Our FL Vacation

It's about time we took our first vacation as a family of four! We had so much fun in Florida last week. It was hot, sunny (with a tiny bit of rain) and absolutely perfect.

Our trip started with a 2 hour drive to Detroit. We shoved all our stuff into a little airport shuttle bus (we had so much stuff they could ONLY take us lol) and took the bouncy ride in. Of course L loved the bus, J's eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head.

The kids loved to watch the indoor "train" and see the big fountain at DTW. They also loved running up and down the long aisles and shoving McDonalds in their mouths-

Jack ended up sleeping on both long flights to and from FL! It was awesome except for the extra hours we spent in the air on the way home because of storms. Overall they both did great, MUCH better than driving.

Ahhhhh the beach! Both kids were a little hesitant about the Gulf at first. I think they were just overwhelmed by it.

They loved the sand and chasing the birds. You'd think they'd NEVER seen one before...

Layla had her own suite back at the condo. She really liked having her own HUGE bed and a bathroom. LOL. She got really into coloring over this trip (random) so she spent a lot of time drawing in her little notebook.

This was taken at Fudruckers...a TOTAL dud. We were trying to be cheap and we heard they had alligators there. This was about the extent of the alligator fun.

We tried to enjoy LOTS of sea food. This was Old Bay Steamers...SO good (the kids did not agree).

One of the kids favorite things was visiting the Gulfarium. They got to see lots of super cool fish in the tanks AND....

They even got to see a Dolphin show!

We knew Layla would like it but Jack LOOOOOVED it. He kept pointing at them saying "ish ish ISH" (fish).

We tried to take a stroll on the beach every evening. We also tried to catch the sand crabs but only had 1 successful evening.

Daddy and the kids with our crab gear.

Jack liked to destroy everyone's sand castles at the end of the day. :/

The kids were pretty tried of swimming by the last day (because they are nuts) so we went to an air museum nearby. Jack didn't get it but L loved to play in the cockpits and look at all the flags.

A new addition to the Barton family came for Bryan's birthday...a GoPro! We had a TON of fun with it!

Here's a few views from the beach-

And from the zero entry pool

Jack didn't love the lazy river LOL

But Layla did!

Jack DID love the splash pad and kid's slide.

He also loved to get buried in the sand!

Bryan and I were terrible about getting in pictures with the kids this trip. Oops!

But we did get this with the GoPro...it's probably one of my favorites EVER.

Layla helped us write a note in the guest book on our last night. She also drew this sweet picture of a the condo full of dogs. LOL

And of course we made a video of our trip. I may or may not watch this multiple times a day :)

We can't WAIT to go on vacation again. I think the next stop is NYC for Mommy and Layla and then maybe another FL trip soon?! I sure hope so!