Vacation?!

A couple weeks ago, Casey and I packed up tons of stuff and the kids...and headed to Orlando. The annual Big O Convention was there, and we've been wanting to go for the last couple years, but decided this was the year! We had been planning it for about a year, and were super excited to get to sunny Florida. We added on an extra day at the beginning of the conference so that we could all go to Disney World. And, I figured since there was a pool at the hotel, it would be no biggie to entertain the kids while Casey was at his meetings. Then we would all have dinner together, get to go see some cool cars at the trade show...basically it was going to be an awesome time. Right???
Wrong. Let's just say things did not go how we had hoped. The first night in the hotel, the kids were CRAZY. They were getting into EVERYTHING possible in the hotel room. It took awhile to get things "baby proofed". Their favorite "toy" was the safe that in the closet because the numbers lit up. Anyway...we chalked it up to being tired since we were up at 5:30am for our flight. The next day was Disney....it's where everything is magical, right?? Wrong. The day started by Casey spilling his coffee all over his shirt on the car ride over. Then, since we couldn't find a trash can, we shoved his eaten yogurt cup into the side of the backpack he was wearing. As we were clumsily loading two kids, all our stuff, and a stroller onto the tram to get to Disney World, it popped out and landed at the feet of two very strong looking gentlemen. They were not thrilled. And Casey said, "Sorry...can you hand me that?" Thankfully they obliged without beating us up. We finally got to the park, Casey got a new clean shirt, and we were off to the Tiki Room. Our first "ride". You have to leave your stroller outside of every ride so Casey was unloading our stuff and just happened to drop my camera. Yes, he dropped my camera...my nice digital Canon Rebel expensive camera. He joined me in line where I discovered that the lens was SHATTERED. On the first day, and the first ride of our vacation...my camera was broken. I was sad. So, we went into the show, and it was suppost to start...birds singing, lights, etc. But...NOTHING. The show was not working. I told Casey he should just stand up and apologize because it was probably us who had caused this mechanical malfunction...that was after all how our morning was going. Anyway, 15 minutes later it was fixed and the show was great. And Casey went immediatly to the mercahdise stand and bought us a $20 disposable camera. My how they get you to pay more when you're up a creek... Thankfully the rest of the day went well. We had fun. Evan was still pretty sleepy though, so our normally animated, happy, talkative kid basically spent the day with a serious face and his thumb in his mouth. Oh well.
Casey's meetings started the next day and we discovered that in fact, the kids were not allowed to go to anything. So, that meant more time with just me and the kids...in the hotel. Now normally, this wouldn't be a big deal. I'm with them all the time by myself. But that next morning as I was watching the news, they were talking all about the swine flu. It had just showed up in the US. And all everyone was reporting on how people in Mexico were dying, and wash your hand, and blah blah blah. Being the mother of two small kids who are always playing on the floor, touching stuff, putting who knows what in their mouth...I was FREAKING OUT. There we were in the middle of germ-land. Oh brother. So, I spent the rest of the trip being ultra paranoid about the kids touching anything.
Finally, our last night had arrived, and we decided to go to Downtown Disney and take the kids somewhere fun to eat...like Rainforest Cafe. It's a restaurant where the inside literally looks like a rainforest. Trees and vines all over the place, HUGE fish tanks, life-sized mechanical animals that make noise, and every half hour there is a thunderstorm where the lights flicker and it sounds like a storm. Cool, right? Wrong. Evan was FREAKED OUT. He hated the storms, the mechanical animals made him nervous, and...our food was lame. It was such a bummer.
We were so excited to get home. But our bad-luck streak continued even to the line to board the plane. Casey and I had bought a yummy smoothie to share on the plane since we knew we weren't getting fed on the flight. And as we were taking our place in line juggling all of our luggage and children, Casey dropped the drink, the cup cracked, and it spilled all over the floor. It was the perfect ending to our vacation.
Although there were many bad moments on that trip, we did manage to have some fun. :) And we learned some valuable lessons. 1. Don't drop an expensive camera on your first day of vacation 2. Don't take a baby who is crawling on a vacation where they really can't crawl anywhere - they just get restless and irritated 3. Don't go anywhere when there is going to be some kind of flu outbreak - it only makes things stressful 4. Disney World is fun - but more fun when your children are well rested 5. There definitely is such a thing as needing a vacation from your vacation