Day One of Vacation -- Getting Here...

Lets just say we're glad to be here :)

4am came REALLY early Tuesday morning but 30 minutes later everyone was dressed and ready to go. I went in to wake William up and he awoke with a BIG smile on his face. I asked him if he knew what today was and he said "BEACH!!!" We got to the airport right on schedule, checked in without too much hassle, and headed for security.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER we made it through. Explain to my why at 6:05am there is already a line a mile long?! We were a little worried we might not make our flight, but we arrived to the gate just in time to get a quick snack and board our Airbus to Miami. It was seriously the biggest plane any of us have ever been on. We got moved to the bulkhead seats, which meant three in the middle of the plane (no window, despite my promise to Yums!). It worked out well, as we were able to put him between us. We couldn't get the seatbelt tightened behind the carseat and realized when we landed that it had come undone and was so the entire flight. Oops! He did AWESOME though for the hour we were in the plane. Right before we took off I told him "Remember...we have to go night night on the plane" and he closed his eyes and nuzzled into his carseat. A few minutes later when his eyes were still closed Patrick and I looked at each other and were like "Seriously...that worked?!" He never did fall asleep, but tried REALLY hard!!

We landed in Miami and had quite a treck to our connecting terminal, which was fine, as we had a 2 and a half hour layover. THAT was an interesting 2+ hours. You can only show Yums the airplaines, the buses, the "tractors" so many times! Add to that he was tired, we were tired, he was bored, we were bored... He would watch a show on my ipod touch for a few minutes here or there, but was really more interested in having a temper tantrum :) He did think it was fun to "call" everyone on the payphones and tell them he was going to the beach, though!

FINALLY it was time to board our plane. No no...wait...it was time to board a BUS to take us out to our plane. That's NEVER a good sign! ;) They crammed an entire flight full of people onto this tiny little bus and left us waiting on our plane for a good 15 minutes...with no air conditioning, in Miami, with my child who was quite perterbed that he could not get on the plane. Ugh!! Once I got a good look at the plane I wasn't too sure I wanted to get on it. It had PROPELLERS!!! No, really, it did. And lucky us, they were RIGHT outside our window once we sat down on the plane. For some reason I just didn't trust those things to turn fast enough to get us up into the sky. Gosh, I REALLY don't like flying.

Anyway, the deafening noise that the props made were enough to put Yums to sleep instantly upon take-off, and he slept against me the entire flight only to wake up cause he had to to get off. (We ended up gait checking the carseat for this flight because there was just NO way that HUGE carseat was going to fit in those TINY seats!!) A couple of stops through customs, a short cab ride (cab meaning really beat up old VW van), and a room switch cause ours smelled like urine and we were SET!!!

We spent the entire afternoon on the beach. The weather was fabulous, but the water was still a tad chilly. Yums immediately made friends with some 20-somethings that are here on Spring Break from Raleigh. He thought he was the coolest thing ever...and so did they. They were happy to entertain him with the hopes that he'd attract some female 20-somethings for them! :)

We had an "interesting" dinner here on property, and headed back to the room hoping that we could get Yums down early. No luck, but he did fall asleep just after nine after 34 verses of the "Yummies Song." He was woken up a few times in the middle of the night by people SCREAMING out in the hallway, but thankfully he fell right back to sleep. He slept til 6:45 this morning (it was already WAY bright at that point) and is currently running around the room going crazy! ;) We're heading out in a few minutes to the UNEXSO dolphin encounter!

Here's the only picture that was taken in Auto yesterday and therefore the only picture not in RAW! I'll have to wait til we get back to process them....unless I get bored and download photoshop to Patrick's computer! ;)