Fort Lauderdale: Day 7

We began this morning with none other than breakfast in the hotel, I even took a picture today :)

Per Aubire's request she had cereal and milk, pancakes with syrup, scrambled eggs, a donut, fruit punch, and milk. So even though she only ate about one bite of everything she still had a good breakfast...

After that we headed over to a place called the Funderdome. It was a huge indoor playground that kids had a BLAST in. We stayed for just over 4 hours! I took a ton of pictures and videos. 

Aubrie would only slide down the orange slide. For some reason she was convinced that it was the slow slide and all of the other colors were too fast and scary. 

They had a Ball Blast Arena where you could shoot Styrofoam balls at each other. 

This is how Aubrie went down the stairs:

Jackson was really brave and climbed the rock wall! I was so proud of him for trying even though he was nervous!

Jackson getting all belted up!

We took a break for lunch before playing some more!

There was a really cool Lazer Maze. You had to crawl through the lasers without touching them and hit the blinking buttons on the wall to "complete the mission" (It was really hard to get a good picture since it was so dark inside)

Below our videos of the interactive activity floor. 

Jackson spent 20 minutes putting together this really cool tower/tunnel. (Of course, not 2 minutes after I took this, some wild kid came barreling through and knocked it all down).

The kids playing in the Sports Court in the sky.

There was also a really neat zipline course that was above everything but Jackson was little too scared to try it. Maybe next time if we're ever down here again!

After we got back form the Funderdome we went out to Outback for my birthday dinner :) Then we came back and finished off my cake!

Now Drew is at work and the kids and I are winding down in the hotel room and trying to decide what to do tomorrow. Good Night!

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! ;)

Fort Lauderdale: DAY 5

We had a bit of a slower paced day today, which the kids (and me!) really needed. After breakfast and a quick trip to the grocery store we spent the morning at the pool.

After swimming we headed up to the hotel room for lunch and then Drew and I took the kids to see the new movie Epic. 

Now we are all settling down for the night to get a good night's sleep so we can be ready for a busy day again tomorrow :)

Fort Lauderdale: DAY 4

Today of course began with breakfast at the hotel, Drew even joined us this time! (sorry no picture...you can only look at so many pictures of the kids eating breakfast). Next the kids and I went to the Museum of Discovery and Science. There were tons of things to look at and do, so be warned that this is a fairly long post with lots of pictures! I've broken it up into sections for each exhibit. Here we go!

EXHIBIT: Florida Native Creatures

The aquarium portion was really neat and well done.

Aubrie and Jackson standing in front of the bats!

They had a really neat otter exhibit. The otters would swim right up to the window and play.

I think this is called a spiny lobster. It was sooo freaky...

Hands-On Science

(This was actually split up into multiple exhibits at the museum: Space, Weather, Flight, Health, Etc. 

Don't let the picture above fool you as it did me. It's a hurricane wind force simulator, notice the number at the top. It was blowing at 91 MPH! Jackson took it well so I walked into it without thinking it through to see what it was like. My sunglasses went flying across the room, my purse and camera hit me in the face, and needless to say I had a bad hair day for the rest of the afternoon. We will be evacuating the next time a hurricane comes through our area!! :)

This was a GIANT kaleidoscope. 

They had a couple of really neat flight simulator/games that Jackson really liked. 

Tony Hawk Skateboarding Exhibit

(This was a brand new exhibit that had literally just opened today. Although I thought it was kind of an odd addition compared to everything else the museum housed.)

Of course no day is complete without some sort of mishap:

Prehistoric Florida 

Jackson comparing his size to the size of a mammoth. 

Aubrie was enamored with all of the shiny rocks and minerals. 

Play Area 

This was called the hammock playground and was really cool! Jackson loved it but Aubrie was too scared to climb up it. 

This was a pretened orange grove where you picked oranges off the trees and put them in the machine that went through an automated assembly line and orange juice came out at the end. Of course, the bike is what powered the machine!

This was Aurbie's favorite thing in the play area. You built the walls to the house with pieces of individual square foam. 

We all had a blast at the museum but did unfortunately have to fight a few large school groups so we didn't get to stay at some of the exhibits as long as we would have liked. But by the time we left the kids were tired and ready to go.

We headed back to the hotel and had a late lunch before we went down and swam in the pool for about an hour and a half. (Drew came down with us and to watch the kids swim and try and catch a few extra ZZZs)

After the pool we were all exhausted from a looong but fun day. We headed up to the room for dinner and "chill" time until Drew had to leave for work and the kids had to go to bed. 

Now, I am one tired mamma so I'm off to bed! Good Night!