Family Vacation to Florida - Part 1

I decided to break our trip into parts due to

a) the many activities we participated in on our trip,

b) the hundreds of pictures I have to sort through to decide which are best, and

c) the fact that if I don't start somewhere I may never get it done!

Here is part One: The Drive to Florida

In April, we took our first ever big family vacation to Florida. We decided to drive since we were staying in several different cities. While Dan was dreading the 20 hour drive (I guess he took a few too many roadtrips growing up), it actually went really well. In fact, it was waaaaaay better than trying to fly with 3 kids. I am now all about roadtrips!!

We took 3 days to get to our first destination. Our first day, Thursday, we drove 11 hours and got in late to Pensacola, FL to spend the night. The next morning we headed out and drove 6 hours to Cape Canaveral, getting there in the late afternoon. The hotel we stayed at had a gated kids' pool, as well as a large heated pool and hot tub. We all went swimming as soon as we got there - just what we needed after two days in the car. It was heavenly!

Afterwards we went to a restaurant right on the water for dinner. Natalie and Nathan were so excited to see the ocean, all they wanted to do was go to the beach. Tyler tried his first lemon there, just look at that face!

We spent Saturday morning at the beach in Cape Canaveral. In the distance we could see the rocket launch site. Unfortunately we didn't have time to tour the Kennedy Space Center (next time!).

We discovered several things once we got to the beach -

Natalie is a fish and made for the ocean, she never wanted to come out!

Nathan has developed a fear of the ocean and would NOT go near it, but fortunately was very happy to play in the sand.

Tyler loved watching the waves come in and swirl around his feet, even though he kept falling over whenever the water got to him - I think the movement threw him off.

We loved watching our kids have the time of their lives at the beach, it was awesome!

Once we cleaned up at the hotel and checked out we finished the last 3 hours of the drive down to Fort Lauderdale to start the first part of our vacation package - which will be Part 2 in this series and will be posted at a later time.

Hope this holds you over for now (yes, I'm talking to you Mom)!