our first family vacation

The Vistana Villages... It feels like our second home. 

We had a lovely week in Orlando with my parents and it was clear that Coop enjoyed his first vacation ever :) He lovesdthe pool (so happy we did swimming lessons to prepare for this), sleeping in his stroller with the sounds of the waterfall in the background, and spending every waking minute with his grandparents. 

It was a bit of an adventure GETTING to Florida though... 

At 6:30am we arrived at the Ottawa airport, dropped off our cars, and stood in line to check our bags. We had our boarding passes so normally we would just go through the bag drop line, but since we had Coop's carseat to check, they wanted us in the main line. Mom and Dad went through to the other side and we said, "see you soon!"

We presented the nice Air Canada lady with our passports and Coop's birth certificate. She took the birth certificate and said, "let me just check something." I knew immediately that it was going to be a problem. When she came back she told us that Coop needed a passport and that a birth certificate wasn't enough documentation to fly with him. She recommended we go to the ticketing counter to change our flights to the next day and spend that afternoon trying to get him an emergency passport. 

Yeah, I don't think I'll be waiting in line for 6 hours at the emergency passport office, who wouldn't even answer their PHONE by the way, in hopes that we can catch another flight the next morning... 

The lady at the ticketing counter told us that we could DRIVE him through the border and then fly out of the states. At this point, I was looking for someone to acknowledge that that was the most ridiculous rule of all time. Since we were booked with Air Canada, obviously there were no flights available from the US. After chatting with the supervisor of US customs and being told for 100% sure that we would not be flying that day, we hit the road. 

By this point we had called my parents and told them we wouldn't be making it through to the other side, and that we would keep them updated with our progress. In my mind we were driving to Florida. It was 8am on Sunday morning and I figured worst case we would get there at 8am Monday. I've done that drive something like 21 times in my 25 years; piece of cake. 

We ended up booking a flight to Florida out of Syracuse after much discussion and we crossed the border without any issues at all. By the time we landed in Orlando and got our bags it was close to midnight. Travel days are the longest kind of days. 

Coop was a champ on the flight, slept most of the way, and by Monday morning we were hanging out by the pool.  

We did our usual stop at Downtown Disney but this time it was packed. There was some kind of convention and half the people there were dressed like video game characters with wigs and crazy costumes and glowsticks and stuff. I'll never forget our preppy looking family strolling amongst this crowd...

On New Years Eve we attended a poolside party at the resort. Ryan and I are SUCH old people that we literally went to sleep at 9:30pm and set our alarms for 11:15pm in time for the party.

This is Ry posing with his plastic NYE necklace. 

Looking at the hundreds of fish and two turtles below :)

We did a day trip to Jensen Beach so that Coop could put his toes in the sand and see the ocean for the first time. It was probably the best weather all week :)

These photos are my entire life.

This will be framed in our home for sure. I love my boys :)

On Sunday afternoon Ryan flew home all by himself on our existing Ottawa flight. Since I had to rebook my ticket to fly back to Syracuse, I figured I might as well stay another week. We switched to a different building at the resort and Coop and I had so much more time in the sun together. 

I always write about the things that happened on our trips and my notes from that second week are just ridiculous. Each day started with a super basic account of life in Orlando (pool day, played Scrabble while Coop slept, shower, out for dinner), and ended with a little update on Ryan's life back home (car didn't start when he got back to Ottawa, couldn't pick up Weezy, gets frostbite one night and ends up in the hospital, loses his wallet only a few hours before picking up a rental car...the list goes on.) 

It feels SO good to be home and have everyone where they're supposed to be (together).