As mentioned in the previous post, we arrived at Larry's house in Rotonda West late Sunday night. On Monday morning, we went out for breakfast and then grocery shopping to stock up for our stay. The rest of the day was spent swimming in the pool and hanging out at the house. Parker did not nap that day. This has been happening lately, she just won't go to sleep in the middle of the day. Sometimes the evenings go OK, sometimes not so much. Our plan for Monday night was to drive out to Boca Grande to have dinner at Miller's Dockside. The drive is about 20 minutes and of course Parker fell sleep in the car. We stopped at a beach, wrapped her up in a blanket (still asleep) and walked out to watch the sunset. Then we headed over for dinner. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for a private event so we had to get Parker back into the car again and that did not go over well. A visit to a second restaurant ended before we even got inside, the Little Miss was not having it. So we drove home, put her to bed and had ice cream for dinner. The rest of the week had fruitful naps and no meltdowns, so we were happy about that. We went to the beach both Tue and Wed and Parker absolutely loved it....playing in the sand, looking for shells, jumping in the waves.
On Tuesday afternoon, we drove up to Sarasota and walked through a mangrove and let Parker play on a playground before having dinner (followed by yet more ice cream)
Wednesday evening we had dinner at Leverock's. Parker was a little wound up but behaved very well. She won the hearts of many of the people working there and we had a delicious meal. Here are some other random photos/video from the trip:
Our flight on Thursday left at 3:00 so we drove up through Sarasota and stopped at the Mote Aquarium. We saw lots of fish, sting rays you could touch, sharks in a big tank, and sea turtles up close & personal. Our favorite exhibit was the manatees. There were two swimming in a tank and one of them kept swimming up to us and smushing his face against the glass. I wish I would have taken video of it, so cute.
By the jelly fish
We are so lucky to have a house to stay at in Florida like this, it was so nice to get away from the Rochester winter for a few days. And even though Parker won't remember it, her first trip to Disney World was amazing.
This past week we took Parker to Florida for a little winter getaway. It turned out to be a good time to be away from Rochester as it had single digit temps & a foot of snow last weekend. We enjoyed pretty good weather down south: not much rain, low 70's. Here are videos of us packing the night before and waiting for rental car:
We flew in and out of Tampa and stayed most nights at Papa G's house in Rotonda West, which is about two hours south. Upon arrival on Saturday, we had a different destination planned and after lunch with our friends Nate & Angela in Tampa, we headed over to Orlando and checked in to the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek. We didn't make it down to the pool until 6:00 pm, so it was dark, but we had so much fun anyway. The pool had a lazy river and was nice and warm. We even experienced some swimming in the rain! We went up to the room to change and back down to have dinner at the poolside restaurant.
Greg & Parker to the left, it was raining
The next morning we had breakfast and then headed over the to the Magic Kingdom! It all went very smoothly and Greg and I were pretty pleased with ourselves by the end of the day. The Fast Pass is a wonderful thing that allows you to get a pre-determined time for a ride where your wait time is very short. We used this for any ride with a line longer than 10 minutes. I even had an app on my phone that listed current wait times for rides, awesome! I feel like Parker was in awe most of the day, with an open-mouthed expression for everything. She did love the Tea Cup ride and the Dumbo ride. We finally got her to nap by taking her on the Carousel of Progress, a rotating theater with a VERY dated show on the evolution of household conveniences. After the show was over, we put in her the stroller and had ourselves a bit of people watching. That nap time enabled us to stay for the lighting of Cinderella's Castle Christmas Lights, it was pretty cool.
Mesmerized by the Mickey Show
Waiting in line for It's a Small World
Waiting for food at Columbia Harbor House (she actually asked me to take her picture here, funny)
Riding Prince Charming's Carousel
Riding Dumbo
Riding the train
Napping
First ever ice cream cone (she's had lots of ice cream, just not in a cone, it took some coaching)
Dinner at Gaston's
Main Street on the way out
View from ferry ride back to parking lot
We drove down to Larry's house that night and of course Parker slept most of the way. She kept saying, "Mommy, I'm tired" and she finally zonked out.
We got about 6 inches of snow Tue-Wed of last week and so we took a walk on Thanksgiving morning. It was a battle (to put it mildly) to get Parker in the snow pants, but eventually she enjoyed being outside.
We spent Thanksgiving at Papa G & Sandy's house. Delicious food, great company, and a relaxing atmosphere made for a wonderful evening.
On Friday, we took Parker to her first movie theater show to see the animated movie, Free Birds. She sat on my lap the whole time and dozed off for a bit in the middle, but made it through the whole thing. Afterwards, we sat her in her own chair, bad angles here....
After the movie, we grabbed lunch and then got a snippet of Parker singing on the way home.
We had every intention of going to a farm to cut down a tree this year, but between the cold temperatures all weekend (below 20 degrees much of the time) and lots of projects to work on at home, we decided to wimp out and go to a lot. It was still a fun outing because we experienced our first Pittsford-style Christmas tree lot. It was set up on property of Pittsford Dairy which is just off the main street of the village. They had calves in a little manger, fire pits, and a resident dog named Tommy. Parker loved walking around among the trees and saying "It tickles" every time a branch rubbed her. She also loved the calves, of course.
