Busch Gardens - Tampa

So the last leg of our trip was to go up to Tampa and stay for 3 days. While there we visited Busch Gardens twice. It was AMAZING! I totally recommend it for small kids. Their kids area was Sesame Street theme, which was perfect for my kids. We saw "the real" Big Bird, Grover and Zoey. They kids had there pictures taken with them. They were SOO excited. I have to admit I was pretty excited they had Big Bird there. He is one of my favorites. My big kids could ride two of the adult water rides which I rode with them. All the kids could ride the rides in the kid section, they required an adult with Luca sometimes.

We watched a couple shows. One was with animals who could do all these tricks. It was made to look like the animals and humans were together on a deserted island and working together. Then we saw a Pirates 4D show. The back of the seats sprayed water and air at us and the movie itself was 3D.

They also have spray park for the kids and you can bring in bathing suits and towels.

Finally, a huge section is a Zoo. They have a train that runs through the whole park. It also goes through the African animal habitat. Here is a cool interactive map of the park so you can see what it looks like: http://buschgardens.com/Bgt/Explore/ParkMap.aspx


All kids with Big Bird.


Grover and Zoey monster with the big kids.


Luca at Spray Park inside Busch Gardens.

More vacation pictures - Fort Myers

So we flew into Fort Myers and stayed for 3 days. The first day we visited Sanibel. The second day we drove down to Naples area and took a boat tour. We saw Manatee, many kinds of birds and a Dolphin. It was pretty cool. I think the kids favorite part was helping drive the boat. Luca didn't make it through the whole ride. He fell asleep the last 1/2 hour or so.


The third day we went to Fort Myers beach. It was super fun. We went back on our last day as well.

Sanibel Island

Our first full day in Florida we went across to Sanibel Island. It is beautiful, clean and very unique. We took our lunch and stayed all day. We went to the beach and then ate our lunch. After that we went and rented a double 4 seat bike. It fit all 5 of us, since 3 are kids. Massimo pedaled us all around the island and we stopped and got the most amazing ice cream. We had flavors like Blueberry Buttercream Cookie and Carmel Marscapone Pistachio.

Luca preferred to play in the sand. He was a little intimidated by the waves, even though they were pretty small and mild.



Gioia found a hole someone else had started in the sand and really went to work making it bigger.

Florida Vacation

This week we took a family vacation to Florida. It was awesome and amazing. The weather was upper 80's all week, no rain and just perfect. I am going to post about it in a couple different posts so it doesn't get too picture heavy. The kids did great on the airplane and really enjoyed it. It was Luca's first plane ride. We flew into Fort Myers and stayed for a few days then went to Tampa for a few days.



Here is the view from our hotel in Fort Myers. There is a great little restaurant in the mall area next to our hotel. It is called Gator Bites and they have Alligator on the menu. We went there and ate. It was really good. The waiter said he had never seen kids willingly eat Alligator like that (and like it so well). I thought that was weird and funny. My kids thought it was cool to try Alligator.



Looking out the hotel the other way is a Nature Preserve. You couldn't go on the land but it looks cool.

Spring, for real this time, right??

I should have awesome pictures to post but I don't. So here is just a list of all the fun things we did this weekend!

1: The boys and I went to my moms for the weekend.
2: We watched the musical Oklahoma! and it was great!
3: Luca got to stay with his Great Grandma and had a blast.
4: The boys got to play in the hay, see cows and spend time on Papaw and Grandma's farm.
5: My hubby bought 4 apples trees and 2 plum trees AND GOT THEM PLANTED!! WOO HOO!!
6: He also bought 10 blueberry bushes and 3 raspberries. He got most of them planted.
7: I planted cabbage, broccoli and flowers.
8: Hubby got the whole garden tilled.
9: Hubby got the whole yard mowed (2 acres).
10: We watched Tangled, the new Disney movie about Rapunzel.

All in all it was a super great weekend. I will try to post some pictures soon.