Just barely after moving and without even being unpacked at the new house yet, we repacked our bags and headed to Florida.  This was a trip we’ve had planned for a few months.  Cheridy’s brother got married in Ft. Myers and then we were going to do a family trip to Daytona.

Our trip started out quite interesting.  We’re used to traveling really light with both of our stuff fitting into a suitcase, however, now with Mayz in tow, that won’t be happening anymore.

We had two suitcases, a stroller, a car seat, camera bag, diaper bag, and Mayz.  We got to the airport about an hour and 10 minutes before our flight and when we got to the check-in desk at Spirit Airlines, we found that our seats had been given away due to overbooking the flight so we were put on standby even though we had paid for our tickets months ago.

Apparently that’s totally legal and done all the time.  They told us the next flight out would have been the next night, which would not have been helpful as we would have missed the wedding by that point.  The people at the counter were extremely unhelpful.  They had us wait at the counter for almost an hour.  About 20 minutes before our flight was supposed to board they still had us sitting at the check in counter and had not given us any updates.  I asked a woman to check the status and she found out that there were two people that didn’t show up for the flight so thankfully we were able to get seats.  We had to run to get through security and get to the gate to catch the flight.  When we got to the security desk we were told that they had improperly marked our boarding pass and did not indicate that Mayz was supposed to be with us.  After holding us up there until a manager could come by, they let us through and we ran to the gate and were able to make it on board although we were sitting on opposite parts of the plane from each other.

Mayz had no interest in sleeping on the plane and instead wanted to walk around and say high to everyone…what a cute kid!!

We arrived in Ft. Myers and dragged all of our bags to pick up our rental car.  Since we were picking up the car in Ft. Myers and dropping off in Orlando they wouldn’t rent us a car seat which is why we had to bring our own.

The first evening in Ft. Myers, we got to hang out with Cheridy’s family, some of which were meeting Mayz for the first time.  We had fun just sitting around talking and hanging out.  Cheridy’s sister Amber and nephew Matt had an adjoining hotel room which made it really convenient for everyone.

The next morning we all went out to Sanibel island which is known for having lots of shells washed up on the shoreline.  The whole area was covered in shells.

Mayz had fun sitting around playing with all the shells and watching the pelicans dive bomb the water to catch fish:

Sanibel Island also sports the ugliest light house I’ve ever seen…I just had to take a photo and try to make something of it:

Matt got himself a nice collection of unique shells to take home.  Here’s a shot of Amber and Matt:

Here’s my favorite shot of Cheridy and Mayz:

Later in the evening we headed out to Dareck and Valentina’s wedding.  They seem really happy together!  It was nice going to a wedding without having to take photos.

Mayz got all decked out in his finest clothes:

The next morning we headed out for our vacation to Daytona Beach.  It was about a 4 hour drive from Ft. Myers and thankfully Mayz slept for half of it.  We were staying at the Wyndham OceanWalk Resort which was really nice.  We stayed in a super nice room which was actually a condo on the 21st floor with an incredible ocean view.

The place we stayed in had a room for Mayz, a living room, kitchen, master bedroom, and two bathrooms.  Everything was bright with fun colors and very clean.  I had read mixed reviews online about this place, but we were extremely impressed.

Since this is their off season, it wasn’t too crowded which helped me a lot because I don’t like crowds.  The hotel had two indoor pools, two outdoor pools, a kiddie splash pool, a lazy river, a kids play area, etc.  Unfortunately the weather was a bit too cold to take advantage of all the outdoor pools.  It was 65 and really windy.  We spent a lot of time together as a family doing a whole lot of nothing.  We took walks on the boardwalk and beach, we let Mayz play in the sand and splash around in the water, we slept in, took naps, watched a couple movies on the laptop and that’s about it.  It was REALLY nice having this downtime as we’ve been running around like crazy lately with our move and trying to setup the new house.

Here’s some of my favorite pics:

Since our place had a full kitchen, we went to the grocery store and bought food which saved us quite a bit of money.  On Thursday we decided to go out for dinner and after walking over a mile in downtown Daytona Beach, all we found was quick places for junk food by the beach or LOTS of biker bars.  Other than the Ocean Walk area itself, Daytona Beach seemed pretty dumpy so we were glad that we were staying in the right place and we were REALLY glad that our room had a kitchen so we could have some decent food.

On the way back to the airport, we had extra time to kill so we stopped at Cocoa Beach for a couple hours.  It was really cold and windy on the beach so we hung out in the park and had a picnic lunch and let Mayz crawl around on the play structure:

The only downer was when I tried to get some information about our flight home, I was told that we would need Mayz’ birth certificate which we were not told we needed, nor were we asked for it on our flight out here.  So we had to scramble to have someone at home get into our house, scan it, email it to us, and then find a printer to print it (thanks Frank!!)  It was very frustrating and just one more thing to make me want to avoid Spirit Airlines at all costs in the future!

After a very relaxing break, we’re now back home and hitting the ground running!!