Fort Lauderdale: DAY 6

Not every day can be a good day. Especially when your on "vacation" with two young kids, and today was just one of those days. It started off well with breakfast at the hotel (did you expect anything different?) and then the kids and I did a little shopping nearby.

When Drew woke around noon we decided to head down to the beach for just a couple hours so the kids could see the Atlantic. I knew it would be busy being Memorial Day Weekend but what we encountered went beyond what I was expecting. The drive that should have taken 15 minutes took over an hour and when we finally made it there was no parking..and I mean NO parking. Even lots that were charging $50 a day (yes, $50!) were full. And in case you were wondering, you are NOT allowed to hop out of a car while on the strip and stand in a parking place to hold it until your husband can find the entrance into the parking lot to park. The cop informed me of that. So here was the beach we saw (from the car):

And here are the kids enjoying the beachview (from the car):

So of course the kids were dissapointed we didn't get to go to the beach. Drew and I had to come up with something else fun to do with them to cheer them back up. There's a new chick-fil-a with a cool playground that just opened a few miles from the hotel (but in the opposite direction of course!). We decided to go anyways.

And since a bad day has to contain multiple issues, we hit a draw bridge trying get off the beach which backed up the traffic even more. (Although, Jackson thought it was really cool to watch the bridge go up and down.)

After close to 2 hours from leaving our hotel we fiiiiinally arrived at Chik-Fil-A.............................. And you guessed it, it's Sunday. Yep, They're closed. Closed! Not being on a normal schedule we are all out of whack and completely forgot what day of the week it was, so we have disappointed kids yet again. 

We decided to just grab something nearby to eat and take the kids back to swim at the hotel. We chose this place called Pollo Tropical. It looked good with healthy tropical/spanish style food. Eh...not the best choice. While the food was edible (barely) its not somewhere I would ever visit again. 

Finally we arrive back at the hotel to swim and the day slowly begins to redeem itself. 

Aubrie discovered floating on her back today and this is how she spent the majority of her time in the pool.

We came back up to the room, the kids got baths, and we decided to eat the birthday cake Drew got me a day early since we hadn't had the best afternoon. 

But of course no bad day can end on a good note. Drew had not been gone 15 minutes when I hear this conversation from kids. (I'm in the bedroom and they're in the living room).

Jackson: Uh Oh....Don't tell Mom

Aubrie: Why Not?

Jackson: Because we'll get in trouble.

Aubrie: But I have pee!

I debate for a minute if I really want to walk out there and see what they've done, but I finally conclude I don't have a choice. Somehow they had managed to lock the bathroom door and shut it with no one inside so we can't open the door. Now this happens occasionally at home but we have really simple locks that I can twist open with a butter knife or credit card but these locks are more complicated than that. 

I call Drew and of course there's nothing he can do, so I call the Front Desk and they assure me they will send someone up within 10 minutes. So the hotel guy finally knocks on our door and I let him. He looks at the lock and says:

"Uh oh, these aren't the kind of locks I'm used too. I just switched from another hotel and we had the  locks you could just slip a butter knife into and unlock"

(Did he really think I would call him up here if it was something I could unlock myself?) So he leaves to go and find something to unlock it with. Five minutes later he comes back with.....a paper clip! I just roll my eyes behind his back as he struggles to unlock the door with a paperclip for 5 minutes before concluding that isn't going to cut it. (Somebody's been watching too many spy movies).

Sooo he finally comes back for the third time about 10 minutes later carrying a large tool box. He goes through about 4 different screwdrivers before he finally finds one that unlocks the door. Geez!

Now I hope you all have had a good laugh at everything we went through today because while I was NOT laughing at the time, as I go back and read this I definitely am. We're off to bed now and hoping that tomorrow is a better day! ;)