Obviously, I have not blogged in a really LONG time. In fact, we've added another member to our family, our sweet Jackson, now 20 months old. So we really are Four Jones now, but we've got this name, so we'll stick with it!
I look back at some of our vacation blogs and I *really* enjoy reliving the details in our blog posts, so I figure I'll use this vacation to try to get back into blogging and to document our vacation details for all eternity! So come along with us on our trip to FL!
Friday, May 18, 2012 Adventure Begins!
We are headed to FL for the next 11 days! We will first stop in New Port Richey. My brother & his wife will meet us there for a two day visit with my Grandparents. My Papa turns 90 on June 5!! On Monday, May 21, we will head to Kissimmee and meet my dad and his wife. We have rented a five bedroom, four bath pool home in Emerald Island Resort, and plan to hit Disney from Tuesday-Sunday, and then head home on Memorial Day!
On Friday, I worked a half day at work from 7:30 am to 11:30 am. At 11:30, I headed to Janet's to pick up both boys Jeff had taken off work the whole day and had accomplished so much by the time we got home! He mowed the grass and packed the car all by himself. We got home by 12:20 ish and after a few last minute preparations, we were on the road by 12:43 pm. About an hour later, we made it to I-95. and we kept on going! By around 2:30 pm, we had made it to the SC border. Jacob needed a potty break, so we stopped at the rest area right at the SC line and hopped back in the car. The boys had been pretty good thus far, and we had several different options in mind. Option 1 was to drive to Savannah (about 5 hrs total) and stay at Embassy Suites (leaving about 7 hrs for Saturday); Option 2 was to stay at a Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham in Kingsland, GA, (7 hours / 4 hours to go Saturday) about 3 miles from the FL border; Option 3 - which I just thought of Friday morning, was to drive to Ocala, FL (about 9 hours, leaving 2 hours for Saturday) and stay at a Homewood Suites there. Option 4 would have been to go the entire way to New Port Richey, which would have us arriving after midnight. By about 4:00 pm, we decided we definitely wanted to drive past Savannah, so I cancelled our hotel reservation there. By 5:40 pm,, we had been in the car about 3 hours, but all was going well, so we cancelled the Kingsland reservation, and decided to stop in Brunswick, GA for a quick dinner and then press on to Ocala. It seemed to make more sense to try to get the boys to sleep the first couple of hours in the car, and have a shorter trip on Saturday, and we normally stay up until 10:00 to 10:30 pm anyway, so why not be driving? We ended up getting to Brunswick by 6:30 pm - I could not believe we drove four hours straight without a potty break! The boys were being SOOOOO good, I was extremely impressed.
We stopped for dinner at Wendy's, and while we were there, we put their PJ's on them in the parking lot of the Wendy's. For Jackson, not such a big deal, but for a 5.5 year old, a little funny!! ["Jacob, don't show the world your undies!"] We got Jackson set up with the Ipad to watch a little SuperWhy and Jacob watched something on the Iphone. We let Jackson watch two episodes of SuperWhy and then turned off the Ipad, by a little after 8 pm he was asleep. Success! We let Jacob stay up quite a bit later than usual, until about 9 pm before taking the IPhone away. He fell asleep shortly later, but clearly was pretty restless and not too comfortable. Very glad we didn't expect him to sleep in the car very long.
We pushed on and got to the Ocala Homewood Suites around 10:15 at night. I had called and told them we would arrive at 10 pm and would need a pack n play. Alas, it was not in the room on our arrival. Not too happy. I made up the sofa bed for Jacob and prepped the room. The pack n play arrived about 10 min later. We got the boys in and settled by about 10:45 pm. Jackson was very thrown off. He whimpered on and off for about 10 minutes. Then, quiet. Jeff and I finally fell asleep around midnight.
Saturday, May 19, 2012:
We were awoken at 6:10 am by Jacob. He also woke up Jackson. We put them in the bed with us, but they wouldn't go back to sleep! So, we were up. Jacob told us that the night before, when Jackson kept whimpering, he sang to his brother, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, TWICE and then Jackson went to sleep and was quiet. He is just the BEST big brother ever.
We finally went down to breakfast a little after 7 am. We showered and then got back in the car for the almost 2 hour trek. We arrived at my grandparents a little before 11 am.
We stayed until around 12:15 or so, and then went to Chili's with the boys and my brother and sister in law. The boys were pretty good considering how tired I'm sure they were. Jackson fell asleep in the car immediately. When we got to the hotel about 10 minutes later, I checked us in and then we went to get the boys into the hotel. I carried Jackson and he did not wake up the whole time. I laid down with him in the bedroom part of the suite while Jeff unloaded the car. Jackson slept a whole hour, which is a great nap for him (for us... he naps two hours sometimes for Janet, but we are lucky to get 30 minutes out of him). After naps, we went back to visit with Sugar & Papa for about 2 hours. At 5 pm, we headed to the grocery store and picked up rotisserie chicken and sides to take back to the condo my brother had rented. We fed the boys and prepared the dinner. By about 7 pm, we headed back to our hotel. I bathed the boys while Jeff prepared us for staying in the bedroom part for the night. We got them to bed by about 8 pm, which was a great success. Jackson did not even whimper tonight!
Relaxing now with a glass of wine. We'll visit with my grandparents again tomorrow, and have Cracker Barrel take out fir dubber. Monday, we are off to Kissimmee and Tuesday to Disney!
Showing posts with label Vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vacation. Show all posts
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Back from Mini-Vacation to the Mountains!
We had a great Labor Day weekend in the mountains of N.C. We were fortunate enough to be offered a free place to stay at a beautiful condominium belonging to the parents of my dad's wife at Sugartop. We couldn't say no, so Jeff & I took off work on Thursday & Friday and we left on our adventure on Thursday morning. We stopped in North Wilkesboro for lunch and then on to Sugar Mountain, which is about 20-30 minutes from Boone. After we got checked in, we got settled and went out for supplies & provisions. By the time we got back, we just played with Jacob a little while longer, then fed him dinner. We put him to bed and despite being in a new place in a pack n play he had never slept in, he only cried for eight (long!) minutes before going to sleep!
On Friday morning, we waited until after his morning nap to get a start on the day. We headed over to the original Mast General Store in Valle Crucis. It's probably one of our favorite things to do, they have lots of neat stuff. We also went by the Annex store as well. As we were walking around, I showed Jacob a Lambchop puppet like this one. He took to it immediately and hugged it as we walked around the store, so of course, we had to buy it for him. [By the way, Lambchop has now moved right up their with Slugger. Jacob slept with his little arms wrapped around them both last night. It was adorable.] We went to lunch at Woodland's BBQ on Friday and it was pretty good! Jacob enjoyed his first BBQ and ate almost a whole hotdog too! We did some other shopping on Friday, but mainly tried to just get Jacob adjusted. We also went to the indoor pool at the condo on Friday and Jacob really enjoyed that too. We have an inflatable whale infant float that we bought before he was even born, and we finally got a chance to use it! Oh my, he loved it. Jeff took him out at one point, and he wanted to get back in!
On Saturday morning, we took a chance and left early before Jacob's morning nap, hoping he'd sleep in the car. He did okay, but not great with that. We were headed to Linville Falls. It was very foggy on the Blue Ridge Parkway. At one point, it was difficult to even see the yellow double lines on the road!! We considered turning back, but pushed on through the fog. We made it to Linville Falls and tried out a LLBean Child Carrier borrowed from some friends. It worked well and we hiked about 1.5 miles round-trip to see the falls & take pictures. Jacob seemed to enjoy riding during our hike. I even carried him on the way back and it wasn't too bad. After leaving Linville Falls, we headed further south on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Little Switzerland, an adorable little town in the mountains. We had a delicious lunch at the Switzerland Cafe, where our waitress asked us if Jacob just love to smile all the time. If we learned anything this trip, it's that Jacob likes to eat in restaurants! He loves looking all around at the people! After lunch, we went by the Orchard at Altapass and had some ice cream while listening to a band play mountain music. This is one of those attractions you don't see in the guidebooks, but we stumbled across it and we have enjoyed visiting a few times now. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite apple season yet, but the store and the music are lots of fun. Saturday was one long day, and we
actually went back out to the Mast General Store again. It was a lot more crowded than the day before, and we picked up a few more things.
On Sunday, we headed over to Beech Mountain, which is the highest incorporated town east of the Mississippi River. Wow, those were some STEEP and WINDING roads to get up there. I'm pretty sure the brakes weren't really fond of coming down either.... Anyway, they were having a Mile High Kite Festival. They even had free kites for kids, so we made Jacob a kite that read "Jacob's First Kite" and included the date. Then, Jeff & I tried our darnedest to fly it! We had a nice time and took some great pictures of Jacob sitting in the grass! I'm going to get all the pictures posted in a few days. When we left the Kite Festival, we went on a 2 hour expedition looking for lunch without any luck at all. Everything was SUPER busy because it was a holiday weekend and the weather was beautiful. We ended up giving up and hitting the McDonald's drive through on our way back to the Condo. For the record, Jacob wasn't too fond of chicken nuggets, and I couldn't be happier about that.
On Monday, we started packing up and headed for home around Noon. We stopped again in Wilkesboro for lunch (at the same Applebee's, no less!) and got home around 4:30 p.m. We had a great time on Jacob's first vacation, even if it was a short one!
On Friday morning, we waited until after his morning nap to get a start on the day. We headed over to the original Mast General Store in Valle Crucis. It's probably one of our favorite things to do, they have lots of neat stuff. We also went by the Annex store as well. As we were walking around, I showed Jacob a Lambchop puppet like this one. He took to it immediately and hugged it as we walked around the store, so of course, we had to buy it for him. [By the way, Lambchop has now moved right up their with Slugger. Jacob slept with his little arms wrapped around them both last night. It was adorable.] We went to lunch at Woodland's BBQ on Friday and it was pretty good! Jacob enjoyed his first BBQ and ate almost a whole hotdog too! We did some other shopping on Friday, but mainly tried to just get Jacob adjusted. We also went to the indoor pool at the condo on Friday and Jacob really enjoyed that too. We have an inflatable whale infant float that we bought before he was even born, and we finally got a chance to use it! Oh my, he loved it. Jeff took him out at one point, and he wanted to get back in!
On Saturday morning, we took a chance and left early before Jacob's morning nap, hoping he'd sleep in the car. He did okay, but not great with that. We were headed to Linville Falls. It was very foggy on the Blue Ridge Parkway. At one point, it was difficult to even see the yellow double lines on the road!! We considered turning back, but pushed on through the fog. We made it to Linville Falls and tried out a LLBean Child Carrier borrowed from some friends. It worked well and we hiked about 1.5 miles round-trip to see the falls & take pictures. Jacob seemed to enjoy riding during our hike. I even carried him on the way back and it wasn't too bad. After leaving Linville Falls, we headed further south on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Little Switzerland, an adorable little town in the mountains. We had a delicious lunch at the Switzerland Cafe, where our waitress asked us if Jacob just love to smile all the time. If we learned anything this trip, it's that Jacob likes to eat in restaurants! He loves looking all around at the people! After lunch, we went by the Orchard at Altapass and had some ice cream while listening to a band play mountain music. This is one of those attractions you don't see in the guidebooks, but we stumbled across it and we have enjoyed visiting a few times now. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite apple season yet, but the store and the music are lots of fun. Saturday was one long day, and we
actually went back out to the Mast General Store again. It was a lot more crowded than the day before, and we picked up a few more things.
On Sunday, we headed over to Beech Mountain, which is the highest incorporated town east of the Mississippi River. Wow, those were some STEEP and WINDING roads to get up there. I'm pretty sure the brakes weren't really fond of coming down either.... Anyway, they were having a Mile High Kite Festival. They even had free kites for kids, so we made Jacob a kite that read "Jacob's First Kite" and included the date. Then, Jeff & I tried our darnedest to fly it! We had a nice time and took some great pictures of Jacob sitting in the grass! I'm going to get all the pictures posted in a few days. When we left the Kite Festival, we went on a 2 hour expedition looking for lunch without any luck at all. Everything was SUPER busy because it was a holiday weekend and the weather was beautiful. We ended up giving up and hitting the McDonald's drive through on our way back to the Condo. For the record, Jacob wasn't too fond of chicken nuggets, and I couldn't be happier about that.
On Monday, we started packing up and headed for home around Noon. We stopped again in Wilkesboro for lunch (at the same Applebee's, no less!) and got home around 4:30 p.m. We had a great time on Jacob's first vacation, even if it was a short one!
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