Vacation - Day 1

**Sorry I didn't get these posted last night. I was too busy watching the season finale of Biggest Loser. I'm pretty bummed about who won. But oh well, I still LOVE that show**

We left last Wednesday to head to Florida. We had planned on leaving no later than 9am. That didn't happen. We didn't end up leaving town until about 11:00. So we got a late start. Lesson learned there. When driving forever with kids, leave as early as possible and drive as much as you can in one day. My kids did much better making the whole drive in one day rather than 2 days. I really wish we would have left early and drove the whole way but we ended up stopping in Birmingham, AL that night. The girls did really good until the last 30 minutes we were driving and Kinsley pretty much screamed as loud as she could for those 30 minutes. I also learned that I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. I packed 2 coolers of food to take with us and we had planned to stop at a rest stop right off the interstate for lunch and have a picnic. We were going to let the girls play for about an hour and then continue on our way. That plan didn't work either, as it rained pretty much the entire way to Florida - both days. We ended up stopping at McDonalds. I hate that McD's is the only restaurant with an indoor playplace. Doesn't give us parents much of an option when you're on the road and your kids need to get some energy out. After stopping at McD's, we were finally on our way and we didn't stop for the next 5 hours. Kinsley napped while Aliyah watched her new movie Enchanted, that Grandma and Grandpa got her. We stopped to eat supper and then drove another 2 1/2 hours. I didn't really know what to expect with Kinsley that first night. I figured it might be a little rough, considering she had never slept in her pack-n-play and we had only been gone away from home for only one night since she was born and she was only about 3 months at that time. That first night ended up being worse than I had thought. She would NOT go to sleep and once I finally got her to sleep, she didn't stay asleep. I finally got her to sleep at 11pm and she was awake by 1:00 and up until almost 5am. Then she woke up for good at 7:15am. Needless to say, we were all pretty tired. I'm really glad we were only in that hotel for one night though. It was very cramped and not baby friendly at all.

Here are the pictures from day 1 of traveling...

I do get a good picture of her every now and then. Of course, she was pretty excited to be going to Florida =)


Kinsley banging on a bench at McD's


She played with this thing quite a bit, although there wasn't much to it.


time-out. Can you tell what she's doing? ;)

Brandon climbed up those tunnels with Kinsley so she could go down the slide

I blew this one out but I love the expression on K's face and Aliyah in the background =) I don't think Kinsley knew what to think of that slide...


She posed for 2 pictures in ONE day *gasp*

I was there too =) I actually LIKE this picture. Thanks Brandon!

Miss Aliyah wasn't too thrilled to be in that one but she reluctantly obliged after much coaxing.

Aliyah did lots of this on our drive. We have a DVD player in the van but Brandon and I get tired of listening to it so I gave her the portable DVD player.

And Kinsley did this. Not as much as I had hoped though.

To be continued....