After spending the majority of our July moving to Georgia and trying to get our new life figured out we decided we deserved some fun! We drove the four hours to Florida to join in on the Rollins Reunion for Ben’s last week of freedom.
I’d never been to Florida and Ben had only been recently for a conference, so that hardly counts. Four hrs is just about the length of a reasonable car trip in my book. Six hours is too much for a day, but four is just about right. The kids did great on the drive, and I was so impressed! Nelson is getting a lot better at putting up with car rides and I’m gradually getting better at prepping for these rides as well.
We arrived Tuesday evening and got settled. Walked around the area of our Airbnb and saw some baby gators!
Wednesday was going to be a big day. Ben was a huge Harry Potter fan when he was younger and still can do remarkably well with Harry Potter trivia games. Of course, when they created Harry Potter World he really wanted to go! Unfortunately, his family first went to HPW a week before he got off his mission (it was in connection with a reunion so they couldn’t choose the date). The second opportunity came around the summer he started Med school so he had to miss that as well. Finally, the Florida reunion would be a time that he had time off! And as a bonus we were moving super close to Florida! Ben’s mom and dad were the real heroes by watching Riley and Nelson after getting off a red eye flight that morning. They arrived around 8 am, we passed the kiddos off to them, and headed for Universal! We had Ben’s brother Tim and his wife, Annaliesa with us which made it fun! They had done Universal the previous summer so they were able to suggest which rides we should seek out and how to use the Universal App to our advantage.
When we were planning this trip I realized I hadn’t been on a real rollercoaster probably since senior year of high school, maybe freshman year of college. And those rollercoasters were just at lagoon so not the coolest rollercoasters. The rollercoasters at universal were amazing! After the very first ride I was like, ok that was worth the $200 ticket. That was amazing. The kind of 4D, virtual rides were my favorite. Also, the butter beer was amazing! It was $9 a glass, but we still got it twice! Overall, we had a super fun time. I will say having not been to an amusement park it’s crazy how much money you have to spend to get to ride like 8 rides. The lines are so long you spend so much time trying to ride one ride. We did the single rider line a few times that can make the wait faster, but I wasn’t going to Universal just to ride rides I was going to experience it with Ben, not some rando. It’s fun to hear the screams and sounds of the people you know next to you. So I requested not to do the single rider line too much.
We lasted at Universal until about 7:30. It had started raining and thundering at 6:30 so that really diminished the options of things we could do. I was perfectly fine being done a little early. It was a long day which lots of walking, but such a fun time!
Thursday was sort of a down day because a lot of the crew was sleep deprived either because their red eye had been delayed and they’d arrived at 5 am or because they’d been out late kayaking till 3 am. So most of the morning I was just trying to keep the kids quiet. Eventually Ben’s dad suggested taking the kids to the aquarium. Aquariums are always fun for the kiddos so I was onboard! When we walked in they had us pose for some pictures that came with the price of the ticket, good thing too! They turned out so well I would’ve had to buy them if them didn’t. I was holding Riley so I couldn’t tell that she was actually following the directions the camera lady was saying to look up and look scared so when I saw how the picture turned out I LOVED it.
After the aquarium we took the kiddos on a carousel. Riley was having the time of her life. Nelson was not. Everything was fine until I had to move him so I was in between both him and Riley. He was NOT happy to be picked up and then discard so quickly. He spent the whole ride grasping at my shirt trying to pull himself off the horse.
Thursday night it was our turn to go do some bioluminescence kayaking. It was the best part of the whole trip. I kind of feel bad the best too outings were just Ben and I without kiddos, but it was also really fun having adult fun together which hasn’t happened in forever. I realized that the day at Unviersal was the longest I’d been away from both children since Riley was born. 😨 So yeah this trip was good for us. Uncle Paul took a group of us out to this lagoon that has these algae that glow when you touch or move them. It’s incredible. As you row your ore is making the water glow. You trace your finger in the water and can see marks of where you’ve been. You pull your hand out of the water and watch the glowing water run down your arm. Kayaking through a school of fish is the best, it’s midnight so you don’t see the fish, but when you disturbe them all the sudden you see flashes of light speeding away from your boat. It was the most incredible night!
Well the incredible night made for a rough morning. We kind of drew the short straw in that there was an early morning activity planned for Friday morning. So we were up and ready to go at 8:30 after getting to bed around 4. Also, did I mention we were sleeping in a bed with Riley in between us? So none of our rest was super restful. That girl likes to go horizontal in the bed and then start to kick. So we drove up to some blue springs and went swimming for a bit. This activity would’ve been more fun if the water hadn’t been so cold! Nelson was immediately not a fan and was in hysterics on and off the whole time.
Most of Friday was a daze because of how absolutely exhausted I was. I definitely passed out on the couch at some point while Nelson was napping and maybe I’d let Riley watch a show.
Saturday was our last day in Florida. We still hadn’t been to the beach and I realized it wasn’t gonna happen unless I just did it and said hey people can come if you want but we are going to the beach. I’m so glad we did because we had such a fun time! I wish we’d had more time, but we had to be back at 12 for the birthday party tradition they have. So we only got a few hours, but the good news is we live very close to some great beaches here in Georgia anyways.
We hurried back to the house, had a fun birthday party, which Riley was a HUGE fan of. After the birthday party we said our goodbyes and got out of there as quick as we could because it was already 2:30 and our arrival time at home was going to be later than I’d hoped.
But even when we left it didn’t feel like the reunion ended because Ben’s parents actually followed us back to Savannah for two days! It was so fun hosting our first guests and getting to share a small bit of our new life with someone. It was also a bonus for me was having Meredith in town to show me some of the basics on the organ so I could play the organ instead of just sticking with the piano. We went to Forsyth Park and and awesome wildlife nature center.
It was a wonderful end to our month of vacation, we so enjoyed having Dad at home, but I’m happy to report we’ve found a bit of a rhythm to our days now that Dad’s back at work as well. Riley is now doing PreK 5 days a week and so far hasn’t put up too much of a fuss to going each day. We will see if it starts to wear on her after a few weeks of this, but I’m hopeful she’ll just be a girl who enjoys school 🤞🏻.
