Florida Trip

If you haven’t already heard about my trip to Florida, you must not follow me on instagram where I recapped a story that involves my Grandmother being rescued by someone playing Pokemon Go. I’m not gonna spoil it here, go read it.

Our trip to Florida started as Brandon having a work trip and since he had a hotel room already and we can fly stand-by, we were able to get on a flight and tagged along! I had never been to Tampa before, and for some reason I had a negative expectation of what the city would be like. Tampa won me over big-time. From beautiful beaches and bays to awesome parks and playground, we had a great vacation! In the USO at the airport, a lady told me to go to Busch Gardens, and that right away I would see that it’s the best place to take kids to, so we went to the hotel and then straight there. If you or your spouse is in the military, once a year your entire family gets in free to any one of the Sea World group of parks (remember that if you go, military families!). Sawyer and Rhett both got to ride their first roller coasters, which they quickly got addicted to and wanted to ride every ride at the park, including the grown-up rides. Lucky for us, we went at a time when the park was pretty empty and there were no lines- we got right on any ride we wanted to! There were so many fun things to do for young kids, way more than any amusement park I’ve been to, from giant trampolines to tons of rides that even Rhett could ride, a splash park, playgrounds, climby tree houses, shows, food, animals (it has a zoo at it too!), and the best part was probably that most of the park is shaded by trees, has fans, or is air conditioned. So even though we had Ford in a stroller and couldn’t both be on the rides with the boys the whole time, the one waiting didn’t have to melt in the sun the whole time. I didn’t want to chance losing my camera there so just close your eyes and imagine some really awesome pictures of me and the boys smiling on roller coasters with palm trees and elephants in the background. Awesome, right?

We were a little sad we didn’t get to spend much time on the beaches since some were closed because of a bacteria in the water, but we did go to Cypress State Park to see the beach one morning. Sadly, it was the day we were leaving and we didn’t get to swim but the beach was really pretty and we did get to do a little seashell hunting. Sawyer has been on the hunt for shark teeth every time we’ve been to the beach and we didn’t find any yet, so if anyone knows a great beach that’s bound to have some, let me know.

We also hit up Chick-fil-a day while we were in Tampa. If you don’t have a Chick-fil-a near you enough to eat there once a week, I’m sorry. It’s the best, and on cow-day they give away free meals to anyone dressed up like a cow, not that I need an excuse to eat various forms of fried chicken all day long, so we are all over that. We weren’t home so we didn’t go all-out on the costumes like we normally do, but we had a lot of fun and ate a lot of chicken.

Yes, they are wearing Dalmation hats. It looks like a cow though, right?

We did go to more parks and had a lot of food and good fun, and the boys were so good for us. Hopefully we get to visit Tampa again soon, because we had a blast!