Spring Break 2025: A Trip to Florida

 We took a trip! Our first big family trip ever. And... we survived. We also had a great time and hope to do another trip again some day. Maybe. This is really the trip that almost didn't happen. We had been planning this trip for about a year. We told the kids about it at Christmas. The night we were supposed to leave we went to the town we would fly out of and spent the night. And a snow storm hit. I had gotten 3 of the 4 kids to sleep (Riley was still awake) and we got a phone call. 

Our flight had been cancelled. Not delayed, cancelled. My husband was on the phone for hours in the middle of the night trying to reschedule with no success. The next day we went back home with no other choice but to leave later in the week. We considered cancelling the trip and going later in the year. In the end, we paid the extra money to switch over to another flight line and then extended our trip a bit to come back on the same flight line. Also, in the end, it was still a trip worth our time and money. The memories will last and I am hoping we only remember the good from this trip!

I have learned, more than words can say, my pictures seem to paint a better picture of our life. So, with fewer words and a ton of pictures, lets paint the story of our trip that we will remember for a lifetime and will be a tough act to follow up on. Doesn't mean we won't stop trying though.

Spring break 2025, the time we went to Florida:

                                                     

The flight went well and the views on my side (with Jayden and Avery) were gorgeous as we went to land:

                                                 

                                                 

                                                 

Our first stop on our trip was the beach!

During this trip we actually stayed 3 different places (thanks to the rearranging of our flights after the flight was cancelled). The first location had the best views:

                                           

                                           

                                           

And we ate almost all our meals outside on the patio with that gorgeous view:

                                                         

I don't seem to have tons of pictures of the subsequent places we stayed. But the second place was huge (3 floors) and the kids loved sitting outside on the patio underneath the house:

                                         

We came for a back to the beach bash and it was so much fun. There were vendors and live music and professional sand castles being built:

                                                          

We took the kids on a pirate cruise. They all became honorary pirates on this ship:

We even saw a dolphin on this cruise:

They had story time:

And were given guns:

Also, some face paint, if you didn't notice in any of the above pictures:

So much sun, we had to put on sunblock everywhere. I grabbed this funny picture. The kids helping dad get sunblock on:

Of course we took tons of pictures of Miss Avery. One of the only kids that will sit still and pose for us. She may never actually remember this trip but she had a total blast living her best life:

She got a doll from the souvenir shop that she named "baby" and was attached to:

I also have so many beach pictures. The kids asked to be buried one of the mornings and that brought on so many giggles. People walking by loved to stop and watch them being buried, too:

There were tons of shops with big chairs for picture ops so we had to do:

One afternoon we went mini golfing at a location where you can also feed alligators!

Riley really wanted to fish in the ocean and so we tried to make that happen. Our first house had a dock and a fishing pole. The grocery store next door to the condo had fishing bait so he was all set:

Payton joined in for some fishing, too:

His first and only catch, although he claims to have had a bigger fish but lost it at the last second (although he saw it):

One day was really rainy so we headed to an indoor activity park complete with trampolines and slides and an obstacle course way up high in the air:

                                                  

One evening the two littler kids were worn out and ready to go back. But the other two wanted to stay out. So we walked and the beach walking trail and took pictures every where we could:

And then one last burst of beach photos:

And that's a wrap for our family trip at the beach. We will always treasure this time:

Our return trip home was extremely early, a 7am flight. One last photo I have of our trip... the views of the flight in the dark as we left Florida:

We are so thankful for this trip and opportunity to try new things with the kids. Maybe another time we will make it again!