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Signaling the End of Summer (by dates... not so much by weather)

This has been a super awesome Labor Day weekend. We started our weekend early on Friday with a trip to Disney that was, by far, one of our best yet. Then, on Saturday we met up with my parents and spent the weekend at their timeshare.

We met them at Froggers in Mount Dora for lunch and then all drove down together. They have a timeshare not far from Disney that actually lets you book a house. An actual house. It is a 3 bedroom house with a pool outside in the back. You get your own (albeit small but perfect for us with two small children) pool and everything. Can't beat that.









Kenzie was super excited to see the pool and wanted to get in right away. There are child proof locks on the doors, but we had a nice, long discussion about pool safety anyway. After getting settled, we put on suits and headed out for a dip. We were afraid we were going to get rained on because a storm appeared to be moving in, but it held off long enough for us to get an hour or so in the pool in.



Once we got out, we all got changed for dinner and Kenzie actually went to sleep in her bed. Friday night she woke up in the middle of the night running an almost 102 degree fever. We actually thought our weekend plans might be derailed, but she woke up Saturday perfectly fine. As it turns out, she must have still been fighting something off because she put herself to bed. We had to wake her up before dinner and she tried to fall back asleep in the chair in the living room when we were getting ready to leave. Then, right before we left she decided to twirl and hop in the living room.



We went to Olive Garden for dinner and both kids ATE like it was going out of style. So, even if she is fighting something... she was hungry. Kenzie ate more than 1/2 of a child's pizza, a ton of grapes, a breadstick, and milk. Will ate 1/2 a breadstick, applesauce, 11 rigatoni with meat sauce (I counted), and a bunch of cheerios. I swear. Sometimes these kids are like bottomless pits. Well, Will is usually a bottomless pit, but Kenzie is rarely like that. Kenzie perked right up after dinner. Once we got back to the timeshare we got both kids changed for bed and Kenzie required songs, prayers, and a story then she was OUT. Will cried for a bit in his suite that Nana designed for him and then went to sleep with minimal issues. Thank goodness. The day was fun but tiring. Momma and I made a Publix run while Steven and Joe enjoyed some libations on the patio by the pool while listening to/periodically watching football games.


Saturday night the kids slept great! Kenzie slept all night in her own room. She was quite excited. We did end up taking the mattress of the bed and putting it on the ground so that she wouldn't roll off but she didn't move all night. Will only woke up twice  during the night and then was up at 6am, but it was pretty bright in the room despite his suite so I expected it.

Since we were up so early on Sunday morning, we decided to head down to the new kids' splash pad/water park. A few years ago a sinkhole opened up and swallowed an entire building, so they built a water park and another park with things like a zip line in that area once all was clear. It was, by far, the coolest kids' water park I have ever seen. The entire thing was no more than 1 foot deep and had zero entry so both kids were set. Kenzie took a little bit of time to open up to the idea of the entire thing. She isn't always super into water getting into her eyes so with all the water cannons, she had a hard time initially. She did enjoy turning the water cannons on and off though.There seriously wasn't an area of the structure that didnt have water spraying on it or a bucket dumping water. I might have timed my initial entry onto the thing poorly and ended up with a bucket full of water dumped right on me. Eventually, I decided I was going to go for it... and braved the slide. Let me tell you, when you are wet, slides are fast. I hit that bottom fast. After a bit more coaxing, Kenzie decided she was going to try it. I had to sit at the bottom (and Daddy had to help her get to the top since she still wasn't into the water splashing on her too much), but once she went down once, she was sold. She kept requesting to do it again and again. Towards the end, I was barely catching her and she even went underwater a few times. At the end she would get up and do her "Oh Yeah!" dance after every slide. It was hilarious. Steven even tried out the slide a couple of times. Momma would have, but we were worried about her banging her elbow on the way down. Too bad, she would have liked it too. She did take Kenzie up once, so she ended up soaked, as well. We stayed a little over 30 minutes because about that far in, we started gaining company and eventually it was quite crowded. Will enjoyed his time sitting near the edge splashing like a crazy person. He would try to crawl out periodically, but if we brought him back in, he was good. I'm sure by the next time my parents reserve the timeshare he will be running after his sister to go down the slide, too.













After that excitement, we went back to the house and Will took a nap while we took a dip in the pool. Eventually we had to get out and get lunch. We ate at the house so that was pretty nice. We like having the option to eat without needing to go out. We bring Will's highchair and we can all just relax and have our meals. After lunch, Kenzie had her rest time, Momma and I ran to Publix for some stuff to grill (the house also has a full grill on the back patio) for dinner, and then eventually Will took his second nap. Momma and Joe stayed at the house with the kids and let us walk down to the Tiki Bar by the pool for a bit. That pool was PACKED! It is so nice having a pool to ourselves because there is no way we would ever get in that pool with all those people and the kids. It wouldn't be worth the stress.


Eventually we headed back to the house. Will had woken up from his nap and was chilling with Nana and Kenzie. He is doing so much better without me around 24/7. This marked the third time since Will has been born that we have been able to do something without him. We wanted to go in the pool before dinner, but there was a big storm moving in with a lot of thunder and lightening so we ended up waiting it out. We grilled hot dogs for dinner and then decided to take an evening dip before the kids went to bed.



They loved hanging out in the pool. Will decided that anytime I floated on my back, he would lean back in his float and do the same thing. Kenzie spent a ton of time "walking" using her hands and feet around the side of the pool. I'm not sure how many times she circled the pool, but it was a lot. After about 45 minutes we got the kids changed for bed. Will nursed and was out like a light within minutes. Guess we wore him out. We timed our exit from the pool exactly right because it started to rain shortly after we all got out. Kenzie had a slightly harder time because she got upset at me and threw a goldfish bag at me. That ended that. She was told to go to bed right now. She started crying once she was in there and we sent in Nana. She told Nana that she wanted me to come in so she could say she was sorry. *Heart breaking* I went in and she said "Momma, I'm sorry I threw my goldfish bag at you." She ended up falling asleep immediately after I left her after her songs and prayers. We think that is the first time she has every genuinely said I'm sorry without any prompting whatsoever.




Both kids actually slept in until 7am so that was awesome for Labor Day. When we all woke up we had breakfast and headed over to the kids' water park again. It was a ton of fun again and this time Papa even joined us. Kenzie took a bit of prompting again but did go down the slide. She would only do it if Nana brought her up to the top of the slide though so we do not have any pictures of her going down because Nana was taking those until she had to go in the water. We actually took Will onto the big contraption this time too. He seemed to enjoy it.






After the water park play we did the same thing we did the day before and went back to the house for a dip in the pool. We are always lucky when we can get Kenzie out of there. She loves being in the water... she just doesn't like it in her eyes. Will took a nap and then we had lunch and did a Target run. They had some good clearance stuff for kids so we stocked up some on clothing for next summer. Now, we hope we estimated the kids' sizes okay. After all that we just hung around the timeshare for the afternoon. Kenzie and Nana apparently had a meeting of the minds...



It was truly a day of not much going on. We ordered pizza for dinner later, bathed the kids and packed up and headed home. Kenzie has school on Tuesday so she needed to be in bed. The kids and I are going back tomorrow afternoon and staying through to Wednesday night when we will come home again for school. Then, we will do the same on Thursday and hopefully Steven will be able to join us for the last couple of days that my parents have the house.

We had such a good time this holiday weekend. Thank you to Momma and Joe for letting us hang out and enjoy the timeshare with you!!

Happy Labor Day everyone!

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