Florida! Part 1....

This will probably end up being one of the longest blog posts I've ever written. But there are a lot of picture and anecdotes to share. The four of us took a spring break trip to Florida last week. We flew to Orlando and stayed with Glenn’s parents. I didn’t get a chance to blog much during the previous week because Glenn was on a work trip in D.C. and both kids took turns being sick, which put a serious damper on my free time. Will had another one of his rashes and Reina kept spiking a fever. I took Will back to the allergy/asthma doctor that we saw in January and they determined that his rash (Will's technical term for it this round is 'my bumpies') was the result of another virus and not an allergy. They recommended that I keep him home for the rest of the day and as I was driving back to work to pick up my computer to bring home, Montessori called to let me know that Reina needed to come home because of a fever. The next morning, after watching her lash out at her brother (and anyone else foolish enough to cross her path), I took Reina to the doctor and found out she had an ear infection. It was quite the auspicious start to our trip but we patched everybody up and headed to the airport.

The flight to Florida was relatively uneventful. Reina slept for a big chunk of time and Will stayed pretty entertained with all of the novelties of flying in an airplane. We did have a slight pee emergency thanks to an extended "no getting up and moving around the plane because of turbulence" but all you need to know is that Will has an iron bladder when he needs to. We landed in Orlando and had to sit on the tarmac for what felt like an eternity but was really only 20 extra minutes. The kids kept their cool although I felt like screaming my cute little head off. Will entertained everyone around us by singing “Life is a highway, I want to ride it all night long.” No, not the whole song, just that line. Over and over again. In a cute, plaintive voice but after about the fifteenth time, everyone around us had the giggles.

Grandpa Pauley picked us up and headed to DeLand. We were all pretty tired from the long day of traveling and the kids slept fairly well. Sunday, we ran errands and tried to get the kids on east coast time.

We walked around a nature preserve and saw turtles and birds and one lone alligator. Reina’s fever made a mysterious appearance and I kept a worried eye on her all day, hoping that she wasn’t coming down with another ear infection. Little did I know, I was worrying about the wrong kid. We went to bed Sunday night and woke up a few hours later to the sight of Will standing in our doorway saying that he’d had a bad dream, something about bear chasing him and he couldn’t find daddy, etc. etc. He was gasping for breath and as we started to wake up, we thought that he was just crying pretty hard. After about 30 seconds, we heard that sound that we should be all too familiar with by now and realized that Will was really struggling to breath and was having another attack of the croup. We woke up the grandparents (although a certain sleepy grandpa at first suggested that we just google the directions to the ER…sorry Grandpa Pauley, Glenn said that I could record that for posterity) and headed to the local ER. A few hours later, Will was on the mend and we were all bleary-eyed and headed back to bed.

So, that was the beginning of the trip. The next few days were uneventful disease-wise and we managed to have some fun too. We visited De Leon Springs which is one of my favorite places in central Florida. We took a boat ride and saw lots of birds, a manatee, turtles and alligators and more green things than we have in Wyoming in mid-March. After the boat ride, we had a pancake lunch at an old Sugar Mill in the park. Delicious! The water in the spring is a constant 73 degrees and that's a little chilly for the Bronco Baby Mom but luckily Dad was a willing volunteer. The kids stayed in the water until they starting to shiver and they still threw a fit about getting out. Back at the Pauley grandparents house, we took the kids swimming and they both loved it. Will’s had some experience in the water lately with swimming lessons with Aunt Vicky but Reina was new to the water. She was much more excited about it than I thought she would be, and as is always a good indicator of how much fun something is, we had to drag both kids away kicking and screaming (really) when it was time to go eat lunch.

Hey look! It's the elusive mom! I'm not in many of these pictures because cameras are not allowed when I'm wearing a bathing suit and the Florida humidity brings out the worst in my hair. Trust me on that one. On Wednesday, the four Wyoming Pauleys packed up the rental car and headed to the beach. Glenn and I both love Merritt Island and the areas around Cape Canaveral and that, combined with the fact that it was Bike Week in the Daytona area, meant that we headed further south to Titusville. A totally serendipitous moment occurred when we realized that we were getting into town right as Discovery was making her landing, meant that we all (minus Reina who was sleeping the backseat) got to see this huge spacecraft come in for landing. It gave me the chills and I’m glad we got to see it.
More on the rest of our trip on Part 2!