Blessings: Vacation Part I: SeaWorld

A few weeks ago we had the opportunity to take our first family vacation together to Florida. Hunter was going to be a groomsman in his friend Brian Baker's wedding in Vero Beach on May 21st so we decided to go a few days early and make a little vacation out of our trip.

We flew into Orlando on May 17th and arrived around 10:30 that night. Our plan was to go straight to the hotel and get some rest so that we could go to SeaWorld first thing on Wednesday. Well, here's what happened instead... We discover around 11:30 that our luggage isn't going to make it to Orlando until noon the next day which means that I have no diapers, formula, bottles, clothes...nothing. I had only packed enough in the diaper bag to make it to Orlando. We're not sure what we're going to do about going to SeaWorld at this point considering we're not going to have any clothes or most importantly the camera. So we go on to get our rental car around midnight and didn't even make it out of the parking lot before realizing that the engine was smoking! Off we go, back to the rental lot to try and get another car. The process takes a little while because they actually closed at midnight. We get a new car and for our troubles they gave us a very nice SUV upgrade! So back in the car we are off looking for the nearest place to buy all the baby items we need. We pull into Wal-Mart around 1:30am and start buying everything we need with the plan of going to SeaWorld in the morning and then going to pick up our luggage afterwards. We make it to our hotel room at 3:00am and are exhausted, however Savannah Kate had been sleeping through most of our adventurous night so now she is wide awake and ready to play! It was about 4am when we finally got her to go to sleep. Needless to say, we were now way too tired to go to SeaWorld in the morning. We ended up sleeping in until noon because that was the latest check out time we could get. We pick up our luggage at the airport, change clothes in the car and then head to SeaWorld - finally! We got there around 2:00 and even though we didn't have a full day there we still had a wonderful time. There was so many good shows and tons of animals to see. My favorites were the dolphin cove and the Shamu show. I had never been to SeaWorld so I was just as excited as all the kids were to see the whales jumping in the air and doing tricks. It was so fun and I can't wait to go again! Maybe we'll wait until Savannah Kate is old enough to enjoy it too :)