Sunday, April 6, 2014

The Beginning of the End

94/365
We didn't have the money to do an Extreme Spring Break, like go to Florida or something.  We had a couple hundred dollars budgeted to Play.   So, my sister and I were scheming.   We wanted to run away to a water park, over our Spring Breaks.  But as it turned out, our spring breaks only overlapped for one weekend.  So we decided to run away for 1 night, to a fairly local waterpark.  I'd seen the Buccaneer Bay/Best Western from the highway traveling I-65 before, so we decided to give it a try.  I didn't tell the kids about it until morning of, and even then, I just said we were meeting Aunt Lisa at a hotel.  Sam had received a swimsuit for his birthday, so I picked up a couple more, and bam, we were ready for 1 night of a runaway. 
Since Annie's break started this Friday, and Chris's ends Sunday, this weekend was the Perfect time to run away.  It's the beginning of the end for both of us, as we come out of our Spring Break, and Lisa is just starting.  I was worried Eric's strep would interfere, but he was healthy enough to help us pack up.  Slowly.  It took us all day.  We left about half past 2 and met Lisa at the 267 intersection of 65, and she followed us up.  The boys were so excited, I had taken half the day Wednesday to load Frozen onto the ipad.  This made their day!  


This is us driving, and Lisa behind us.  It was a rather windy day, so I just real quick snapped it from the rearview.  Not too shabby with the point and shoot.  Jake stayed awake the whole way up, he didn't get fussy until the last 15 minutes though.  It helps having all these brothers in the car. ;) 


The boys sure looked adorable in their swimsuits.  The color of the day is Green.  
I know, not surprising.  Since we'd skipped naps to drive, we just decided to go right in to the waterpark area and swim before having dinner. 


All the cute cousins! 

It was basically one big room, so if we were in the corner we could see almost all 5 kids at the same.  As long as an adult was holding Jake, it was good to just chill. I even got some time in the hot tub all by myself.  And stretched out to soak a bit.  It was so nice.   


Jacob insisted on being held the whole time, and that was just fine. 
It was his first pool swim, and apparently, that's exhausting for a sweet baby.  He only lasted about an hour before he started making this face, it was clear he was Done.  We waited until the others started indicating they were hungry (Sam) before clearing out to get cleaned up for dinner.  


There was a treasure chest that slowly filled with water, and then an alarm would sound, and anyone underneath it would get drenched and dumped on.  Initially, my boys were scared of it.  By the end of the evening, Chris would run for the platform, and though he never made it by the first dump, but he laughed hysterically as the trickling remnants soaked him.  I was worried about his eyes, he kept them open so much of the time.  But nah, he said he was fine.  


After our round of swimming, we came back to our rooms, and got dressed.  We went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, Our Time, and I was happily surprised they put us at a fairly isolated table, it helped tone down the crazy immensely.  And the food - oh the food!  To start, we sampled the soups, lobster bisque, and french onion.  Lisa needed Oysters Rockefeller.  I had crab and asparagus topped halibut, and Eric got scallops, Lisa got a filet (or maybe it was Prime Rib, I forget, we just kept calling it cow meat, for her kids) and sampled each others. It was so swanky, and totally worth it!   I didn't think I had any room for dessert, but then I saw creme brulee on the tray, and I just had to say Yes! Jake fell asleep on my lap after I nursed him about halfway through the meal, oh yes, he was done.  And afterwards, so was I.  I waddled back to our room.  


We were too stuffed to attempt sausaging ourselves back into wet suits to go back down and swim again.  
So we turned on the tv, and the kids sweetly watched the last hour of Ice Age.  Quite nice actually, since we were all stuffed and exhausted.  


When it came time for bed, we merged our evening routines, which was neat, we did a special story with Aunt Lisa, The Kissing Hand.  There was a lot of smooching going on before prayers, it was awesome.  We had the lofty goal of putting the kids down and staying up to talk and snack, but I was too full, and the kids were exhausted to let us sneak out of bed.  So we all crashed at 9:30.  Nice.  


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