Labor Day & Aquarium Day

Well, our little road trip went pretty well, though the night before it did not. I had intended to get up early so I could run to the store and then make a cake to take with us. However, Amelia was apparently not informed of this plan, because she woke up like 6 times and would.not.stay.asleep. So, I was up until about 7:30AM, blah. Finally, I had Mark get up and take care of her so I could finally get some rest. I think I dragged myself out of bed at 1 and then we got everything ready and peaced out, sans cake.

We got to Cape Coral around 4:30. We walked into the loud house and Amelia decided at that point to become shy and buried her face into me. Any time someone would try to talk to her she would turn away and I think she may have cried at one point. She got over it after awhile but there was a lot of action happening so she didn't get to do too much exploring. She got passed around quite a bit once she started warming up to people. She definitely preferred women over men at first.

Happy again. I love her smile!

Lily was seriously in seventh heaven having someone her age to play with. She ran around with her cousin nonstop, getting into things and being adorable. They played dolls and colored and played with purses and hair bows. Eventually they took a break to watch Bubble Guppies, and then followed up with a few dozen screaming laps around the house. It's really too bad they probably won't get to see each other for another year.

We thought that after the marathon she ran before we left that she would pass out in the car. Before we left we had her in her jammies so she could go straight from the car to her bed. Nope. She stayed awake and talking to us the whole 2 hour trip home. She can fall asleep in the 10 minutes it takes to get home from my parents house, but 2 hours on the interstate in pitch black? Wide freaking awake. Oh, and we realized we had a problem when she announced she needed to pee when we were in the middle of a stretch of BFE no where on 75. It was after 11pm so it's not like we could have stopped at McDonald's or anything really...my only idea was to find a Walmart, but we ended up missing the exit and she peed her in pull-up. That's what it's for kinda, but really, it was a mama fail. We have since put her little potty in the back of the car...if this happens again (which it probably won't because we're prepared now), we can at least pull over somewhere safe and let her do her thing.

We actually all got a decent amount of sleep that night! Again, I was ambitious with my mental planning and wanted us all to get up to go with Mark when he took Ellie to the airport and then go to the aquarium from there.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

After I roused the sleepyheads, it was time for the aquarium anyway! I had never been to the Florida Aquarium strangely enough, and it was on my list of things to do before moving away forever. And, I got cheap tickets on Living Social months ago.

It took almost as much work to pack up 2 kids for a trip to the aquarium that's less than 30 minutes away as it does to take them to Disney. We needed all the accoutrements involved with the water playground so they needed to be pre-sunblocked before leaving the house, and we needed towels and bathing suits, changes of clothes for them and for me, sun glasses, more sunblock, etc.

We got there by 2 and had plenty of time to look around, as it's not very big. Lily had a pretty short attention span at each tank: "Hi sish! Bye sish! I wush (love) you!".

I'm the boss of this tank.

Apparently this evil green eel was smiling. He's a very happy fish. 

After we were done inside it was time to see what Explore A Shore had in store for us. We went outside and got Lily changed and re-sunblocked quickly. She dug in the sand pit for a while and then went nuts on the pirate ship that Mark has since deemed a death trap. She seriously loved though. 

"I diggin!"

Eventually we got Amelia changed so she could play too. Babies in bathing suits are crazy cute. Unfortunately it was so.freaking.bright outside that I couldn't see the screen on my phone and ended up hitting the button that switches the main camera to the front facing camera...so while I thought I was taking cute baby pictures, I was actually taking (horrible) pictures of myself. Camera fail. 

We left the aquarium shortly before closing. Amelia was zonked in her stroller and her hair looked AMAZING. Lily fell asleep in the car before we were out of the parking lot - and it wasn't a big lot! It was a really great day. Love love love.