every now and then she would say "get me out of here" or "I'm all done". My favorite was, " Where are we going"? I would reply, "To Florida Penelope". She would say " oh mommy, but where are we going"? Eight hours, four kids and one stop. Not too bad. We arrived at my moms at 1:30 , she was in such a deep sleep I could not get her up to come to the door. We packed back up, Dora and all (that is our pet rat) and we headed 10 minutes down the road to Thomas's parents house. They were so surprised to see us on their doorstep. Thomas's dad peeped through the peep hole, opened the door and said " I looked out and saw little children and thought they were lost in the dark". Thomas knows me well, so he wasn't as suprised as everyone else to hear I was in Florida Monday morning. On Monday Thomas's mom and I took the kids to Busch Gardens. Oh what fun! Perfect day, perfect weather. Thanks mom for such a great time. We had so much fun! Thanks for watching the kids so I could ride on a roller coaster. Thomas's I missed you so much. We will have to do it sometime when you are with us! Here are the kids on their first ride. Nele's face when it was in the air was priceless. She grined so big!
Thomas's mom fastening the kids in.
I can't believe I gave birth to such a fair skined child. This was the first time I have been out in the sun with a baby and been really concerned about getting them sunburned!

Emma came to life in the water. We spent over half an hour standing in the splash zone of this ride so that she could get soaked when it passed by. She would stand their and scream with glee when it came roaring by. Then she would say " again mommy, again"! She drew an audience. I looked over at one point and atleast a dozen people were standing there saying "look at the little girl"!
Emma would not leave Dragon Land very willingly. She hiked up her pants and away she went jumping from rock to rock in the splash zone. It wasn't too long before she had soaked her clothes.
Emma again...

Whoa these guys are soooo tall...

The bird atrium was fun. Everyone loved this but Nele. She still talks about how the bird bit her on her finger. She say's "that birdy was not kind to me mommy".

We traveled back home on Wed. We didn't make such great time on the way back. Stop after stop and one child screaming "get me out of here" (guess which one:) and I realized why I don't make the trip more often!

I will post the pictures of Tuesday's beach trip later. To all my friends in Florida who I did not tell I was in town, I am sorry. I did not bring my contact book with me and we were visiting for such a short time. I will try to see you guys next time. I did think of you all! Love you all!