The Smith Seven: First day of vacation

5-22 In the morning, Derek started to cry at 7:30 so Kori took him down to the lobby so he would not wake all of us up. When the kids woke up, they went down with Kori to have breakfast while I watched the monster, and then we packed up and waited for our van to arrive. Lisa, who had purchased a van for us, had it towed to our hotel because she was afraid to drive it without a tag on it. Once it got there, (a royal blue 99 Ford Windstar), we loaded up and headed to our condo where we would be staying for 10 days. It was going to cost a fortune to rent a car and drop it off in Indie, so we bought a van instead. It was cheap, but as long as it gets us to Indi, it will work great. And lisa actually found us a pretty good van (all things considered). We got to our new condo a few hours before check-in time, and since we did not know what else we could do, we went swimming.

The pool here is great, with a lazy river and bath tub temperature water. Unfortunately, Kori and I got fried (not smart on the first day of vacation before heading to Disney for the next 4 days). We tried our best, staying in the shade until Lisa showed up with the sunblock, but we got burnt anyway. For the most part, the kids turned out much better. Haley is the only one that got burnt. I went and picked up burgers from Checkers for lunch, and then we swam until about 2:30. We got out and loaded all of our stuff into the condo and then headed off.

Next we headed to East Lake Tohopelega lake for an everglades swamp airboat ride. It was neither in the Everglades, or a swamp, but in the tall, tall grass on the edge of a very large lake. They claimed the lake drained south and eventually made it into the everglades. The ride was awesome. Airboats are a blast. We did not see much wildlife, because it was 95 degrees outside. Mostly birds, timptons (or something like that), snake birds, egrets etc, and a few turtles. Logan and Haley loved the boat ride, but Isaac mostly sat hunched up from the wind with his eyes closed until somebody said they saw something. Derek slept through most of it. We looked pretty funny because they had us wear large ear muffs do dull the noise of the boat. I actually took mine off almost immediately, preferring the noise to the muffs, and many of the other passengers joined me by the end of the ride. After we got off the boat, they had a 2 year old alligator with his mouth taped shut. They let each of the kids hold it. (Kori and I held it too - it was really cool) and then they suckered us into buying pictures of the kids holding the gators for $32 bucks. Eeesh!

Afterwards, we headed to Cici's for dinner, then back to our condo. Kori got the kids bathed while I ran to the grocery store to stock us up for the next month. It was a pretty good start to a vacation.