Saturday, July 30, 2011

Vacation

Last weekend Mike, the girls and I headed out on a little family vacation.  We headed to Grapevine, TX and had a great time.  We left Saturday morning and came home on Tuesday.  It was about the perfect amount of time to be gone, although the girls cried when we got home because they wanted to sleep at the hotel again. 
Here are the girls loaded up and ready to go.  We were about 10 minutes into the drive when Hadley started asking, "Are we in Texas yet?".  Luckily Mary Poppins got started and she didn't ask that question too many more times.


  We stopped for lunch at a Chile's and had to take some pictures.


Most of Saturday was spent traveling and getting checked in.  Our hotel was booked full the night before so we didn't get into our room until about 6pm.  Luckily my sweet talking got us a credit on our bill :)  To kill time that afternoon we thought we would go to the Legoland Discovery Center.  Hadley was very excited when we told her where we were going.  She soon would be disappointed due to the 2.5 hour wait to get in.  We bought our tickets for Monday and assured her we would be back.  She kept saying the rest of the evening, "I am disappointed mom."  To help with the disappointment we let them ride a few rides at the mall before we headed back to see if our room was ready.  Hadley always tells us that she wants a car without a top and I think she found it.
 Once we got checked into the hotel we got settled, walked around the hotel and ate dinner.  Hadley had to do a model pose by the fountain.
  By this time we were all pretty tired and hit the hay early to prepare for a big day of swimming on Sunday.
We stayed at the Gaylord Texan Hotel.  This is the hotel Mike and I stayed at 3 years ago when we left Hadley overnight for the first time.  They just opened a new resort pool area this summer.  It was perfect for the girls.  They had a lazy river or crazy river as the girls called it.  A zero entry pool with lots of sprays to play in.  They also had a zip-line and slide that Mike and I could do.  We spent all day on Sunday at this pool with a break in the middle of the day for rest time.  While we were there they girls and I got spray on tattoos and the girls got braids and beads put in their hair.  It was a great day and both girls fell asleep on the way to dinner that night.  Here are some pictures of swimming.






 Monday we got around and headed to Legoland Discovery center.  We wanted to be there right when it opened because we knew it would get busy.  In the end we were very disppaointed in Legoland and sad that we spent so much to get in.  They highlight of Legoland was the Bob the Builder 4D movie.






 For lunch we went to the Rainforest Cafe and the girls loved it.  Jillian was a little scared of the animal noises in the beginning but got used to them.

  After lunch we did some back to school shopping and then went to the Sealife Aquarium.  By this point the girls were getting very tired and looking back we should not have planned so much for one day.  We made it through the aquarium but left at the end with Jillian in the middle of a fit.  Both girls were asleep in the car before we got the 2 miles back to our hotel.  A power nap was all the girls needed to be ready to go swimming again.  So we changed and headed to catch the bus to swim.  The swimming area was just down the road from the hotel and they have a bus going every 10 minutes.  This might have been one of the girls favorite parts of the trip.  Jillian asked to ride the bus no less than 100 times while we were there.  We swam for an hour or so and then headed back to get cleaned up for dinner.  By the time we got back from dinner we were all ready for a little movie time and bed.
 The next morning was time to pack up and go home.  The girls and I walked around the hotel to kill time while Mike waited in line to check out.

 On the way home we stopped at an outlet mall for a little more shopping.  I think I can say we all had a great trip.  The girls keep asking when daddy can take us back to another hotel. Hopefully we can talk him into some time off again soon :)

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

How fun! We'll be down by Grapevine in October! If we have time we'll have to check those places out! :)

aleshia said...

What a fun vacation! It's so cute how they love hotels when they're little! I want to stay at Gaylord-it sounds so perfect for kids and adults! So Lego Land was a thumbs down? I've been curious about it and wondering if we should take the boys.